Two more thoughts

I suspect that these very frequent posts are a way that I compensate for the stresses of watching the one you love most in the World slowly die. Hopefully, they help you all also.

She still can tell me that she is NOT in pain, physical or mental. I wish that I could say the same.

One of our many great friends said in an email that she felt like an intruder if she commented on the Blog. She had read wonderful comments by Family and Friends, some of 40 years and more and as she and her husband had only known us for one Winter that we shared in the same marina, she feared that it was presumptuous for her to add her thoughts to the Blog which was (she thought) only for our very closest Friends. Therefore, she used email, so as not to defile a sacred space, as it were.

Well, that is the sort of sensitivity and thoughtfulness that is common among those that we call Friends. One of the many wonderful characteristics that cause us to cherish her and her husband as our Friends. I hope that I conveyed adequately to her that we welcome her comments, anytime and anywhere she wants them.

We welcome comments from complete strangers and several have. We are all travelers on the Road Of Life. Isn’t some horribly trite phrase from somewhere?

But, it seems like a Great Truth to me. Especially right now. So, to remind you of Rumi’s wise words that I have enjoyed in previous posts:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“Come, come again, whoever you are, come!
Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come!
Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times,
Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are.”

Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi
1207 – 1273

(If you missed it, Mevlana who is also known as Rumi, was a philosopher and mystic of Islam, but not a Muslim of the orthodox type. His doctrine advocates unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love.) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The other comment that I wanted to expand upon was by our Dear Friend (don’t obsess on why didn’t Dave call me ‘Dear Friend’? He must not like me as much. HEY! I am erratic. I often fixate on some obscure things and ignore obvious things. Surely you have noticed that and rolled your eyes. Right? I love you too, and JUST AS MUCH! Now chill a little. This is hard on all of us.)

Well, Jennie just commented, “Dear Janet and David, you continue to blaze trail for us all. You are truly amazing people. Thank you. Jennie”

When Janet got out of High School in the, in many ways, ‘Bad Old Days’ of 1964, women were supposed to be housewives. If they just could not confine themselves to their correct place in the Man’s World, then they could be school teachers, nurses or secretaries. End of list.

Actually Janet wanted to work with machinery, but it was not until 1980 that she broke into the field of working in the engine rooms of ships and really blossomed. She was not the first to do that, but she was one of the first and paid a heavy price for ‘not knowing her place.’

So, back to just out of high school, she wanted to teach Spanish. She had had 6 or 8 years of Spanish by 1964 and was an Honor Student and she decided to go to college in Granada, Spain, all in Spanish. All, on her own, in a time when that was NOT common.

But, she had VERY little money and so she stayed with people that took in students for a small fee to pay their bills. Usually Widows on a shoestring. She got her room a little cheaper by not getting all of the meals that the other students got. She averaged US$1.00 per day and it was not easy. Her shoes were so cheap that they were really sort of a cardboard flip flop.

In the Winter? In Spain?

She has always been a tough broad.

At one of those homes she became good friends with Lieve (short for Godlieve) & Veva. Two very young, Belgium women, of Janet’s age. Like all of the other roomers staying there, they happened to have a lot more money than Janet and were impressed or perhaps amazed at Janet’s drive and tenacity. Veva recently said, to Janet, the following in an email: >>>>>>>
“I´m not very good comforting, but for me the most consoling idea is that you enjoyed together the most beautiful and passionating life I can imagine. Only few people have the courage to get loose of our modern planned society, to take enormous risks in order to have a life of adventure, too short but so intense.

“Already in Granada, Lieve and I saw how special you are, Janet : during the cold winter, she used to come home in the evening – we lived together-
almost barefoot and with a baguette under the arm for supper (without anything to furnish it), all to save money for her studies and to accomplish a European tour. ” Now we realize how the west was won” was our comment…During the next summer my sister and I, full of nostalgia, visited her in Calpe, where she earned a living washing dishes in a bar… ” >>>>>>>

How the West was won, indeed!

As I said, Jennie also just commented, “Dear Janet and David, you continue to blaze trail for us all. You are truly amazing people. Thank you. Jennie”

Many are aware that ‘Janet the Trail Blazer’ is a fitting label. Many of the things that are now taken for granted, were pioneered by Janet and other exceptional women, and men, much like her. One of the many reasons that hundreds of people, many of them also Pioneers, Trail Blazers, love her so much today.

Now, as I type this, an arm span away, she is blazing another trail. Exploring the transition to the Next Life. ¡Que le vaya bien Juanita!

I had not asked Janet about the accuracy of my poor Spanish, but I was just told that, in this sentence above, que does not carry the accent. My apologies. My fault, not Janet’s. See also: http://www.peoplesguide.com/1pages/chapts/spanish/gen/que-le.html

BTW, “The People’s Guide To Mexico” is also one of our favorite books.

Dave & Janet

8 AM Reno, NV

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