A chat with Mother at the nursing home today, brings to mind a phrase I often use for the women in my family. I call them “lingering women”. It seems the females in my family outlive the males by a considerable number of years. When my mother commented on missing my father who has been gone 9 years, I mentioned my thoughts about lingering woman to her. She said she’d rather be a malingering woman, commenting that she often hides out in her room to avoid activities. Earlier in the week, she remarked that she had been very unproductive and idle in the three days since my last visit. I tried to explain that I thought that was what she was meant to do at her stage in life, but I don’t think she bought it. She had two novels out that she is reading in tandem. One big book is for her room, and another skinny book is for hauling to the dining room to read while she waits to be served. Her organ music sits near the door so she can go to the living room and play and her crochet is at the foot of the bed ready for action. She doesn’t look at all like a malingering woman to me.

I may age to be a lingering woman, but I don’t think I can ever malinger either. I, too, have a couple of books going at once at well as multiple other activities aside from the ranch work. In terms of the design work, as do most other beaders, I keep multiple designs going at once. The current seed bead project fits well with listening to TV, hammering wire and metal is readily on tap for relieving frustration and stringing projects, organized into small groups on the work table, wait for this human to arrive. While yesterday’s blog showed the copper Pascal’s necklace I completed yesterday, today’s picture shows a seed bead collar finished the same day. Diversity is good or as the saying goes, “variety is the spice of life.” 

So whether we linger or malinger, I choose to believe that barring unforeseen medical complications, the strong survive. The men in my family would probably say that the strong-willed survive and looking at my mother, grandmother and great grandmother, I might have to agree.