Gladys

Welcome. Thank you for visiting my website. As I mulled over the the theme of this blog post - what you can expect from this website - my mind did a sharp U turn. It sped back through decades of memories. Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, it was 1990, and I was standing on Gladys Curry’s front porch and ringing her doorbell.

A survivor of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Gladys was then 93 years old. She was living alone in the house she had been living in for approximately 70 years. I was employed by an agency to visit her several times a week. Her house was filled with lace doilies, bone china teacups, and delicate glass things.

My subconscious had surprised me. Gladys is not who I was expecting to think of, especially not when writing for a website. I am pretty sure she never touched a computer. Indeed, since  she quit her office job and became a full time homemaker upon her marriage in, oh, say, 1920 or 1925, she had probably never even touched an electric typewriter.
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On one of our medical visits, a doctor asked her, “Who is the President of the United States?"

Gladys’s voice rang out with confidence. “Warren G. Harding.” The doctor shrugged and seemed unsurprised.
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True to her upbringing, Gladys was the consummate hostess. Whenever she opened the door, her eyes sparkled. Gladys was delighted to receive a visitor; it was like a Christmas present to her. She always offered me a cup of tea.  As soon as we had settled into her Queen Anne chairs with our teacups, Gladys would ask me a question. It was always the same question. “What do you know that’s new and different?” Or the occasional variation, “What have you done that’s new and different?”

It was not just throat clearing. It was her way of approaching life. Gladys’s life had become restricted in many ways. She had outlived her family members and all of her friends. Due to the infirmities of aging, she could no longer take the bus to downtown San Francisco to shop. All of the ladies from her neighborhood who had gathered at the bus stop in neatly pressed dresses, hats, and white gloves for the weekly shopping excursion into The City - all were gone.

But as she aged and her daily life became increasingly restricted, Gladys approached each day as an adventure. No longer able to peruse vases and silverware at Gump’s or have lunch  under the leaded glass dome of the City of Paris department store, she became intimately acquainted with her backyard. She knew when the figs on her tree would ripen and take me outside to pluck and eat them.

When I took her on excursions to the Oakland Rose Garden and the gardens at Lake Merritt, she would call my attention to the differences in the color and shading of the flowers and how the heads of some drooped down, bent from the weight of their large blossoms.

As I mull over what I want this website to give you, I am remembering what Gladys gave me - a reminder to slow down, stop multitasking, be totally in the moment, and realize that if I am open to it - each day has something to offer me that is worth seeing, hearing, or reading.

​Gladys’s continuous search for the new and different is a good approach to both life and websites.

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