A Thanksgiving Epiphany

Maybe it was the slices of spice cake topped with cream cheese frosting that I kept sneaking and stuffing into my mouth that made it happen, but I had a Thanksgiving epiphany.

With everything that has happened, it feels like a century has passed since I did the book launch of Not Yet! At Edith Wharton’s The Mount in Lenox, MA. It wasn’t a century; it was just last month when I wrote this in the blog titled Just A Week Ago Today:

I particularly want to recognize those who laughed, cried, and saw themselves in all the right places. It reminded me of how if we scratch the surface, we are one.

I didn’t realize it, but when I wrote those two sentences, an idea that for years had been dormant inside my headball slowly resurfaced. Cream Cheese frosting can have that effect.

At the launch, I read an excerpt from Chapter 4: The Honeylessmoon. It was July 1954 at a market in Vichy, France. We were on our honeymoon. I was 19 years old.

After the reading, I remarked to the audience that at the time of my marriage and honeymoon, I thought I had escaped my family, but I hadn’t. I had exchanged one “dictatorship” for another. Almost immediately, several audience members told me that though they didn’t share my specific experience, they related to what I had said and written.

Light bulb!

We are different and yet we are also the same. The real work for us humans is finding the connection wherein we can discover our commonality in our differences.

Oh, my goodness. Try to visualize what I can see as plain as the zit on my nose. A planned “get-together” would begin with reading a couple of excerpts from my memoir. After which, I would open it up to the audience to share, if they so choose, a story from their life that was similar, different, relatable, or even not relatable.

Isn’t that what most of us want? To be seen, heard, somewhat understood. Could my memoir be a catalyst or the ground for that shared experience?

If others found themselves in my story, might I find myself in their stories? When we empathize and sympathize with characters or situations in a book, movie, or television show, isn’t that when we discover we are not as alone as we thought we were?

Epiphany!

I want to find places where we can come together to share our stories. Places like libraries, senior centers or residences, bookstores, community theatres, or art centers. What do you think? Any suggestions?

In the areas where I live, Florida in the winter and spring and Massachusetts in the summer and fall, I think I could scout out a few locations where gathering together might be possible. But how do I reach beyond these local boundaries? What to do? I call Lynnette.

Lynnette: What’s the matter from you? Have you never heard of the Internet?
(It’s a fact. Hang out with a person long enough they begin to talk like you.)

The point is, my dear friend Lynnette can solve the logistics. She’s been solving my logistics and other things for years.

Creating a safe space in person or online to exchange our stories, hoping to find even the smallest common thread, makes me feel warm all over. It makes me feel seriously good. Do you know how nice it is to feel warm all over and seriously good about anything these days? So you bet your bippy I am going to run with this idea. And I am hoping you’ll help and run with me.

I know. I know. The pundits predict in the future machines will remove the need for human connection.

Bull - - - -!

I wouldn’t have made it to 91 without the touch and feel of connection to my fellow humans. Good times…bad times…it doesn’t make any difference. When are we going to realize how much we need each other?

As I moved from one decade to another in my memoir, I wrote how I traveled from the sublime to the ridiculous. Each decade brought changes physically, emotionally, and psychologically. How cool would it be to come together sharing how we dealt with and continue to deal with changes?

Sharing our stories is how I want to spend whatever is left of my life. What can I tell you? I am so damned grateful for what I have been given in this life. I have to…no…I want to give back.

On pain of being a pain, do not tell me and other men and women of a certain age we are irrelevant. You better believe our life experience counts for something. As the seventh of eight children, if being called irrelevant stopped me, I wouldn’t have survived growing up with my brethren and sistren.

Here’s an invitation I hope you won’t ignore or refuse. If sharing stories interests you, give me a shout. I would love to know what you think and if you have any suggestions, ideas, connections…human or otherwise.

It’s not a new idea. What is? But in a world gone a little crazy (I’m being kind), it's a chance to….

Love, Sally-Jane

P.S. Confessions of a Shopaholic: I come by my addiction genetically. My mother, reform Jew that she was, opened her Christmas Savings Account the day after Christmas and began shopping for the following holidays immediately.

All to say that I come by my shopping credentials honestly. I have shopped till I dropped with the best of them. Today, it’s a different story. I’m 91. If I’m going to drop, I’d rather not do it shopping. Soooo I’m taking the easy route, and here is an offer to you, my nearest and dearest, that I know you can’t refuse.

USE THIS LINK TO BUY A PAPERBACK OF “NOT YET!” for only $10 until December 15 in time for Christmas delivery!