Life In The Big City
Hello, and welcome back to my former readers and thanks for joining me once again. I hope you have all fared well as can be expected in this crazy time. We have lost one of our dearest friends and many other dear ones during this time we haven’t connected. I realize we all have. To my new readers, I’ve missed writing, and haven’t written a lick since I’ve moved here. This is my first attempt, so please be patient with me. During this time, our 25 year old granddaughter passed her MCATS with flying colors and is, at this moment, applying to med schools. My twin grandsons are going into their senior year at different colleges, while our 17 year old grandson graduated high school and is going to UCSB in the fall and our 25 year old Max graduated college and is living in Northern California. How on earth did all these years pass by? Now, that takes care of the housekeeping.
Life is heating up for me in the city these days and I’m beginning to find my way around. It has been one year and eight months that I have lived in LA and I now know how to navigate life a little better. The important things like knowing where to have my hair and nails done, I have down to a science. Today my daughter took me and a friend to "The Bungalows” (a trendy club), then to a matinee of Six, the Tony award winning show. It was “A New York kind of Day”. Tomorrow night, I’m going to the Catalina Club with a bunch of friends to see a singer. I’ve been going to museums {I saw the Basquiat show), which was really good, BTW, and to some artist private studios with an old good friend. On top of this I have Taco Tuesday, with lots of Margaritas at my apartment once every few weeks and invite different women of all ages, a salon of sorts. It makes for a feeling of community and interesting conversations.
But now for the other reality. After Bob left, I stayed at home at first with curtains closed, feeling sorry for myself. For those of you who don’t know, my husband is in the Motion Picture and Television Home. He’s in the memory unit and is diagnosed with Parkinson’s and Lewy Body Dementia. So, therefore, I never know who he is going to be when I talk to him or see him. Sometimes he is totally lucid and other times he says he is in New York and he’ll meet me at the hotel. I go along with whatever he says. I say, “Great, see you there”. One time he said “you sound just like Beverlye, ”! I said “I am Beverlye,” and he said “no wonder you sound just like her.” We both laughed.
My kids kept pulling me out of bed to take me places and I don’t know if I would have come out at all without them. But, one does, because staying in bed does no one any good, least of all me. Bob lives 30 to 40 minutes away in Calabasas, but it’s an easy drive. Sometimes, I take him out to lunch (with Bob’s lifesaving caregiver, Patrick) and he loves that. Other times I meet friends when we go out, or I go by myself and we just stay in his room or walk around his place and talk to his friends. The amazing thing is that he is pretty much adjusted to his life. I am thrilled with the care, BTW. They are so sweet to him and call him Papa. There are wonderful restaurants in Calabasas and sometimes we go there or to Westlake, which is only 15 minutes away from him. He is doing well and recovering from Covid and pneumonia. That was life threatening and so scary, but he pulled through like a trouper with the help of nurses round the clock.
Now it's a week later, and I had a really lovely afternoon with Bob. I brought us turkey sandwiches (some things don’t change) and we had a late lunch. I took off my shoes, and crawled into his bed with him and we both took naps. I stayed with him after we woke up and watched the news and didn’t leave until 6:00PM. It was like being at home. It felt warm and wonderful.
It’s a different phase of life but one I’m trying very hard to accept, and make the best of it. It means staying home and eating dinner by yourself in front of the TV, a couple of nights a week, isn’t the end of the world. It means coming from the 3 of us,me, Sophia and Bob, to just one is not the end of the world either. It means it’s time to be grateful for the time I have with him and our 89(almost) years of life on this earth (35 together).
It means it’s time to appreciate family and friends who have surrounded me with love.
I hope I haven’t given you TMI, but I just wanted to share a little of what my life is now. As the saying goes, “I’m not complaining, just explaining.” I also have exciting news. In August, I’m taking my 21 year old grandsons to Alaska on a hiking trip with the company, Back Roads. So, I’m busy training with my daughter-in-law who shows me trails that I wouldn’t otherwise know.
I know blogs are kind of old fashioned and I could probably have A.I. give you all this info, but I like old fashioned. I received a handwritten note from a young friend of mine today and I just loved reading it. I also like reading real books. For this person to take the time to write that note really thrilled me. That said, I wish I could still turn the radio in my car on and off and just turn the dial for a different station. I also wish I could hold “the clicker” in my hand and go to channels like, 2,4,6,8 to get everything I wanted. Remember those days? But we all try to keep up the best we can, in this world we live in, while keeping a little bit of old fashioned in our lives. Like a blog!
To be continued………..
I hope you like my new pretty and easy web site, done for me by the artist, Alli Conrad.