Everyone used to be older than me

When did they start giving medical licenses to teenagers?

The doctor I met for the first time today looked all of 17 -- if that. Aren't doctors supposed to be older than their patients, or at least older than me?

They always used to be -- and, in my case, they were until the docs who founded the practice I've gone to the past 35 years began to retire or semi-retire. My own doctor still comes in to work from time to time, but if you'd rather not wait several weeks to see him you go with one of his younger (in this case, MUCH younger) colleagues.

Not that this young doctor didn't seem perfectly capable of handling my relatively minor problem. In fact, once I got over the feeling that I had suddenly turned into a wizened old lady, I found him quite easy to talk to. It's just that lately I keep finding myself the only senior in the room, and sometimes it's tough to take.

That sort of thing happens a lot when you teach at a university. For example, if I make some reference to the Watergate scandal, I get blank stares from my students. Well, Mary, do the math: Richard Nixon resigned more than 40 years ago. If one of my profs back at Ohio State had brought up some scandal from the Hoover administration, my eyes would have glazed over, too.

Time flies. Some days it seems to break the sound barrier. This was one of those days.

I'll get over it.

Old friends

I spent the morning catching up with a friend who has known me since I was 17. She's seen my at my best and at my worst. She talked me through the ups and downs of college life. She stood beside me at my wedding. And though we hadn't seen each other in a few years, it didn't take more than five minutes to feel as if we were just picking up where we'd left off the last time we met.

And that's the blessing of old friends -- friends who knew us when and, amazingly, still want to keep in touch.

My friend has lived a life committed to making a difference in the lives of others. I could tell you that, as we chatted in a diner for more than three hours, I kept thinking she looked the same despite the 45 years that have passed since we last sat on her bed in her college dorm room and talked late into the night. But what mattered more, matters more, is realizing that she still lives a committed life.

We were such idealists in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The corners of my own idealism have been rounded off by time and the realities of grown-up life, but hers still shines. I'm lucky that she still counts me among her friends.

Small wonder

The temperature outside, according to my car, had dipped to -17 as we drove home late Friday evening. Knowing how cold it was outside made me shiver, even though it was plenty warm inside the car.

What were we doing out on this ridiculously cold night? We'd gone in search of music -- call it folk, or traditional or Celtic -- music that stirs our souls and gets our feet tapping.

It's also music that, in our part of the world, makes its home in small venues such as the one where we listened to two gifted sisters from Nova Scotia perform for the better part of two hours on Friday. It's a venue reminiscent of a '60s coffee house where you sit elbow to elbow with 50 or 60 like-minded people who know that what awaits you is worth the drive (an hour for us), even in the dead of winter.

I was as entertained by watching the sisters perform as I was by the joyful noise they were making. The fiddler's fingers flew at speeds I didn't think were humanly possible. The piano player's hands were like a kid at play -- fast, unpredictable and just plain fun to watch.

Watching is easy when you're no more than 10 feet away from the musicians. And that's the other thing about small venues: By the end of the evening, the performers are as familiar to you as the people with whom you've shared a tiny table.

A very long time ago I sat in a similar venue hundreds of miles away to listen to a folk singer who had recently quit a trio act to set out on his own. Back then, his name would never have filled any of that city's big auditoriums. It barely filled the coffee house where I sat a few feet from the small stage, hoping I hadn't wasted my money on a virtual unknown. By the end of his first song I knew I'd be getting my money's worth.

The next time I saw John Denver perform he was playing in a packed auditorium on a stage so far from where I sat I could barely see his face. Thank goodness for small venues.

Sacred space

Women's magazines say today's harried female can find a measure of peace if she creates a place, a "sacred space," where she can tune out the world and quiet her mind.

Uh-huh.

I live in a multi-generational household, a trendy term that means we share our formerly empty-nesters' home with one of our grown kids, who moved home with a partner and three kids in tow last year. The house is, um, a bit crowded.

So I was thinking that the creation of my own "sacred space" is, at least for now, just a pipe dream.

Then Mom called.

Her rosary case had gone missing again -- this happens about once a month -- but, happily, it turned up when one of the aides at her nursing home changed her bed. It brought to mind the "sacred space" Mom carved out for herself back when my four brothers and I were kids.

She didn't call it that, of course, but that's what it was: a darkened corner of our dining room where she would sit beside the big console radio for 15 minutes every evening and say the rosary along with a broadcast that came, if memory serves, from the Roman Catholic cathedral in Cleveland.

We kids understood that you did not disturb Mom during those precious minutes she set aside for herself each day. I realize now that she had created a sacred space right in the middle of our crazy, busy household. She didn't need to clear a room or even part of a room. She simply turned a dining-room chair toward the radio, turned off the lights in that room and found a measure of peace.

If she can do it, maybe I can too.

Now if I could just find my rosary case ...

Story time

I'm of a generation that thinks there are few better ways to pass a rainy afternoon than to curl up with a good book. I thank my mom for this.

Most nights, right after dinner, she would settle on the living-room couch with a couple of us kids and read "Winnie the Pooh" or "The Wind in the Willows." I remember thinking how important reading must be. After all, Mom would put off doing the dinner dishes so she could spend that time with us. Not much came between my mother and her household chores.

Today I stopped by a local library and felt again that pull a good book has on a day when it's just too cold to spend much time outdoors. As I browsed through the stacks, I got to thinking of the grandchild who, at age 3, is already adept in the use of an iPad. I've watched him poking the screen with his little fingers, sliding them back and forth until he finds what he's looking for. I wonder what sort of gadgets he'll learn to use by the time he's my age.

I heard this grandchild's dad reading to him a few days ago. It made me smile. I hope this little guy, this child of the digital age, will come to treasure those moments as he sits beside his dad on a couch in the den and listens to stories -- stories told with paper and ink in the voice of a father who loves him so much.

Before the storm

Another snowstorm is headed our way. I'd tell you how many we've had this winter, but I've lost count. (No doubt the Weather Channel will give this storm a name, too.)

But right now, curled up in a comfortable chair in a room that really could use a good dusting, I'm thanking the weather gods for the blue sky and bright sunlight reflecting off the icicles hanging outside the window. Summer skies may be blue, but this blue, the blue of a winter sky, is deeper -- like some cosmic reward for those who've endured months of cold and snow.

Life is just one storm after another, with occasional breaks of sun and blue sky to remind us how good it feels to be alive. So instead of naming the storms, maybe we should name days like this one -- and let the storms pass, nameless, into the dust of all that came before this beautiful, blue-sky moment.

Back in touch

It's nearly five years since I posted to this blog. I'm more than a little embarrassed about that, especially since I require the students in some of my college-level journalism classes to create and maintain blogs. ("Do as I say, not as I do" ...)

The past five years saw the grandchild we were raising returned to his parent's care. These years also saw the arrival of two more grandchildren. I was present at both of their births. Remarkable.

These years saw the passing of one of my four big brothers, but my mom turned 102 last summer and is in reasonably good health.

I've spent a semester teaching in London since I last posted my thoughts here, and that experience -- in 2014 -- enriched my life in ways I'm still discovering. More about that another time.

What finally moved me to pick up where I left off with this blog is something said by an old friend I hadn't heard from in awhile -- namely, that she missed reading my newspaper column. I'd heard it a few times before, sometimes from people I didn't even know, but this time it really struck a chord. I realized I miss writing that column.

Still, at this stage of my life, I prefer to write on my own schedule. I've had enough of deadlines.

So here we go again ... getting back in touch and hoping life has been kind to you.