ON FAMILY ~ Practice Wearing Purple...

Image courtesy National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution via Flickr

At the age of 45, writer Regina Brett wrote a column for the Cleveland Plain Dealer listing 45 lessons that life had taught her thus far. As a breast cancer survivor, many of those lessons were learned the hard way. Five years later she added five more lessons rounding her list up to 50 and turned her popular list into a book called God Never Blinks. I found her list to be entertaining, inspiring and thought provoking. I thought I would go through each of her lessons learned and write about how that lesson has or has not come up in my own life, now that I am 40 and feel old enough to have finally learned something.

"Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple."

~ LESSON #23

In case you are not familiar with Regina's reference in her lesson to "wearing purple," let me first share with you the poem entitled "Warning" by Jenny Joseph that she alludes to:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

I think of my mother whenever I read this poem. I shared it with her the first time I read it and told her that perhaps she could stop practicing so much right now ;0) My mom doesn't give a hoot what anyone thinks of her behavior.

She likes to talk to random people in elevators to break the silence because she thinks it is weird that no one ever speaks in that environment.

She found it hysterical to wear outlandish Halloween costumes to work each year when I was temping in her company and tell everyone that she was related to me.

She had no qualms about telling our waiter that I told her I thought he looked like George Clooney. Who wouldn't want to know such a compliment?

Her goal in life often seems to embarrass her daughter in public. But really she is just trying to teach me to lighten up and live a little instead of worrying about funny looks from strangers when I want to roll my pants up and wade in the fountain with the little kids on a hot day.

And for the record, she looks terrific in purple.