Pat Bean's blog

Aging My Way

When you’re 85, and if you’re lucky, your head is full of memories, and you never know when one of them is going to pop up. Like this morning when I was reading a post by Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writing-advice authors.

She was talking about taking a walk with an old friend and mentioned that they were wearing raincoats because although it was sunny, it was drizzling off and on. “In my family, we always announced during a sun shower that it must be a monkey’s birthday somewhere,” she wrote.

Her family was more positive than mine, because on reading those words I clearly heard my Southern grandmother say that if it were raining and the sun was shining, then the devil must be beating his wife.

Another saying for a day when the sun is shining through the rain, wrote Lamott, is that it’s a day when the foxes are having a wedding.

 A bit of research turned out there were even more old sayings for such a day, including a witch making butter in Poland and day for a parish fair in Germany. And in the Appalachians in this country, the locals might also say that the devil is kissing his wife.

Now I have even more memories stuffed into this old brain of mine. I’m just glad to be remembering some of them.     

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.