Favorite Costumes From My Childhood

Ruth thought it would be fun to do a meme on favorite costumes from our childhood, and I decided she was right - it would be fun! Plus, I found pictures! I was a strange kid...

In this first one, I was five. I am the Frankenstein on the right, wearing my dad's pants. I guess my sister is Morticia. We used to go to the rich neighborhoods for candy and we could fill two big bags! Although I have no idea how she could walk very far in Mom's high heels.

Here I am eight and wanted to do my own costume. I wore my step dad's bathrobe, an old wig I liked to play with, and my sister used some sort of makeup pencil to draw a villain's face. Then I practiced making scary faces. I actually won "Ugliest" in a costume contest. I was so proud!

I am ten in this picture with my siblings. I don't know what my brother was, besides cute, and my sister looked adorable as a cat. I chose to be a bookworm. That's right, a bookworm. I have a box around my middle made to look like a book. I have no idea what the black material is, and the "cap" was my mother's tube top! I pretty much gave up on costumes after this one. Until my kids came along!

Becoming Gracious

I have given a lot of thought to the way I want to grow old. My mom said she was going to live to be 100 so matter of factly the whole time I was growing up, that I just thought that's what one did. So I've always intended to live to be 100. I will be 50 in a few years and it feels like I'll be able to re-start the odometer and do the whole trip over again, so I definitely don't feel old yet, but I assume at some point I will be officially an old woman. Instead of being horrified by that idea, I want to grow in to it graciously. I've known some grand old women, beautiful and gracious and comfortable with their age. They are wise, wonderful, kind and funny. Intelligent and accomplished, too, with very interesting stories to tell. They wear their crowns of white hair as regally as queens and I admire them greatly. That's the kind of old woman I want to be, and I figure it won't just happen. No, I will have to work toward it every day as I build my life decision by decision, choice by choice.

I have always been fascinated by Scarlett of Gone With the Wind fame. She secretly wishes to grow to be exactly like her gracious, self-sacrificing, servant mother. Scarlett is portrayed as self-centered to an amazing degree, willing to do anything that will advance her own welfare to the detriment of anyone who gets in her way. But every time she makes a bad choice, she reassures herself that some day when it is more convenient, she'll be kind, worry about others before herself, sacrifice for the common good. She puts off every good choice to a tomorrow that never quite comes, never realizing that with every bad choice she makes she goes the opposite direction of where she wants to end up. That made a huge impression on me growing up. I came to realize that every single choice I made was a building block in the person I would become. Kindness and self-denial are not concepts to be discussed but character traits to be developed by practicing them time after time, when it is least convenient and hardest to do. But if I practice being gracious throughout my life, I am confident that some day I will grow to be like the women I so admire.

"A gracious woman attains honor. Let (her adornment) be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. Strength and dignity are her clothing and she smiles at the future. She opens her mouth in wisdom and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue." (medley of Proverbs 11:16, 1 Peter 3:4, Proverbs 31: 25, 26) This is what I aspire to.

Memorial

Today I went to Ruth's Memorial at the nursing home. They have one every month to remember those that passed on in the previous month. I thought there would be 2 or 3 maybe. There were 13. Friends and family gathered in the chapel, a woman sang some beautiful songs and a minister prayed, read scripture and spoke "words of comfort." There was a time to share memories of your loved one, and I took that opportunity to remember Ruth, and to thank the caregivers that had helped make her final year so wonderful. Several of them told me how much Ruth had meant to them as well. Afterwards there were refreshments someone had taken the time to make, and we all visited. I met some of Ruth's friends from "the lunch bunch." I was very impressed once again by the staff. They obviously consider their job a ministry. Actually quite a few them are volunteers. What they do is such a blessing. Every time I've ever been there, they are invariably cheerful, efficient, kind and compassionate, and professional all at the same time. It would be nice to be so well cared for, and then remembered, by such a group when it is my turn to be old!

In getting ready for the memorial, I sorted through Ruth's pictures so I could take some of her for the memory table. Of course, I walked right out and forgot them on my own table! But the process made me thoughtful. It is really weird going through someone else's memories. Some of the pictures were of our mutual family, but many were of people I didn't know, but who were important enough for Ruth to keep their photos all these years. It would be nice to know who they were. One thing I have begun doing as a result is to organize my own photos and label them clearly. The other thing is sorting through everything I own, deciding what is really important enough to keep. After all, some day it will all belong to someone else. Do I really want to dust it until then? And there was one last result of all of this. As the minister said today, how do I want to be remembered? After listening to what people had to say about their beloved departed, it seems we write our own eulogy through lots of small, thoughtful things that we do day by day more often than by one monumental achievement. The one characteristic most people seemed to admire about their loved one was some variation on the theme of, "She was old and sick and blind and alone, but she never complained!" Something tells me that takes a lifetime of practice through smaller hardships, don't you think?