Retired Ruth

I grow a little bit older each day and for that, I am grateful. Sleep has always come easy for me until the past few years. Now I wake up after a few hours for various reasons. I find that some of my best thoughts, my best ideas, come during the early morning hours. Perhaps because my mind has had time to slow down, the stressful thoughts that accompany daily life have faded, maybe even disappeared. I’m rested and relaxed and my thoughts are mellow.

Sometimes I get up and explore on my computer. My creative side looks for ideas. I think of making a pot of vegetable soup. I find a simple watercolor that I would like to try. A craft or how to make something from nothing. A letter to a friend or a cousin that needs to be written.

My granddaughter recently asked me how my memoir is coming along. Not well, I replied. She is a writer and a good one, majoring in journalism and writing for her college newspaper. and she wrote a book during the pandemic when she was just 14 years old. So here I am almost five times older than she. Writing a book is a monumental task. I like to write, but I don’t have the perseverance to see it through, to make it flow, to organize it into a readable product. And even though I have retired some 14 years, I don’t see a book in my future. I have hundreds of pages written but they are random and unexpected thoughts of my ordinary life.

Ordinary life. Is there really such a thing? Most of us think our lives have been ordinary or even dull, but we all have stories to tell. A friend recently said to me…I just want to read some positive stories. Hear about something that makes me smile or feel good. I told her not to look in the news for sure. But look for blogs or posts on Facebook. The stories are out there but you have to search for them. Sometimes the stories are inside of you, waiting to be told.

I often think about what others will think about me after I am gone. My random thoughts will be their only clue. I want to write letters to my children, my grandchildren, my great-grands. But that’s a monumental task too. What do I want to say to them that will help them remember me and actually feel like they know me? I’m still figuring it out. But I know one thing … whatever I write will happen in the middle of the night!

In my next life, I won’t be surrounded by corn fields. In my next life, I will be steps away from a sandy beach. The splashing waves will be the first and last sound I hear every day and every night. The smell of the ocean will replace the smells of the farm. The windowsills in my little beach house will be filled with seashells and sea glass and sand dollars and starfish. At the door to my little beach house will be a shaggy rug to catch the sand from my bare feet. I’ll have to shake it several times a day because I will always be going to the beach and coming back from the beach. My feet will be smooth and soft from walking in the sand. On the front porch of my little beach house, there will be stacks of beach towels, buckets and shovels, an umbrella to shade me from the sun, and a straw tote bag to fill with sunglasses, a book, sun lotion, flipflops, and a thermos for cool water.

In my next life, the ocean will be my alarm clock. The sea birds will be the music I listen to. I will learn how to have a clambake. I will watch storms over the ocean through my little beach house windows and I will step outside to feel the strong breezes. I will wake up early in the morning to gather shells and walk in isolation. I will nap during the hot afternoons with a small fan blowing across my bed to cool me. I will walk again after supper when everyone else has gone and the air is cooling. I will paint pictures of the clouds and the ships in the distance.

In my beach house I will have a small desk with endless supplies of paper, pencils, and pens. I will write stories about my life on the beach. I will have watercolors and brushes and I will paint pictures of the beach. I will write letters to my friends who don’t live at the beach. I will send them small shells and small bags of sand and pictures of my little beach house near the ocean.

In my next life, there will be a tiny grocery store nearby. It will have all of my favorite foods and fresh seafood, of course. I will never make a list of what to buy. I will have just a few pieces of clothing. Swimsuits, shorts, t shirts, a jacket. I will wash them by hand and hang them out to dry on a rope swinging across my porch. I might live alone, I might live with a good friend, I might live with someone I love deeply.

Once in awhile, I will take a trip to a city or a small town, but I wont stay too long because I will want to return to the beach. And when I return, I will love the beach even more after being away for a day or two or three.

Yes. That will be my next life.

1958 early spring

Tugging at the sleeves of my favorite cardigan trying to cover my arms, I struggled with the buttons and felt a little sad. I’d worn it all winter but it wasn’t going to fit much longer. “You’re growing like a weed!” my mom would say.

The air was warm but cool, birds chattered in the trees …how did they magically appear out of nowhere? Taking a deep breath of that cool/warm air was so exhilarating. It was a promise of outside fun; rolling in the grass, riding bicycles, baseball games, wildflowers in the woods, laundry swinging on the clothesline.

I knew my mom would be calling to me soon. She would be standing at the back door with a headscarf in her hands, waving me in. She’d tie it under my chin with a double knot and give it a good tug. My mom believed that a headscarf prevented illness and she used it with a vengeance. As I struggled to breathe, I quickly ran out of sight and loosened the knot.

I stopped under the windbreak to listen for birds.. the red-winged blackbird song was my favorite. Trudging out to the barn I jumped over the puddles in the lane and ran up the hill of the bank barn and back down again. Untwisting the rope swing that had been abandoned all winter, I swung a few times but was starting to get chilled.

There’s nothing like the feel of the first days of spring. It’s fresh and clean and full of promise. It was time to go inside. As I closed the door behind me, I slipped off the pink cardigan, hoping I wouldn’t need it anymore, anticipating those warm spring days.

“Writing a letter, to make you feel better”.

Oh, wait…that was The Hollies.

Sorry Paul, I should have written this letter back in 1963 when we first became acquainted. And “by acquainted”, I mean when I started listening to your music. You see, I’m 74 now and I get things confused a little but in the same token I realize you are a bit older now too and may understand the confusion.

I was 13, a brand new teenager, when I discovered The Beatles. I had a record player, that sat on the floor of our “good” living room. The room with a door so my parents could shut it and muffle the music that I listened to. The first record I ever bought was not The Beatles, it was “Popsicles, Icicles” by The Murmaids. But I remember best that orange and yellow 45, the first of many Beatles records that I bought, and like every other girl in the world, I became a Beatles fan.

I lived out in the middle of nowhere. I had never been to a big city, much less even out of my own state of Ohio. So I never entertained any wishes of someday seeing you in person. You were this band from Liverpool and just like The Hollies, and The Byrds, The Beach Boys, and countless other bands, in my mind you were in another Universe that I would never be a part of. I never knew there were Beatles Concerts that could be attended. And that was OK with me. I didn’t really expect anything more. It was enough that the music was there for me.

When I was 14 or 15 I got a transistor radio for Christmas. Now, not only did I have a few records to listen to but I could listen to music all the time, as long as I kept my batteries fresh. I listened mostly to AM stations, specifically CKLW, based in Windsor, Canada, which must have been the strongest signal around because I could always tune in to that station and they played all the popular songs of the day… including Motown since they were just across the water from Detroit. I Loved the Supremes, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops and of course, Aretha! I remember listening for hours just to hear my favorite song played once.

Sorry about the digression, Paul. I just thought I should let you know how much The Beatles music meant to my little life and what it still does. When I entered college in the fall of 1968, it opened my life up to new experiences and new people. Even thought the college I attended was just an hour from where I lived, and like my high school was pretty much in the middle of a cornfield, it was still more than I had ever experienced before. Only now, I am no longer in the “good living room” but I’m sitting on the floor of my dorm room listening to my roommates record player and playing The Beatles Albums. I don’t remember when I graduated from 45s to albums… probably when you four boys released your first album. I didn’t have them all because we couldn’t afford them all but the ones I purchased were treasures to me. The White Album blew me away and I think I wore a hole in Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts club band. My life could be written with the lyrics of your songs. They were all special and they all meant the world to this small town country girl who would never move more than 30 miles from where she started.

I endured Junior high school listening to you, I graduated from high school listening to you, I fell in love listening to you, graduated from college listening to you, got married, had kids, sang Golden Slumbers to my children as a lullaby, had grandkids and now great-grandkids listening to your songs. The first song I taught my great grandaughter was She Loves You; she’s only 6 years old but she knows The Beatles.

I have a room in my house dedicated to The Beatles. It’s full of posters, pictures, coffee cups and saucers that look like 45 records, plastic models of you, a yellow submarine lunch bucket, a year round Christmas tree with all Beatles ornaments, just to name a few. You can guess what my I tunes Library looks like. I have quite a few books about The Beatles.

When I turned 64 I had a Beatles themed birthday party with a huge cutout yellow submarine for photos. When I had surgery a few years ago for a heart stent, they asked me what kind of music I wanted to listen to… you guessed it, and I have (half) jokingly picked out Beatles songs for my funeral. My car has a Beatles sticker on it, I carry tote bags that are Beatles themed, I have Beatles songs piano books galore and I don’t go too many days at a time without listening to one of your songs. Lately I have enjoyed watching McCartney 3 2 1 and Get Back and there are so many you tube videos I can watch when I need a Beatles or an Oldies fix

I’ve been called obsessed, but I’m not. I’ve had a family and a career that always came first to me, but without your music, my life would have been different. The lives of my entire generation would have been different. I don’t know if you still have an official fan club. I searched online for information on how to send you a letter but… well… when you’re Paul McCartney, really… what’s the possibility of you actually seeing a letter someone writes to you?

In closing, Paul, I just want to say thanks to you and John and Ringo and George for creating your music for me and for the rest of the world. Thanks for writing the songs that helped us get through the tough times of growing up.

Sincerely,

Ruth