“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” Eleanor Roosevelt
Having just learned to play The Way We Were on piano, my excitement of learning the song was trumped only by my ability to sing along while clinking through it on the keyboard. Yeh, I was feeling awesome in that, I might be a 4th grader but I'm already completely grown up, kinda way. As I made my way to the second verse I saw her there, standing in the doorway of my parent's formal living room. How excited I was to see her, it felt as if a dream! I wanted to jump up, run and squeeze her tiny frame. NoNoNo she motioned with her head, "don't get up now, please keep playing. Will you start again? From the beginning!" I did. I would have done anything for her, my fabulous Great Aunt Loma.
Funny how someone who had been over the age of 60 my entire life was the youngest spirited, most vibrant woman I had ever known. An exotic world traveler, she and her handsome husband had journeyed to 6 out of 7 continents and sailed most every sea. I remember her in Japanese inspired silk dresses and brightly hued pink lipstick with flashy earrings and chic strappy sandals. She personified the type of style I had only seen in magazines and envisioned on the shelves of fancy Dallas department stores. If that truly wasn't enough to make them the most rad couple ever, they drove a vintage 1965 red Chrysler Newport (sunglasses on, top down) and they loved to dance. Yep, they were the poster kids for glamour past a certain age and a welcomed relief for me any time their travels brought them closer to the tiny dirt road towns I called home, small Texas towns where she herself had grown up as a cotton farmer's daughter and a survivor of the Great Depression.
I'm not sure why she favored my sister and I, but she did. And oh how I loved that she spoiled us by sending trinkets, jewelry and lovely items from places like Turkey, Greece, India, France! Postcards from beach destinations and tropical isles, far away places my 10 year old mind had only read about in books and could not, for one minute, even imagine visiting. Ohhhh the stories! Fun stories of adventures, brightly lit cities, museums, art galleries, plane, train and ship rides. Even a few nail biting re-enactments of near death experiences, including a cruise ship fire that found them swimming for their lives in The River Nile. One thing always held true, she was on a full fledged mission to live her life out loud without hesitation. No matter the age, she would always create for herself a colorful existence, a colorful existence of magnetism.
I often wonder if this is a universally shared vision of Great Depression era children. It was as if her experience of such sadness and overwhelming hardship in youth created an unrelenting determination for beauty, limitless freedom and an unstoppable charisma. I do believe that for every darkness we endure within this lifetime there is an equally bright burning flame to light our way. Loma was a flame. She was a lovely, living, breathing flame of fearlessness.
I like to think she lit my way as I can still see the indelible colors of her as they Light up the corners of my mind
and I am on a bumpy and oft failed quest to one day become as fearlessly fabulous.
The way she was.
The way we were.
Wishing you Adventure and Love
Hepburn Hugs & Ric Ocasek Dreams
xo
Birdee Bow
