Talking Trash

Is it a sign of approaching decrepitude to start shouting at radio and TV programmes? Am I now officially a grumpy old woman for constantly finding other people’s opinions ridiculous? I guess I must be, but senility must be slowly coming on because now I can’t remember the ridiculous thing I heard yesterday that I was going to blog about! Sorry, folks. If it comes back to me……I’ll get back to you. It was probably something on TV; it usually is.

Anyway, with little of any challenge to occupy my headspace while waiting on and waiting for Gareth’s hip op recovery, like a buzzing fly my attention lands on all kinds of things that I can suck the nonsense from.

There’s this for instance: Listening to Woman’s Hour the other morning I was drawn to think about the de-cluttering thing. It’s a topic that comes up so often in different places. There are articles on it in women’s magazines (I only tend to read those when I’m in the hairdresser’s), on TV, multiplying in book sellers (on-line and in real shops) and even on Facebook. On the one hand we are being urged to throw stuff away and on the other we are being told that the garbage we chuck out is destroying the planet! Give me strength! 

The programme I was listening to included an item about a book written to help people get rid of stuff they don’t need in order to improve their well-being. I think the book is by Marie Kondo “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”. Now I’m all for keeping things tidy, except when the weather is lovely and the thought of having to tidy my space instead of wandering free makes me gag. So, I’m quite likely, on a rainy day when I’m being crowded out by accumulated stuff, to burrow into cupboards and load the car with things for the charity shops or the dump. There are always the dilemmas about whether the item which hasn’t seen the light of day for years is worth keeping (“I could upcycle that into a……”, or “That might come in handy one day…”) but the Marie Kondo book could apparently help.

I haven’t read the book, but from the programme I gathered that there should be a method to decluttering and that if an item doesn’t give you joy, it should go. Also, the writer says that we should thank the items that do! If I start saying “thank you” to my shoes and “thank you” to my wool-for-learning-crochet scraps, Gareth will probably tell me “they’re coming to take you away!” (“Haha, heehee”…… some of you might remember that one. What group was it?)

I’m going to empty the recycling bin this morning, and I will then (silently 🤓) thank the bin for being so helpful in the smooth running of my life. Does it give me joy to have it sitting, rustingly, in my little kitchen? Can’t say I’d thought of that before. It could be prettier, I guess. Poor thing - it’s  tough being an unattractive item that still has its uses but doesn’t evoke feelings of joy from its owner. Should I give it a respectable funeral so that it can enjoy it’s eternity in bin heaven? Do I set out in search of a replacement that I can find an immediate joyous connection with? Will I grieve? Will I feel guilty for my lack of loyalty? “Do you take this bin, to have and to hold, till death do you part?” Hmmmm. 

There is so much in the way people think nowadays that we seniors cannot get our heads around. But so it was, of course, with those who have gone before. My grandfather was aghast that, just married (it was early 70’s), we had bought a little b&w portable TV instead of ‘more important’ household items. I didn’t ask him what items he thought would have been a better purchase but the little thing, state-of-the-art as it was then, gave us joy and continued to keep us happy until our infidelity with colour TV (we did it for the kids, of course! 😜).

With regards to my recycling bin, I know that my daughter-in-law, Jess, would give it a good home if I were inclined to retire it. Mind you, she probably isn’t aware of how, like me, it’s showing signs of age. I have lived in hopes that my brood would carry on the tradition of housing in their turn the great big ugly lumps of furniture that have been passed down through the family but they have steadfastly refused unless it suits their decor and/or fulfils a need. I, however, had to accommodate the wardrobe, dressing table, chest of drawers and bed that had been my grandmother’s 21st birthday present….even when I was living in rented rooms while at Uni! The huge mahogany sideboard that went back at least as far as my great-grandmother also came to me after a bit of a circuit around relatives. Having now downsized so drastically I am consumed with guilt for not having maintained custodianship of these precious items. Built to last, and on the assumption that subsequent generations would be all the richer for finally inheriting them, they have had an ignominious end, either smashed up, up-cycled somewhere and appearing on Pinterest, or mouldering away in a junk shop. 

I tried selling the furniture we no longer have room for. People often advertise such stuff as ‘pre-loved’. What a strange description. All it tells me is that the item was loved once but isn’t lovable any more, so why would I love it. Am I also ‘pre-loved’? Anyway, try selling anything ‘pre-loved’ on EBay, Gumtree! FB’s Marketplace or wherever and it’s startling to see how much stuff out there is no longer loved and looking to be rescued. I can feel the older generation all rolling over in their graves (or fluttering in the bushes if they were cremated) at our wastefulness. My grandmother, who had lived through the Great Depression and two world wars kept everything, including left over bits of cotton thread which she carefully wound around pieces of leftover cardboard and a tin of buttons. She kept every postcard she had ever received and never wasted any food. Anything left over would be used up somehow. Yes, her home would never feature in one of today’s style magazines but is the way we live today better? It might be more stylish, but it’s much more expensive, stressful and wasteful. 

Ramble over, here’s a poem. Oh, and if you are wondering whether I now remember what it was that wound me up before starting this post, no, I haven’t. Sorry.

Recycling Bin

(Written in the tune of “Oh Christmas tree! Oh, Christmas tree”, so it will help to sing it to that tune)

Recycling bin, recycling bin,

A lovely thing to put trash in

I’ve spent the cash and in you stash

The debris of my life of sin.

Our life of ease, the plastic seas

Extinctions and the dying bees

Now pave the way for our Doomsday

Unless of course it’s been a tease.

Perhaps it’s not as experts say

The end of days, 

Maybe we’ll win

So I will trust until the last

My rusty old recycling bin

Crutches, mothers-in-law, and the onward journey

Yes it’s a while since I posted anything on this blog of mine. A lot of the time since we returned from our Italy trip has been taken up with the practicalities of servicing the day-to-day, spending time with family, (which included a fabulous hen weekend for my niece), delighting in grandchildren, catching up with friends and organising the stuff that we still have left over from our house move. We’ve looked at it and decided to thin out our possessions even further; to lighten the load and live more simply. We don’t want a cluttered life - a litter of things getting in the way and obstructing the view out. 

The weather has been incredible! So many weeks of warm, even hot, sunshine. It’s a bit scary from a global warming (global warning?) point of view but what a gift for our first whole summer of freedom, living full time in our caravan - between motorhome trips, that is! 

Another amazing stroke of luck is that Gareth was called in for his hip operation, conveniently in time, hopefully, for him to recover before we go off to Ireland at the end of September. It’s a trip I’m so looking forward to as it’s my eldest niece, Roz’s, wedding and it will be a lovely family gathering. Not only is this a convenient time for Gareth’s op but he has had the luxury of a private hospital, compliments of the NHS! We’re a bit conflicted about the need for the NHS to do that, but he’s now recovering nicely at the caravan, everything within easy reach and all on one level. It’s a lovely summer, and this is a great place for convalescence. We couldn’t be any luckier.

Counting my blessings is a regular practice of mine. When I was a small child my paternal grandmother taught me how in a little song: “Count your blessings name them one by one……”. It meant more to me when Ma sang it than it did at Sunday School. These days walking with the dogs every day in this beautiful place I contemplate my own good fortune and am humbled by it, realising how other people’s fortunes are in so many cases much, much less happy. Recent sad news of a death in the family brings that fact into sharp focus. We hadn’t seen each other for many years and the news has me thinking about how time can make strangers of those who were once close to us.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about female relationships. I don’t know why, but thoughts about my two, now departed, mothers-in-law have particularly occupied me, and what it means to be a mother-in-law, particularly now that I am one myself. The title of ‘mother-in-law’ gets a much more negative press than ‘father-in-law’. There are far more jokes, horror stories and unflattering stereotypes of mother-in-law. 

Example: A woman goes to her boss and asks for a day off to visit her mother-in-law. “Absolutely not!” Is the reply. “Thank you so much for your understanding” says the woman, feeling relieved. 

I had a much closer relationship with Gareth’s mother but I had by then learned how to be a better daughter-in-law in relating to her. Having three boys of my own had given me reason to think about how a woman has to part from her son when he finds his life partner. The little rhyme “A son is a son till he takes him a wife, a daughter’s a daughter the rest of her life” stuck with me from the time my mother first recited it to me and has made me envious of my sisters who have both. I can see, now, how thoughtlessly I sometimes behaved towards my first mother-in-law when I was a young woman. She chastised me very gently for my thoughtlessness on just three occasions and her words have stayed with me down the years. “I know he’s yours now” she once said to me, “but let me keep just a little bit of him, please”.

Now that my sons all have homes and family of their own, I know just how she felt. My three daughters-in-law are exceptional, talented, strong women. It’s hugely satisfying to know that each of my boys is settled and in a loving relationship though of course, my concern for their welfare and happiness will stay with me always. The challenge for me now, as an older woman, is how to take a back seat. When my boys were little, an older mother with grown up sons said she’d had to learn to “wear grey and stay in the background”.

Q. What’s the difference between outlaws and in-laws? A. Outlaws are wanted!  (By the way, has anyone come up with a suitable equivalent title where the couple are not married? ‘Mother-in-common-law’ is a bit of a mouthful)

I tend not to wear much grey and I’m not good at keeping thoughts to myself by staying in the background. As grandmother I do, of course, have my uses, but I am as alien an individual in the world of the younger women’s experience as they are in mine. I’d like to think that I have more to offer them now that I have 65 years under my belt, and I wouldn’t dream of chastising them in the way I was years ago when I was overwhelmed with new baby. I was told that I needed to learn how to cope and not to look to my husband for support. That may say more about my mother-in-law’s own experience now I think about it and it’s taken all this time for that thought to surface. Anyway, just as the passing of time can make strangers of those who were once close, so can it also cement and deepen relationships. In my role as mother-in-law I hope that’s what happens. In my rear view mirror I can see the distance I’ve travelled, and it was a good journey on the whole. We all have our own journeys to make but it’s good to share our experiences. I’m not too old to learn, and I’m still working at being a better person so I look forward to the coming years. I hope that, as mother-in-law, grandmother, as well as in all the other roles, I will have performed well.

Later:

Crikey, that was a bit heavy, wasn’t it? But I guess that’s the nature of a journal and if (when?) I get dementia it will help me remember who I was.