Old Age Day by Day June 30, 2010

I admit it! I've been playing with the dollhouse on the dining room table. If this isn't a sure sign of mental decrepitude, I don't know what is. I've rearranged and moved pictures and rugs and people around. It beats lugging heavy furniture in the real world. It is as if I'm playing out reoccurring dreams I have about fixing up an old house, going room to room and the stuff keeps multiplying. This may save me thousands of dollars in therapy.

One of the next to-do items on my list is to get the eight hours of cassette tape interviewing my father transferred to CDs for my kids. I've been meaning to do this for several decades, but I had to find the darn things first. They were sunk in the abyss of the basement but now are found, kind of like saved sinners. I'm looking forward to hearing his voice again. It's the only instance I have. In the olden days people didn't record and video themselves and there were no answering machines. Home films were not my parents' cup of tea. So there are just the still photos and some of their possessions, like driver's licenses. I found my mother's Pan Am travel book with her name inside it. It's touching in it's hope and datedness. The world has changed and countries have disappeared and been created.

Maybe I'll get around to this moment again, but right now nostalgia is what's happening, and I figure it's for some kind of reason. Grief doesn't heal itself all at once, it takes it's time, and bobs up like a float signaling a fish on the line. It would be a shame not to reel that fish in and see what I caught.

Old Age Day by Day June 29, 2010

Wow! I couldn't access this blog for couple of days, and it was most disconcerting! My younger daughter's boyfriend rescued me, and I'm back in business, boys!

I had a delightful phone discussion with a bud, all about the greater meaning of Toy Story 3. Only crazed grandmothers would tolerate such a topic, but we had fun. Now we've plans to go see an adult movie tomorrow night - with Tilda Swinton, so it's bound to be weird but perhaps wonderful as well.

It's summer, and I didn't wear a jacket all day. Yippee! I'm in cowgirl mode because we saw Puccini's Girl of the Golden West Sunday with Deborah Voight riding a real, live palomino, and it was delightful. All the good arias are the tenor's, but she was wonderful in her hat and gauchos and rifle. Annie Get Your Gun, before Betty Hutton. I adore that musical. Anything you can do, I can do better, I can do anything better than you. I especially like - can you bake a pie? neither can I.

And in Puccini's opera he gives a little song to Minnie's Indian servant. The only other time I've seen an Indian in an opera was John Adams' Dr. Atomic. Why not do Sacaweja the musical? Or John Ross, the traitor? There are some mighty good melodramas in Native American History. In fact, for tragedy, you just can't hardly beat us! But we're laughing now. We didn't get exterminated, and we can overcharge for vision quests and jewelry. It's the American way.

Old Age Day by Day June 26, 2010

Well, the basement is organized. After heroic effort, there are still mountains of stuff, but in labeled plastic boxes with lids. I found the tapes of my father being interviewed, his wallet and bible, my baby book, the kids baby clothes and toys, and matchbox cars, baseball cards, and letters, cards and posters. Now, if I get sick of the stuff, I know which boxes to hand to whom. My daughter and her boyfriend were amazing. I took them out to lunch and dinner! Now if my husband can get rid of old computers, we'll really have some room.

If I had done this a few years earlier, it might have been more painful, but now I know the stuff doesn't matter. Whatever the kids do with my parents' memorabilia, it will be okay. It really doesn't matter. I have powerful feelings for certain objects, but that is me. Whatever they do will be right for them. I had a lot of fun seeing jeans jackets I'd embroidered for the kids when they were tiny, their favorite stuffed animals, and washing up doll clothes for my granddaughter. The most fun of all was the three of us putting together my daughter's doll house, and then arranging the furniture and tiny people. Her boyfriend was into it as well. And now when my granddaughter comes - what a treat! The problem is where to put it. Right now it's on the dining room table. I have a strong feeling I'll be moving things around for a while.

Moving things around is what I do a lot. When I vacuum, when I receive a new picture from one of my kids, when I give something away. What a lot of time this moving stuff has taken up in my life. It's good exercise, I guess, but what more does it mean? A way of controlling my environment? The illusion of order? I don't know. But like the years I've slept away, there must be years I've moved the objects of my life around.

Old Age Day by Day June 25, 2010

Today I am tackling the basement, with the help of my younger daughter and her boyfriend. I've had stuff on the stairs for six months, but each time I thought of the job, I felt faint and nauseous. But it's got to be done, and it's summer now and if I don't watch out, it will be fall and rainy and cold and then I won't be able to do it until next spring. So I'll be sorting through the kids' old toys, artworks and stuffed animals, papers from my parents, and millions of legos. I want to clean up the Playmobil house and pirate ship, for our granddaughter, and see if the Breyer horses can be cleaned and boxed up. Then there are no doubt bags and bags of stuff for the trash. I must be ruthless. Show no mercy. Or the basement will still need a bulldozer to get through to the back.

My parents were the opposite. They held a few things of mine under the house for a couple of years after I left for college, but when I married, at nineteen, it was all disposed of. I have a feeling there was some anger involved, but I didn't realize it was gone until I had my daughter, and searched for dolls I'd saved. Long gone. It was the same when my father died. Everything had been cleaned out except a file cabinet with tax copies for the estate. No personal stuff, no letters from us or cards or dresses or baby shoes. All gone. There was one small drawer of photos, all mixed up. I kept their drivers' licenses, passports and anything I could find with their handwriting, but it wasn't much. They were not sentimental about objects.

I have to think like them today, and see what is actually useful to save or give away, and what no one will want to sort through when my husband and I are gone. It's a tidying up. But am I such a messing being, I have a feeling the basement will be pretty overfull when I'm done. But organized in plastic containers from Target, and labeled. It's a start.

Old Age Day by Day June 24, 2010

I went with my music teacher to see Gounod's Romeo and Juliette last night at the movie theater (Met Simulcast). Here we were eating salads, sandwiches and popcorn, spilling soda on our laps, and there was THE great love story passionately before us. Both voices were sublime, effortless, full of emotion. They were gorgeous and sexy as well. A prolonged bed scene was quite the surprise. And yet there was a detachment I felt, given my age, with their love. It was the height of folly, impulsiveness and hopelessness. But Shakespeare's message still resonates. We have not changed, and the romantic vision of true love without obstacles makes you feel the villains are the families and their idiotic feuds. Yet, beyond what you feel in the theater, there is the knowledge that this physical passion might have spent itself quickly, and the mismatched pair might prove mismatched in more than last names. I admit it. I'm relieved to be of an age where biology is not yanking me around on a chain. They are so young, this pair of lovebirds, and the largest force compelling them is not the parents.

That is why I, and many of my friends, joke about going back to high school being the seventh circle of hell. Because now we can see our hormones were in the driver's seat. Many of us crashed and burned a few times, and none of us listened to anyone older attempting to reason with us. It's painful just to be a parent watching your kids as teenagers. You pray for luck and that they survive.

So I'll take my aged marriage and mature love, perhaps less exciting, but so deep and so safe, that the horse and buggy ride feels like a blessing.

Old Age Day by Day June 23, 2010

The other night we ate in a tapas place owned by a man clearly from Spain. It was yummy food, and reminded me of our hunt for food when we've visited Spain in the past. We couldn't get the hang of the schedule there, and we were often on the train at times when cafes were running, and then we'd get to the station and be starving, and nothing open. A couple of places we stayed had room service, but that turned out to mean from 5-7 or some impossible time, and when you called, they were never actually operating. We succumbed, and ate a huge lunch at noontime, even though the courses were daunting, waddled around in the hot sun to see cathedrals and palaces, and then ate tapas at a bar in the evening, because waiting for dinner meant 10 pm or later. We were too jet lagged to stay awake until 4 am.

Recently, I read that the Spanish government is trying to convince Spaniards to stop the clubbing and late night revels, because work productivity is abysmal. Evidently, the opening of shops and offices from 4 or 5 until 8 pm leaves employees overstuffed and drowsy from lunch. Tell me about it! If I were younger I'd immigrate, as I am the perfect early morning person to reorganize their schedules. Spain needs me.

I love their cafe con leche, and I discovered marzipan can be delicious, if you get in in Spain. I love the South of Spain, and Granada and the Alhambra. But Toledo, Madrid, Barcelona and other places ain't bad either. I am most fond of the Prado, my favorite museum. I worship all Spanish painters, especially Velasquez, Goya and Ribera. I love anything Moorish. I'd be in heaven. All I'd have to do is open a guesthouse which had 24 hour room service, or a cafe open all the time, and I'd clean up. The tourists would all be American though, and that would be a drag. How would I ever practice my Spanish? Ah, perhaps it is too late for me. But I can dream...

Old Age Day by Day June 22, 2010

I'm reading a memoir Jean Renoir wrote about his father, the artist. Jean himself became a famous film director. I'm just in the beginning pages, but the tenderness of the tone of the book is engaging. I've been interested in Renoir the man since reading another book which portrays him as compassionate. During the first world war, although he hated war, he refused to have another man take his place and die, so he volunteered for the ambulance corps, and later ended up in charge of the cavalry horses. He tried the keep the horses from going into battle. He was kind to all beings. Many a time he helped Cezanne, who was probably schizophrenic, and who scared most people, but Renoir treated him with dignity.

Anyway, at my age memoirs have quite the appeal. Maybe it's because the summing up is what many of us do at this stage. We want to see what a life means. What has value. Yes, leaving great art behind for the ages is a great gift, but perhaps Renoir's nature was even more valuable. And, on reading these accounts, I realize that everyone's life is complex, with episodes that are embarrassing or worse, and high moments when we surpass ourselves and do something generous and brave and life altering. Everyone alters others' lives. I like that fact, though it implies a huge responsibility. We cut a swath across the world, whether wide or narrow. It's a good thing to remember, and give us pause before we act.

We're all equally important, artists or not, because our interactions have effect. And though only a few of us get written about, all of us have similar experiences. Perhaps Renoir's grandson Claude, to him, might have seemed like the most important event in his life. I like to think he was that kind of man.

Old Age Day by Day June 21, 2010

I thought the day would never come, but it has. Yesterday, Father's Day, was organized and carried out by one of our kids - the youngest. She also organized Mother's Day. I love it! I am definitely not a control freak, because I'm delighted when somebody else does the logistics and the change of plans and the traffic delays and the suddenly sick participants. I stayed home and read a murder mystery, and they all hiked and had a picnic, and then I joined everyone for dinner at a restaurant. My husband said he had a great day, and I did, too!

There comes a time when you feel you've done every variation on a celebration, bought every kind of gift known to man, and nothing new is going to pop up from your particular brain. That's when the reinforcements need to arrive. The cavalry horn is blaring, the flag is waving, and - wait a minute, I'm an Indian, this metaphor is not working for me. I'll try again. The women and children are surrounded by the cavalry, the warriors are off hunting, but then, on the ridge, there they are, and in a rain of arrows they drive the cavalry back to the outpost. Big group hug.

Anyway, today the warrior is gone, and I have to take the dog to the vet for a split nail, but yesterday I got a break, and I'm grateful.

Old Age Day by Day June 20, 2010

Today is my foster granddaughter's fifth birthday. It's also Father's Day. Her Dad died when she was 1 1/2. How much he's missing, and what a wonderful dad he was. He adored her and I can't even imagine what it felt like to know he was dying and would not see her grow up. My older two kids' father died when they were young teenagers, and at every graduation, wedding, holiday and birthday I pause to think of him and all he's missed. He never saw them marry and never knew who they chose, and now he is unable to see his granddaughter.

By some miracle I have lived to see so much, and witness my children grow up and find work and people they love and develop interests and travel and change. This is a powerful fund of happiness for me. They are strong and good people, who work hard and know how to love.

Now when my little two year old granddaughter asked me today on the phone to come up soon, she misses me, I say I will. Soon. And we hope to keep those promises and someday we'll not be able to, but our intentions can be known and understood by our hearts from a very young age.

We intend to be there for them, and if we aren't - well, in a way - we are there, because we would be it we could. We will be if we're lucky.

Old Age Day by Day June 18, 2010

The phone rang just now and I noticed a tiny frisson of excitement as I picked up the receiver. It was an automated reminder of my husband's dentist appointment. Whoopie. I'm old enough that a phone call used to mean a connection to a live human being on the other end. Now, in the house, I have to check and see who's calling, in case it's still another salesman or person wanting a donation, but out here, in my work space, I have an old fashioned phone. The phone call is rarely a human being who knows me, though the stranger refers to me by my first name as if we'd been in grade school together. What was I hoping for? One of my kids perhaps, or my granddaughter. But those calls are rare. Email supplants some of the phoning, and friends also schedule by email. I think I miss the voice. And the possibilities of a live human being call. A phone call can go off in any direction, but emails seldom have that tangential adventuraousness. My best friend and I phone each other once a week - and our connection is stronger because of it. Neither of us knows what we'll end up talking about most of the time, but it ranges from the silly to the life-altering. People of younger generations don't talk like that on the phone. Or in person either, generally. I miss it. I don't get to FEEL them from the voice and the conversation. The lack of scripting is delightful to me.

Oh, well, that's the way things are, and conversations are still unpredictable and goofy and fun in person. I find out a lot of information about myself that way. I discover what was bothering me, what I'm unconsciously problem solving, how I feel after I've talked with that person. I listen to them and what they don't say is often as important as what they do. We may be feeling alike an it's such a comfort to know that someone else is experiencing what I'm dealing with. I gain perspective.

So, the morning is young and I may still get a call that is a real person I care about who will make me laugh or cry or know, yet again, that I am not alone in anything I think and feel. There is an ocean of us, and I've only to tip my toe into the wet. I can make that call myself.

Old Age Day by Day June 17, 2010

I went on the walk with my friend this morning. I had written myself a note to remind myself. When we walk now, her dear aged lab cannot come, because the dog is too old and frail, and it's a little sad. My dogs miss her and acted a bit confused. We met a lot of dog walkers and they all asked if my dogs were friendly. It's hard to explain that they are SO friendly they lick the other dogs ears and wallow all over them. It's overwhelming, and there can be too much friendliness. My dogs never met anyone they didn't like, and they don't take hints. Snarling and baring teeth means nothing to them. Barking excites them. In other words, they are clueless. They believe the whole world adores them, and when a human walks by without acknowledging them, they look back over their shoulders like, "what was that about?"

I wish I had their confidence. Though I'm more or less in the friendly puppy category. I like striking up conversations with strangers, and have had deep philosophical discussions in waiting rooms and on airplanes. I like finding the humanity in a person I've never met, and feeling some connection. I talk to taxi drivers and people trying to get me to donate over the phone. I talk to Jehovah's Witnesses at the door. I don't give anything, except five minutes of me. Then I wish them luck. I am polite. One instant of kindness might make a difference in the day of a person forced to go door to door.

But I have boundaries. I can not coerced into supporting anything except raffle tickets small children sell. I'm a sucker for kids. But every interaction, either deliberate or accidental, should be respected. Maybe we should be judged by these little connections, instead of our historical, elaborate ones. Well, we shouldn't be judged or judge at all, but sometimes more is to be learned in the friendliness of dogs and their people than in the halls of Congress.

Old Age Day by Day June 16, 2010

I was supposed to meet my friend outside my house at 8:30 am to walk the dogs, but I forgot, and blithely did the whole walk without a thought of the arrangement. This senior mind is pretty ridiculous, at times. I was busy singing Iz's version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow for my voice lesson this afternoon. I got ahead of myself and now I can't get back to 8:30 and wait in front for the friend. Good golly Miss Molly! I need a reminder person to catch me out - Nooo, remember you said you'd pick up the present today, don't forget, you have an appointment at two. Yesterday, I had to call another friend and ask we if were having lunch and who was driving. I found out the lunch was for today, but I still don't know who's driving. I need a microchip implanted in my arm that flashes small, but painful dates and times. Then all I'd have to do would be remember what it was I was doing, not when.

On the bright side - don't sweat the small stuff? Hey, I don't even REMEMBER the small stuff.

And the old brain, or brian, as I just typed, has suddenly a huge capacity for song lyrics and knowing which greeting cards are due to be sent next. At the card store I get the next two birthdays, father's day, get well, retirement, etc, which has me set for the next month. I'm more thoughtful than I ever was. Well, in one sense of the word thoughtful. Best not dwell on the other definitions.

OOld Age Day by Day June 15, 2010

One of the many issues I work on in my Buddhist practice is Right Speech. That one had my name on it from the get-go. I was raised in a contentious family with arguments over politics at dinner and sarcasm about everything. I developed a devastating tongue, and hurt many people before I recognized, in my later teen years, how harmful I was being. I began to notice that my father's sharp tongue, and my brother's and my baby stilettos left my mother as the victim of any verbal exchange. I didn't realize then that she'd only been in school until third grade, and she was in a huge Baptist family that worked so hard there was no time for repartee. My father's mother was educated and a teacher, and from her he got the mouth that lashed out unconsciously. Everything was adversarial and a conflict. There were winners and losers. The worst thing my Dad would say about someone is they were a Loser.

I didn't want to be a loser. But I also began to notice that winning a verbal argument didn't make me feel any better, it made me feel worse. I began the long task of taming my tongue. Now, when something slips out, it is a big shock to me. On Saturday, I said something about a person in front of some friends, and it is haunting me. There is a Jiminy Cricket after all. All that nastiness is still stuffed in a corner of the messy room I call my brain, and I once told my teacher I was most afraid of having a stroke like my father's mother, and ending up spewing nasty words until death. What a sad ending for her, and since we cannot know our manner of dying, I am often dusting my room, throwing out the junk, packing up my language in boxes and marking it trash.

I enjoy silence now, and pause before speaking in the phone. I wait a day when I can to answer email. Let my better self, my mother's voice, have a chance to speak. Ironically, as my mother got older, and drank too much, she was capable of intense cruel speech, and some of her words echo for me when I'm in the mood to berate myself. We all have this capacity to wound and it takes an active holding back sometimes to change our habits and think first and speak later or not at all. If I don't want silence, I sing, and singing lifts my heart and reminds me of the way I want to live. From the spirit not the dark.

Old Age Day by Day June 14, 2010

Well, even though we had to sit inside on a beautiful day for 4 1/2 hours, Wagner turned out to be worth it. Die Valkerie was a gorgeous production, and all the voices were sublime. We surprised ourselves, by saying in the car on the way back that maybe there was something to this Wagner guy. When we got home it turned out our younger daughter an her boyfriend had taken the dogs to the beach, so they had not been neglected and we all went out for pizza feeling great (well, no, the dogs didn't go, but there are limits).

I called my friend last night to see if she got home okay (she was driving back alone) and she said she'd sung in the car a lot on the two day trip. I feel like I started something good, and building up her repetoire will be handy when she babysits her granddaughter. Special requests, silly versions of favorite songs, solos by the granddaughter - all very fun.

And on my email - news that a dear friend's medical condition has worsened, and yesterday news that my daughter-in-law's stepdad also has a deeply serious medical problem. All this balancing of grief and joy, of the young and the old, of creativity and destruction. Holding it all in our minds and hearts is difficult, and requires a deep compassion for the human condition as well and gratitude for being a part of it. Underneath the beautiful weather today and the song of the Valkeries swimming in my head is a cello solo of sadness. This is getting older. It's a new path, and scary and yet inevitable, comfortable like going to a new destination and recognizing it as a deja vu experience. I am not alone. We are all of us older beings feeling these same feelings. But it is not easy.

Old Age Day by Day June 13, 2010

I'm going to the opera this afternoon, though it is a glorious day and I should be outside. So much for planning ahead. Yesterday, a bunch of friends and I went to a private art collection, and the art and landscape were so well integrated that you could see the outside from inside and from outside the buildings blended harmoniously. Today, I will be in the dark all afternoon. But I can't complain. I'm lucky to see opera and this one got a rave review. I expect to be shocked and awed.

I'm feeling especially grateful this morning. All the kids are well and I've just a had visit from my best friend. My cup is full. I just got off the phone with our son in India, and so I feel back in equilibrium. All present and accounted for. As my mother would have said - count your blessings. She loved Rosemary Clooney singing the song from "White Christmas". She also adored Doris Day singing "Que Sera, Sera". Whatever will be, will be. True enough. Breath deeply into right now, because the future is unknown and possibly surprising.

My mother survived cancer twice, the death of her parents, her first love, a couple of siblings, and others she deeply loved. Then she died and left a bunch of us to miss her and tackle our own scary nights. Once in a while I sing her songs to her, and imagine her listening and saying, "You're no Rosemary or Doris, but thanks for singing the songs for me". Thanks, Mom, for for playing those records endlessly, and even though I plugged my ears, the lyrics lodged into my brain, like messages from you beyond the grave.

Old Age Day by Day June 11, 2010

My dear friend is here for a couple of days and we've been having fun chatting a mile a minute and wandering around. Yesterday we were further afield, so the car was necessary, and wherever I parked, I was about two feet from the curb. It took me three or four tries each and every time. Some days are like that. You just can't get snug to the curb, and you're being constantly pulled away from your destination and safe anchor. I wonder if I was literally of two minds yesterday - one to keep moving and one to stand still. I think it's all part of my disorientation since I returned from my trip.

But if I look back on my life so far, I see these two minds - the mind that married a person from a different culture and lived on the other side of the world - and the person that circled my home state and parents and what I knew. And since my family lived on both coasts and in between, I think the homing instinct for home and the wandering instinct to see the new and different are ingrained in me. Our kids all have it too. They get restless if they aren't traveling, and restless to be home again when they are. Most people are trying to get both sides of themselves to function in tandem, but the pull is there all of the time no matter what your position.

That is the tension of life. The longing and quest, and the honing in of what feels like home. We're all on an invisible tightrope, and some days, like yesterday, it becomes visible.

Old Age Day by Day June 9, 2010

Well, now I've managed to sign up for Medicare. It took a very long time on the phone, but it's done. I never did find out what my application number was, to do it online. So I guess my next move is to Florida, where I will drive to mini-malls and take my coupon to all-you-can eat restaurants for a five pm dinner. On the way I will sideswipe vehicles and ignore red lights. I'm basing this scenario on my Aunt, who rolled around Colorado Springs putting the fear of God into all she encountered. I'd sit in the front seat beside her with my eyes closed, thankful that the car was a big as a house.

My aunt and uncle had lived and worked in Minnesota their whole lives, then retired to the Gulf side of Florida. My uncle was happy as a clam with his Shriners and church work, but within a month after he died, my aunt had high tailed it out of there. The bugs, the gators wandering the golf course, the heat, the hurricanes, the sheer work it took to drive two miles through umpteen lights and slow drivers, well, they were not her cup of tea. I think she even missed the snow. So she moved to where her sister and brother-in-law lived and set herself up in a high rise condo where someone else got to shovel the paths.

She was such fun, and such a pragmatist. When she went into hospice as her cancer returned, she said to me, "This is the best place for me right now. Don't worry. I couldn't handle the apartment by myself." She died a day later. I had said I didn't want anything but she left me some money and a diamond ring that was so gaudy I figured it must be fake. But it was as real as she was, and I had it made up into three rings with leftover diamonds I'm saving for my kids. I wear the big diamond when I dress up, and think of her with love. She was hewn tough from a rough childhood, but with a multifaceted cut with hidden depths, and true down to the bone.

Aging Day by Day June 8, 2010

Well, I've found my blog - now if I can just get signed up for Medicare! Now that I've done loads of laundry and my husband has vacuumed up the dog hair, I feel ready for the world. It also helps to talk to friends on the phone and organize the stuff by the sink in our bathroom and also that I am wearing something today that is moderately attractive, instead of the strange outfits I've been selecting since I returned from the trip. Now if my hair would just grow faster (I'm growing out a bad haircut) and the white hair in my eyebrows cease and desist, I'd be presentable.

Today is a free day, which means time to do a couple of errands and eat out at the Indian cafe I love - I order chicken vindloo every single time. Yesterday my foster granddaughter and I saw Shek 4, which I cannot, in good conscience recommend, but that hurdle is over. Later this month we are tackling Toy Story 3. She is getting so grown up now that she's almost five, and I miss some of the babyness, but love the conversation. We discussed penguins a great deal yesterday.

Last night there were clean sheets on our bed, and the fan was in the window. My husband asked if I wanted him to turn it off and I replied, "No way. A fan is one of my favorite things in the universe." I love the sound which lulls me to sleep and the breeze and the coldness on my shoulders. A fan is a great pleasure in a world of great pleasures, and it only cost twelve dollars many years ago. Talk about value! I missed my fan. I'm happy to be home.

Old Age Day by Day June 7, 2010

I'm having trouble with my blog. I can't seem to access it myself. Not only that, I can't manage to figure out how to sign up for Medicare online. This after reading in this morning's paper that the middle aged brain is improved in skills and actually getting better. No evidence here. I've been away so much that all my rhythms are off and I seem to need my old boring schedule back. A few days with not much going on would be good. I'm very outgoing, but not all the time and each day I actually spend more alone that with people these days, so much as I relish socializing, and also get disoriented. Our little choir had its concert yesterday and I had a baby solo, and was nervous before and going over and over the words in my mind. It was quite the busy, multitasking mind during the performance, and afterward, I felt a few million brain cells heading off for a nap. They'd done their duty, but were exhausted. So last night, after taking family to the airport, we ate junk food and watched "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?" My husband thought we needed some silliness. Ironically, now that I think of it, there was a lot of good music in it, and the down home country tunes were like three we sang at the concert, one of which had my mini solo. Which reminds me, when we waved goodbye to our granddaughter at the airport, she was clutching what she calls microbaby. A tiny doll I found for her in the toy basket. Microbaby resonates with me. Sometimes I feel like a microbaby, and sometimes larger. It weaves in and out with the rhythms of each day. Hopefully, Macrobaby will find her blog before tomorrow!

Old Age Day by Day June 3, 2010

I've been on a trip to help my daughter and her husband with their move to a house they bought, and my husband and I decided to drive there. It's amazing how driving instead of flying makes me feel the distance more. It was cold there, and it's humid and very warm here, so it feels like I've changed seasons as well. My husband's and my job was to take care of our two year old granddaughter, so she wasn't crushed or too confused or upset. This is the kind of job we both enjoy very much, and we went to the zoo, a children's museum, and wandered the sidewalks in search of bugs and snails. We sang in the car, we ate grilled cheese in restaurants, we played in her room, we read books, we tucked dollies in bed, we fed them dinners and changed their diapers. Then we drove home and had to resist the urge to point out cows and horses. I had Raffi songs in my head the whole way back.

Now I've read the paper once again, and noticed I didn't miss anything much, and the emails were not urgent, and neither were the voice mails. I am re-entering my normal world as slowly as I can, though with a necessary grocery store and pharmacy stop, and a voice lesson and dog walking, it's too quickly. There is an azalea I need to plant and laundry overflowing, and it wouldn't hurt if I washed the sheets and towels and vacuumed. It seems the dog hair multiplies even when the dogs are at the kennel.

None of it matters really. And when I get away, I break myself out of habitual ruts and gain a bit of perspective. Today I went to the school where my younger daughter teaches, and watched the 2-3 class perform a Congolese folk tale, and was reminded again of why people become teachers. These children have so much to teach us, and they bring us back to what matters. Love and joyfulness, quickly passing sorrows and laughter; living is this act of caring for others and ourselves honorably and tenderly.