Sometimes I wonder how much sickness is brought on by the
way we think and our attitude about life.
My friend Roxanne* relayed how her upbeat, overweight
mother, a mere four feet and eleven inches tall, never let anything get her
down. Roxanne said, “She refused to be
negative. And today at ninety-six years
of age, she enjoys life, including the food she eats—especially Nutter Butter
cookies and diet soda—and makes no apologies for her preferences. Although she suffered a heart attack in 1997,
she has no diabetes, or other ailment, and she’s outlived all those doctors who
pestered her with dire warnings that her diet would kill her. She refused to believe them.”
Intrigued, I asked Roxanne to tell me more about her
mom. Roxanne folded her hands on the
table in front of her and said, “I really think God simply enjoys my
mother. Her attitude protects her from
sickness and disease. Even as a young
girl, Mom, whose family lost everything in the Great Depression, found a way to
enjoy life. For example, she dug dirt away from the roots of a large tree in
their back yard to make ‘rooms’ in a ‘dollhouse’ for her rock collection
family. She’d say, ‘I have the best
dollhouse in the world!’
Mom’s up-beat, can-do father always verbalized his
adoration of his wife and children. Injured
by shrapnel in World War I, he also kept a very positive attitude through that
ordeal. The family has letters he wrote home
from the trenches, telling his wife she’d be so proud of him if she could see
the way he fixed everything up. He
described how he turned a box into a bedside table, made something else into a
cot, and built a little nest for himself. He turned lemons into lemonade.
After the war was over, my grandfather’s self-sacrifice and
love shone as he helped a cousin in financial hardship. He raised this cousin’s son as his own, even
though Grandpa thought he didn’t have enough money for his own three children. With no extra bedroom, that child slept
between him and Grandma in their own bed.
My mom always saw her parents have a great attitude.
My grandmother had a job at the post office in the days
following World War I and maintained a positive, thankful mindset. She got up at 4:00 every morning, went to the
post office to light the fire in the coal-burning stove to warm the place, then
came back home to heat their own cold house.
But my grandmother saw to it that the cold house did not deter my mom’s
piano practice, an established habit since second grade. Mom was to play the piano in spite of the
cold – with gloves on! And when the
piano teacher told my grandmother, ‘Your daughter has no talent; you’re wasting
your time,’ Grandma refused to listen to such negative talk and got her another
teacher. Mom went by train to another city
to take lessons from a person who had studied in New York City . She was so good that over time she started
giving piano lessons to help pay for college (or as they said back then,
‘finishing school.’)
Mom got out of college at the end of World War II and
became a piano teacher, went to Fort
Bragg , North Carolina
One day, the soldiers were to ship out for what they later
learned was “D-Day.” Soldiers were lined up in an auditorium where Mom was in
dress rehearsal with the orchestra to play Rhapsody
in Blue when the piano bench fell out from beneath her! My mom went crashing under the piano with the
bench. You could hear a pin drop—the
soldiers didn’t know what to do. Mom
just crawled out from under the piano, stood up, and started laughing. That broke the ice and all the soldiers started
laughing as well. Everyone was able to sit down and hear the concert of Rhapsody in Blue before they shipped out. Mom never took herself too seriously—a mindset
she got from her father.”
The war was over, but not in Japan . In 1945, she went by ship to Europe with the
U. S. Army and set up night clubs in Germany for the soldiers. She carried a gun and had soldiers who worked
for her, and they gave her an ambulance to drive around in."
Roxanne brushed back her hair, leaned forward and continued.
“In college, Mom had very few things.
She told me she remembers looking out the dorm windows and watching the
other girls walk around in their finery, and drive off in a car driven by
chauffeurs. Mom said, ‘They may have
beautiful things, but I have my piano.’
She never let those women get her down, even though she knew they had
more possessions. God inspired my mom to
pursue playing the piano in spite of her first teacher having been so negative.
When Mom married in her thirties, she’d tell everyone, ‘My
husband is the best catch in D.C! We
have the best house, the best back-yard—the best of everything!’
When Dad contracted Alzheimer’s, Mom was forced to make
drastic life changes. She had to sell
their beautiful 5-bedroom home with manicured lawns and gardens near the Potomac River and move to a retirement complex into a
2-bedroom condo. We children thought she
might be greatly distressed, especially when her condo had a view of the
parking lot instead of a view of green grass or woods. Instead, Mom said, ‘I have the best view of
any condo! I can look down at the
traffic and pavement and see who’s coming and going!’
She gets around well in her scooter, is active with other
senior citizens, goes to a Bible study, a poetry class, and DAR meetings. Her mind is sharp.”
Roxanne leaned back in her chair as she finished her
narrative. “In spite of my dad’s protracted
and difficult Alzheimer’s disease, and eventual passing, Mom made her presence
known in her mid-eighties as she starred in a play, Love Letters, at her retirement community. Mom thinks she’s a classic beauty, but really,
she isn’t,” Roxanne said with a smile. “She
simply has a positive attitude about herself; it never occurs to her to be down
on herself. Mom has a zest for life –
Nutter Butter cookies and all!
* Name has been
changed
Copyright © 2015
Elaine Beachy
