I'm a "10" for sure!

Yayyyyyy I am a 10!  I reached the milestone of 55 on April 18th and in looking at the cup half full, I recognized that I'm finally a 10.  In 1979, the movie "10" starring Bo Derek and Dudley Moore and hit the big screen, and forever after gals wanted to be scored a ten in looks.  

I may be taking liberties with my own definition of being a ten (55 years old:: 5+5=10) but there is so much to be thankful for, I reckoned why not.  My personal benchmark may be different than others, yet they are mine alone:

1. I'm happily married to a wonderful man who to this day makes me appreciate him and the life we have formed together.
2. Through blending our family, we have four awesome kids aged 21, 23, 25 and 27 where the eldest, Kyle, has been working at the same corporation for 8 years, Des is solid in her career and engaged to be married this year, Chantal is finishing up her 2nd year of university and Kelsey is off to make her fortune in Vancouver with a great job in a law firm and with the man of her dreams.
3. Ones own happiness is often defined through motherhood and my kids are happy, healthy and really great people.
4. I am working for an excellent Canadian corporation that sets the bar in many ways.
5. I have discovered my love of writing and blog as often as I can.
6. I have found balance with work, life and love.
7. I am a fashion forward fashionista where even the young gals where I work often comment on my ensembles.
8. I have my mom who is 81 years old and still there for me with love, support and an example of how healthy living can carry you to a longer life still able to travel, dance and be true to herself.
9. I have a beautiful home which I am continually redecorating and improving.
10. I have an adorable pet dog named Buddy who makes my day every day.

I guess those are pretty basic to most.  Yet, we should stop every once and a while and just appreciate what we have to be thankful for and give gratitude to those who make our lives meaningful.  I am lucky to have a few great friends whom I've known for years and years.  

Aging is all about continual improvement, seeking more knowledge, being satisfied with what we have while still stretching ourselves towards new goals.  

Material things and money are easy targets for setting goals, however, the simpler things are sometimes harder to appreciate.  Certainly, when I was in my 20s, my list was fairly long.  I've experienced great success, great disappointments, periods of sadness or melancholy, and times of money.  

At the end of the day, what makes me the most content are:

•  spending time with my kids, family dinners and playing games like "Heads Up" or having a backyard fire pit just hanging out and talking.
• sharing time with my best friend and her husband whom Rob and I really enjoy hanging out with.
• talking on the phone with my mom or sister, to discover the quick hello evolved into an hour.
• my youngest daughter calls me almost every day from Vancouver, although I miss her tremendously, I love talking with her on her updates, news, happiness.
• my stepdaughter, her fiance and my son drop in often just for a visit and sometimes a sleep over.
• My older brother Greg and I get to go have dinner when he is in Calgary on visit.
• My sister and I have been on vacations together to Mexico three times and there are wonderful memories that I would like to add to by going again.
• My husband and I have been able to travel on tropical vacations, we like just going for drives in the beautiful country surrounding us, meandering through garage sales, or me just sitting on the driveway soaking up the sun while he putters around on our "Getaway Car".
• While so many are unemployed, I have a job with a great company and have learned that my job title no longer defines me.
• I have Buddy to take me on walks with, snuggle up with and who protects me faithfully.
• We have a beautiful home that can accommodate our kids and their friends, hosting get togethers and celebrations.
• I love working on my garden and transforming it year after year into a haven of beauty to be enjoyed not only by us but those who walk back the green belt pathway that goes along our back yard.

Sure, I wouldn't be me without some things we call bucket list as we grow older, transformed from goals:

• a dream job doing marketing or maybe even dabbling in sales again
• my writing starts to generate an income, for the extras in life we want:: travel first and foremost
• I'd love it if my writing were to evolve more into reviewing items geared towards the female 50s crowd, with samples arriving from Brands who value my opinion and a following that trusts it.
• My mom and sister are always telling me to write a book.  Humbly, I think everyone wants to write a book or thinks they can.  To be any better would be egotistical.  I recognize one just has to "do it".
• I'd love a chance to go with Rob to Seattle to watch a Seattle Sea Hawks football game.  So strange for a Canadian hockey fan to put an NFL game on her list ... eh?
• It would be fun to be invited to help decorate a show home or a room to stretch the imagination and challenge myself.
• See if my painting hobby of re-purposed objects could actually be sold as art :: more designed for the garden.
• Maybe get a second dog, smaller, for a companion for Buddy, like our teacup poodle Coco was before she passed on at 13 years old and who will trot after me as I putter in the garden (Buddy is too busy running around and playing bodyguard to follow me).

It is safe to say I am able to stop and be grateful for what I have and yet energetic enough to want to stretch farther and reach higher.  I am content for the most part yet still have a restlessness to want to do more.  The next decade is going to be interesting to see what unfolds.

The one that got away ....

I was having this conversation with my sister the other day.  Heaven help me if I even remember what our train of thought may have been... do you have a sister that you really relate to even though your worlds may seem so far apart?  

                 STOP and have a listen, or play while you read on through 

My sister is as opposite of me as the world could even imagine:

• she was born in the autumn and I in the Spring
• we saw our growing up differently: she full of pain; me full of belief
• while I can come across gregarious she could come across as calm and reasoning
• our relationships, kids, friends are friends of each other too - they find it easier to like the other
• you enjoy shopping together and would never imagine skydiving - although one would have if she thought about it while the other wouldn't have dared (me).
• you both reach for the same things even if our home, our taste, would seemingly be different

Sidetracked again.  Apologies ... then what the heck do you expect of me by now?   It appears as though I have writing AHSD.  Thank goodness not in real life:  I can be excruciatingly organized and detailed while consciously trying not to be so the opposite is perceived.

This is what the conversation was about: the one that got away.  How bizarre eh?

Two sisters of 18 months apart in their fifties having an absurd reminiscence.  Opposite memories, no doubt.  She talked and I listened for a change.  Yeh, not a regular occurrence by any means.

My conscious memory a week later pops this into my head as I'm driving home.  I know I listened carefully.  I am really trying to be a better listener, which is not a natural state.  

She talked about this boy that she really liked when she had run away from home.  As much as she seemed like a radical from candy-coated pink 15-year-old eyes, I seem more like a rebel now that I've hit my 50s.

The memory went on in the manner that this sort does:  what would have or could have happened if she had not broken his heart and stayed with him.  

Astonishing!  The responsible, loving, caring mother, daughter, sister or aunt, was actually rewinding life to check back and check in to what she thought she'd be doing once she hit her 50s.  

STOP and have a listen, or play while you read on through 

So many wondrous movies are about going back in time, less about heading into the future.  It must be a creative dream, to take a situation and from the current state, to what had happened, and how things may have gone differently.  I now realize that the surprise in store for the reader or viewer, is will the hero or heroine return to the current state much differently or very much the same with differences.

That is such  a creative morsel of temptation.  Take a situation or moment in your life, and fast rewind and slowly play forward.  Taking the audience on a ride that even you may not predict.  Will you return differently or much the same with differences ...

What do I mean?  My sister  ... was doing that in a sense.  She was wondering if she had stayed with that very nice boy, not broken his heart, and stayed together.  She wasn't evaluating it, nor was she suggesting that she was disatisfied with how things turned out.

 It was a simple, honest meandering .... My sister  was highlighting what we go through when we hit or 40s and 50s.  We really aren't all that different than we were in our teens.  The ride we'd be on at the time would result in whether we are currently on the ride of our lives, or too conservative.  Or, some of us would recall that maybe they could have been a little bit braver or self-confident at our teens.  Others of us blossom as life and the years make us milder, more content.  While others of us become restless and want to step out.

What would your comfort zone and would you have done things differently then and end up different somehow? 

I am torn between staying the same or being more carefree.  How does one's homelife be the same and yet be reacted far apart?  

I couldn't have imagined things getting any worse so I would madly try to be an over-achiever.  Perhaps some experts would say that was because I was a fighter and did whatever it would take to have a life that would erase anything.  My sister may say that she was acting it out.  

Deal with it now is what most would applaud.  Get it out of your system so you can grow up and get on with life.  In a measured, grounded, spiritual way.  

If you bottle it up you may never know when it will sprout. Maybe that is what they mean by mid-life crisis?  When it hits or skips over anyone, would be a multi-zillion market.  

Many marketers, services or products  are divided into two groups:

ONE:  Going through mid-life crisis.

TWO:  Not.

Are you meandering about the one who got away?  Examine whether you think things would have turned out differently, or would have it made a difference.

Create a balance between the two:  Don't pine for what may have been.  Instead, create the life now that would be a different you .... or the same you with a little change.

Now this is how I really feel:

 

When a KISS is not a KISS

The Kiss (Lovers) was painted by the Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt between 1907 and 1908, the highpoint of his "Golden Period", when he painted a number of works in a similar gilded style. A perfect square, the canvas depicts a couple embracing, their bodies entwined in elaborate robes decorated in a style influenced by both linear constructs of the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. The work is composed of oil paint with applied layers of gold leaf, an aspect that gives it its strikingly modern, yet evocative appearance. The painting is now in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere museum in the Belvedere palace, Vienna, and is widely considered a masterpiece of the early modern period. It is a symbol of Vienna Jugendstil—Viennese Art Nouveau—and is considered Klimt's most popular work.^[2]

Ahhhh, the kiss.  How fitting to begin meanderings about kissing for Valentines Day.  As a matter of fact, I do have a reproduction in my home and it is a favorite.  It sits outside our master bedroom, a subtle reminder of how wonderful the right kiss transcends love and validates "the one".

How you feel when you kiss ?

According to Psychology Today, one hypothesis is that the kiss has evolved as a mechanism for gathering information about potential sexual partners. A kiss brings us into close physical proximity with the other, close enough to smell and taste them. The face area is rich with glands secreting chemicals that carry genetic and immunological information. Our saliva carries hormonal messages. A person's breath, as well as the taste of their lips and the feel of their teeth, signals things about their health and hygiene, and thus their procreative suitability. 

Another hypothesis claims that the kiss functions primarily on the level of psychology, as a way to express and reinforce feelings of trust, closeness, and intimacy with another.

A kiss can seal the deal.

One thing I'm always thankful is having a position of trust with my girls.  As a mother, you have to guard the sacredness of having a relationship with your daughter in which she turns to you in moments of elation and devastation.  One can only hope that you can share her peak times and times of excitement.

In our home, it usually started with "I met a boy...." and would move on to the enrapture and description a daughter would go on to share in confidence while she would be exuberant with excitement and possibilities.

Imparting with excitement, as confidences go, I would be allowed into the secret world that women share when they are optimistic over the possibilities of meeting a great guy.

Of course, I would want to hear the details if she would feel comfortable sharing.  There is always a common thread in my line of questioning:

* how did they meet?

* was it a random meeting or among friends?

* did he treat her with respect?

* what did he do?

* were they drinking, at a club or a party?

* what did he do? (student, job, career?)

* where is he from? 

* how did his kiss make her feel?

Time does have a way of sorting out whether it was the joyfulness of being young, flirting, and being beautiful to the opposite sex.  Bias aside, all three of my girls are beautiful, unique to themselves, wired differently.  

Having external beauty and inner beauty is something I am always reinforcing to them.  I have always gone on about the fact that you can be beautiful on the outside, but your character is inner self is what exudes true beauty.  

They're all quite different and what is important to each is unique.  Yet with each one, I have asked:  "How do you feel when he kisses you?"  As though that is the secret to passion, life and longevity in relationships.

Movies have forever portrayed a swooning, toe curling kiss with fireworks to mean that you have found heaven with that connection.  It may not be as dramatic as all that.  

There is something to be said on whether it leaves one warm, safe, shared intimacy of that singular exchange.  Whether it holds the promise of discovery.  

I'm not talking about a saliva-sucking physical reaction of the moment that fools many unsuspecting ladies to think that the energy is a signal to yield all.

Nor does a friendly hug and peck depict anything other than just that.  More than a regular friend but not the deep connection that can be communicated by something as simple as a kiss.

A kiss can tell you whether he will guard your heart and not trample on it.  It can convey that he may be just as enraptured as you, while just as nervous of exposing his own heart and vulnerabilities.

A kiss is symbolic.

Many women who have been married for a while or for years can often reminisce about that first kiss:  how they felt, how they knew something was spectacularly special, that the exchange was deeply meaningful holding promise, some would say that it told them of a future with this person.

There are famous kisses that have withstood the test of time, even if the relationship was fleeting. The images rarely portray the feelings I've described or experts depict.  Nevertheless, they remain as timeless as the moment they were captured:

Image source:  New York Post

In August 1945, George Mendonsa was 22 years old, a Navy quartermaster on leave from the Pacific theater. He’d dropped out of school at 16 and worked with his dad, a commercial fisherman, in Rhode Island, enlisting in the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor: 

So on this joyous and unbelievable afternoon, George  grabbed the first nurse he saw, spun her around, dipped her and kissed her. 

The kiss did kind of bother someone else, though: the woman in the nurse’s uniform, Greta Zimmer, who wasn’t even a nurse. She was a 21-year-old dental assistant from Queens, who, having heard rumors about the end of the war, walked over to Times Square from her office on Lexington Avenue. George says he was so drunk, he doesn’t even remember the kiss. Greta says she’ll never forget it.

Greta Zimmer was born and raised in Austria, and in 1939, after much debate, her parents insisted that Greta and her two sisters flee to America. They were among the last refugees to make it out, and even on the afternoon of Aug. 14, as Greta read the illuminated news crawl declaring the end of the war, she had no idea where her parents were, or if they were even alive.

Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance in Behind the Scenes, 1916

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in Red Dust, 1932

Clark Gabel and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind 1939

Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity 1953 

Disney's Lady and the Tramp, 1955

Breakfast at Tiffany's kiss with George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn, 1961

Great love story: Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton Cleopatra, 1963

John Lenon and Yoko Ono 1971

Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia ~ Star Wars 1977

John Travolta and Olivia Newton John in Grease 1978

Dirty Dancing starred Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swaze, 1987

Ghost with Demi Moore and Patric Swatze, 1990

Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet in The Titanic 1997

Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in The Notebook 2004

Madonna kisses Britney Spears during the 2003 MTV Video Awards

There you have it:  some famous and infamous kisses ~ some we may remember while others we may want to forget.  Most of the movies are favorites and come recommended as worth watching.

Regardless of who you may be kissing this Valentines:  make it memorable!

Lil bit of attitude

"Oh, my, this one has attitude!" exclamed the delivery nurse.  Who may have been saying "here's another one" to the tired, adrenaline-rushed parents of this newborn creation ..... of theirs.

 A mixture of disbelief and amazement as this gaze upon this near perfect little human girl.  Minutes from being in a warm, comfortable womb.  Indignant at the harsh introduction she hadn't anticipated she let out a howl.

This little beauty grew and grew:  and sang "take me out to the Ball Game" at a mere 16 months.  As a party favor, she blasted through the adults polite conversation, as their jaws dropped and gaped open at a special experience unfolded.  Discussion began.  How amazing is it that a little burst of energy could sing to the rafters, in such abandon, glorying in the musical flutes her own tonsils gave. Oblivious to the expressions of anyone around her.  She liked bursting out and singing.  Her abandon to anything akin to self-conscious expression.  The audience crossed between envy and awe.  How could such a little thing stand up, be so proud, and sing with such abandon?  At ONLY 16 months.

The parents who were always ready with a video camera were stunned into inaction.  The musical notes combined with gusto and self-exuberance.  How could they have created such a ... umm... creature?  Alas, it was a daughter.  They should have had their seat belts tightened.  Yet they didn't do anything. Why should they?  They weren't puppeteers, merely creators.  

They wondered, however, how can they take credit for such a beauty with such a powerful voice? 

As the little girl developed and continued to grow became as ever a sight to behold.  At 2, this confident, clever,  creation would insist that she was a princess.  Her hard-working mother and father fascinated, would wonder:  how could a princess be born and insist she was one.  They  were, although not average folk, wondered how they could be responsible for this envisioned little lady?  

Then, one day, when the father was away at work, slagging dragons called life and career, the mother bent over a captive keyboard for job.  A nanny, on call, living out, ever present, vacuuming the castle always to shine, was focussed on leaving a tread in the carpet, hadn't noticed her charge, who had transformed into an escapee to her mother's home office.  Sneaking in, quietly, taking and absorbing every last detail.  Alas, the mother noticed the scamp in her midst.  The little joy did ask: "Mommy, what are you doing?"

Lest the mother cause disillusionment of the responsibility of working and career, she tenderly said:  "I am working.  When you grown up, you will likely work too.  What is it that you think you'll do too?

The predictable reply did unfold "why, when I am grown up, I will be a princess!" Said with such convincement, less mortal men or mothers would never argue.  However, the mother did sigh.  She then glanced around, realizing that the King was not home nor was the princess' guard on command.

She did try to dispell the disillusionment which chance had burst, said to her darling daughter with such thirst, for life, for dreams, goals and confidence:  "why Sweetie, you will be princess when I am a queen!"  Rationalizing that being realistic of drastic importance.

Then to her utter dismay her daughter did respond:  "Why mommy, I didn't know that you were a queen!!"

The days grew onwards and upward the girl grew, when tragedy did brew.  The media, the news, the television, no matter how one flew, protested the death of a princess many thought they knew.

When dinner one day, was being prepared by her mother.  As the news and the television broadcast the cover:  A princess died while so many fed .. on the photos, paparazzi with the princess photos they led.  How sad to have such a wonderful soul cut short, would end up causing this young four-year-old lady to retort:  "That is so sad to hear about the princess."

The mother, astonished, that this little girl wisdom, attuned to the news and the stories that bloomed.  She asked her daughter, in parenting skills on high alert, how do you feel about this story?  The daughter said "Sad".  The mother now curious, nowhere near mad.  Asked her little one why would she say so.  When the gem said "well, I am a princess, so this one I should know".

This is a reflection of a mother, rediscovering the journey she started with her daughter.  She has just turned 23, in second year of university, dedicated to  fine arts, art history and philanthropy.  

A mother's pride never diminishes with age.  If anything, it flourishes as cheerleading captain of her daughter's journey.  

Happy Birthday sweet, beautiful daughter O mine.

Footprints in the soil

I was first given the gift of the poem "Footprints in the sand" when I left a company with many friends, advocates and supporters about 15 years ago.  It was the image from the same poem.  Not long after, this poem was chosen by my mother-in-law for the keepsake for a man whom she had been married to for 40 plus years as her farewell gift of love:

Footprints in the Sand

One night I dreamed I was walking
along the beach with the Lord
Many scenes from my life flashed 
across the sky.  In each scene I
noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of
footprints, other times there was one only.
This bothered me because I noticed in low
periods of my life, when I was suffering
from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could
only see one set of footprints.
So I said to the Lord: "You promised me
Lord that if I followed you, you would
walk with me always.  But I noticed that
in my most trying periods of my life
there have only been one set of footprints
in the sand.  Why, when I needed you most
have you not been there for me? 
The Lord replied: The years you have only
seen one set of footprints, my child,
is when I have carried you."

How lucky and amazing it is that one's farewell in unique circumstances and miles apart were given as a gift, as a send off to someone beloved or held dear.

I was thinking,  how lucky one is when there is someone who wants to follow in their own unique path, with the imprint of your wisdom imparted to them.  Really, footprints in the soil.

The soil, because of the wisdom can become deeply rooted in the receiver's philosophy to bloom at times of despair, discouragement and perhaps depression.  We dig deep to find the wisdom of those before us to provide inspiration when we are grasping at something that we are unaware, yet desperately seeking. 

How lucky one is to have someone who seeks your advice and an ear to listen as they sort out their feelings, their goals and struggling for a path or confirmation we are on the right one.  We all wonder.  We all seek guidance.

As we grasp for understanding for what unsettles us, we are seeking that one person who can understand our restlessness.  Fortunate are those who find that person, whether it is a parent, a friend, a sibling, a mentor, spiritual guider or willing advisor.

When we realize that there is someone reaching out to grasp your hand to guide you upon  self reflection and seeking understanding.  Some people don't have that gift to receive.  Others, don't appreciate that they have that gift to give.

Recognize that you have had agony, frustration and strongly desire to extend that guidance.  When it is before you, take it.  Similarly, don't disregard the kind words of encouragement or discredit the accolades that person extends to you.  Remember you are not in the best frame of mind or self-belief.  They may not be bias by love, but objective in understanding.  You just may need those words of encouragement when you find yourself at the bottom of the valley with a mountain of optimism before you that you cannot climb on your own.

Help others plant themselves in the soil of your wisdom.  Don't force upon them your passion for wanting them to avoid the same pitfalls you have found yourself in.  That exuberance may alienate the opportunity for them to absorb your wish for them to avoid the same pain you have experienced.  They have to be willing and accepting of your inspiration.  They will not accept any words of encouragement until they are willing to embrace them.  You may need to repeat those words more than once until they can see it for themselves.

Frustrating as that may seem, the want to clear the soil so that optimism may bloom, patience may be needed.  Hold on dearly to their need to reach out as a small bud would in soil.  You can nurture that need and wet their appetite to your desire to help them bloom.  Reach their fullest potential.  

You cannot force them to see.  No matter how hard you try.  No matter how much you want to help them avoid the pain that you have had.  They will only accept the advice when they are open to it.

Don't take it as disappointment or a sign that your experience isn't worth listening to.  Understand that it will sprout and bloom on its own accord and in its own time.   Sometimes it is delayed, sometimes immediate.  You nor them can bend it to your will.  It happens at the right time.

Yes, you see the flower that is before your eyes. It may be that the flower does not see itself as such because it is merely a sprout and cannot see the beauty that is unfolding.

Patience is wisdom.  Understanding is enlightenment.  When they both meet, wonders can happen.

Neither can embrace it or help it to be without understanding the other's role in footprints in the soil.

Be thankful that you have someone seeking your guidance.  Appreciate that you have someone whom you can reveal your deepest desire for them to reach their maximum potential.  Together, you can uncover what may be hidden in a seed.  Ready to bloom.  Likely to flourish.

"Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind.  To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue."
                                                                                        ~Buddha