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According to publications, this year the trend in footwear is the fashion-forward flat. Low heels are all the rage with celebrities including English royalty. Seventy-nine-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told “Sixty Minutes” she works in three-inch heels but, if you’re like me, you’ve taken your stilettos to the Salvation Army resale store. One in a while, like the stopped watch that’s right twice a day, we’re chic without trying.

Flats are safer and more comfortable. My new, favorite is a pair of warm-weather, taupe sneakers that I saw pictured in a magazine. Seeking the latest thing is unusual for me. I tend to stick with classics that I wear for years, but I couldn’t resist those. I spent weeks trying to find the style so I could try them on before I bought them but, contrary to what the ad said, no store in this area carried the brand. I was forced to order them on line and they fit fine.

Earlier, I had a Christmas gift card to use at an emporium that was closing. All of the spring trousers hanging on the racks were tapered. I think tight-leg pants look good on about one percent of women, but I bought a pair of slim, turquoise jeans. I added a harmonizing, print top. This summer I’ll wear the outfit often with my taupe tennis shoes and be up-to-date fashion-wise until the ‘in-thing’ shifts.

Do you follow current styles or avoid buying new things when they don’t suit you?

My mother died sixteen years ago and it’s been a lot longer than that since she told me what to do. Yet, whenever I prepare to leave the house, I still hear her admonition, “Go to the bathroom and get a drink.” It doesn’t matter if I’m strolling three blocks to the post office or embarking on an all-day ride in our ’65 convertible, I can’t walk out the door until I’ve followed her rule.

When I left home as a young bride, I vowed I wasn’t going to be like my mother. The first time my husband upset me, I was as shocked as he was when her words shot out of my mouth. Marriage quickly taught me how frustrating a spouse can be.

Mom was a good cook and instilled in me a love of cooking. One of the first things I did in my own kitchen was buy a set of measuring cups and take them apart. I put the 1/4 cup in my sugar canister and the 1/2 cup in the flour like she had.

It took me a while to realize I didn’t have to search for a role model. My mother was a wise, strong, independent, hard-working farm woman who showed her love for me with her actions. I’m a town gal, but I’m trying to fill her shoes that often were spattered with cow manure.

Do you strive to be like your mother or do you rebel?

Wednesday, April 17, marks 60 years since Ken and I promised “to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish until death us do part.” That optimistic young pair didn’t realize how our life together would mirror those vows.

The two of us will spend the evening at the Circa 21 dinner theater in Rock Island seeing the play, Grumpy Old Men. Afterward we will stay overnight in a motel. On Sunday, April 21, our kids and grandkids will meet us for brunch at The Hoffman House in a combined celebration of our anniversary and Easter.

Ken and I courted for seven years before we married, including his four-year hitch in the Navy. Looking back, I see a lot of ‘what ifs’ during that time. What if sixteen-year-old Kenny had been to shy to ask me to ride on the Ferris wheel while I walked around Davis Days summer festival with my boyfriend, Ronnie, July 18, 1952? What if I’d said no? What if I ‘d just said good-bye when he started his four-year enlistment in the Navy in ’54 instead of promising to wait for him? What if he’d found someone else during his travels? What if he’d been aboard that ill-fated plane that crashed in the Grand Canyon in ’56 instead of letting another sailor use his ticket while he took a later flight? What if one of my mother’s worries had come true and I succumbed to either the life-threatening appendicitis infection when I was fifteen or TB when I was nineteen? I firmly believe we were meant to be together.

‘What ifs’ have shaped your life?

“Fraidy Cat! Fraidy Cat!” was often yelled on the playground of my grade school. I did some dangerous things to avoid having it hurled at me.

A few days ago I was sitting in our village coffee shop with women in my age group. They thought I was still taking chances when I shop alone in our county seat. The media reports of shootings in the city prompted my neighbor, Jan, to ask, “Aren’t you afraid?”

I replied, “No, I’m not a Fraidy Cat. I believe in living my life.”

The media also recently reported two couples in their seventies were attacked by gunmen during home invasions. One pair lived in an elite, city neighborhood and the other in the surrounding rural county. Both areas are considered ‘safe’.

Earlier the local gathering spots were abuzz about the shooting that occurred in our village park where I love to walk in the afternoon. About eight-thirty on a Saturday evening, two young men had a dispute. One settled it with gunfire. The volunteer fire department ambulance took the victim to an area hospital for treatment of a non-life-threatening injury. The perpetrator was arrested a short time later in another small town about thirty miles south.

Those incidents barely made the news because they’re happening all over all of the time. In olden days, folks turned to witch doctors with magic spells to ward off evil. Today, people implore our senators and representatives to solve these problems with more legislation. I think each of those remedies does about the same amount of good. More gun restrictions will not prevent crimes because those armed men and others like them are not law abiding citizens.

What do you think is the answer?

Grandma Ditzler came to call on her grandson, my husband, who was recovering from knee surgery. She was in a snit about Grandpa and his friend, Roger, an old farmer who lived on the hill north of our village. Her voice dripped with disgust when she said, “They were sitting on the front porch watching the young woman across the street doing yard work in her shorts and making remarks to one another. You’d think they were a pair of fifty-year-olds.” The two men were in their eighties.

I laughed to myself because my dad would turn fifty on his next birthday and Mom was teasing him about getting old. If he fell asleep in his chair watching TV in the evening, after a hard day’s work on the farm, he heard, “You better wake up and go bed, old man.” She was only five months behind him so she enjoyed the fun while she could

Now our son and daughter are in their fifties and retired cops. They joked when they were recruited by AARP. Sometimes our adult grandson refers to his father as, “Old Man.”

When I hear him I remind him he’s talking about my baby.

What ages do you consider young and old?

Last summer when I was admitted to the hospital with the Norovirus, one of the questions a nurse asked was, “Do you want to be resuscitated?”

I replied, “No.” One of the plastic bracelets she snapped around my wrist bore the letters DNR. I didn’t feel like I had a life threatening illness but I was in Intensive Care. When my husband was allowed into my room, I told him about my decision.

His first response was, “You can’t mean that.”

We talked it over. Twenty-five years ago, we’d filled out various end of life papers including compliance with Illinois’s Living Will Act that we didn’t want heroic measures to keep us alive. Decisions in the abstract are easy but when it comes down to possibly happening , it’s different. I don’t have a death wish as long as I continue to enjoy my roles as wife, mother, grandmother and writer. I’m in good health but I have been living with one lung since 1980. We had friends that were subjected to fruitless, extreme measures for bodies that were worn out and they died anyway. Neither of us wanted that.

From the time I was a little child reciting the prayer, “If I should die before I wake…” to my DNR bracelet, I’ve known I would die someday, but I always emphasized ‘someday’. When our oldest daughter was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, my husband and I faced the reality that it’s not a question of if but when death would arrive.

Have you thought about your wishes and filled filled out the necessary papers to comply?

I was a young wife with three little kids and we’d just moved to town. My three-year-old son was sitting on my lap during a meeting of neighborhood church women in our living room. He asked, “Mommy, what’s that red stuff on that lady’s face?”

I ignored his question, which was the wrong thing to do. He repeated himself a little louder. I was sure everyone in the room heard him, but pretended not to.

I murmured in his ear, “Shh. That’s just make-up.”

Mrs. Sweet, the spry grandmother who lived across the street from us, dipped generously from the rouge pot when she applied make-up. She was an attractive lady with only a few strands of gray in her black hair although I knew she had to be in her sixties.

Mrs. Waller, who lived two houses down the street from us, was one of a group of three widows I saw at community events. I always noticed the petite, gray-haired woman who stood as straight as a soldier when the sergeant barked, “Attention.”

I never knew those two women well but, now that I’ve entered their age range, I think of them nearly every day. When I’m applying make-up, I still hear my little boy’s voice and go easy on the blush. When I stand up, I remind myself, shoulders back.

Every day, each of us may serve as someone’s example. Will it be what to do or what not to do?

I was a young wife with three little kids and we’d just moved to town. My three-year-old son was sitting on my lap during a meeting of neighborhood church women in our living room. He asked, “Mommy, what’s that red stuff on that lady’s face?”

I ignored his question, which was the wrong thing to do. He repeated himself a little louder. I was sure everyone in the room heard him, but pretended not ot.

I murmured in his ear, “Shh. That’s just make-up.”

Mrs. Sweet, the spry grandmother who lived across the street from us, dipped generously from the rouge pot when she applied make-up. She was an attractive lady with only a few strands of gray in her black hair although I knew she had to be in her sixties.

Mrs. Waller, who lived two houses down the street from us, was one of a group of three widows I saw at community events. I always noticed the petite, gray-haired woman who stood as straight as a soldier when the sergeant barked, “Attention.”

I never knew those two women well but, now that I’ve entered their age range, I think of them nearly every day. When I’m applying make-up, I still hear my little boy’s voice and go easy on the blush. When I stand up, I remind myself, shoulders back.

Every day, each of us may serve as someone’s example. Will it what to do or what not to do?

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