2nd Wind, October 2002
"A smile is a light in the window which shows a happy heart is at home"
"Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday"
I was asked if I would deliver a homily at a Sunday service in a nursing home. I said I'd think about it, which freely translated, meant, "What the heck is a homily?" I was familiar with hominy, of the corn family, but if it had to be delivered it sounded more like a pizza. Of course I'd heard the word, homily, and had a general idea, but needed to be sure what the parameters were. A scan of the dictionary revealed: "homily...a solemn moralizing talk or writing, esp. if dull or long." Well, solemn isn't my style. I tried not to make it dull, and it wasn't long.
I got a clever note from a new reader: "Dear Doctor Darlys: A note of appreciation for the 'fun fix' your periodic potions provide. Not only do they keep us healthier, but wealthier as well, when substituted for today's 'Preposterous Prescription Pill Prices.' Then, too there is the additional benefit of NO HARMFUL SIDE EFFECTS (unless, of course, you count those sore lower body laugh muscles). Please renew my prescription. Your appreciative patient, Eleanor."
Long time friend, Loana, is 91, and still has beautiful penmanship which puts my wobbly scrawl to shame. I laughed when I read her last letter, because she made the same statement I once made after an MRI to discover if there was an ominous reason for my migraine headaches. The person to whom I made the statement didn't let me forget it. Loana's daughter, Nancy, was having a problem with her ear, and Loana wrote, "The Dr. sent her to have an MRI of her brain -- nothing was found." So I guess Nancy and I are in the same boat. I haven't had a subsequent problem. My friends and family may have one.
I just witnessed a little domestic drama. A rooster and hen, with their two remaining offspring, spend their mornings just on the other side of our fence. Apparently something grows there that attracts them. This morning, I looked out to see the rooster on this side of the fence, frantically trying to find his way back (through the fence, of course, not OVER, which must have been the way he came). His mate, equally disturbed, was dashing about on the other side of the fence. I called Beth and said, "Want a chicken dinner? We've caught one." But Beth thought it was a better idea to open the gate so he could go back. I figured if the gate was open, it was more likely the rest of the family would join him over here for fresh pickin's. After Beth opened the gate, she gently herded him toward it. He became increasingly agitated and when he was within a foot of the escape route, fiercely attacked the fence in an attempt to break through. He finally spotted the open gate, strutted through, ran to the top of a small mound in the neighbor's yard and gave a triumphant crow. I'm sure he thought he'd outwitted Beth, which, if you have ever estimated the I.Q. of a chicken, was not very flattering to her.
I think Billie, at 94, is my oldest reader. She still drives a pickup and loves to help her daughter (or is it a granddaughter?) with yard sales. Recently, when Diana had a brief hospital stay followed by a cold, and was pretty well wiped out, Billie was very upset she hadn't known. She said, "I could have brought your dinner, done your laundry and your shopping. Diana said, "Don't worry. Over the weekend my kids came from San Francisco to help me." Billie fretted. "They didn't need to drive so far. I could have done it." And she could, and would.
While at the hospital, Diana met a couple as they were passing a restroom marked with stick figures of both a man and a woman. The lady said, "Look, honey, there's another of those bi-sexual bathrooms."
A week ago, Beth called me early in the morning and was quite upset because there was a road kill raccoon in front of our place. She said, "If I hadn't locked him out he wouldn't have had to cross the road." I reminded her he had been eating more dry food than the seven cats and she was daily having to mop his muddy footprints from the kitchen, but she was inconsolable. She re-opened the pet door and returned daily to a clean kitchen and reasonably full catfood bowl. After the long Labor Day weekend she called, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that my kitchen was full of raccoon prints this morning. That's also the good news. That means it wasn't my little guy who crossed the road....unless I've been hostess to more than one." Maybe she's listed on the raccoon eatery hotline. Over the Labor Day weekend, when she was gone, I'd noticed her cats were congregating on my front porch expectantly, but had no idea their food bowl may have been wiped out. So she again closed the pet door. The next weekend, although the pet door was closed, the back door itself wasn't tightly latched, and again, the kitchen was invaded. We now suspect, from the number of footprints and the amount of food consumption, that Beth is the unwilling welfare system for an entire raccoon family. The footprints are not only on the floor and countertops, but on cupboard doors. There are also muddy footprints up my steps and on my front door. MY door will be firmly latched.
After last month's 2nd Wind, when I told about our Missouri mudhole experience, in Reminisce a writer told of a mudhole near her father's home in Colorado. She said he was driving his team to town one day and came across a traveler stuck in a neighbor's mudhole. The traveler asked if her father could pull him through. Her dad actually didn't have anything with him to hook on to the car, but he told the traveler, "I can't pull you out because this isn't my mud hole. It's Billy Gustafson's," pointing to Billy's house.
After I wrote last month about travel in our '21 Dodge, more memories popped up. In Nevada, at that time, you could drive for hours without meeting another car. You always stopped to help a stranded driver, because it could be hours before anyone else came. I only remember once we didn't stop. It was dark. Driving across the desert, we saw a fire ahead. As we drew near, we could see a roll of something like bedding, across both lanes, on fire. My mother also saw a vehicle, lights out, parked back in the sagebrush. It was too contrived and didn't look good. My Dad gunned the engine, circled out into the sagebrush around the end of the burning barrier and we kept going. We assumed it was a setup for robbery.
The only time we got "took" for our Good Samaritan approach, we picked up two stranded motorists. To make room for one, Dad asked him to hold a package that had been on the front seat. After we let them out, Dad realized the package was missing. We would like to have seen (but not heard) the expression when he discovered he had pilfered a Bible and several sermons.
Like that traveler, we often get what we need rather than what we want. I wish that for each of you.
Blessings, Darlys
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Jim and Mary were both patients at a mental hospital. One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool, Jim suddenly jumped into the deep end. He sank to the bottom and stayed there. Mary promptly dove in to save him. She swam down and pulled Jim out. When the medical director became aware of Mary's heroic act he immediately ordered her to be discharged from the hospital, as he now considered her mentally stable. When he went to tell her the news, he said, "Mary, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you're being discharged, because since you were able to jump in and save the life of another patient, I think you have regained your senses. The bad news is, Jim, the patient you saved, hung himself with his bathrobe belt in the bathroom. I am so sorry, but he's dead." Mary replied, "He didn't hang himself. I put him there to dry."
(This one is pretty gross, but if you've been a parent, or can remember being a kid, you'll laugh.) As I was trying to pack for vacation, my three year old daughter was having a wonderful time playing on the bed. At one point she said, "Daddy, look at this," and stuck out two fingers. Trying to keep her entertained, I reached out and took the fingers in my mouth, saying, "Daddy's going to eat your fingers," and pretended to do so before I rushed out of the room again. When I returned, my daughter was standing on the bed staring at her fingers with a devastated look on her face. I said, "What's wrong, honey?" She sobbed, "What happened to my booger?"
During training exercises, the lieutenant who was driving down a muddy back road encountered another car stuck in the mud with a red-faced colonel at the wheel. "Your jeep stuck, sir?" asked the lieutenant as he pulled alongside.
"Nope," replied the colonel, coming over and handing him the keys, "Yours is."
A little girl was watching her mother do the dishes when she suddenly noticed her mother had several strands of white hair sticking out in contrast to her other brunette locks. She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, "Mom, why are some of your hairs white?" Her mother replied, "Well, every time you do something wrong and make me unhappy, one of my hairs turns white." The little girl thought this over and then said, "Momma, how come ALL of Grandma's hairs are white?"
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