Back to the old adage: Attitude is everything

Linda Tyssen Mesabi Daily News Columnist

It has been said that attitude is everything.

That old saying came to mind just the other day when I had the honor of doing a telephone interview with polka and accordion master Florian Chmielewski.

He has been playing the accordion for 71 years, even before I was born, and that was a long time ago. He started the Chmielewski Funtime Show back in the 1970s, when color TV was a luxury, before cell phones and the Internet came to be and vinyl records were the order of the day.

How old are you, I asked him. “I’m not going to be 90 until next February,” he answered. I loved how he put that. He didn’t say, “Oh, I’m so old…” He sounded young — because he is. Age is all a state of mind.

How well I remember when I heard someone say years back, “I’m 80. I don’t have to do anything anymore.” How very sad, I recall thinking, and it wasn’t long before the person passed from this life.

I could tell Florian was a busy man, as he told about entertaining at places where the residents are often younger than he is. “When they call me, I go,” he said, “Nothing slows me down. I just love being with the people. I’m constantly on the road.”

His attitude is a lesson in living. Age is only a number. And it’s sometimes used as an excuse for a woe-is-me attitude.

The idea that “attitude is everything” got me thinking about how privileged I am to be able to lead a coffee group once a month at St. Michael’s Health and Rehab, my way of giving back in small measure for what the staff of St. Michael’s has given me. “A very belated thank-you,” I recently emailed a staff member at the facility, “for all the good things you and the staff did for me when I arrived at St. Michael’s, so afraid what the future would hold.”

It’s been more than five years since I had a stroke and went to St. Michael’s for therapy that would give me my life back. When I was able to return to my own home four months later, I missed the company of the staff at the center so much, and sometimes I would cry — but I remembered what they had told me, that they had helped me learn the skills that I was now going to put into practice.

Now the monthly coffee group refuels me each month. Several residents will gather around the table, and we talk of many things — the other day it was “smart phones,” that it is now possible to talk at the phone and tell it to call so-and-so. They laughed — some of the residents remember the days of crank telephones and party lines.

And we laughed a lot, as we ate cookies and drank glasses of pop. Attitude really is everything.