Imagine

 

One of my favorite astrologers, Rob Brezsny, recently wrote about our time, the one we are having right now, in the early summer of 2025.  He titled his newsletter “Wake up, and wake up, and wake up some more.”  In it he explained that there were three other times in our nation's history when the stars overhead were similarly aligned with Uranus in Gemini.  This transit typically lasts about eight years and represents tremendous upheaval, that so far has had lasting results, regarding some important social changes.  

The first was the American Revolutionary War, with Uranus in Gemini from 1774 through 1778.  Uranus is full of chaos and Gemini is swiftly intelligent.  The result was freedom from British rule and self-governance.

The second was the American Civil War with Uranus in Gemini from 1859 through 1866.  At that time we were a “free” nation that enslaved millions of people.  One out of every two people in the south was a slave.  The schizophrenic nature of our split personality, slavery & freedom, came to a reckoning.  As Brezsny said, Uranus in Gemini can be wrathful and necessary.  

The third time was when we entered WWII, with democracy battling fascism.  We had Uranus in Gemini from 1941 through 1948.  In the decades that followed, we had the rebuilding through the Marshall Plan, to help prevent the spread of communism and repair the economies of Europe while bolstering U.S. economy through increased trade.  The GI bill gave veterans good home loans resulting in the rise of suburbia and a strong middle class.  The result was America’s emergence as a world leader and our commitment to global stability.  We also saw the birth of the civil rights movement, well underway by the mid 1950s.  And, as well, by the 1960s, we saw the Women’s Movement advocating for equal pay, women’s reproductive rights and significant movement towards ending gender discrimination.  We also saw the beginning of The American Indian Movement, Gay Liberation and the Environmental Movement.

In all three of these instances: The Revolutionary War, The Civil War and WWII, millions of people perished.  Old ideas became obsolete and innovations stepped up, in a cascading effect.  Big changes.  So, Uranus in Gemini is something to note.  And Brezsny says “Wake up,” because we should expect shake-ups.  (And so far, these have been hitting hard on relationships, information, learning and truth.)  

It is important to think of this time as a beginning, rather than an end.  Birth is always a little rough.  It involves blood and sometimes death.  But, so far, Uranus in Gemini has resulted in new life for our nation, a freer life.  It took some fighting, but we got there.  First, our own sovereignty in self governance, second, the end to slavery, and third, liberation into greater levels of equality, including for the birds and the bees.

Now we have a new view, struggling to be born.  And Blessedly, Gemini is a little mischievous.  And Uranus multiplies that energy.  So, this transit also holds a little cosmic comedy.  It can be full of playfulness, pranks and tricks.  Like the jester in a formal court, it dances around challenges to the status quo.  In the words of Congressman John Lewis, who fought for voting rights, justice and dignity for all, “Make good trouble.” or more acutely, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”  Good trouble is “the action of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice and create meaningful change.”    
And here we stand, entering the door way of profound change.  We are looking down the throat of attacks on voting rights, dis-information campaigns, the loss of the rule of law, violations against truth and science, the gutting of essential services, including health care and public education.  We are seeing the disappearances of our neighbors, the assault on free speech, and physical threats to our judges and representatives in congress.  

I agree with Brezsny, together, it is time for us to wake up.  And I feel we need to wake up to our higher calling as humans, as planetary community members.  And it is also time for us to start dreaming about what we’d like to achieve, with this wake up and shake up.  For me,  I am envisioning the whole world, with America in the lead, tending carefully to social justice on all levels, including an end to poverty world wide, along with equality and freedom for all people everywhere.  I am envisioning the complete cessation of deforestation and a full throttle re-forestation, with the full spectrum of original native plant materials.   I am envisioning a complete shift in attitude and action around climate change, with innovations abounding and all hands on deck for climate stability.  I am envisioning revisions in public education and gun control, and even elimination of all weaponry; these are also in my view, right along with all people creating a world beyond war.  Imagine all the people, sharing the world and living free.

I’m reminded of those pranksters of change who came out of Liverpool, after the last time Gemini rolled through Uranus, The Beatles.  Their songs about peace and love carried us forward as we rebuilt our ideologies into greater compassion and understanding for one another.  And I will leave you today with the lyrics of John Lennon’s superlative song, “Imagine.”  

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people livin' for today
Ah, ah, ah-ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothin' to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people livin' life in peace
Yoo, hoo, oo-oo

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood and sisterhood of man
Imagine all the people sharin' all the world
Yoo, hoo, oo-oo

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Josephine Laing
© 2025

This Is My Prayer

 

 I pray that the men and women who are the guards, who have taken and who care for these newly created prison camps, holding undocumented workers and others recently snatched from their lives on American soil, find within their hearts, the ability to see all who are under their lock and key, as fellow human beings, and open their hearts in compassion and understanding, and stop the abuses and the cruelty, and turn out the lights at night.

I pray that the men and women being held in detention can find peace in their hearts and minds and be able to care for themselves properly and be able to sleep deeply despite the conditions they find themselves in.  

I pray that those individuals, the ones who are displaying the utter insanity and greed that is running rife through the halls of our United States government, right now, I pray that they awaken abruptly to the truth and good within themselves and find their way swiftly back to love and to the real meaning of compassion.

I pray that we all, world wide, awaken to our empathy and feel what it is like to walk in the footprints of the other.  May we learn to share, to grow, to be kind and understanding.  

I pray that all of the nations and governments of our world can find a way to smooth the waters of unrest pervading in so many areas, including Gaza and the United States.  May we all quickly find our way to a world beyond war, a world where habeas corpus, the right to a trial, and the rule of law presides with justice, true justice, a world where prisons are no longer the outcome, but compassionate healing environments, for those who have experienced pain, the pain that caused their unrest, in the first place, to be healed.  

I pray that all of the animals, especially our endangered species, find balance one more, in their natural habitats and I pray that the plant kingdom becomes free once more to flourish, free from clear cuts and mono cropping.  I pray that the rocks and minerals be unmolested and allowed to be as they are.  

I pray that the climate and the great waters of the oceans are free from the influences of recent human endeavors, and are allowed to resume their natural patterns of global balance.  I pray that humankind becomes kind, and finds its way fully into equality and quickly leaves misogyny and domineering ways behind.  I pray that we come to be honoring of our diversity, of our uniqueness, valuing these varying traits in one another, while respecting our own individual and collective self governance.  

I pray that all beings everywhere be free from suffering, be happy, be peaceful, and be free.

 

Josephine Laing
© 2025 

Cultivating Joy in Changing Times

Yes, it’s true.  Our world is turning itself upside down.  Whenever we humans find ourselves on the brink of a major shift in consciousness, the old paradigm grabs on tightly to try and hold on.  But the new is already underway, so the divisiveness becomes even more inflated.  And sometimes it is hard to know what to do about it.  But I say, ‘Hold your thoughts and actions on what you would like to see.’  Poke your head up out of the sand; there are already plenty of places where we can start to build the new.  Simply doing something, anything, can help us to feel a little bit better about all of this change.  Here are ten things to consider.

1.  For my part, I’m a gardener at heart.  So, I’ve started growing food plants to share.  Frank and I have put in eleven fruit and nut trees this past month.  The last of the bare-root plants, in the nurseries, came into their end-of-season sale, so we jumped on it.  
Several years ago, we adopted an untended parking lot near our home and cleaned up the trash, began to build the soil and now have it blooming from spring through fall with hardy florals and flourishing native oaks.  
During WWII, when the Germans tried to starve the island nation of Britain out, she created her “Victory Gardens,” in every backyard.  With the changes that we are about to experience, food prices may well jump sky high.  Certainly federally funded care programs providing nutrition for the young and the elderly are at risk.  Fruit trees yield the most food per acre and potatoes can be abundantly grown in banks or in bags.  Oak trees have provided native peoples world round with balanced nutrition in easily stored acorns.  As federal funds are further removed from Agriculture, producing our own food may well become increasingly important.  Gardens are bountiful.  They make it easy to give and to share.  And working in them brings us exercise, serenity and great peace of mind.  

2.  Sing and dance or play music.  Music connects us.  It is the song of life and we all move to that rhythm.  I’ve heard it said that if you are not singing and dancing, you are not truly alive.

3.  Align your purchasing power with your ethics.  To get you started, visit Goods Unite Us.  
https://www.goodsuniteus.com/
Or get the book for The Better World Shopping Guide  https://betterworldshopper.org/

4.  Try not to drive or fly, and avoid using plastics, which are made from oil, as much as possible.  

5.  Go to the website DuckDuckGo and switch your search engine to theirs so all of your on-line research and data is no longer being easily and shamelessly tracked and sold for advertisers and others to target.

6.  Write to your members of congress, state and federal.  You can get their postal addresses at  https://www.govtrack.us.  Click on congress for current federal representatives and senators.  Let them know that you expect them to honor their oaths to defend our constitution and to respond appropriately if they’d like to continue to gain your support.

7.  Spend time with friends.  Get together with neighbors.  Host Monday night potlucks.  We may need to depend on each other a lot more in the future.  Forming relationships now and creating community can ease this sort of transition, should it occur.  Plus it is fun.  And if you wish, governmental study groups or affinity groups and forums can be formed.  Visit sites like Choose Democracy at  https://choosedemocracy.us/what-can-i-do/    And sometimes it simply helps to band together and share our feelings and experiences.  
One of my guiding lights, Peace Pilgrim, had wise advice for those with concerns over what the future might hold.  She said, “Stay in the present moment.  Do what needs to be done.  Do all of the good things you can each day.  And the future will unfold.”  For me, her words are a steadying influence. They bring me both direction and peace of mind.  
 

8.  Figure out a way to get yourself laughing again.  Play with some children.  Kids laugh hundreds of times a day.  Adults not so much. Watch and rewatch shows of your favorite comedians so you can laugh.  (I like Kathleen Madigan’s “Don’t Bother Jesus.”  Raised a catholic, she was supposed to first go to her priest for absolution.  She could also appeal to her guardian angelk available 24/7, just for her.  If the situation was dire enough, her priest might recommend a Saint, specific to her need.  If that wasn’t adequate and if she, the repentant one, was really good, she could hang with Mary.  But no one was really ever supposed to bother Jesus.)  
 

9.  Eat clean and get plenty of exercise.  Let those endorphins flow and build your own health and strength for the work and times ahead.   
 

10.  Spend time out in nature, even if it is your own back yard or the city park.  Let nature speak to you and guide you.  Answers to our problems always come to us more easily when we are out in nature.  As John Muir famously wrote, “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
 

Okay, one more, and probably most importantly,

11.  Imagine what you’d like to see.  Use your right brain.  Get creative.  (Remember that caffeine holds us in our left brain where we focus only on known solutions and tend to contract around fears about the future and worries about the past.  So consider herbal teas instead.)  Cultivate your right brain potential by laughing, day dreaming, and playing.  This is the realm of cooperation rather than competition.  It is expansive and collaborative and it cultivates and holds you in joy.  
(For more about accessing our right brains, check out Jill Bolte Taylor.   See either her TED talk  at  https://www.ted.com/speakers/jill_bolte_taylor   or read her book, Whole Brain Living at   https://www.drjilltaylor.com  )
(For more about the effects of caffeine on our brain's health and well being, read Michael Pollan’s This is Your Mind on Plants.  https://michaelpollan.com/books/this-is-your-mind-on-plants/) or read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.   https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-Walker/9781501144325)

We are all in this together, so together let’s find ways to create anew.  
*Love is stronger than fear.  We shift the energy with our mutual support, while listening within to find our unique service.  
*Create something alive and empowering.  Follow your calling.  Share your experiences and knowledge.  Ask for and give help.
*As we gather together in small groups of support and connection, we build resilience and find our clarity.  Doing this is disempowering to realms where fear and division reside.  
*Learn from the children.  They know how to laugh.  We’ve all witnessed kids cracking jokes even right after they’ve been in trouble.  There is always something fun and funny to see and do.  Charge into that.  
*I recently heard that heroes are just ordinary people.  They happened to be at the right place at the right time.  And they just simply held to their values and ethics.  
*Trust in the larger vision.  This is after all the Age of Aquarius.  It holds the promise of harmony, egalitarianism and understanding.  It was the dawning of this age that brought us the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Liberation, Gay Rights, AIM the American Indian Movement, and The Environmental Movement.  These movements now have deep roots that have firmly taken hold and risen strongly.  They have provided insights and support into the eons of beauty and equality and justice that lie ahead for us all.  But first we have to clear out the old.  And that dying grasp is making one last powerful lunge back into the unsustainability of massive consumption and resource depletion and all that that brings with it.  

Years ago I heard a talk by the feminist, Sonja Johnson.  She was driving into the city to work one day when she passed through an open space of beautiful green forest and meadow.  She was so moved by its beauty that she stopped the car and got out to marvel at the scene.  When she did this, she was swept up in a moment of profound epiphany and compared the truth of nature to the falseness of the city that she had been heading towards.  She found herself realizing and deeply understanding that we are all doing everything all wrong.  And there is truth to this, we have become completely lost in the citification, or the ugly-fication, of the natural world.  And our massive over consumption has become more than critical.  So, yes, things do need to change.  And we are here, older, wiser, ready to create what is new.  And creativity is fun.  It brings us joy.  I’ll leave you with these words from Louis hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life.  

“All is well.
Everything is working itself out for the highest good.
Out of this experience only good will come.
And I am safe.”

Josephine Laing
© 2025

Mites! Yikes! 3, 2, 1 - Gone!

OMG!  I contracted mites!  It has happened to me before, two other times.  But this time I was blessed with the right answer as to what to do.

Most of the time when humans get mites, it is considered scabies and you contract them through human contact.  There are two types of scabies.  One has the little buggers concentrated in between the fingers and sometimes the toes.  The other is more long term and leaves patches of gray crusty skin wherever the colonies concentrate.  But when I’ve gotten mites before, neither of those two descriptions matched my condition, nor did I get them from human contact.  I think I got them from birds.

Birds get mites really badly, so much so that certain swallows and finches have been know to line their nests with cigarette butts.  (For more on animals self-medicating, please see National Wildlife Federation, Winter 2025, Master Medicators.) This allows the nicotine, which was one of the first pesticides ever used in the United States, to reduce the mite infestations in their nests.  

In my research, I’ve come across horror stories of other people’s experience with mites that were similar to my own.  These mites often were not diagnosed as scabies and seemed to behave more like the mites that birds get infested with.  One man I read about was going on seven years of misery.  One woman wrote about her eighteen month old baby girl screaming in agony for weeks after her husband brought them home from work.  And it was she who posted the specific answer I was looking for, Hot Borax Baths.  

The first time I encountered these little buggers was when I was in my late teens and was helping a friend take care of her parent’s farm.  They had hundreds of chickens and ducks and had a coop with a low roof.  I went in there to clean it out and my bun, on top of my head, brushed the chicken wire, overhead, several times.  When I emerged from the pen, five or ten minutes later, I realized that I could feel the creepiest sensation of hundreds of invisible little beings moving down my neck and shoulders and onto my chest and back with little tiny nibbley bites.  

With a sense of panic, I alerted my friend and ran to the shower, grabbing a bottle of bleach on the way.  I stripped off my clothes in the shower and stuffed them into a plastic trash bag, to be thrown away.  Then I very carefully poured straight bleach over my head, hair and whole body.  I never would recommend that anyone do this.  But, that is what I did and it worked.  It happened so soon after infestation that they never got a chance to burrow deeply enough into my skin, and they all got fried.  It took about a half an hour of running water to rinse all of the bleach and dead mites off.

The second time I got infested with mites was decades later, out on our front lawn, under the trees.  I noticed a few little teeny tiny itchy spots, first on my legs, maybe three or four of them and didn’t think anything of it and went to bed.  The next day, there were a few more.  Soon after patches of twenty or fifty little bumps arose and I knew I was in some sort of trouble.  This time those buggers had already set up house-keeping under my skin.  

Over the weeks that followed, I started with aloe, progressed to herbal skin creams and essential oils, and wound up with prescription creams, all of which seemed to help for a day or two and then wound up much worse than before.  In the end, my husband and I move out of our house and into a hotel so we could run ozonators in all of the rooms of our home and kill every living thing in there.  We rented extra days and ozonated the hotel room after we were out, as well.  Wouldn’t want to pass this on to anyone else.

Meanwhile, I took a blow dryer to my skin and oh-so-painfully burnt the little buggers and their babies in the top layers of my skin.  This is another technique that worked, but again, like the bleach, I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone.  Neither the hot blow dryer nor bleach are good for the skin and both can be seriously dangerous.

But this time after gathering some pine cones under a tree, by the next day, I knew what was cooking.  I started right away with the prescription cream and again some improvement progressed rapidly into becoming much worse.  I gave my chiropractor friend a call, saying I was considering a prednisone shot because I was in so much misery and expecting it to get only worse, when she reminded me that in our age group bone loss is a serious concern and cortisone poses a serious risk of osteoporosis and subsequent fractures and surgeries etc.  She said to try Borax Baths for getting rid of mites.   

In the midst of all of this, my digestion went off as well.  My appetite dropped and I felt nauseous.  So, I also called a Naturopath friend of mine.  She brought by a homeopathic remedy called psorinum.  I started on that and looked on-line for borax baths for mites.  

Previously my on-line research for what to do for mites was woefully unhelpful.  The natural remedies were fairly ineffectual and the medical ones weren’t ideal either.  But when I added Borax Baths into the search for mite cures, I blessedly found one site with bunches of success stories.  One week and 15 loads of laundry and four hot borax baths later, I was mite free.  We sprayed the house, car and all of our furniture down with three tablespoons of borax, diluted in three cups of hot water, with three tablespoons of three percent hydrogen peroxide.  We stripped our bedding and hot borax washed it with all of our clothes every day using one half cup of borax along with our usual laundry soap.  We also put the ozonator in the car for four hours.  And we put our shoes in the freezer overnight.  After taking our baths as hot as we could stand them for thirty minutes using three cups of borax, with two cups of three percent hydrogen peroxide and one cup of epsom salts, (3,2,1,) we air dried instead of towel drying to let a little of the solution remain on our skin.  And, blessedly, it all worked.

Should you, or any one you know, ever be so unlucky as to contract mites, may these Twenty Mule Team Borax rescue remedies help you as well as they have helped me.

Josephine Laing
© 2025

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor.  Nor am I licensed in any healing modality.  However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing.  All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for.  After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries.  Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and in my videos could be dangerous for you to try.  So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol.  However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine.  So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

Oneness and Wonder

Wow!  What’s That ! ? !

We’ve all had such a moment.  Hopefully many of them.  Hopefully nearly every day.  Frank and I just had one yesterday.

We were standing in the kitchen and by some trick of the afternoon light, the wall under the desk, in the office, right below the closed shutters, looked like it was iridescent or had suddenly turned into an awakening computer screen, only much deeper and imperceptible in it’s nature.  We were both startled and felt compelled to walk toward it to get a better look.  It was so weird and surprising.  We wondered, ‘How could such a thing be?’

As we walked closer, we could see that it was just the wall, with the usual cords and whatnot draped down from behind the desk, and somehow the bright afternoon light, reflected off the back of the shutters or the back of my old metal computer monitor, or something, was illuminating the wall in a way that either hadn’t ever happened before, or that we simply hadn’t ever noticed before.  The moment passed.  We brushed it off, still a little surprised, as ‘just the wall.’  Then we left it and went about our business.

The interesting thing to me, in hindsight, was how it stopped us both.  It caught our eye, gave us pause, knocked us right out of our thoughts and activities and drove us into action, in this case, the need to investigate.  We both jumped right into the present moment with an excited curiosity, almost a touch of fear and an alluring love at the same time.  

These are the qualities of awe and wonder.  And when we get there, we step right into the right hemisphere of our brains.  Time is replaced by a sense of flow in the present moment.  There is a pause, we open our mouths and our eyes.  We listen.  The surprise that we feel at the same time demands a moment of recalibration as we consider the newness and the allure.  We loose a sense of self and feel called forth into action or response, the need to do something.  All at once we suddenly tap into a flood of possibilities, new ideas, creative potential and a feeling of healing or well being.  All of this, all at the same time.  

In wonder, we also find a locked in unity, a sense of togetherness or oneness.  When Frank and I saw that light, we both experienced the same body movements, a lifting of the head and chest, a dropping of the jaw, then a peering closer, focusing on the same point, listening, then moving forward, both of our minds and our sense of consciousness, open and as one.  We were moved to respond.

Fascinated and fascinating.  A widened perspective.

Babies and small children experience this sort of state on a regular basis.  It is part of everyday life.  Everything is new and calls out for our attention.  Everything invites us to wonder, to try to figure it out, to open to all the possibilities that could possibly be in play.  “How does that fly fly?”  “Wow!  Look at the shadows of the leaves playing on the sidewalk in the sun.”  This is where art dwells, imagination, creative flow, discovery, the unified whole.  And it’s all imbued with a sense of love.

As infants, with mommy or daddy near, we feel safe and protected. (Given the natural parent/child bonding experience.)  Our parents even join us in our surprise and delight, as the world of exploration opens before us, reliving for themselves the joy of discovery and the love that we all share.

When we bask in this state, we slip ease-fully into Divine Placement in the grander scheme of all things.  Our ego or sense of individuality falls away and we enter the flow of oneness.  All is right with the world, everything is possible and it’s all moving toward love.   In the pause of awe, we become free.  We open our hearts and minds and become one with everything.  Just like any other creative moment, be it singing or dancing, playing music or painting, splashing in the waves, digging in the sand, or stringing beads, we feel ourselves fitting nicely into the whole of the greater totality of being.  And, at the same time find ourselves gratefully opening to the unlimited potential and the wider perspective that dwells there, amongst all possibilities.  

So, let’s remember Oneness and Wonder.  Let's let ourselves be caught more often, even daily, if we can, by the jaw dropping beauty and mystery that surrounds us in every moment of every day.  Let’s not brush it off as something nameable or explainable.  Let’s be baffled for a moment before things start to come clear.  Let’s twirl in the miraculous wonder of it all and move together toward greater healing and love, where new ideas and creative solutions pop up in front of us, coming seemingly right out of nowhere.

 

Josephine Laing
© 2024

Envision What You'd Like to See

 

Fear is such a strong emotion.  It can have a very high volume.  And it can almost act like a vortex, drawing to us what we don’t want to have happen.  One of my spiritual teachers once said to me that it is important not to imagine destruction.  

Our minds are very creative and they can also direct the focus of our lives.  ‘Is the glass half empty, or is the glass half full?’  Where we hold our thoughts creates our perspective of reality.  If we think the world is terrible and going to hell, then it is.  If we think the world is beautiful and people are pretty nice, then they are.

Sure, there are stinker moments, and stinker people too, but we don't have to dwell there.  We can shift our focus and choose to see what is good and right and true, and then place our minds in a new direction and take that new path.

I feel that there is a big difference between judgement and discernment.  Judgement holds us, and others, in a particular pattern.  Discernment lets us decide what works for us and it shows us where we’d like to go.  Discernment also helps us to let go.  We no longer have to strive against the other.  We can simply let them be and direct our energies, instead, onto our own path.  And the others will either change on their own and join us, or simply fall away.

It’s a lot less stressful, really, when we follow our inspirations and go where we feel called.  So, let’s all envision what we’d like to see and then head in that direction.  My bet is that we’ll all end up with what we’d really love.  Our joy, after all, holds an equally loud volume, and it calls out to those around us to join us in the fun.  

 

Orchid Photo by Aleta Arthur

A Century of Friends

Spending time with people of different age groups can be so insightful and enlightening.  When they are older than us, they can reach out a helping hand to guide us into our future decades.  They help us with not only their hard earned wisdoms, but also with examples of their successes and their challenges.  When they are younger than we are, they can remind us of our more youthful goals and ideals and even help us to remember how to have fun and to play.

Frank and I had a delightful 4th of July.  We hosted a simple afternoon garden party, a potluck, with just a few neighbors, friends and family.  In hindsight I realized, that in our guests, we had quite a nice representation of nearly a one hundred year span of time.  Let me introduce them to you now.

Over the years, we’ve grown quite close to our next door neighbor, Dorothy.  She grew up in the South and has many a tale to tell about situations she has encountered in her lifetime, like being one of only a very few women and the only black woman in her classes at teachers college.  Not too long ago, her doctor talked her into getting the shingles shot, as a preventative measure.  The next morning she woke up blind and in terrible pain with shingles in her eyes.  After several years, a corneal transplant has returned her vision, in part, to one eye.  She, Frank  and I meet out on the front lawn, several times a week to enjoy our eye exercises together.  We take a zoom class taught by “Your eye wellness guy,” Richard Miller, to naturally improve our vision and prevent visual decline. 

We have a little rental in the back and our tenant, Hugh, has become a lovely friend.  He made Lasagna, in a toaster oven, with only one cooktop to brown the meats, heat the sauce and boil the noodles.  It was a mastery of planning and timing to have the dish ready right on the spot at twelve o’clock.  

A few decades ago, Frank and I experienced eighteen deaths in twenty-four months.  It was a crash course in grief and at times we were totally overwhelmed.  I turned to Cal Poly, our local university for help.  They have a student job service to help connect community members who need a little help with students who are looking for a little work.  So, into our lives waltzed Loretta Joy Hartwell.  Just her name alone gives a pretty good picture of who she is.  She actually skipped out to her car after we completed our initial interview.  And that was the start of a life long friendship.  I consider her to be my adopted daughter.  She has had the good fortune to meet and marry her own true love, Ross.  And they now have two beautiful daughters, Bea and Gigi.  I was deeply blessed with the honor of being present for both of their births.  

Our nephew, Brett, came to school here at Cal Poly, just about twenty years ago.  And fortunately for us, and just like us, he decided to stay.  Now, his life has been graced with Lauren.  And she has graced all of ours with her warm connection and deep understanding.  Both of them have jumped right into our community spreading their love and sharing guidance with the wisdoms of their young years.

Darling, I call “Darling,” because that is actually her last name, and a perfect fit.  She and I met fresh out of college having both been accepted for the same job.  Standing out front at the Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, we learned later, that there were two positions being filled for Inspector Biologists.  At the end of the day, I suggested that we meet for a beer.  But, since neither of us were that crazy about beer, we went to her house instead and ate mushrooms, that she had grown herself, sautéed in butter.  Then I laid on her hardwood floor, under her grand piano, while she played Chopin, the Nocturne in E Flat Major.

Einar floated gently into our lives at a time when I thought I might not survive my thirties.  A tall Swede, and a technical master, he was overseeing the recordings of my soon-to-become spiritual mentor’s channeling sessions.  Jana Massey, who has since passed on, used to come through our town every few months and brought us “messages from spirit.”  Einar, Frank and I grew to love and cherish each other from that beginning and now, we chat or see each other almost everyday.  He is our main go-to-man for all things technical and the number one person I turn to for wise counsel during spiritual emergencies.  

Dorothy and Einar chatted for quite a while on the fourth.  Frank made fish tacos, the best that Ross had ever tasted.  And I served my famous vinegar drink: ice cold sparkling water with a dash of Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar, a splash of vanilla, a few drops of orange extract and one drop of stevia.  Yum!  

The two girls and I dined on the little benches around the bird bath and then up on the deck for desert, homemade, neighborhood grown, fresh baked apricot pie.  Einar provided the half gallon of vanilla Häagen-Dazs.  “Soul food,” he calls it.  We had salads, fresh fruit and sauces and we even went up in the attic, to look at the puzzles and try on some Halloween costumes and plan our next tea party, with Lauren, up there.  

Then it was on to fireworks.  We started with my favorite, Dancing Ground Flowers.  The girls, Hugh and I had to wait for any passing cars and then huddled tightly together in the middle of the street until lit match successfully touched fuse.  And then we’d drop it, get away! and watch the show.  Ross and Brett both missed this as the lure of our twin reclining easy chairs called out to them to rest and digest.  They delighted in the invitation to a tiny little nap, followed by just another tiny little snack from the potluck table before joining the rest of us again for games on the lawn.

Thanks to Frank, the lawn was in perfect condition for a casual version of Boccee Ball.  After watching a round or two, even Dorothy joined in.  Having always been very athletic before her blindness, she set the standard and demonstrated a technique for double handed holds that we all started to use in the next game we played.  

Brett and Lauren not only supplied the fireworks, but they also brought a new to us but ancient game called Kubb.  I guess the Vikings used to play it.  Kubb is a game of skill and strategy, that has been likened to chess.  And like so many fun times, it involves throwing little sticks at bigger sticks and is perfect for groups that like to play on lawns.

We finished off the day writing our names with sparklers and burning “snakes,” those funny growing ash tendrils that get longer and longer after being lit.  And because of that ‘potluck principle of abundance,’ everyone took home leftovers: salad, tacos and pieces of pie for later.

It occurred to me this morning, while thinking back on the day, that this lovely little garden party with it’s many pretty tables and small bouquets of flowers was graced with someone from almost every decade of life.  Little Gigi, age eight, was under ten.  Bea, just ten, covered ten to twenty.  Hugh at twenty-five, filled the twenty to thirty spot.  Loretta and Lauren, thirty to forty.  Ross and Brett, forty to fifty.  Here we skip a decade, fifty to sixty.  But Frank and I, rising not quite yet to seventy, filled the sixty to seventy year span.  Dorothy covered seventy to eighty.  And Einar, at ninety-two, filled the ninety to one hundred decade.  As Frank said, “It was a Century of Friends.”  

Just before the final guests departed, Hugh, who had already returned to his studio, began to play the flute.  He is quite accomplished.  And like Darling, he has a Powell.   They have a gold lining which brings a warm and round tone.  We all quietly stepped out on the patio to listen as the sweet and lovely notes floated all around us, curling overhead on the air.  

Thanks for joining in with us.  How rich to live a life with so many friends of such a broad range of ages.  What a beautiful life it is and what simple pleasures we’ve all now shared together.

 

Josephine Laing
© 2024