Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Photo: Purple flowers 2009

I recently met a woman named Candace. She is in her mid 80s and full of life. She makes all her own clothes, insists on wearing pumps, and wears thick white rimmed glasses over her purple painted eyelids. When chatting with her, I found out that her mother owned a clothing factory and this is what she was destined to take over. Miss Candace, however, had other plans. She wanted to become a sailor and did so by joining the Norwegian Merchant Marines in the 1940's (after doing a little research, I found that there were 33000 seamen in the NMM in that time frame and hundreds were women.). But first, she decided that she needed to get a tattoo, as all sailors had ship tattoos! She was turned away from mulitple tattooists because they didn't think a pretty young lady should have a tattoo, but she insisted and alas has a ship tattooed on her upper thigh. She admitted that once she came back to stateside, she had to wear a bandage over the tattoo when she was wearing a swimsuit, as it was such a taboo back then.

She is now widowed with four grown children. She entered college at the age of 69, plays guitar in a band, drinks a glass of wine at diner every night, loves to scrapbook and make greeting cards for family and friends, and sews all her own bedspreads and drapes. I find her such a delight and feel inspired to keep on doing what I am doing. Just proves the saying to be true: not all who wander are lost.