Month: February 2025

“Remember where you came from.”

djpasternak

Donald Rumsfeld

Lately, we’ve been attending a number of funerals ‘up home’, as my older cousin Howard calls the place we grew up. At the recent repast of my 97-year-old aunt, one long-lost younger cousin said something as we parted, that stuck in my mind—Remember where you came from. 

You know how something pops up repeatedly and grabs your attention? Well, in my busy world of lists between meditation, checking and mostly deleting emails, this statement kept ‘calling’ me; so I did my usual way of researching and googled. This led me to Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of state under US presidents, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, along with fifty-some other quotes from him. I recognized his name, but nothing else about him. Embarrassing fact, I admit. But that remains a subject for another blog—his wisdom for then and now.  However, in my next blog I want to elaborate on the subject I’ve deviated from, this one five-word quote.

The Impossible Dream

djpasternak

One downside of growing older is the limitation of taking cholesterol medication. This is a ‘biggy’ for us and one of the limitations we face in ‘oldish age’. (That’s a term our GP used after my rant of can’t dos.) For me it had been a ‘won’t do’ because grapefruit was our ‘honeymoon fruit’ (in Florida), and my husband began taking a statin some years ago. We broke the rule once a year on our anniversary.

However, this year, we rationalized the situation, and he decided to eat grapefruit in season, when it is abundant and more affordable, than say, eggs. And what a season it has been and still is. Easing our consciences that we will stop this dalliance when the grapefruit season ends, we solved one impossible dream. This made me think of other impossible situations all of us experience in our life. In fact, one that stares at me through all the many large windows of our house this morning.

The sorry facts: It snowed 4 inches, my husband snow-blowed our gravel driveway. It snowed again, 4 inches; he repeated the process. It snowed 2 inches, too little to blow so we drove over it. It rained. It snowed and left inches of solid ice. He scattered gravel so we could slide our car down the driveway to take out the garbage Sat. and get to Mass on Sat. night. And 4 inches of snow fell during night covering the ice. The forecast next week is more frigid weather and perhaps. more snow.

We are facing an impossible dream. I fear the ice and the man behind the machine falling. Being the hardy folks we are, our dream is ‘just drive over it all in our four-door sedan and hope for an early spring; fortified with grapefruit.

A dear friend revealed she had not experienced a winter in the NE for twenty years–one of those immigrants who pass the border into grapefruit country even before Thanksgiving.

I used to love snow.