We have thousands of mathematicians
And thousands of wordsmiths
It all seems very complicated
As we explain what is
Some people don't understand
They get lost following
Thousands of formulations
Thousands of avenues

What if it's simple
Would that be so bad
Negating all attempts
Making our efforts useless

Dense matter
Compacted to the nth degree
It is said the Universe was born
An explosion
Or a letting loose
Something may have started it
Or been no longer able to hold everything together
The force of its own failure

We do not blame Nature for its acts
These things happen

Throughout the Universe there are black holes
In the centre of galaxies
We can't expect Creation every day
But some
Those large enough
May attract enough matter
That they will explode
Everything being too much for them

We start again
Perhaps not in our own region
But another
Space is wide
And space is deep
The mathematicians may be right
The birth could be in another dimension
It might hardly effect us
We don't have time to know

One of our finest scientists
Calls the Big Bang singular
The word might be just a useful phrase
Indicating it belongs solely to a particular region
But there could be other singularities
Building up
Preparing
Someday
To produce
Further Universes

          *

We will go on exploring
Our minds question what is about us
We have our tools
Research methods
Language and Science
We will not see God in this
Unless we want to

Let us clear it with ourselves

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Marcy Belson’s 1942 piece last week jogged the memory bank of my mind. My mother surfaces and it’s the year FDR died.

My sisters and I came home that day to our little house in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was deathly quiet. Always mother would be ironing in the living room, a stack of clothes piled high on the floor, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and others blasting on the old Philco and my mother dancing away. That day silence.

We entered our modest living room quietly. There she was. Crying her eyes out. Her beautiful mane of hair over her face, piles of used tissues on the floor and swathed in her usual attire, an orange chenille robe with white trim.

When asked about her crying, sobbing she replied, “President Roosevelt is dead.” She cried for days.

My mother was beautiful. She had yearned to be an actress but her father, an Episcopalian priest, said she had to go to college first and then she could think about acting school.

Six months into college she met my father, married, had me in September 1936 and fifteen months later, my twin sisters. Her acting career never took off but a love of music and a dramatic flair for everything she did remained.

She was a cross between Rita Hayworth and Ingrid Bergman and she danced to every activity imaginable: doing dishes, cleaning, ironing, shopping. The music blared in the background while bathing us, feeding us, cooking and dashing us to tap dance lessons in Hollywood, Florida in her two-door Ford she had christened, The Green Goose.

Often she dragged us to a bar and grill called the Rainbow Room where she would meet her friends, put nickels in the juke box and enter her own private world of Miller, Dorsey, Goodman once again and dance.

We three sat patiently until she returned to us and reality.

Coupon books were distributed during those war days. You were allowed only so much sugar and other staples with them. Mother would drag us all in the store, (this included half-brothers years younger than we were) to get her groceries then load us and them back into the car.

To our astonishment, she proceeded to take off her dress. She would slip into an entirely different set of clothes and pile her luscious hair up onto her head tying a head band of sorts around it. She would apply a darker lipstick onto her full, sensuous lips, and attach large hoop earrings to her ears.

Her entire appearance would change dramatically. Off she would go to return to the store getting extra, badly needed staples for our family of seven.

Many times while in a grocery store or drugstore, the music of the bands came on and my mother would quickly glance around to see whether anyone was looking and break into a swing dance in the middle of an aisle, her skirt flying and saddle shoes really boppin’.

We three were frantic someone would turn a corner. “Mommy, Mommy stop,” we called out in unison, “someone is going to see you.” To no avail, we saw that inward disappearing act where only the strain of her favorite piece was lord of her mind at that moment.

She had wanted to be an actress. I had wanted to be a singer. In both cases marriage, children, responsibilities, divorces occurred and dreams were surrendered to reality.

In college I played the band records continuously. Even after marriage and children, I would be singing Chattanooga Choo Choo or blast St. Louis Blues March while I ironed.

Gene Krupa’s famous drum solo, Sing Sing Sing, would definitely get me going if fatigue came knocking on the door or when the full moon was especially bright.

I listen to Miller’s music and back on the shelves of my mind are memories that lay dormant and I, too, disappear to those dusty regions to read their old pages. I get dreamy, nostalgic, misty eyed. I picture myself singing with his band. I dance to the familiar refrains. I say to my mother in spirit, “I understand.”

Glenn Miller’s band was one of the most popular and best-known dance bands of the swing era, his music a careful mixture of swing, jazz, improvisation which received praise from audiences and critics alike.

With each passing year I appreciate and love it more and more. It filled longings in my mother unrealized; it does the same for me.

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I built the clipper ship,
secured rock elm to iron frame
with tiny brass-like bolts,
raised fore, main, and mizzen masts,
hoisted her flaxen canvas sails,
and carved the black-haired
bare-breasted Nannie Dee
in her cutty sark
(or as we might say,
in her short chemise)
holding the grey mare’s tail.

I dreamed of steering her
through calm and stormy seas
to bring Australian wool and Chinese tea
to England’s outstretched hands.
I dreamed the race with Thermopylae
and fixed her broken rudder.
I dreamed of winds and clouds
and days of stifling drift,
of private thoughts and splendored hopes,
and the freedom of confinement
that such a life conceives.

And despite some minor obstacles,
like being a girl a century too late,
the only thing that kept me back
was I never learned to swim.

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I was five years old in 1942. It was a very good year for me, not so good for the five-year-old children in the war-torn countries.

My parents bought a house that year.

I remember walking to town with my mother. She was wearing a suit and high heeled shoes and I thought she was quite beautiful. She told me we were going to the bank and I would be signing some papers with my name.

I realized later that they were savings bonds my parents had put in my name. She told me we were going to use the money to purchase a home and we would be moving there shortly.

I believe they paid $4000 for the two bedroom, one bath house.

There were two things that made that house special. First, I had a bedroom; better yet, I had atree house. Until that move, I had slept in a baby crib at the foot of my parent's bed.

The earlier house had one bedroom and a sleeping porch where my father's younger brother and a nephew slept.

I called both of them Uncle. In our family, any adult relative was addressed as aunt or uncle. Uncle Art and Uncle Hayden had moved from Arkansas to our small town in order to find work.

Now, in the new house, those young men slept in another screened in porch at the rear of the house. That was the porch where my mother stored the homemade sauerkraut that blew up for several days.

The men came in from the fields at noon and rested on the living room rug while my mother got the food ready. They always listened to the Gabriel Heater news on the radio. My dad nicknamed the young nephew Gabe.

There were lots of nicknames. I answered to Mouse. I don't know where that came from as I was never little in size.

My new bedroom had a full-sized bed and a tall dresser, plus a dressing table with three mirrors. The side mirrors moved so a woman could see the back of her hair or clothing. My mother kept fabric for sewing in most of the drawers.

Glass shelves were installed over the windows for my collection of dolls, a brave thing to do with a small child in earthquake country.

The house had previous owners with two sons. Someone had built a treehouse for them. It was just a platform in the chinaberry tree with a wooden ladder nailed to the tree trunk but the thrilling part was a metal pole located close to the tree but far enough out to be a heart stopping feat until I learned to jump and hold on, as I slid down the pole.

As an adult, I could stand next to that tree and see the platform; it was less than six feet from the ground. But as a child, it was wonderful and hidden from the adults. In the winter, the tree had no leaves but it was a summertime hideaway.

We lived there until I was 11 years old. That was just six years, but I can see every detail in that home, every light switch and wall light fixture, the hole in the kitchen floor where the original ice box sat and could drain through the hole, the old white sink and a kitchen window that gave my mother a view of the driveway when my father came home.

I remember the maroon frieze living room set my parents purchased; it scratched my legs - little girls wore short dresses then - so I took my mother's scissors to it one day.

Got a spanking and I always had to go out to one of those chinaberry trees and pull a switch and take it to my mother for the whipping. My dignity hurt more than the switch.

There was a Philco radio in the corner next to the fireplace and I would stretch out on the hearth to listen to the scary shows in the evenings.

We had a phone with a party line. The phone was installed for my father's business and I was not allowed to chat with friends. I could phone them and set a time to meet but it had to be done quickly in case a business person called.

There were other families on that phone line and it would infuriate my dad when the children were allowed to "play" with the phone.

I also remember my mother closing the window curtains and telling me that we must not open them; it was a black out due to the possibility of a bombing.

After the war, two things happened as soon as possible. We got a private line for the phone and a new car. The car was a DeSoto, maroon colored, cloth seats, a two door with a lot of chrome. Someone must have washed that car often but I don't think it was my dad.

About those two boys who lived with us. They were just kids. Hayden was employed as a tractor driver by my dad. When he got called up by the army, he was sent to the Pacific and eventually to Japan during the occupation years.

The other boy was my uncle, my father's baby brother. He had been injured as a child and had lost one leg. He worked in the family grocery store as a meat clerk.

Those two young men were my heroes. They gave me their pocket change to save for a red haired doll on display at Firestone Tire Company. When I saved the necessary money, my mother let me go alone to the store.

She told me, much later, the clerk called her, unsure about a small girl with a piggy bank full of change, buying a doll without any supervision. My mother approved the sale and I went home with the doll, named "Red" for her hair.

Uncle Art and Uncle Hayden are gone now but I have three girl cousins, Phyllis, Cheri and Judy, descendants of those two men.

The house is gone too; it burned a few years ago. The owner built something new and used concrete on the remainder of the property. No tree house for some little person to climb.

I'll just think of it as I first saw it in 1942.

[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Please read instructions for submitting.]

(I did not plan this, but at 87, find myself composing nearly daily limericks and sharing them with fellow residents of my continuing care community. This is one of them.)

I'm going to take a brief vacation
from the need for medication,
from capsules, drops, and shots and pills,
from new prescriptions and refills,
- if only in imagination.

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Most mornings, my wife and I awaken to music and news from our favorite oldies station.

In addition to being able to gloat a bit when the traffic reports are given, knowing our retired status means we don’t have to venture forth on the snow-covered or traffic clogged roads, we especially enjoy a daily segment of events in history for that particular day, which always ends with a list of people who celebrate their birthday on that date.

On May Day, one of the names mentioned was Judy Collins who is not only someone whose music I have enjoyed over the years but who was the vocalist a few times for a jazz combo in which I played piano.

That memory sparked others, for although I am neither rich nor famous, along the way I have personally met a few people who are. And my guess is that those of you who read and contribute to this blog have your own list of such people you have known along the way.

The list of such people from my past is small but without a doubt one of them is a household name many of you will recognize, especially if you think back on your high school and college days. That name: Cliff Hillegas.

Doesn’t ring a bell, you say? How about Cliff Notes, those ubiquitous study guides some of us relied on with their famous yellow and black covers? I don’t think I would have made it through my Ph.D. Comprehensives in Philosophy without Cliff Notes on Plato, Arisotle, Kant, Hume, and others.

But little did I realize not only that there was a real Cliff behind these guides but that I would one day have the privilege of meeting him up close and personal.

The connection came when I was president of Midland Lutheran College in Nebraska and discovered that Cliff was an alumnus - possibly the most famous alumnus of Midland.

He came to the college from a small town in western Nebraska during the Great Depression and as he tells it, his father lost their farm just as he completed his freshman year. Convinced that meant an end to his education, he notified the college he would not be able to return in the fall, since he lacked the funds to cover tuition, room, and board.

At that point, the business manager at Midland took a calculated risk, inviting Cliff to continue his education, offering to defer the cost of tuition and fees if he could find work to cover his living expenses.

He found work as a stock boy in a five and dime, earning 25 cents and hour and when another stock boy broke his leg, his work time and income doubled allowing him to stay in college.

Completing his degree, Cliff found work in Canada as a traveling salesman for a publishing company that offered a small selection of study guides which gave him the idea of doing this himself.

Returning to Nebraska, he and his brother took out a loan to cover start-up costs, contacted professors at the University of Nebraska to write the content and printed the initial copies in their garage. Cliff Notes was born.

Within a short time, sales enabled him to repay not only the loan but also the debt he owed to Midland. One of my memories of Cliff is sitting in his office surrounded by bookshelves filled with Cliff Notes translated in many languages, providing study guides in a wide array of subjects.

Little could I know that day that I would also personally know someone who would write one of these guides. For proudly placed on one of my bookshelves today is a revised Cliff Notes edition of Shakespeare’s The Tempest written by my son, Dr. Matthew Carl Hansen, who earned his Ph.D at UNL and who is now on the faculty of Boise State University.

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This morning I dreamed I was driving a country road beside a river. In the passenger seat was an elderly man. He pointed to a point along the bank and said, "I had a twin brother. He drowned there when we were nine. I'll never forget that."

But once awake I couldn't put a name to him. It's bugged me all day but late in the afternoon I finally remembered.

A week ago, I was trying to document my Aunt Iva's second husband and couldn't. I don't know his full name, when he was born, the year he died or anything else other than that I loved him.

I couldn't even remember exactly what he looked like, until my subconscious found the late 40s early 50s folderin my head and pulled his file.

Mother described Iva's first husband as a scoundrel, a category most men fell into. "Remember," she'd say with an expression hovering between disgust and alarm, "they're all out for one thing."

Since she never explained what the one thing they were out for was, I was left guessing. But she often complained that she couldn't keep a cake or pie in the house for more than a few hours so I thought "the one thing" must be pastry.

Mother and her sister couldn't have been more different. Mother was tiny, dark and ferocious. Being “mothered” by her was like being raised in boot camp.

Iva was fair, round and soft. She was gentle and a cuddler. She'd gather me into her big rocker and rock and kiss me like I was a baby even when I was five and six years old. Since the only touching I got at home was a twice daily scouring with a rough washcloth, Iva's cuddling was like cool water on a thirsty field.

Iva's husband was called J.A. but I called him Poppa. He was 20 years older than Aunt Iva and he was one of the few men Mother approved of. He was a small man with a shock of white hair that stuck out at angles on his head. He wore red plaid shirts and suspenders. He liked little kids and I tagged around after him like a puppy.

Aunt Iva and Poppa had a farm with two big ponds where Poppa raised fish. People paid money to stand on the bank of the pond and catch the fish Poppa raised.

One afternoon my Daddy, Poppa and I went fishing to catch a big snapping turtle that was eating people's fish off their lines.

Poppa baited a stout line and hooks with some perch and dropped them where he knew the turtle lay under the brown water. He soon had the snapper on the line. It had a fish in its mouth and didn't want to let go.

That turtle hung on so stubbornly to the fish that Poppa was able to pull it out of the water far enough so my Daddy could grab the end of it with a big gaff hook on a pole and pull it up on dry land.

That snapping turtle was as big as the steering wheel of my Daddy's Pontiac car.

Poppa walked up the bank backwards pulling the turtle step by step. When the line would start to strain Daddy would help with the gaff. When the turtle finally bit through the fish Poppa stuck a broom handle in front of its face.

The snapper hissed and bit the broom handle and Poppa and Daddy carried it home between them with it biting on the broom handle. It could have let go but it was too mad. Poppa said a snapper wouldn't let go until it thundered. He said he was going to cut its head off with an axe and make turtle soup.

I felt sorry for the turtle even though it was ugly and the meanest thing you could imagine, biting on the broom handle and growling like an old dog. I begged Poppa not to cut off its head but to take it to a pond where there were no people paying for fishing. He said he would do that as soon as I went to bed.

I'm sure the turtle was dispatched as soon as I was asleep. I guess the same principle applies to turtles as to people; sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut and when you are on the losing side of an argument, you should just let go and make as graceful an exit as you can manage.

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My brother Mike calls me every morning at 8:15am. I usually have just enough time to unlock my office door, hang up my coat and turn on my work computer before the phone rings.

“How ya doin' this mornin'?” he’ll ask in his thick Okie drawl.

“Just fine” I answer. “How are you?”

“I’M GREAT,” Mike responds with obvious enthusiasm!

And so our morning conversation goes. He proceeds to tell me the establishments he has already visited. The sandwich shop where Ralph the manager gives him a free or discounted sandwich each day and the grocery store where he gets the same thing each day, a bottle of Sunny D and some Oklahoma caviar.

He tells me he is ready for his aerobics glass. He has filled his water bottle (a gift from Mary, his neighbor) and he has his emergency kit, which consists of his pollen hat and eye drops.

I tell him how envious I am and how I will be working hard while he is out having fun at his Silver Sneakers class.

His voice often softens and he responds most sincerely, “Well Bless Your Heart!”

I love it when he blesses my heart! It couldn’t mean more if it came from the pope!

We typically chat a few minutes more and I tell him to have a wonderful day. Our calls end with, “I love you,” followed by, “I love you too.”

That’s a GOOD day.

On the days that his mental illness has a hold of his thoughts, our conversations resemble the Keystone Cops. It goes everywhere but gets nowhere.

He greets me with, “I’m having suicidal thoughts,” without so much as prefacing it with hello.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because I’m afraid I’ll die,” he quickly answers.

“Hmmmmmm, doesn’t that seem like overkill to you? If you were afraid to die why would you kill yourself?” I ask while looking around to see if anyone can hear my crazy inquiry.

Sheepishly he responds, “I dunno,” and then together we laugh at his illogical thoughts.

This will be a day of confused thinking and many, many phone calls. I’ll assess each call to determine if he is a danger to himself or others. I’ve learned not to react every time he has a foggy day. I have learned that this too shall pass.

Yesterday, when he made his routine afternoon call, he told me he had a great time at his aerobics class and that he didn’t say anything inappropriate.

I said, “Of course you weren’t inappropriate; you are a gentleman and a scholar.”

He giggled at my silly response and then in a very lucid moment he softly said, “I always was, my disease wouldn’t let me show it.”

Yes Mike, you always were!

[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Please read instructions for submitting.]

Teeth are the most distinctive (longest lasting feature) of the mammal species. By the age of 21, most people have all their adult teeth which have replaced their baby teeth. Adults usually have 32 teeth which includes their wisdom teeth.

Some people are born with crooked teeth and resort to wearing braces to straighten them. It’s a long and expensive procedure; I should know for I wore them twice.

Nowadays it is also very popular to use teeth whiteners. Who wants to look at someone with yellowed fangs, yet when I look in the mirror each morning I am greeted with what I call old elephant tusk colored teeth.

At 83, do I want to go through the process of having my teeth whitened? No. First, I couldn’t afford it and second, there is no guarantee it would work on my old teeth.

Luckily I have them all except my wisdom teeth but yes, I do also have lots of gold in my mouth due to former cavities. I’ve always wondered what happens to that gold when I’m cremated. Does that person doing the job collect it as a tip or what? With price of gold they must becoming very rich.

There are five major problems that that affect our teeth: cavities, periodontitis, gingivitis, plaque and tartar. All these problems develop because of poor dental cleaning and care.

It would have been better if, instead of a silver spoon, we’d all been born with a toothbrush in our mouths.

There have been studies done in many countries about teeth. In a health and nutrition survey done in the United States in 2004, Americans over the age of 65 had 18.9 teeth while in China they only had 9.5 teeth.

But the survey pointed out that just because Americans had more teeth doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still consider tooth loss a problem. Certainly as older people age they have fewer and fewer teeth but with proper care, they can retain more of them.

For sure, who really wants a glass of water by their bed in which to hold their dentures nightly?

To solve this problem, I think the government should provide free oral examinations for senior citizens and provide them with very inexpensive insurance coverage to take care of their dental problems.

Most insurance companies do not have teeth, eye or hearing coverage unless you pay more and then it is quite limited. Yet these three things are something all older Americans need but usually can’t afford. As many of us know it’s very difficult to live on a shrinking Social Security check and still pay the high costs of taking care of some of our pressing needs.

If we can’t chew our foods properly, see what’s going on around us or hear people talk, why bother to live? Just give me a hemlock branch to suck on please.

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Good yoga lies in details; yes,
The insignificant:
Minutiae;
Stuff you never pay attention to,
To which you never pay attention.

You, the organism
That consists
Of teeny, tiny-nesses-es,
Each of which you must detect.
It’s you – why not?
You are the only you you’ve got;
You’re what
You’re made of,
What you’re based on.
You have nothing better than
To know it
In its wholeness-parts:
Abilities and limitations,
Weaknesses and strengths:
Its opposites.
Good yoga:
Everything you do.

[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Please read instructions for submitting.]