Perspective

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Perspective on Age

Times: 1968, 2016
Places: Republican National Conventions
            Reading, MA, Argelès-sur-mer, France.

2016
Richard Nixon filled my TV screen. CNN was comparing his speech to Donald Trump's. I feel nauseous more by what they've shown about Trump. I am tired of war and race riots. Nixon looks so young, I think.

1968
Richard Nixon fills my TV screen. Same speech as I will see decades later in France. I am nauseous more from my new pregnancy than what he says. I am in Reading, MA. I am tired of war, race riots. Nixon looks so old, I think.

Perspective on Friendship

Times: 1993-2016
Places: Internet, Geneva, Africa

"You can speak English," were the first words J spoke to me. I had telephoned about an ad for an apartment in Geneva where I'd just moved for work. Little did I know that would begin first a landlord-tenant relationship followed by decades of growing friendship that included silliness, sushi, support thru life-threatening illnesses and loss of beloved family members and much, much, much more.

Her blog triggered the memory of our first meeting at the apartment that would be my home for the next 11 years. She was with her Son. No. 1 a gangling teenager.

I think of a photo of that son taken a year ago. He is in Africa in tribal dress on a jeep surrounded by gun-toting body guards. No, he didn't become a terrorist. He is doing good things while on mission for the UN.

Friendships are built by shared experiences little by little until one day, one realizes the depth of that friendship.

Perspective on weather

Times: 2014, 2016

Places: Westport, Ireland, Argelès-sur-mer, France

Dec. 2014

"Isn't this wonderful?" I asked my husband Rick. We were walking a dog in Westport, Ireland as part of a house/pet sitting experience. Sleet was stinging my cheeks. Every atom of my body felt alive. I had the energy to conquer the world.

Raised in snow-bound much of the year, Binghamton, NY and having lived in hot, hot Dallas happily for  20 years, he looked at me. There were ice crystals in his beard. I could "hear" him thinking "I married a crazy woman."

July 2016

Rick and I are walking around the village at the end of a very hot day that has sucked my strength. It is a bit cooler (meaning I can breath but barely). He is happy, I am sure thinking of golf games yet to be played in "good" weather. Snow is a four-letter obscenity to him while heat enlivens him.

Fortunately we both like spring and autumn.

The mystical "they" say the more things change the more they stay the same.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Maybe it is our perspective that changes.