Category Archives: Health and Long Life

Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Music and Theatre, Uncategorized

Sometimes, you just have to go with your inner musician

February 24, 2013 Cherry Leave a comment

I have a one-hour piano repertoire of well-rehearsed oldies which I perform at local retirement centers. Not wishing to lug around a stack of books and never having seen the need to purchase print music for old folk songs; I play by ear, make up my own arrangements – or perhaps put in a little research as to what a particular chord progression might be. (FYI, Moon River is a bit of a doozy). Consequently, most pieces end up in my keys of choice: C and F.

The other day, I was absentmindedly idling my fingers about the ivories at home and letting my thoughts wander out the window and slide down a few clouds. Suddenly, I found myself in the middle of an Elvis Presley song and playing an E major chord. (You know, the one that belongs deep in “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” as part of the harmonic cadence before the final phrase?)

“I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” has been a staple on my playlist for a couple of months. Yet, I could not remember camping out on an E major chord before. So I worked it around a few times, ferreted out the sequence to verify. Yes, that chord really belongs there. I was puzzled and played through the song again. Then palmed my forehead. Duh. “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” may be my well-worn standard, but “Love Me Tender Love Me True” had not been on my playlist – until that day.

That is how we discover new things. We travel down a well-worn trail of routine, something new and different catches our eye. We follow up on it, do a little research and experience and find we have a new hobby, a new favorite activity or a additional item on the bucket list. Sometimes you need to follow the inner musician.

Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Home and Hearth, Spiritual Well Being, Uncategorized

Wherein I contemplate finances as a part of whole health

February 3, 2013 Cherry 4 Comments

Physical, Mental, Emotional, Spiritual – all parts of the whole of good health, of well-being. What do you think? Is financial health so important as to be considered a part of the whole? I have often been accused of thinking too much, becoming too analytical as I ruminate on relationships. Today, I am thinking about my relationship with money.

Physical, Mental, Emotional, Spiritual – four parts of personal health. Positive Psychology Daily News refers to these four as energies. Other psychologists have included a Social category to arrive at five dimensions. Some cite seven components: Emotional, Environmental, Spiritual, Physical, Social, Occupational, Intellectual.

However you slice the pie, I believe it is not wise to try, nor is it possible to sever one from the other. I agree with Paul’s first century letter to a Corinthian team, “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many…If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it (verse 14a and 26, I Corinthians 12).

Physical, Mental, Emotional, Spiritual, Financial – Rather than stick with my usual four, I propose five parts of whole health and well-being.

Over the years, I have enjoyed exceptional physical health; better than average mental and spiritual stability and variable but manageable emotional health. Recently, I hit my stride physically via outdoor walks and hikes and careful attention to eating and sleeping habits. Optimum physical health has the happy effect of reawakening the mental, spiritual and emotional aspects. But, what about the financial?

I have noticed that money makes me happy and lack thereof makes me anxious and sad. Destitution wreaks havoc with my mental and emotional state as I strain my brain with the challenge of how to fix it. As long as I maintain regular walks, my physical state is the least affected. Eventually, financial stress may take its toll on the physical.

Are finances an energy? Is money one of the dimensions of my personality? Must wealth be one of the legs on which whole health stands?

How about you? Does your overall health and sense of well being hinge on financial health?

Character, Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Uncategorized

January warning signs

January 23, 2013 Cherry 4 Comments

Take heart, folks. Things are not as bad as they seem. The heart attack warning signs you feel gripping your chest? Are just your lungs and heart responding to sub-zero January temperatures as you struggle to breathe. Feeling faint all the time, depressed, light-headed? Your New Year’s resolution to loose 10 pounds must still be effective. Does your workplace feel like a prison where you never see the light of day?

It’s January!

If you can just hold on a few more weeks, the weather will right itself. You’ll be pleased with your new body. The sun will be back and you can take regular outdoor excursions before and after work. In the meantime, give a little extra grace to those around you. I trust they will do the same for you.

Be good to yourself. Read your email by the light of a full spectrum bulb or sit on the sunny side of the house. Fill the bathtub to capacity and give yourself the luxury of a long soak (candles and bubbles if you are female). Plan some mid-day outdoor time on weekends – even if you have to skip lunch to do it.

And hold on! It’s going to be a glorious spring!

Character, co-dependence, Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Home and Hearth, Metaphor, Uncategorized

The bunny at my house lives free and uncaged

January 11, 2013 Cherry 2 Comments

Cottontail on Monument Trail, September 2012

The bunny at my house lives free and uncaged, hippity hopping at will over an acre or more of desert terrain. He is a common cottontail – born in the wild in one of the warrens underneath the juniper cedars in my front yard. I see him every morning in the half-light before dawn and every evening at dusk as he scavenges in the flat sandy areas of my small adobe house front, or sniffing his way around the carried stones of the meditation maze in back. He nibbles with delight at the occasional tossed apple core, yet never turns up his nose at the winter starved rabbit brush, scanty saltbrush, or shadscale.

Today, in the fresh scouring of snow, he ventured completely up on the flagstone porch, whiffling in the cold powder. What did he find there? Some unknown nutrient blown in with the snow?

Some evenings, the bunny arrives while I am playing the piano and he pauses, twitches his ears and looks straight at me through the window glass. I fancy he likes the vibrations stroking his ears. Frequently, the rabbit is a complete distraction to students sitting at my dining room table for tutoring. While a rabbit might lend to research and discussion of mammals, rodents, or the differences between cottontails and jackrabbits; one rabbit does not facilitate a math lesson for nine-year-olds.

There are actually three that I know of. Occasionally, I see two of them sparring over food or territory in the small clearing. One time a third, and smaller, bunny huddled demurely in a clump of ricegrass, intently observing the contenders.

As dusk fell last week, a nine-year-old piano student looked up sharply from the keyboard, “There’s a rabbit!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, that’s my bunny.”

“Can you hold him and pet him?”

“No but I see him every morning and night and sometimes he stops to listen to me play the piano.”

“Can you put him in a cage and bring him inside?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“To keep him warm. It is cold out there.”

“He has a fur coat and long underground tunnels were he keeps warm. He wants to be out right now.”

When I ponder the bunny in my front yard, some questions cross my mind:

Why would I want to take natural responsibility from the rabbit and smother it with artificial care and provision?

Why do I feel like something or someone belongs to me only if I can control them?

When I cannot control significant people, why do I feel they are no longer mine?

Why is it we want to catch and tame?

Can we not all live free and independent?

In truth, I see this bunny more often than I ever saw bunnies kept in a hutch. This bunny chooses to hop into my field of vision, forage on my doorstep. Bunnies in a cage are often forgotten but for chore time.

Health and Long Life, Holidays and Traditions, Home and Hearth, Travel

Dreams of a white Christmas do come true

December 25, 2012 Cherry 2 Comments

Merry Christmas! Here in the high desert of Colorado – and in many other parts of Colorado – we are enjoying a white Christmas.

These boots were made for hiking; and that's just what they'll do — These boots were made for hiking; and that’s just what they’ll do

A very Merry Christmas from my house to yours

Having a new pair of hiking boots gives freedom and scope for the imagination about as well as would a new set of tires (I have one out of four); but, my boots can take me places the Subaru can’t go. Maybe these boots will start walking and walk all over the world.

Addiction, Books and other Soul Food, Character, co-dependence, Emotional Health, Family, Fiction is Truth, Health and Long Life, Uncategorized

Would you like your closure before or after death?

December 7, 2012 Cherry 2 Comments

I have heard psychologists recommend it as important to get closure before the death of a significant other; to confront the father who abandoned, the mother who neglected or the parent who exacted too violent a punishment, however just. I know healthy adults who had these conversations with aging parents with happy result. Sin was acknowledged, forgiveness was offered and accepted – sometimes even begged.

When death comes unexpectedly soon and we are left with question after question and no closure; what then?

Many years ago, when I was a fresh divorcée; raw from every attempt to keep a husband who wanted freedom, I heard a panel of young widows on Focus on the Family. They were discussing with Dr. Dobson the pain of their loss. One said the most painful time was when she saw a man checking out at the store. From behind, he looked like her husband. She resisted the urge to run throw her arms about him and was devastated when he turned and the illusion was broken.

I knew something of that experience, and longed to give my response. Though the finality of divorce is a bit stickier than the finality of death; in a small town, the chances of actually meeting my estranged husband at the store were real. So too, the possibility of seeing him with another woman. Restraint was essential, denial useless.

Over time, I came to see that denial might have been faced with healthy result much earlier in the relationship. I endeavored to write a novel about it-to help others with my experience. That book and two others remain works in progress.

Enter psychologist turned author Bonnie Grove whose book “Talking to the Dead,” deals with similar issues of love and loss, appeasement and denial – and closure. Only this is closure with the already dead.

What do you think? What would you want? Is it better to unmask denial or betrayal and find closure with the living; or to discover, after death, those things you never wanted to know?

Family, Health and Long Life, Holidays and Traditions, Home and Hearth

Happy Thanksgiving Memories

November 22, 2012 Cherry Leave a comment

334718_4756610122562_2070962136_o — Thanksgiving with Andrea and Philip, by Andrea 2012

Thanksgiving. It’s hard holiday to beat for generosity and the mix of food, family, and fellowship.

There are some wise folks who choose Thanksgiving as their favorite holiday; and why not? An attitude of gratitude boosts everything about life to a higher level, positive and productive.

Oh, I know; particularly if you are a woman, you have spent the last week baking, planning, running to the grocery store – but, isn’t it wonderful to feel the wind in your face, to rise to the occasion – even to be thankful that you do not have to cook like this every day of the year?

As a child, I stood by and tried to help with the Thanksgiving Eve grinding of cranberries and stuffing of the turkey as promising aromas filled the kitchen. I learned how it must be done, by watching. As a too young bride exiled to Germany, I was determined to keep up the tradition, though I bloodied my knuckled trying to grind cranberries on a cheese grater and had to remove all the racks in the apartment size oven just to roast a pint sized turkey in a two quart lasagna dish.

Later, I stood at a kitchen sink in Texas, flanked by my two younger children as we gathered and mixed all the necessary side dishes for meals shared with friends. I not only enjoyed those years, I lived to write about them.

Over the years, we have feasted on small turkeys, large turkeys, smoked turkeys, bonus turkeys, food basket turkeys; turkeys roasted in a conventional oven, wood stove oven, motel oven, and even in a cast iron dutch oven over a campfire.

Last year Andrea was with me for Thanksgiving break. Together we knocked out the pumpkin pies and then toted them to Grandma’s house and Kevin’s house for the feast.

For the past few years, I have been the spare tire, the single who brings a side-dish and is welcome at the table anyway. My house is small and my work schedule changeable, so I greatly appreciate the hospitality. I will never forget the Thanksgiving in 2010 when I worked the register at Safeway until late afternoon. Throwing on my coat and rushing out the door to catch the bus, I was hailed in the parking lot by my cousin who tucked me into the jeep with his mother and took me home for a feast.

This year, the Thanksgiving spirit has been pervasive. Facebook is littered daily with the confetti of thankfulness. Shoppers and store clerks alike seem to have entered into the spirit of the season. Yesterday the bank teller transacted my deposit with a look of happy anticipation, “Are you cooking?” she asked. “Not this year. Going home to Mama’s, “ I replied. “And you?” “Yes, for twelve people,” she confided with delight. “I’ve got it all planned. Happy Thanksgiving!”

Blessings on your day. I’ve gotta run. I am expected across town with my sweet potato casserole.

Character, co-dependence, Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Spiritual Well Being, Uncategorized

Foul Weather Friends

October 22, 2012 Cherry 2 Comments

musing — Cherry Odelberg, photo credit, Kevin Decker 2010

Today I am contemplating foul weather friends. As might be assumed, foul weather friends are the opposite of fair weather friends. Fair weather friends are those who love to be around you when all is going well, when everything is fun and good times. Fair weather friends slink away, run away or hide when life hands you things difficult to bear.

Foul weather friends are the ones who are there for you when things go wrong; relationships sour; the refrigerator is empty. But, are the foul weather friends here for me in the good times? Do they know how to enjoy life with me, or only how to help? Do I know how to accept their friendship in good times or only how to use my need as a magnet for their attention?

I have a few of these foul weather friends. I know I can go to them when I am desperate and they will shelter me with a shoulder to cry on, they will offer lunch, a listening ear or even a room until I get back on my feet emotionally or financially. They seem to have it all together and they never seem to need me to reciprocate.

But I treat them the same way I treat God. I can’t thank them enough. In fact, it is a little embarrassing how much they have helped me over the years. I am ashamed I had to ask for help. I don’t want to be a bother, so I try and give them a reprieve from my presence when times are good. I try to stand on my own two feet until I slip up or something goes wrong again.

What I really want are all-weather friends with a life-time warranty. Is there such a thing?Do I have the resources to afford them? Am I balanced enough to both give and receive? Do I even know how to be free of every feeling of obligation and debt except the debt of love?

Character, Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Metaphor, Photos, Poetry and Prose, Spiritual Well Being, Uncategorized

Survive or Thrive? Putting my house in order

October 10, 2012 Cherry Leave a comment

IMG_2849-2 — Cherry Odelberg, November 2011

The fall weather is beautiful. It makes me want to set my house in order, get rid of the chaff of a lifetime, prepare for a cozy and uncluttered winter. At the approach of 2012, I made it my goal to live the year as though it was all I had been given, a gift of 365 days to thrive or survive. I have survived, stabilized, reached a rhythm of contentment where I love my life and am mostly free of worry. Yet, in the remaining two months, I want to thrive. There are still things to do, places to go, people to see; even as I tuck everything in for the winter. I want to finish strong. Though it is not baseball season, I would love to knock one out of the park before the year’s end. A home run, a victorious finish, that’s what I want. How about you? Are you exhausted by the time of year or exhilarated by the time of year? I want to align with Caleb:

DSCN2483garfield from holy cross — Mt Garfield from Holy Cross

Give me this mountain!

‘Tho my sight is gone my vision has not dimmed.

Give me this mountain,

And renew my strength to mount on eagles wings.

For I have seen you miracles and I believe your promises,

I have run the race, and in your name I now obtain the prize!

Give me this mountain,

One more thing before I die,

far fields from hermits rest — Hermits Rest, Morrow Lake

One more chance to prove your promises,

One more war to wage for right,

One more race to run with you right there by my side.

There’s been fire by night and clouds by day,

Manna eaten along the way,

Dry land where the sea had been,

And water from a rock to meet my need.

Give me this mountain!

Tho a valley lies beside it,

And Jordan River bound s the other side.

Give me this mountain!

Let me conquer while the young men stand in awe.

I have lived to see this moment and from the highest peak I’ll cry,

DSCN4124 — Independence Monument, late summer inversion, 2012

“Give me this mountain!

And in peace;

Let me die!”

Cherry Odelberg 1995 (the irony of this date is not lost on me, I was 40 years old when I wrote these lyrics and first recorded the accompaniment)

Emotional Health, Health and Long Life

Discovering a mica mine

August 29, 2012 Cherry 9 Comments

When I first moved to my little adobe abode on the fringes of town, I gave my cousin directions as to how to get here for lunch. Trouble was, I couldn’t remember if the left turn was at D or D 1/2 Road. I had confidence in my cousin’s ability to find me from my description because she grew up locally. Turns out it didn’t really matter because the road sign was missing. After one false turn, she arrived in my driveway, apologizing for a few minutes of tardiness. “Why didn’t you just say you were up the road to the Mica Mine?” she asked.

“Mica Mine?” I questioned blankly.

For reasons that are not a part of this story, every level of my social life; home, school, and work; from junior high through young adulthood was cloistered and stunted. Not so my cousin’s. She had boyfriends, school leadership roles, summer jobs and an effervescent and indomitable spirit.

My goal for 2012 is to live as though I have only been given one year-to seize the day, so to speak. Part of that means redeeming things that were lost or missed in childhood and the intervening years.

I pricked up my ears when a co-worker arrived at the office the other day, saying she had taken an early morning walk at the Mica Mine.

DSCN3938balance — Miniature balanced rock

“What makes it so special?” I asked.

“It’s just beautiful,” was her reply.

At the next opportunity, I decided to explore. In so doing, I discovered a place that I should have been familiar with in my youth, but somehow missed; a place so beautiful it belongs on my local bucket list, but I was ignorant. Right there, less than 10 miles up the road from my house, was a mini red