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Amy F. Quincy Author/Freelance Writer

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gratitude

Birthdays

photo 3Today is my mom’s birthday. I’ll go ahead and relieve the suspence now– I’m not throwing her a surprise party. I made that mistake one year before finding out she hates surprise parties. She does like the attention to her birthday, I think. Perhaps just not that much concentrated attention.

Some people would rather forget the anniversary of their birth entirely. Why? We’re all so excited for our birthdays when we’re young. What happens? Remember, it’s not easy to get old, but there are far too many who never got the gift you have been given — the gift of growing older. Happy Birthday, Mom.

photo 4And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. ~Abraham Lincoln

There was a star danced, and under that I was born. ~William Shakespeare

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. ~ Mark Twain

May you live all the days of your life. ~ Jonathan Swift

m2_2There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. ~George Santayana

Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative. ~ Maurice Chevalier

Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest. ~ Reverend Larry Lorenzoni

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty. ~ Georges Clemenceau

The heyday of woman’s life is the shady side of fifty. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

photo 1Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age. ~ French Proverb

At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgement. ~Benjamin Franklin

Pleased to look forward, pleased to look behind,
And count each birthday with a grateful mind. ~ Alexander Pope

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow. ~ Margaret Fuller

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Stay off Task

Amid the crazy multi-tasking I’m attempting, with my list of things to do a mile long, a friend calls midday, “Want to go for a run on the beach?”

I should say no. There’s so much to do. And I’m actually beginning to make progress! I need to put in another load of laundry, there are dishes in the sink and I just heard the tones of more email hitting my inbox. I have newspaper articles spread out on the bed (I’m still trying to update my website,) the cat just stunk up her litter box till I can’t breathe and I have to finish writing a story for my book and writing group.

“Love to,” I say.

I don’t want to lose sight of what’s important. And something happened this past week that served as a good reminder.

The days-old grand-baby of my writing coach underwent open-heart surgery. Disturbed by her shallow breathing, doctors discovered a malformation that needed correcting. Barely out of the womb, little Lucy now recovers engulfed by a tangle of tubes and IV’s. At a time when they should be bonding and changing diapers, her parents are watching and praying as she is weaned off a ventilator. They should be sleepless, but not this way. It’ll be weeks before Lucy’s out of the ICU. Just weeks before, we listened to her first cries recorded by a proud grandmom. It’s a lesson I’ve learned before, but it bears repeating. Things can change in an instant.

As my friend and I move down the beach, she runs through the shallow water, pushing my beach wheelchair. I call it my dune buggy because of the fat tires. Another friend always slips and calls it a stroller, cause that’s what it must feel like when jogging. It’s a beautiful spring day and the cool water splashes up on my legs, then quickly dries in the sun.

When I was still in the hospital after the hemorrhage, friends took me outside to sit beside a small pond and fountain. It was just the parking lot really, but to me it might as well have been a day at the beach. My best friend says she’ll never forget the look on my face as I turned my face toward the sun and breeze and closed my eyes. Gratitude. Most people never get the chance to truly appreciate something as simple as warm sunshine on your face. I did that day, but I can already feel it slipping away.

I love the catchphrase for the TBS channel. Stay off task. But I don’t mean it like they do. They want you to watch more mindless T.V. I’m suggesting you stay off task doing something mindful. I need to repeat that slogan every so often so I don’t get bogged down by all the little, daily things.

If tragedy struck tomorrow, what could wait? Would that phone call, email or work project really matter? Of course not. Make headway on those things, yes. After all, for many of you, that’s what pays the bills. But, every once in awhile, remember to stay off task. Don’t lose sight of the important stuff: friendships, loved ones and a day at the beach.

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Lanes 29 and 30: Intro to Adaptive Bowling

I don’t feel like going.  I have homebody tendencies that have only increased since becoming disabled.  I wasn’t crazy about social situations before, but at least I fit in.  Now I’m in a wheelchair, don’t like eating around groups because I’ll shake and be lucky to hit my mouth, and have to drink through a straw.  I always had beer at the bowling alley.  And I ask you, what’s bowling without beer?

But, I go for several reasons.  I’ve met many nice people in the program (Brooks Adaptive Sports and Recreation Program) that I want to see.  And my mother has drilled this concept of “socialization” into my head.  I should connect with my peers.  In other words, it’s important to have disabled, as well as able-bodied, friends.

It’s always interesting, being part of this group.  I’ve done things I never imagined doing again.  I’ve played pool, ridden horseback, and rowed the St. John’s River. None of them well, but still.   I can’t fathom how I will bowl when I picture my old long-legged approach.  But to think technique is to miss the point.

The last two lanes closest to the ramp that lead to the polished wood floors belong to our motley crew.  Nearly all of us are in wheelchairs.  Some of us, like me, take erratic swings in the lane with the “gutter guards,” those rails that keep the ball traveling toward the pins.  Some of us chuck the ball down the lane with a loud crash.  Some of us, lacking grip, use metal ball ramps to release the ball.  All of us begin at the foul line.

It would be far easier to stay in than worry about if there will be steps, or if I can eat something there, or how silly my beer will look with a straw sticking out of it.  But, if I only surrounded myself with able-bodied people, I’d never measure up.  I’d always see things in terms of what I couldn’t do, instead of what I could.  I’d stay home and play hostess to my own one woman pity party.

As I am leaving someone uses a phone to look up my new website and reads about what happened to me.  He is an amputee.  “How sad,” he says.  “I’m sorry.”  I am momentarily taken aback.  No one disabled has ever said this to me.  And then I realize.  Maybe I make him feel grateful.

Remember, there is always someone worse off than you.  Today, do something that keeps you grateful.

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