Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Monday, October 3, 2005

Thursday morning was a busy one. I woke up knowing that I had the condo building’s four floors of recycled newspapers to pick up and get out to the recycling center (along with our personal recyclables), I had laundry to fold, a child to awaken, feed and get ready for school, coffee to make, a newspaper that I wanted to read, and also, most importantly lines that I had to memorize for the shoot the following day. I mentally sorted through all these jobs and decided that I would put first things first and start my day by writing a thank you note. The day before a slim package had arrived at the office from my Aunt Ruth. Ruth Olesen Kelley, who lives in Springfield, Missouri, is 85 years old and quite a brilliant and fiesty woman. She had been sorting through old photographs and sent all the the descendants of Charles William and Esther Mitchell Olesen photos of two of their respective graduations. There was a photo of a young-looking Charles Olesen graduating from MIT in 1914 and an even younger looking Esther Mitchell sitting stiffly and looking very serious as the high school valedictorian of her class in Oxford, NC at age 16 in 1912. It’s strange seeing your grandparents when they were much
younger than you are now. Anyhow, I’d never before seen these photographs and they are treasures to own.

I wrote Aunt Ruth thanking her for passing these treasures on to me and my six living first cousins. I thanked her for being an inspiration to me and my sister Jane. After I’d done that, I moved onto other items, like the newspaper, coffee, and breakfast. But something about starting the day giving thanks to a higher power or to one’s very own aunt puts life in perspective. We are all so lucky. We need to find—and state—the reasons why.