Useful

At a loss for a blip today, I remembered this tote bag which I received as a gift from UNICEF, along with a request for a donation.  I love the bright patterns, and it has both a zip pocket inside and a Velcro fastener to keep it closed.  Certainly worth the donation I made in return.

This afternoon I got a phone call from my cousin Marcia, the strongest person I know.  We talked for an hour and caught up on a lot of back news.  Marcia and her sisters are close in age to May, me and Lex.  We all grew up in New York City, though in different boroughs so we didn't see as much of each other as we might have wished.  Incredibly bright, Marcia trained for ballet for many years and after college moved into physical fitness.  She designed the first corporate fitness program in the country, for IBM, spent the rest of her career developing and teaching programs, and was named to the President's Council on Physical Fitness.  

Along with these successes, unfortunately, came the tragedies that tested her strength.  Her first child was stillborn, her second a crib death.  The two sons she did raise have become bright, confident, creative men.  About 20 years ago, she suffered a brain aneurysm which she was lucky to survive. She had to learn to walk again and lost some eyesight.  But she continued to involve herself in the world, giving fitness classes for seniors and spoiling her grandchildren.  When I visited her in New York about ten years ago, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and explored it all, with me describing and explaining the artwork to her while she walked up close to them so she could see them.

A few years ago she started to lose her hearing and her vision became increasingly worse, both as a result of the aneurysm; she is now nearly blind and almost deaf.  But she has not let it faze her.  She takes classes at the Lighthouse for the Blind and has found electronic devices that allow her to hear even on the phone and to use her computer.  In all of this she has been supported by her husband Harold, whom she met when she was fifteen.  You may have gathered from this that I have enormous admiration for her.  I haven't seen her in those ten years, and don't know if I will see her again, but I hope to.  It was wonderful to be able to talk with her today.