All of the new year reflections have been published days ago by many other writers, so I guess I should pass on that, but my thoughts often go back to those "good 'ole days" when I am struggling with computer issues. Life was less complex even though the youth today wonder how we managed without instant connections with everyone out there. I admit, this computer has been a gift in helping me write and stay easily connected with special people in my world, and also an aid in my volunteer work in the community.
On the other hand, I often spend valuable time working on computer issues, putting up with individuals in restaurants or other public places talking ever so loudly to someone on the other end of the line who might actually care about that conversation, being ignored or almost run over by someone on their cell phone or head lowered with texting, being put on hold while the person I was conversing with takes a "more important caller who cannot wait or call back", and on and on.
While I was on the phone with the patient computer guys at Golden Shield, (I know most of them by name by now), I could not help but think back to those olden, golden days when there was a dial into a only a few TV shows, and our communication was through wonderful, permanent snail mail, the telephone on which I was first and only to my caller, (even though in the very olden days the lady on the other end of the party line would butt in, after listening in for a long while, and tell me to get off the phone), and a great deal of time was spent in actual face-to-face listening and conversing.
I remember listening to neighbors chatting over the fence or a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, listening to the sounds of cars on the gravel roads, the clucking of fat chickens fussing over a juicy worm, water lapping against the big old rowboat and the drips of water falling from the oars stroking through the water, the steady, familiar vibrations of our gentle cow, Marie, chewing her cud as we lay against her warm belly in the afternoon sun. Sounds of our surroundings were all around then. We did not have our phone constantly at our ear or finger tips, or a TV drowning out the melodies of nature or the sounds of silence.
I remember listening to my mother stirring up dinner in the kitchen, my father's old car clunking up the alley into our garage as he came home from work, a lone wolf howling in the nearby forest, the sharp crack of the baseball bat when the older boys were playing baseball in the empty lot, the church bells chiming, the ring of the doorbell when a friend came calling, chattering voices of the sewing circle ladies lunching in our dining room. I remember imagining - pictures evolving in my head - from all of the listening. There was time for reading, thinking, listening and actually looking into the face of the person with whom we were conversing. Family meal time was with one another. There was no texting, phoning or television. We came first during mealtime in our home.
Most of all, I remember the singing. We sang in the car, at the cabin and the lake, on the front porch and at our neighborhood gatherings. I listened and joined in when I learned the tunes. To this day I remember many of those old tunes and the sound of the piano accompanying them, even as I fell asleep in the adjoining bedroom, filled with the comfort of music.
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