The Ocatillo was a whole new sun shined life for her. I thought they were so old at the time, but now I realize they were only in their late fifties. Their children were all married and had children of their own. This was their time! None of us knew she only a few years left to live. Bob and I had been sick with that terrible cold was going around for weeks and so when a friend offered to have a book signing in the desert, we jumped at the chance! We coincidentally rented a house on the golf course of Canyon Country Club. I was literally walking in her shoes. It had been raining like mad in Santa Barbara and it was cold and damp in our house so you can imagine how excited we were to just relax in that wonderful sunshine. The sun was delicious! We just laid there like two slabs of meat. It felt so good we just baked. We played a little golf, I had my book signing, we met with friends, and all the time my mother was on my mind. I could picture her there, loving it! At the end of five days we had our last night out with some friends and we felt much better with less coughing and general fatigue. We came home from dinner and I took off my jewelry, which consisted of a long silver necklace and a strand of diamonds, I wore around my neck, made up of earrings my mother had left me. I laid them on the counter and before my unbelieving eyes the diamond necklace slithered off the counter onto the sink and down the drain. I thought, "NO! This cannot be true!" I felt out of body as if I made it up. It was 11 o’clock at night, so I called the man who managed the property and left a message that I needed an emergency visit from a plumber early in the a.m. , as quickly as he could get him. I didn't sleep all night, my husband kept reassuring me "We’ll get it," he said, "you'll see, it'll be all right." "Please God," I thought at 7 o’clock the next morning I wondered who else I could call. At 7:30 I finally called my girlfriend who lived in the desert and asked who her plumber was. She gave me her plumbers name and number . I called and I heard them say they would try to be there by 12 o'clock that day. I walked around the house making deals with God and then I walked around the house some more. I thought to myself "really, how did this happen? Why did it happen?" I kept asking myself over and over. At 10:30, Bill the plumber showed up. I was never so happy to see anyone in my life. He said we would have a good chance it could be in the crook of the arm underneath the sink, if it didn’t already slip down too far to be reached. I couldn’t watch him work. I kept walking around the house until I finally heard Bill ( my new best friend ) call out “Beverlye, Is this what you’re looking for?” and there it was , my mother’s diamonds on that long chain.
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 Let’s talk about face creams, beauty creams, miracle masks and how many we really have in all different drawers and shelves. And yet, we keep buying them, right?? My mother, God bless her (aleha ha-shalom) was allergic to everything and passed those allergies down to me and I, in turn, passed them down to my daughter (sorry, Ter). I cannot use anything with perfume in it so therefore that eliminates all of the very expensive ones (thank God). Oh, I’ve tried all the La Mer’s, etc., my eyes would swell up and I’d move on, but that doesn’t stop me. I keep going for all the miracle creams (allergy tested, of course) I see at the drugstores. I’m also a sucker whenever I go for a facial and the facialist whispers in my ear “this will tighten your pores, exfoliate your skin and put all the moisture back in.” Wow! I would be a fool to not buy those! I keep thinking that one of these is going to make me look like the right side of an ad you see in the magazines where the left side is all wrinkly, with a double chin and red blotches, and the right side is smooth with no discoloration and a chin to die for. So far, I still look like the left side.  I looked in my bathroom drawers and this is what I found; retinol night cream, luminescent lifting serum, signature firming cream, (not yet) miracle mask (self explanatory, but still no miracles), perfecting polish, neck renewal cream (one can only hope), broad-range antioxidant treatment (this sounds serious) and Albolene (really the only one I’m not allergic to). And this is after I’ve thrown a bunch of miracles in the trash!
At this age and stage, there is really not much one can do for their looks other than have your hair done and pray for a good hair day. However, hope springs eternal!!!! 
The movie was the story of prisoners on death row and the families that were left behind from the bloodshed they had created. There was a man whose job it was to strap the death row prisoners down before their execution and then take them off the gurney at the end of the execution and send them to the funeral home. He looked at it as just another job. He did that more than 100 times .with out feeling. There was a woman prisoner that he assisted and that got to him. He finally understood they were human beings and the part he played in their dying. He quit and started another job (we don’t know what) but for the first time in his life, he felt real joy from the world !  He said he had always heard the expression “Live Your Dash" and never paid any attention to it. He went on to explain what that meant. On your tombstone, there is your birth date, a dash , and then your date of death. It is up to us to live that dash to the fullest! He also said the first time he heard birds sing was after he quit that job and took the time to look around, and actually listen to the birds. When we receive a diagnosis of any kind , when a car just misses us crossing the street, when a loved one is sick, we realize just how precious life becomes!! The dash is the juicy part, the part where we laugh with our friends, where we hold our kids hands, where we look at our mates in that special way. The dash is when we do a kindness for someone else, when we love an animal and let them lick us in the face. The dash is the living part, good and bad, the part where we hear the birds and smile at the beauty of the flowers or the mountains or the ocean. The part when when we say, I love you and mean it.  My family didn’t get to have enough dashes, so I want to remember that whenever I complain, grumble, disapprove of something, or forget to smile. Aging isn’t always easy but the alternative would be to take our dash away. We have to remember just because we’ve had a bad day, a bad month, or a bad year doesn’t mean we’ve had a bad life! I want to “Live My Dash “with every ounce of joy I can find in my body!
I hope we all do! |
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December 2020
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