WAITING FOR GENTLENESS — IT REALLY MAKES ME WONDER

 

A series of essays….

COLLIOURE, FRANCE: THE MERGING OF A GENTLE LIFE OF SAND,
SEA, AND A PLEASANT, MUCH SLOWER PACE OF LIFE 

….as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

Dream Job: a position that combines an activity, skill or passion with a moneymaking opportunity. It can be exciting and glamorous, like acting or playing music, or it can be prestigious and high-paying like working as a doctor or lawyer.

Or…,

Yesterday there was sun and there was rain; beauty in the mundane. Something in the air; let it shimmer on our skin.

I’m glad I let the sun shine in today. I’m trying to make the darkness go away. I’m gonna try to spread my wings so I can fly.

…it can be a happy, loving medium that fills your heart with the wonders of simple peace and satisfaction. And, that’s exactly what I am seeking.

I’ve been asking myself appropriate questions that help me to pull deep down inside my gut, my soul, and take me on a long twisting ride down a path that suits my personality, sensitivity, and mental processes. Shall I leave behind the fast paced world of daily schedules and the time controlling aspects of a modern lifestyle? Making lists of where I fit in; adjusting to a healthier existence as I correct my past utilizing an outline for the future.

Dream… I choose to dream about things that cater to a simple life. A life soft and gentle enough, yet sustainable for myself and the environment. A life filled with wonderment and kindness where I can question the existence of the dynamic clouds and learn to accept their purpose as they roil and become shape-changers within their magical presence overhead.

Why does the sky sometimes hide behind the clouds? Maybe it’s just like me a little bit scared of heights. It really makes me wonder. Yes, it really makes me wonder.

Why do the trees get undressed when it’s cold? Don’t they miss the leaves they left behind? Could it be to make the ground shine like gold until the winter comes? It really makes me wonder.

One part of my extensive notes and the potential answer to many of my questions — amazes me! For some unknown reason I have learned to place corresponding scents from inanimate objects into realtime and virtually immediately. Simply, the power of suggestion, or could this be part of the magic of living the life of an empath all these years? The residuals from being a good listener? 

I am sensitive to emotions and tend to pick-up on other aspects of the environment. I’ve always been prone to reading the needs of others. Lately, I’ve become more aware of sights, sounds, smells, and other physical sensations that others might not notice. A paper rose can come alive with its scent inhaled as if recently cut from the garden. Noises easily become distractions with the exception of classical music and soft piano compositions.

So, I sit here, nestled among the pillows on my comfortable, tapestry covered chair, contemplating, questioning, and planning out the shortest term of my life; the final chapters of this living novel that will be my personal take on what has been, what is, and what will be — The End!

The dream job I would choose to see me through the final chapters would take me to a small Provençal hill-top village in France. The names of all of the villagers are well known and I will smile and greet everyone on my way to the Boulangerie for croissants and baguettes each morning. After my petit-déjeuner, and grabbing my keys from the console table, I will head over to the area flea markets and brocantes (shops having more specialized items) to find simple gems of pottery, glass, wood furniture, paintings, and so much more, that I plan on displaying in my own Brocante I will run out of my home.

LIVING IS SHARING PRESSED COFFEE, 
PASTRIES, AND GENTLE CONVERSATION
WITH SOMEONE YOU LOVE

The thrill of the hunt is always exciting, and Dan and I will be driving into Lyon tomorrow and then up to Paris to find some larger items to add to my little shop. Along the way, we will meet some of the sweetest people (and possible new friends) while stopping for snacks, filling-up the van with gas, and speaking with those sitting near us while enjoying lunch at a small village café. I am never at a loss for words and find myself totally receptive to a sweet smile or act of kindness.

Driving our new finds home through small villages and stopping at more flea markets, the van full to the metal ceiling, we arrive home to unload the goodies that will be cleaned, possibly painted as display cases for the items in the shop. No time schedules to impede my freedom. My only concern is which kind of homemade jam to slather on a slice of buttered baguette to eat with our afternoon tea.

Mild breezes brush the skin with the kindness of a mother’s touch. The new, green leaves imitate her fingertips with bent branches swaying; Love is in the air and It makes me wonder.

Gentleness is not passive; it requires resistance to brutality. Must hard times hover over our daily routines? Must we wait to slow down the pace only when gray begins to streak our heads? It really makes me wonder.

Here’s to passion and compassion, dreaming about dream jobs, writing our latest chapters, leaving beautiful surprises to discover along life’s path, and loving so deeply all that Mother Nature has so kindly gifted us along our way. And, may we always make time to slow down the pace of life long enough to enjoy it all.

Copyright © 2023 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved 

Photos Copyright © 2023 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

AGE IS ONLY A NUMBER

 

A series of essays….

HERE’S TO THE JOY OF LIVING A FULL LIFE AND THINKING YOUNG

Courtesy of GettyImages.com

….as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

Mom always had a simple rule for her four kids that allowed us to beat the odds, keep our sanity, and overcome many adversities. I suppose one could call it, mind over matter. She believed that your mind could out best your physical self by the shear willpower one places behind their mental ability to convince themselves that an opposite reaction holds greater validity. At best, she could be quite a good teacher at having willpower overcome physical obstacles.

I think it was because Mom didn’t drive and Dad worked away from home for most of the week that her survival instincts while raising the four of us necessitated a unique balance between reality and spirituality. Her charms shone brightly out of the necessity of having to survive just like her own Mother who left Ukraine seeking a better life while in her early twenties and proceeded to raise thirteen children in her new country, the USA.

We walked to perform many functions, even in the middle of the frigid Indiana winter months, such as grocery shopping while pulling the Radio Flyer through the snow in order to bring our basic acquisitions home. Literally shaking in my fake-fur-top boots, lips turning blue, Mom would tell us to stop shivering and instruct our brains to embrace a warm, inner peace, allowing the sun to shine down through the top of our heads and penetrate our bodies with its warmth. Amazingly, my five-year-old brain could concede of this notion and I would stop my shivering for the amount of time it took to run into the manufactured heat of our cozy kitchen.

Applying some of these same principles into my teen and adult life, I’ve often found them to be helpful and inspiring just as Mom’s spirit and character endeared her to everyone who met her. She taught me how to take charge of my life, reach out for anything I wanted and go for it, whether it be good grades, talking with others and making new friends, or interviewing for a job and feeling confident about securing it.

Considering that the mind is truly the most powerful asset we possess as functioning, intelligent beings, we learn throughout our life that if we can control its power through shear will, we can accomplish many things: weight management, learning a new skill, standing tall in our own beliefs, and how to control our own shivering whether it be out of fear or our bodies fighting back from the cold. 

Just as a house comes to life when filled with many people — we ‘Baby Boomers’ are filling the ranks of the senior population and creating a necessity for new products, ideas and ways of thinking, and the adjustment of how aging is perceived. Cavalier Boomers retire with an attitude of ‘now is my time to break the norm and begin to live.’ Understanding that new adventures can be just around the corner, along with the lifting of harsh COVID-19 rules, the mind is allowed to roam free, once again. As delusional as it may sound, it might be healthy to pretend you’re younger than you really are.

Markus Wettstein, a psychologist at Humboldt University of Berlin, conducted a study this past April where he concluded that “People who feel younger are healthier and remain healthier over time.” If you’re not yet in that feeling young frame of mind, you may want to think about engaging in physical activities (for example, pickle ball) to combating negative ageist stereotypes. This may include eliminating the word OLD from your primary vocabulary. Especially when there are so many ways to feel YOUNG! Inserting mind over matter may be a brilliant ticket to success when it comes to combating the aging process.

You might begin by asking yourself, “How old do I feel?” Research shows that many adults feel a few years to decades younger, and this may be a good thing. Most adults are not guided by the small aches and pains of aging, but rather disallow them to take over their lives. By doing so, they are allowing their chronological age to become just another number. 

I’ve always found that a sure way of feeling younger than you are is to hang-out with younger people. Perhaps it’s with grandchildren making TicTok videos together. Or, it may be within your workplace where you make a choice to have conversations with younger coworkers and catch-up on current events and ideas. Living in or near a college town is a must for me. Here one can take advantage of various programs and classes, enjoy the art scene including exhibitions and play productions, or simply take a walk around campus and soak in the surroundings. 

Now that I fit into the category of ‘older adults,’ I insist on believing that how I feel about my age has been changing for the better over time and adults, in general, may be feeling younger than their counterparts in the past. Interestingly, I know I have my Mother to thank for my current and healthy frame of mind. Many of my generation are allowing the sun to shine down through the top of their heads and are accepting that age has nothing to do with how good we want to feel about ourselves. The thing is, we must want to feel good about ourselves and block-out those ageist stereotypes as much as feasibly possible. 

So, each day I remember climbing a mountain in Ireland several years ago to keeping my shoulders down and back straight at all times. I refuse to curve my back and slump into an old age I am mentally not identifying with. Right now, age is only a number to me. If I remain feeling healthy, joyful, and adventurous for many years to come, I know I will have been doing something very powerful in my life.

Thank you, Mom, for teaching us that a younger subjective age can be correlated with better overall health and all we have to do is believe in the power of mind over matter; a unique balance between the gentle denial of reality and the acceptance of who we truly are or want to be.

Copyright © 2023 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

HELLO BEAUTIFUL!

 

A series of essays….

‘JACKIE JASMINE’ WATCHED OVER BY AN ANGEL

….as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

Once upon a time, a dear lady, fellow writer (she has published three books), and friend lived near us in a small subdivision  located a few miles southeast of downtown Orlando, Florida. Now, this person was and is very special, not only to me, but to everyone who knows her. She has a way of making you feel important and loved. Just ask the many students whom she has taught as first graders throughout her long history as educator, mentor, and friend within the Orlando Public School System.

It was our good fortune to have built a home directly across the street from Janice and her husband, Bill, at approximately the same time. Dan and I were slightly ahead of them (a matter of, maybe, four weeks) and the style of their home was the same as what we’d chosen out of the five or six models we had to pick from according to the builder’s architectural designs.

The year was 1999. We closed on our house in September of that year and Janice and Bill closed on theirs soon afterward. Christmas was exceptionally exciting for us because it meant that Dan and I could, finally, secure our stored possessions following two years of visitation rights within their climate controlled storage cubical located on Semoran Blvd..

Not long after the first of the year, 2000, most of our moving dust had settled and the world, as we knew it, failed to come to an end over the hyped-up fears of the Millennium Bug, Y2K, when all computers would be utilizing incorrect data and Armageddon seemed to be a foregone conclusion. How naive we were (are). Did we not understand that this was the beginning of the latest rash of conspiracy theories that would, eventually, consume all of us, one way or another, in the years to follow?

We survived. Life went on. One day, after emptying what I hoped would be the final moving box, I went out to the mailbox at the end of the drive and formally met Janice. Introductions behind us, we must have stood at the end of our driveways talking away under the Florida sun for, at least, an hour. I think we both understood by this time that our lives would be intertwined from that moment on.

HELLO BEAUTIFUL!
CERTAINLY GLAD TO KNOW YOU.

Janice is a feminist and published author who uses her writing forum to help inform women of the choices they have with regards to staying in or leaving unhealthy relationships.  Her two works of fiction are based upon a woman who did decide to leave an abusive relationship and spend a prodigious amount of time running from her abuser, as well as the truth about her marriage. So many women try to second guess their abuser’s motives and convince themselves of either their own guilt or that they misunderstood the abuser’s intentions altogether.

Several months after our friendship grew and we had a few luncheon outings under our belts, Janice and I sat in my family room sipping a cool drink and singing the praises of strong women. I think that’s when the uncomplicated salutation “Hey, Beautiful!” initially came into play. “After all,” she said, “as women, we are all Beautiful in our own right.” From that moment on it has always been “Hello, Beautiful,” or “Hey, Beautiful,” or “How are you, Beautiful?” followed by the warmest hug — the kind you never want to end because you know that your own strength is being charged by the strength found within one another.

One weekend, after a trip to our favorite nursery, Lucas Nursery in Oviedo, I brought home what I would lovingly call a jasmine twig right out of a Charley Brown made for television movie. I potted it, along with great hopes and aspirations of survival, in a French urn and placed it along the backyard fence. Every season (Yes, we have seasons in Florida!) my little jasmine hung in there, but often wore less leaves than she began with. One season she sprouted several inches and her coat of leaves multiplied. That’s when she was transferred to a large blue pot given to me for Mother’s Day. Suddenly, she was luxuriating in a new world of incredible space; she was very happy.

MY THRIVING JASMINE WAS HAPPY
LIVING IN THE BIG BLUE POT

She was Beautiful! My jasmine was sassy, strong, and thriving. Several times a year she would produce the sweetest testament to her glorious being by producing small, white blossoms that covered her in a sweet, gentle cape, comparable to the queen that she had become. She must have enjoyed her habitat alongside the pool enclosure, close to the house. That’s where she grew for over twelve years and became a proper jasmine tree.

I would often tease Janice when she’d stop over for a chat and say that my Beautiful tree was going to be hers one day after Dan and I move back to Michigan. She stubbornly refused to see any truth in that happening and always laughed the thought away. After nineteen years of neighborly love and support, Janice’s smile waned when she learned of our planned departure. Knowing that our five, Beautiful grandchildren resided at the other side of our journey, she knew it was a wise decision, but didn’t like losing us as neighbors after so many years. 

My conversation went something like this, “Hello, Beautiful! My tree needs a good home. I wouldn’t trust her with anyone else but you….” 

Through tears of sadness because of our move and tears of laughter watching Dan and Bill extract my glorious tree from her home in the large, blue pot and carry her across the street together, Janice and I watched as she made it to her new home. Bill had dug a large hole right smack in the middle of their backyard. The guys gently placed her down into its dark depths, filled in the space around her roots, and tamped down the soil around her base. She looked happy but I had no idea if she would continue to thrive after such a major change in her life.

The only thing I asked of Janice was if she would send me a picture of the Beautiful jasmine tree every now and then. She agreed. Last week my phone dinged indicating a new text message that read, “Hey Beautiful! Hope all is well, and it’s finally warm up there! 🤞🏾 Jackie Jasmine is in full bloom! 👏🏾🙂” 

Did I mention that she lovingly named the jasmine tree after me? Thank you, Beautiful, for letting her spread her wings and do what she has to do in order to survive and thrive.

Author’s Note: Janice Cummings is an inspirational author, has written poetry, songs, and short stories. Love on the Run and A Love Proclaimed are her first two novels from the acclaimed High-Top Sneaker Series. You can find Janice at

high-topsneakers.com.

Courtesy of Bill Crooms

Copyright © 2023 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved