What Happens in Life

 

By G. E. Shuman

 

          If you know me, or if you’ve been following this column for long, you probably know about my home. My wife and I own a very large, almost 125-year-old Barre City house where we have lived for nearly 40 of those years. All five of our children grew up here; all twelve of our grandkids and even two great grandkids have spent much time here.

          Our house is in decent shape (for the shape it’s in, as they say,) but does bear the scrapes and scars of those years of use, and probably of some misuse. A few places in the hard old woodwork are marked with minor digs; some inner doorways still show the holes from hinges removed and doors discarded long before our time here. There is a small cold cellar, a closed room in the corner of our basement with crudely painted letters on its door which read: “Keep Out! No Girls Allowed!”  Those words are ‘child height writings’ probably painted there by a few small boys in the process of forming a fleeting ‘boys only’ club down there. Those boys, if still with us at all, are incredibly old men by now. Also in the basement, right in front of the furnace, is a spot where the concrete floor was patched, long ago. A date the patching was done is marked forever in the cement with the year 1934. To me that is amazing.

          Our house definitely has some charm, and a bit of personality caused by these and many other records of our family’s time here, along with the times of the families that came before us.

When I think of all of that it makes me wonder about those other people involved and the fact that those years also had their effect, took their toll on them, too.

What happens in life writes a long and telling story on our minds, and even on our bodies. We too have the scars of age and experience, both physically and mentally; we too bear those marks in our appearance, and in our own personalities.

In a smallish front room of the house, that we have always called the family room, there is a big corner fireplace, and various chairs and antiques. In one front corner is my grandfather’s old Victrola, complete with its 78rpm records from the era when our old house was a new one. The Victrola still works, and I sometimes play one of those old recordings, just to hear the voices of singers who had passed long before I was even born. The amazing thing, to me, is that those voices are still there, contained in the grooves, the ‘wrinkles’ of those old records.

That always reminds me of the fact that we are each, in a way, records of the time we have spent in this life. At my age there are many records of experience in the wrinkles, white hair, and memories that are ‘me.’

Let’s be thankful for both the great times and the physical and mental scars earned by bumping our way through the rooms and hallways of this old house we call life. We should wear the record proudly.

         

 

The Sounds of Silence

 

By G. E. Shuman

 

          Do you ever have trouble sleeping? I have trouble sleeping, and I think it’s a common thing. My problem is both that I often can’t go to sleep, and that I don’t really want to. Also, I usually wake very early in the morning, sometimes due to a call from nature, other times just because I wake up and can’t fall back to sleep. Thus, and therefore, I rarely feel completely rested.

          I’m beginning to think it may be a ‘which came first’ situation, like the chicken and the egg. Do I stay up late to avoid sleeping, get up early because I can’t get back to sleep, and then feel tired all day? Or do I feel tired all day, take an afternoon nap, and avoid going to sleep at a ‘normal’ bedtime on purpose?

          For me, the tradeoff is worth it, in a way. I love the late evening, when others in my home have headed to bed, the TV has been turned off, and even the parakeet has stopped chirping. I also love the early morning, often between three and four am, when others in my home are still sound asleep, the TV is still off, that bird still has its head tucked under its wing, and even the sun hasn’t gotten up yet. Cars rarely pass by our home at that time of morning, and the world just seems to be at peace. That last part is, at least, until I see the morning news.

          My cravings for these late evening and early morning times, even at the expense of rest, stems from my absolute love of the ‘sounds of silence’ those hours bring. Those hours give me both time to think, and to ‘not think.’ They are when I come up with my best column topics and novel plots. They are times for prayer and for thoughts of appreciation for all that I have. Sometimes they are times for planning the coming day, but not usually. That can wait until I am actually ‘awake’ and in full command (sure) of my thoughts.

          Those sounds of silence times are helpful, maybe even more so, when no planning and little thinking is done at all. In those times my tired mind gets rest, even if my body does not, as it puts down the heavy work of weighing the value and use of incoming information. Then, when the new dawn arrives, I can often think more clearly, more kindly. (Even if I might need that afternoon nap.)

          There is a little poem which states:

Your mind is a garden.

Your thoughts are the seeds.

You can grow flowers.

Or you can grow weeds.”

(Author unknown.)

Here’s to listening to the sounds of silence. And here’s to growing flowers.

A Secret Worth Sharing

 

Hello Friends,

          I feel like we’re close, after all these years, meeting every other week in this column in the paper as we do. We’ve probably shared many coffee breaks together, and by now you likely know me pretty well. So, I’ve decided to share a little secret with you. Okay, so here goes. You see, in just another week it will be Lorna’s and my fiftieth wedding anniversary. Yes, you read that right. It’s not our fifth, or our fifteenth, it’s our fiftieth. Whew!

          I know that sounds like a really long time to most of you, and it does to us too. It’s probably hard for you to believe that an energetic young couple like us could have been married so long ago, (ya, sure,) and it is for us too. In my case that’s because I use a twenty-year-old picture in my newspaper articles. I must change that soon. In Lorna’s case it’s because she is the prettiest and youngest looking woman our age I have ever known. (So, what’s wrong with having a pretty, young looking wife?)

Sometimes it seems impossible that fifty years have passed, and other times that the day when we ran off and got married must have happened in some other couple’s lifetime, long, long ago, in a galaxy far away.

          That’s right, we eloped on that long ago day in August 1972. It was August 17^th, to be exact. What happened was that Lorna had been after me throughout high school, and finally wore me down. (You shouldn’t believe me when I say stuff like that. You should just know not to, after all these years.) I pursued her, and prayed, literally every day for a year, that she would come to love me. Yes, we really did elope. The reason we can still be so young and energetic (ya, sure, again) after all these years is that we were both barely eighteen when we did so.

          It did later come to light that a few of the older church ladies were counting the months until our first child was born. Shame on them. I think they must have stopped counting by month twenty-four, when Chrissy was born. And a few other people thought our marriage wouldn’t last longer than six months. Next week, we will have made it to one hundred times those six months, which, to me, is a REALLY spooky thought.

          For all the young men out there, eager to ‘pop the question to your special young lady,’ I do have some advice. For a long and happy marriage, make sure the young lady you’re going to marry is absolutely perfect in every way. (I don’t personally know anything about that, but maybe you can find one?) 

          In all seriousness, and that’s a mode I have trouble staying in for very long, my wife Lorna was, on that day, and still is, the perfect girl for me. We’ve shared a wonderful life together, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ll love you forever, Norn.

          My cousin Donald, who was also our minister at the time and did a public service for us (actually for our families) the very day after our elopement, did give us a bit of advice that has helped us from the day he said it. He told us to always communicate with each other. He said that when one person or the other in a couple won’t talk it’s not good. When neither will talk it spells real trouble. So, talk to your spouse. (Thank you, Don.)

          I have also heard that for a happy marriage, a husband should always treat his wife just as he did when they were first dating. Still, lately it’s getting hard to take her to dinner and a movie and then drop her off at her parent’s house after.