When Life Hands You Lemons...

Shirley met me at the door of her two-story condominium. "I can't hear all that well," she said as we entered her kitchen. "I'm ninety-eight, and I have to wear these darn hearing aids."

I was incredulous. She didn't look a day over seventy. I told her so, but she acted as if people were telling her that since she was seventy-one. She told me she has macular degeneration beginning to rob her eyesight so had to quit driving last year.

"I spoke to a class last year at Boston University Medical School," she said. "I was a guest lecturer. When it came time for questions, all the students, every one of them, thanked me for coming down there to speak. And they all wanted to know the secret of my longevity. Whether is was genetic or not."

"I told them it wasn't. My father died in his fifties, and my mother a few years later. My brother died young, too. I told them the secret to a long life is to be active. And have a positive attitude. I always see the glass half-full, instead of half-empty."

I thought about Shirley often. Is it possible to extend one's life on this planet simply by getting off our butts and smiling a lot?

According to a recent study on longevity called the Longevity Project, researchers Friedman and Martin discovered there are multiple reasons why some people live longer than others. And it is not about genetics. Factors such as personality, ways of approaching and dealing with life, and how physically active a person is all contribute to living longer. My friend Shirley had nailed it, and she was living proof.

What Shirley taught me, and what science is finding out, when life hands you lemons you can either get all sour about it, or you can get to work making a fabulous lemon-meringue pie.

You can peel them open, harvest the seeds and start planting a whole field of lemon trees to sell to Bird's Eye, or walk around with a puckered face.

You can throw a few slices in your iced tea, or leave them in the fridge to wither and rot.

Thing is, life isn't always going to be handing you fruit. Next time it could be something brown and smelly in a paper bag. Better make lemonade while you can.

Frank

Frank met me at the door with his yelping Pomeranian. The dog, high strung and asthmatic, leaped on the back of my legs, her sharp claws feeling like they were shredding my calves.
"Down!" I shouted at her. "No jumping!" It's not my style to be shouting in my customer's homes, unless they're shouting at me, in which case I've been known to dish it back after my breaking point has been reached. The breaking point just got a little closer with the Pomeranian.

Frank was a rail thin senior, sporting a Boston Red Sox ball cap. He wore a thin jacket in the house over wrinkled clothes. With red-rimmed eyes and wispy grey hair poking out beneath the hat, he was an older version of my brother-in-law Lee. Spitting image, aged twenty years. I marveled again to myself how there seems to be a Divine set of molds we are  all made from, with archetypical patterns for each brand of human. Frank was in the Lee mold and wore the very same worried expression I've seen on Lee's face.

"I'm losing all my food," he explained. "The fridge stopped working a day ago. It's just been sitting there. I only go shopping every three weeks since they took away my driver's license."

Refrigerators are one of those modern conveniences you cannot live without. You can get by if your dishwasher fails, or the washing machine. But not the fridge. A warm fridge is a breeding ground for all kinds of bacteria. A home-bound senior whose nearest relative is a daughter in Maine surrounded by uncaring neighbors who loses a fridge is in a crisis. I was hoping I had the part on my truck and could get it back up and running for the guy.

"I lost my wife last year," Frank said, seating himself stiffly at the kitchen table. I noticed old pill bottles, faded prescriptions and yellowed newspaper clippings strewn on the table top. "Breast cancer. We had been married close to sixty-five years." At the mention of his wife, his red-rimmed eyes began to fill. I thought they would soon spill over and trickle down his face, but he had been grieving a whole year now and was nearly cried out. You don't live that long with someone and not feel pain when they leave you.

My folks were married half a century. After my Dad's passing, Mom would speak of him rarely. He was verbally abusive, and I think his being gone gave her some relief. Only once did I see her stifle tears at his memory, but that was after he had long been dead and the memory of his verbal put-downs were softened. Frank was a tender man, not giving to verbal assaults as far as I could see. There was a deep kindness about him. I would have enjoyed his company more were it not for the asthmatic Pomeranian frantically pacing the kitchen now demanding my attention.

"She thinks she the boss," Frank explained. "She's a rescue. I got her after my wife died. It's just me and the dog."

I was able to get the fridge up and running. It was a bad cold control and I luckily had the part on my truck. We spent some time sorting through his frozen foods to see what was safe to keep.

"My daughter said Stop & Shop has a food delivery service," he said as I was packing up my tools to leave.
"It's called Pea Pod," I said, nodding.
"Helluva' name," he said.