Gazing Back, Looking Ahead, Being Amazed
by Kay Kendall
The end of one year and the beginning of a new one often give rise to thoughts of new beginnings, time passing, loves lost, friends gained, and the like.Such musings can be maudlin or optimistic, practical or fanciful, but in my experience, one way or the other, deeper-than-usual thoughts do bubble up. Even if these thoughts are no deeper than this…This year I must lose fifty pounds!
Facing the calendar page marked 2014 is sobering. A friend just posted on his Facebook page that Howdy Doody and his pal Buffalo Bob first went on television 66 years ago. Sixty-six years? No wonder I’m getting a bit long in the tooth–me, self-proclaimed member of the Leading Edge of the Boomer Generation. (Translation: I’m in the oldest cohort.) And I am proud of that. Sometimes when I’m feeling especially feisty, I find myself saying to the cosmetics saleswoman at Nordstrom’ “I’m almost seventy, you know.”
I credit my mother with teaching me how to keep friends. She, a member of the Greatest Generation, not blessed with Facebook, texting, cheap phone rates or email, kept friends for fifty years. She wrote letters and she sent Christmas cards and made long distance phone calls. I saw how much richer her life was because she had dear friends and kept them, adding to them as years went by. I thank my lucky stars, as my grandmother (her mother) would’ve said, that Mother gave me that example. I am reaping those benefits today.
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Kay Kendall is an international award-winning public relations executive who lives in Texas with her husband, five house rabbits, and spaniel Wills. A fan of historical mysteries, she set her debut mystery DESOLATION ROW during the Vietnam War, a key conflict of the last century not already overrun with novels.
You have said it all from one long in the tooth to another. Good to be your friend kay.