Hardwiring and Marigolds

I've been thinking a lot lately, about how hardwired we are as personalities, about past, present and future--where that all intersects, and accepting your life and where you are in it.

The other night while Ernie and I were waiting for something to finish cooking I was watching Ian Hunter videos on youtube in the kitchen. I know, surprise, surprise.... I hadn't seen the ones from his recent 76th birthday show at City Winery in New York. He did Who Do You Love...one of my all time favorite songs from one of my all time favorite albums EVER...his first solo album that came out in 1975. I didn't discover it until a few years later but it an amazing piece of work. I marvel at the fact that this music that grabbed me then grabs me just as hard right now.

I watching him singing and playing and he just looked so happy and healthy. I, of course, have no idea who he really is as a person, but the tidbits that my beloved Amy Rigby has shared have made me feel that he has a good heart, and I hope that he is indeed as happy and healthy as he seems. Sometimes I hear people around me that are in roughly the same place in life as I am and I hear their anger or unhappiness, whether it's with life or themselves. It always makes me sad because....this is it. This is life. If you're heading into your 50's and you don't like who you are, I don't know that you ever will. Perhaps not even 'like' but 'accept.' And that saddens me for those that don't have that because I'm not sure you can have happiness without it.

My father always had a ball of fury inside him. I'm not saying he was unhappy...and he adored his family, but he still had that inside him. That ball of fury though is what allowed him to leave his family, search out the education he wanted and then to fight for the underdog all his life. That ball of fury made him. Sometimes I hated to see that edge of anger he had against the world as he got older but then again, that's who he was. 

I've come out of a few years of rough times and some losses with an appreciation for the depth of my love of family as well as life's little moments, but maybe that's who I alway was and I just didn't realize it? I look at my boys and know that the boys I see now will still be there when they are men my age. Perhaps the most important thing we need for our children is to help them to come to terms with themselves. I see my weaknesses more clearly than I ever have, but I see my strengths too, in a way I didn't when I was younger.

(side note: I did drop out of Brownies not long after this picture...never been good at groups...)

Sometimes as I write here I almost laugh at myself...how predictable I am. My true loves have never changed....when I fall in love I fall hard, whether it be Ernie or early American glass or regency romance novels or old buildings or Ian Hunter. Not that all those things are the same level of importance mind you, but they are things that I respond to over and over and over. One of the greatest joys I have gotten from this blog is the way I have been able to weave all the separate interests and families of mine together. I used to feel more fractured---there was the antique collecting me, the music me, the roadside architecture me, the cooking me....and now somehow they are all one.

That's a lot of ruminating for a hot summer morning so I will just leave you with a bit of the garden me. A nice old fashioned marigold.

Ernie has a soft spot for marigolds...

And this song, Ian Hunter's Life, is perfect for today.

Easy come, easy go
Just another rock 'n' roll show
Hope you had a great night

When you get home and climb into bed
Just remember what I said
And laugh because it's only life

Fear knows how to kill ya
Stress knows how to kill ya
Take a little sound advice

We all gettin' older
Let some of those chips fall off of your shoulder
And laugh because it's only life

Laugh because it's only
Laugh because it's only
Laugh because it's only life

When you're down remember that
It's all water off a duck's back
And laugh because it's only life

Some of us are born rich
Some of us ain't got a tent to pitch
Most of us just get by

You got to learn to live with it
You've got to remember to smile a little bit
And laugh because it's only life

I ain't talkin' 'bout the serious stuff
Just talkin' about the stupid stuff
The things you do when you get high

Did you blow it on my space?
Did you out of your face?
Well, laugh because it's only life

Laugh because it's only
Laugh because it's only
Laugh because it's only life

When you're down remember that
it's all water off a duck's back
And laugh because it's only life

I hope you had a good time
Hope your time was as good as mine
My you're such a beautiful sight

I can't believe after all of these years
You're still here and I'm still here
Laugh because it's only life

Well, laugh because it's only
Laugh because it's only
Laugh because it's only life

When you're down remember that
It's all water off a duck's back
Laugh because it's only life

Alright