....and it all started with a conversation with Emily (my granddaughter) about various high school classmates of which she was able to paint a very excellent verbal picture for me of these various people she surrounds herself with daily (all good) and with a curious mind, I asked how she would describe me....."so Em, what am I? Describe me." With no hesitation she replied...."You are my grandma, the hippie (I could use hippy but I prefer hippie in this case)." "Really? A hippie?" "Yep, you live in the mountains, you love butterflies, you feed the birds and you love nature." Well, I was flattered and that is all true but I lived in the 60's and I don't think I fit into the category of a hippie from that era i.e....drugs, free love, dread locks, you get the picture. I asked her for a more thorough explanation..."Oh, grandma, it's all about the fashion". We bantered back and forth and I told her I'd have to get me some bell bottoms and flowered shirts and some headbands". Evan piped in at this time and said..."That's not it grandma. You wear comfortable clothes." Here I am sitting in the sun on a winter day in Pine Valley with my oversized sweatshirt (no bra) XL pajama pants and yes....the light went on. "It's my Birkenstocks, isn't it? (Today I actually had on my Uggs but that's just the house slipper form of Birks.) So I did my research and here's what I found. The dictionary definition of "hippie" includes things like......... A hippie (sometimes spelled hippy)[1][2] is a member of a counterculture, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. The term hippie first found popularity in San Francisco by Herb Caen, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Other things I think about when I think of hippies is LSD which I won't try and marijuana which I will try if it will keep me from pain and nausea (and if it's legal) and being anti-everything which I am pretty much anti-nothing: however, I must add here that my recent personality test when the score was tallied up, out of the following: Upholder, Questioner, Obliger or Rebel, I am a rebel so I guess I could be in the category of anti-something. I think it's just that I like to fly by the seat of my pants, hate having a schedule, don't like being told what to do and like to wander, in nature, with comfortable clothes on. In a survey I found online entitled "33-signs-you-might-be-a-hippy", the only one I fit in was #11 "wears socks with Birkenstocks". Yes, I do that, because I wear my Birks year 'round and it gets mighty cold up here in the winter. Another hippie thing is that I make fires every day and sit in front of them sometimes strumming my guitar. Oh, and today for lunch I had this.....avacado on 7 grain bread. I know some vegetarians and I have some vegans in my family and while I admire them greatly, I just can't do "organic" completely because to me, sugar is a food group. I do love my quiet, serene, peaceful hippie life here in Pine Valley so I'll embrace it and as I live off the grid, feed my birds, chase my butterflies, and drink my Fresca (not a hippie thing but totally a 60's thing) I'm happy to embrace it and be what Emily says....."My Grandma the Hippie".
