Can you imagine not knowing how to swim by the time you graduated from college? Helen Dow couldn’t swim. But her finance Dr. William J. Hale wanted her to learn. Reading my grandparents’ letters to each other has been enlightening.It is hard for us to realize that swimming was not something that a lot of people knew how to do in the first couple of decades of the 20th century. Helen Dow had never learned how to swim. But Billy…
All summer of 1916 Helen wrote Billy Hale every day except on the days when they saw each other. While he was absent she spent a lot of time painting china. He visited her in Midland, which was a company town, with little else to offer the visitor. She writes of longing to see him, to kiss him, but not too much. She is clearly passionate about him, but circumspect in her writing about this part. They were still chaste…
My grandmother Helen Dow Hale was smart and funny. She was one of six children, the oldest one in her family. She had loads of friends when she went to college. She was young and vibrant and full of hope and plans for the future. She graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1916. While there, along with studying and joining a sorority Theta of Alpha Phi and making new friends, she fell in love with her…
It is hard to believe that this is my second year of being “motherless”. Because I had a mother for 77 years it is rather strange NOT to have one. Most people lose their mothers at an earlier age. Most people mourn their mother’s passing. But many were so old, tattered, gray, and wrinkled by the end that there was little left. They may have been ill for years or incapacitated. Not mine, though. She was vital until she was…
You are not a victim! You are not powerless. Despite the media, the classroom, and many best-selling books plying the public with tales of victimhood, it is not the truth. We all have the ability to rise above our circumstances, no matter how horrid. It has been proven over and over in the past. During the last century, the words of hope from people who were in hopeless situations were abundant. They populate the writings of people who survived concentration…
Gratitude is the antidote for all the unpleasant emotions.
2020 has been an incredible year for me. It started with me living in my mothers’ house after her death in November because we needed to get things organized and arranged as the estate settles.When my mother died at 101, my calendar was full. To distract myself from watching her decline, I involved myself in many different organizations. Once Mother was gone, there was no reason to stay there. But I did not realize that at first because my forward…
The restrictions people accept as “Laws” are becoming more and more onerous. We the “People” MUST do something to combat the total erosion of our Freedom. Why are people not concerned? The answer is that they are terrified. I speak to people like this daily. They are intelligent and sensible people, many of whom I have known for YEARS. They tell me that people are dying of COVID, and they do not want to be dead. But they are confusing…
Charlottesville is a town filled with fear. I have never seen anything like it. People are afraid. Children are afraid of their grandparents, and parents are afraid of their children. How on earth did things become so twisted? Using the excuse of a disease that is so non-lethal, it kills less than 1% of those who contract it. And they are mostly people with one or more co-morbidities. “They” scare us with tales of hospitals full of patients, refrigerated trucks…
“You have inspired me!” She said the magic words. I was feeling a bit discouraged about my “reach”. I had been wondering if anybody cared about my message. I received an email from a woman whom I know only slightly. She wrote those words to me. “YOU have inspired me!” which encouraged me to keep going. When someone says “you inspired me” or variations on that theme, it warms my heart. Some women have even said, “You changed my life.” Those are…
A friend of mine got the COVID-19 virus. He was very ill. He was in hospital for some time. It is taking him a long time to recover. I am so glad that he is getting better all the time. It is terrible that he, of all people, got a bad case of the virus. He writes of his fear of infecting others. He speaks of the virus as if it were a fatal illness for almost anyone who catches…
Do you ever stand in front of the clothes in your closet saying “I don’t have a thing to wear” while looking through hangers full of clothes. I spent many hours this way. It is frustrating and at the same time it is obvious that there are a lot of clothes in that closet.?And like a lot of women I had my fat clothes and the clothes I could only wear after dieting. And of course there were also the…
When events seem discombobulated and people feel disoriented, it interferes with the energy surrounding us. On the day after an election with no clear winner, it is good to be older, wiser, and calmer. And that is certainly true for me.I remember the first election for which I was old enough to vote. I was passionate about it. It seemed to be the most critical thing in the world. If my candidate lost, the country as we knew it would…
The sun beating in my windows woke me with intense golden light. It is such a pleasure to wake up that way. Full of gratitude is my state every morning because I love being here in this house.My room faces east and overlooks a brick terrace that borders the whole length of the back of my house. A lovely view of fields, surrounded on the far edges with woods peacefully extends out from there. The trees are beginning to turn,…
What did you believe when you were small? Did you like yourself? Or were you like me, scared to say or even feel that you liked yourself because that seemed conceited. They warned us about appearing to be “conceited” because that was arrogant. It was a terrible sin. I knew that some people said they “like themselves best.” But I felt sorry for them. It seemed like the proper thing would be to say that you liked others more than…
