Pat Bean's blog

A Memorable Memorial

October 3, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

After nearly 25 years, I recently laid my mother’s ashes to rest beneath a pine tree with a scenic view of a river flowing past. My mother loved water, and the peaceful site was along a route we had traveled together.

To commemorate the occasion, my good friend Kim, and I decided to have a margarita on the balcony at Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park, while watching Old Faithful put on its impressive eruption. It is one of the last joyful moments I remember spending with mom.

Things, however, didn’t go well from the beginning.

For one thing, I got us lost because I had Kim drive to the Old Faithful Lodge instead of the Inn. While I immediately knew we were in the wrong place, renovations at the park, including a new visitor center since I had last visited, meant it took a while before we found the inn – and then after a couple of minutes of confusion before turning a corner, the balcony that I remembered.

Since I had been using my beloved rollator, which allows me to comfortably walk around on level ground, the next problem was getting it up the stairs to the balcony. That was solved by Kim folding the 16-pound device and carrying it up while I held onto the handrail for balance to get up the stairs.

When I was finally seated on a front bench, Kim went off to find us margaritas. The ones I had shared with my mother were served in tiny glasses, and were quite tasty as I recalled. But the ones Kim came back with were in gigantic glasses and tasted like roadkill. Neither of us could do more than take a few sips as we toasted my late mother.

So, now, let’s put the icing on the cake.

After watching Old Faithful do its thing, Kim and I departed down the stairs, me in front holding on to the railing and she in back carrying my rollator. As I neared the main floor of the inn, I missed the last step, something I was just as likely to have done at 34 as I did at 84.

In fact, it might have been my habit of always being so clumsy that had me quickly tucking and rolling in somersault mode — and ending up with nothing but my pride hurt.

After a minute or two, I was even able to pull my own-self up, to the consternation of those who wanted to help me. All I can say is I get my stubbornness from my mother.

Meanwhile, in my head was her voice saying: “Patsy Lee! You always were a klutz.”

Well, Mom. You can’t say your memorial wasn’t memorable!

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.

Posted in aging, Journeys | Tagged mothers, Yellowstone | 2 Comments »

Wrong Turns, Maybe Not

September 29, 2023 by Pat Bean

Cumbres Pass on an autumn day. — Photo by Pat Bean

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” — Douglas Adams

Aging My Way

Some of my best travel moments have been the result of a wrong turn. One example is the day I did just that in Chama, New Mexico. By the time this directionless-nitwit figured it out, I was driving through a scenic landscape that kept me going forward with no intention of turning back.

Facebook, with its post and photos from the past, brought back all the good memories of that 2009 day, which had me driving through the 10,000-foot Cumbres Pass in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. It was a colorful autumn day, traffic was almost non-existent, and my then canine companion Maggie and I took a walk and breathed it all in.

Of course, I was driving and living in a small RV at that time, and had no daily deadline to meet.

In a way, that’s kind of how I’m still living my life in retirement — although without an RV. And by the way, I cuss out myself often for selling it, especially since a recent road trip had me realizing how much I loved traveling.

But the bonus of that trip was I came home energized, ready to get this arthritic old body out into the world more, something I was actually still doing until Covid hit and isolation and staying home became a habit.

It’s time to get on the road again, even if it’s just day trips around Tucson. To misquote Dr. Seuss, I have brains in my head, shoes on my feet — and I should know where to go. Maybe I’ll even be lucky and take a wrong turn.

Posted in aging, Dogs, Favorite Places, Journeys, road trip, Travel | 1 Comment »

Unfinished Thoughts

September 8, 2023 by Pat Bean

Sitting on a fence with my thoughts. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I was looking for an idea for a post, and found at least a hundred of them on my own writing to-do list. All those possibilities were on the list, however, because I didn’t yet know how to flesh them out.

Ideas are as plentiful as the leaves currently dropping from the giant cottonwood tree in my yard, but turning them into an essay can be as difficult as keeping my yard leaf free.

As Maya Angelou said: “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

Here are just a few of the potential ideas that have intrigued me, or that I need to finish. First there’s an essay based on the theme unfinished. It has a September 16th deadline, but there are so many unfinished things in my life that my mind has become a muddle in a puddle.

Other possible essays ideas fermenting in my brain include:

Questions vs answers – which are more important?

Why is it that the same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg? Reasons to own a dog, like pizza crust ends. I’m working on this list.

The times when you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Why at 84 I still read Outside Magazine? Maybe because if I can’t hike to the top or a mountain or backpack 30 miles to reach a natural arch or a majestic waterfall at this stage in my life, I can enjoy the thrills vicariously. Hmm, maybe I should focus my writing efforts on this one for now. The muse has started buzzing around in my head.

But then that’s what brainstorming is all about. Thanks, treasured readers for listening. Now if you have any ideas about the theme unfinished, whose deadline is fast approaching, feel free to share.

Posted in aging, Art, Dogs, Journeys, Writing | Tagged to-do lists, Unfinished | 2 Comments »

A New Frontier to Conquer

September 1, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

Even if you’re not a Star Trek fan, you’re probably familiar with the phase “…to go where no man has gone before.”

That’s exactly where I feel I’ve taking a journey to and through — in the here and now. While the feeling certainly has to do with aging, that’s not all I’m talking about. I’m constantly being bombarded with new thoughts, new ways of thinking, new words, new ways of working, new ideas and new gadgets.

The world is changing faster than I can keep up. And while the good old days were not all good, these days aren’t either. As in almost everything, yesterday and today have both positive and negative attributes.

Getting from there to here has been a chaotic journey that continues to have this old broad dodging potholes to stay on the right path, the one I’ve chosen to travel while still being kind. thoughtful and updated.

Life has had me discarding misconceptions about almost everything, from race and gender to religion and morality. I even had to disregard my high school geometry teacher’s conviction that man would never make it to the moon, never mind traveling in space farther than that.

So, Captain Kirk and Captain Picard I’m ready to board the Enterprise, because I’m going where no 84-year-old woman has gone before. I’m greatly looking forward to the adventure.

Posted in aging, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Star Trek | 4 Comments »

My Dog Scamp

August 22, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

One of the best things about being retired is that you are not usually beholden to someone else’s schedule. And one of the more dubious things about being retired is having a full day ahead of you and deciding how to make it count.

I’ve been retired for 19 years now, and you would think I had that aspect perfected. Ha!

It was easier the first nine years, when I lived in my RV full time and had road trips to plan and all of this country to visit. It was even easier for the next five or six years when I was more mobile and could still hike a trail.

But my mobility became a bit restrained this past year. I’ve become mostly a nest dweller. Now, it’s a nice nest, with good neighbors and a caring granddaughter and her wife living just next door, so I’m not complaining. The truth is, I’m really enjoying this period of my life.

But that still leaves me waking each morning and wondering how I’m going to spend the day. Not so easy as it seems – especially because I’ve never wanted one day to be like the next. It helps, however, that my activity basket is quite overflowing – and my daily self-generated to-do list is always too long to finish.

I do art, I write, I review books, I judge books, I birdwatch, I watch TV, although I read much more than sitting in front of a screen. I also listen to audible books. I keep up with all my own household chores except ones requiring heavy lifting, and I even do a little yard work. I email and have snail-mail pen pals. I journal and moderate a writing chat group. I cook. I visit the library, go to a play, attend a movie, or even party with friends. And I walk my dog, which gets me outdoors where I can do a little nature observing. I also try to learn something new each day, even if it’s just a new word.

But I’m always open to something different. And I found it a couple of weeks ago. I’m taking a poetry class – me who in all my nearly 60 years of writing never wrote poetry. So, here’s my first assignment. Of course, it’s about my canine companion.

My Dog Scamp

A lap full of hair

A nose full of sniffing

Four prints in the sand

And a tail always wagging

A tongue full of kisses

A belly full of rumbling

Brown eyes that melt hearts

And ears up for alerting

A balance to my life

A companion worth having

Posted in aging, Dogs, Journeys, Writing | 9 Comments »

It’s Darth Vader Laughable

August 10, 2023 by Pat Bean

***Don’t laugh. But if you look you may find Darth Vade atop the Washington National Cathedral.***

Aging My Way

I have funny bone that’s ticklish. It doesn’t take much to make me smile or laugh.

For example, it got a good workout this morning when I read a story about the Darth Vader gargoyle that sits atop the Washington National Cathedral. Reading that in an Atlas Obscura article had my jaw dropping with a giggle.

Wait, I thought. Isn’t the Washington National Cathedral much older than Star Wars? So down the online research rabbit hole I went. Alice has nothing on me.

The cathedral, I learned is officially known as the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, and while construction began on it in 1907, renovations have pretty much been going on ever since.

The Vader gargoyle was added in the 1980s, the result of a contest to design a sculpture for a new section of the famed building. A child drew the Vader sculpture, and it was selected for the third-place prize, which included addition in the renovation. I suspect the selection committee had a sizeable funny bone, too.

As an aside about gargoyles, I’m currently reading the series Midlife Magical Madness, which is generously populated by shifter gargoyles. The books have been feeding my funny bone, which is a good thing for this old broad, who reads the daily news, to have.

Posted in aging, Journeys | Tagged Darth Vader, funny bone, Washington National Cathedral | 4 Comments »

The Snake and the Chinaberry Tree

August 2, 2023 by Pat Bean

***As a kid, I gathered up these berries as ammunition for the neighborhood kid wars. Today I wonder why kids engage in war games?*** ***What does it say of the human species?***

“Courage is knowing what not to fear.” — Plato

Every time I pass the chinaberry tree that grows in a neighbor’s yard, it takes me back in time to when I was a young girl joyfully climbing the one that grew in my grandmother’s backyard. The tree was located in a fenced area behind the house where my grandmother raised chickens, rabbits and pigs that eventually found their way to the dinner table.

Beyond this area stood a wild blackberry field that stretched for several football fields down to train tracks. It was in this tree that I often watched the Texas Zypher fly past. The sight of that silver streak may have been the beginning of my lifelong wanderlust, as I always wondered where that train had been and wished I had been there.

And as the zypher passed, I always waved at the engineer, imagining that the whistle that blew in response was just for me. Adulthood eventually inflicted me and I realized that the whistle was blown because of the nearby railroad crossing and not for me. It’s not easy growing up.

Anyway, one day when I went out to climb that chinaberry tree – and to collect its hard green berries for a neighborhood kid’s fight – there was a huge rattlesnake sunning itself on the large rock I used to reach the first limb. I screamed and ran back into the house and never climbed that tree again.

But, without nary another thought about snakes, I continued collecting blackberries, my child’s mind not connecting the fact that field was where that big rattlesnake surely had come from, and had relatives as well.

Instead, I continued enjoying those blackberries with a little sugar and milk

in a bowl, and in the blackberry pies or cobbler my grandmother baked.

It’s kind of funny thinking about that now, which I did during the big monsoon storm that shook up Tucson this past week. There is nowhere Mother Nature, with her hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, avalanches, hail storms, floods, deadly winds or just a lightning bolt out of the blue, can’t get at you.

I eventually overcame my fear of snakes, although I still keep my distance, and I learned not to let fear of what might happen keep me from living a full life. Growing up is not all bad.

Posted in aging, Journeys, Travel | Tagged chinaberry tree, snakes, storms, trees | 2 Comments »

An Old Underwood Typewriter

July 7, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I taught myself to type back in the late 1950s on an old Underwood Typewriter that I bought for $5 at a thrift store. I remembered this because I came across an ad this morning from someone wanting to sell an old Underwood for $475.

Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, if I still had that old typewriter lying about somewhere. But too many moves, and my habit of getting rid of everything I don’t use or love, reminded me that my old typewriter had long vanished from my belongings.

I taught myself how to type on that Underwood back in the 1950s because I thought it might make me employable as a clerk or secretary. I became just good enough that I got a job typing Western Union telegrams that people called in on the phone. It was a brief job, and my best memory of the time is that I took a telegram from Ernie Ford, a radio personality, singer and early-day television host.

I bet not too many of my readers out there will even remember him. Maybe not even telegrams.

I spent the next years after that job being a wife and changing diapers – five kids’ worth of them – before I once again entered the working world. The year was 1967, and typewriters like my old Underwood were being replaced with electric models, and shortly thereafter computers.

I was working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when I was forced to use one of the new-fangled contractions for the first time. No way, I thought, would I ever be able to write on it. But two weeks later, typewriters became one of those non-useful things in my life that I would get rid of.

Meanwhile, I’ve become daily hooked to my computer. I use it to write, to learn from, and to communicate with. And I paid just about the same thing for the computer laptop I’m writing this blog on, as what someone now wants to get for an old Underwood Typewriter.

Life is strange.

Posted in aging, Journeys | Tagged Underwood Typewriters | 7 Comments »

OK! So, Do Something Else

July 4, 2023 by Pat Bean

***Sitting under a large old tree in the shade is what appeals to me today. — Art by Pat Bean***

Aging My Way

My granddaughter Shanna and her wife Dawn are cleaning my gutters. I came in from watching them because I felt useless – and because I got antsy about their safety climbing up and down the ladder.

But I knew it would be annoying to tell them to be careful, because at their age I was the one climbing the ladders and putting myself in even more precarious positions. It’s what you do before you reach your eighth decade. And I found people who told me to be careful, or especially “You shouldn’t do that,” quite irritating.

Meanwhile, there are a lot more things than cleaning my gutters that I can no longer do, or have to do differently, than when I was younger.

I use my rollator to bring in groceries and take out trash because carrying anything more than a few pounds hurts my back. I also use the rollator to walk my canine companion Scamp. I use a pair of pliers to open water and soda bottles because my hands aren’t up to the task any more. Household chores are accomplished a small bit at a time here and there during the day with occasional help to lift something heavy or move a piece of furniture.

Some years back, I took up birding when my white-water rafting and tennis activities seemed a bit too much for my years. And over time, I eased down my 20-mile hikes to five-mile hikes — until my knees said no more. My birding these days is mostly done from a shady place to sit to watch and listen.

The thing is, I’ve found ways and things to replace what the years have taken away from me. I make use of my time to read and write more, and to piddle with my watercolors. I also take online classes and try to learn something new every day, even if it’s just the meaning of a new word – today it was polymathy, which means having encyclopedic knowledge.

The plus side of aging is that the years have also taken away all the angst, insecurities and unnecessary drama of my younger days. Most days I feel as if I’m living my best days.

It’s good to be an old broad, especially when you have loved ones like Shanna and Dawn to clean your gutters.

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing | 9 Comments »

I Am Woman. Hear Me Roar

June 17, 2023 by Pat Bean

***I fear weeds have invaded the beautiful flowers. — Photo by Pat Bean***

Aging My Way – Pissed and Speaking Out

One of the reasons I left the Baptist Church when I was 14 was that a hell fire and brimstone preacher replaced the calm, gentle pastor who spoke mostly of God’s love for us. He recognized his congregation’s goodness and focused on that instead of calling us all sinners, whether we were or not.

I later quit the Mormon Church, among other things, because as a woman I was a second-class citizen who couldn’t reach the highest degree of glory without a man. I’ve never thought of myself as a second-class citizen, especially since circumstances pushed me into being the family breadwinner, a position which many women find themselves in, want it or not. It wasn’t easy, and for years I fought against a system that paid men more than women for the exact work, and in fact often still does.

I’ve long looked for an answer as to why I was drawn to organized religion in the first place. My parents never went to church, but I felt a need to do so. I’ve never found a satisfying answer to my question. But today, I’m pretty much an atheist, although I shy away from that word. I do believe in a higher power, but I think it’s inside each of us and we have to find it on our own.

Meanwhile the years, particularly recent events, have brought me to the conclusion that some of those who call themselves Christians are the least Christ-like of all. Racism and bigotry have infected their circles. And, more personally, they are advocating, in one way or another, that men are better than women. And women who were raised that way believe it.

The most recent examples are the Baptists expelling churches that have women pastors, and the Shiny Happy People documentary that exposed the IBLP (Institute of Basic Life Principles) which teaches, among other insidious things, that females, from birth, are to be subservient to males, even their incestuous brothers.

Sounds to me like it’s the men writing the rules – and always has been.

I’m pissed – and scared that this kind of thinking will become more acceptable in the world I live in. And also sad that so many women in the world are still treated as slaves and servants without even the ability to leave their homes, and may even be married off when they are still children.

This is not the kind of blog I like to write. But if we women — and men who don’t have to dominate women to prove they are men – don’t at least speak out against this kind of thinking … well, I fear it’s going to be a sad place for the futures of our female great-grandchildren, of which I now have four.

Posted in aging, Journeys | Tagged Baptists, IBLP, Mormons, women | 6 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »