Old Age Day by Day May 11, 2010

I had a great Mother's Day, planned by one of my kids, and it was goofy and fun. I talked to the son who's abroad for an hour in the morning, my husband brought me breakfast in bed, my daughter who's in the next state called and I wished her happy mom's day and talked to my granddaughter, who's one great talker for barely two years old. Then the two kids who were around and one partner drove me to a powwow. We went by the baseball stadium, where normally I go to the ball game, but it was raining, and we thought it was a bad bet, so we drove on to the powwow, ate fry bread Indian tacos, and watched some fantastic dancing and looked at the wares in the booths. I do love fry bread, lard and all. Since I only have it about once a year, it seems safe. I can make the stuff myself, but never allow my little hands to get close to doing so. On the way back, we saw the word "perfect" on the billboard by the baseball park, and quickly turned off the radio. Sure enough, the one time in about 25 years I hadn't gone to the game, the pitcher had a perfect game. Oh, no, I cried, knowing my older son would never let me live this one down. Sure enough, the minute we got home, my husband said he'd called from the other side of the world and teased mercilessly. Thank goodness I wasn't there to receive the call. We laughed and laughed! Lost my one chance for bragging rights.

Then we went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D, which I loved. Johnny Depp is amazing in it. And then we met my husband for pizza at a great place, and a good time was had by all.

Now, if I can just develop some baseball karma so I can see another perfect game this season, by my beloved A's and hopefully catch a fly ball at the same game. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so.

Old Age Day by Day May 7,2010

Last night my younger daughter and I left chorus rehearsal and spontaneously broke out into song as we walked the busy streets to get to the car. We didn't care how we appeared to others, we just belted it out. We sang pieces of several songs we love and then "As I Walked Down to the River to Pray".

As I walked down to the river to pray
studying about those good ole days
and who shall wear the starry crown
good lord show me the way

Oh, sisters let's go down
Let's go down
come on down
oh, sisters lets go down
down in the river to pray

We gathered force and volume and sang our hearts out. It was a weeknight, we'd each had busy days, and yet the world was glorious and we praised it with song. What is more fun, more grounding, and more spiritual? I've sung in church choirs and school choirs as a kid, in acapellas and music camps, around campfires, on car trips, to soothe my babies, to be goofy with my children, and to click into a throbbing universal heart.

When I was visiting my friend with my granddaughter, and we were coming back in the car after dark from her son's house, we soothed the little overexcited toddler with singing, and it's the first time my friend had sung with me. After over thirty years, we had never sung together. My granddaughter chimed in, and we were looking at the big full moon in the black sky through the car window and singing with every ounce of joy and faith and love we possessed. We were singing the praises of granddaughters and our beloved children now grown and interesting and good people in every sense, and we were singing our own praises for having done a good job of raising them despite divorces and illnesses and setbacks and the deaths of our parents.

"Who shall wear the starry crown" indeed. All shall wear it, all do wear it, and all share in our common humanity and connectedness. "Show me the way".

Old Age Day by Day May 6, 2010

Having a grandchild brings back memories of my own grandmothers. One was Indian, on a midwestern farm near a river, alone, except for her father, who helped out after her German immigrant husband died young. My great grandpa sat on the porch and doled out sugared orange slice candies to us, when he wasn't driving his Model T Ford across the fields to get some errand done. Mom's mom had 13 children, and as my mother was in the middle, she was still raising some of them and slaughtering hogs, chickens and forcing a garden to grow, with buckets brought from the river. She was too busy to play with me, but I had plenty of fun anyway. With my cousins I rode the old plow horse, watched her hack a chicken's head off, ran in the fields, and watched biscuits baking in the hot kitchen. I was said to look the most like her of any of the grandchildren. I also sat by her bedside many a time as she was dying slowly and painfully of bone cancer. She was 60 when she died (I was 12), worn out and tired of fighting, probably, but still a vibrant presence. She was a "good" woman, who prayed and sang at her Baptist church, stood out on a dirt road with eggs in her pocket to sell to the occasional car that came by, so she could feed her brood. I don't much like any meat, though, because the screams of the hogs and cows and other animals slaughtered right there, made me know their suffering. They were bled out and hung. I'll eat an occasional chicken and seafood and fish, but I won't touch pork or beef or lamb.

My other grandmother and grandfather lived in a bigger town a couple of hours away, but out on a road by the fairgrounds, so it was still country. They had chickens, too, and parakeets and a big terrier dog called Mitzi. She saved boxes and containers for me so I could play "store", and had a dress up box for myself and the neighbor girls down the road to have fun with. There are pictures of us in big hats with feathers and scarves and dresses whose waists were to our feet. Sometimes my little brother dressed up, too. He'd do anything to get to play. She filled tin animal buckets so we could play in the water on the lawn in our bathing suits. I liked to sit on her porch and have her rock me. She told me I'd say, "Nice beeze, granma", just to be sociable. I loved her cellar with it's cool, damp smell, and the shelves and shelves of canned tomatoes, pickled beets, green beans, pickles, peas and other delights. She had a huge vegetable garden. I loved pulling up carrots and hunting for eggs.

I was left regularly, as a toddler and preschooler with both grandmas and various aunts and uncles. I adored the visits. I loved chasing fireflies, eating watermelon on the grass, going to the fairs and looking at quilts and paintings and cakes and pies. Both my mother and I won blue ribbons later, when I was about 10, me for an apron I'd sewed and my mother for a lacy white shawl she'd crocheted. I was left with a feeling of resourcefulness and a lot of useful survival skills, and the assurance that I was special to those grandmas, and now, here I am, upteen years later, passing on the love.

Old Age Day by Day May 5, 2010

I volunteered to go buy pants for our older son, as he is out of the country right now. His wife is going to visit him and can take them. So it's Macys in the Morning (I believe you know that musical). And I might as well pick up some black pants for my husband, as he has none. He needs them for the chorus concerts he's in, and he actually thinks navy blue is the same color as black. This is not your exciting shopping experience. Men's clothes are boring, deathly boring, and once they have brown, khaki, gray, black and blue pants, what's left? Fuchsia? Paisley? No wonder they don't like to shop. I made my husband wear a colorful shirt for an anniversary party we had a few years ago, and that's the first and last time he deigned to put it on. He tries to hide it in the closet, but I hang it front and center when he's at work. At least I can look at it and sigh a little. He prefers shirts that are flannel plaid, with the colors so similar you can't tell if he ever changes his clothes. And he is sentimental about these drab and dreary clothes, so you have to cajole him to get rid of the ones with rips, missing buttons, and those now too small. I once had to get rid of a sculpture I loved to trade for his recycling of a car coat he'd worn since 8th grade. No, it had no historical value whatsoever.

So, what can I say? I may be forced to glance at women's shoes or toddler clothes or something in the humans' section, just to liven up the trip. I feel it is my moral obligation to colorize the planet, as these men just haven't got a clue as to the function of clothing. It's hardly for practical reasons, especially in this season when we could all traipse around naked without harm (well, without catching a cold). Obviously, clothing is a response to the marvelous colors of nature around us and a message to the flowers and the birds that we DO participate in the glory of our planet, and I don't mean the brown part under the grass.

Old Age Day by Day May 4, 2010

As I get older, I find myself able to revisit old wounds or traumas without all the turmoil of emotions that would sweep me up before. I can touch on something, pause, feel sadness arise, even weep a bit for myself having to go through that event, and then slip back into here and now. My practice has helped me be able to revisit without reentering that past place. So when I was telling someone yesterday about an upsetting time in my life a few years back, she, at the end, looked nervous and said, but you're really good right now and having good feelings about your life. She was uncomfortable and wanted to see me back to my usual cheerful self before we parted.

But every day is composed of moments, and not each of these is happy, or sad, or reflective or anticipation. A day has all the emotions of the rainbow, and I no longer fear getting stuck in any thought or feeling mode, because it's all changing, and summing up is for prosecutors and juries.

I am so kind to myself now that I can allow myself to feel what comes up, and then let it go when my mind and feelings inevitably move on. I, personally, thought it was great that I cried a few tears for stress and pain that I'd felt. I deserve some compassion, and those events are part of who I am. I'm not Ahab swallowed by the whale, I'm the writer of the story who can look back and see the paths that led me to where I now am, and be present with the pieces that make up my puzzle. I'm complex. We all are. And I'm resilient, as most of us are. I don't push away what arises, I respect it. There is probably a purpose, which my complicated self is working out.

Pain is inevitable, and sometimes it must be relived to remind us of where we've come from and where we're going.

Old Age Day by Day May 3, 2010

My friend and I went on a house tour yesterday afternoon, seeing nine houses with the same architect. It was blazing hot, but we soldiered through. It was a hot job, but somebody had to do it. I'm kidding, of course. It's fun to glimpse these houses inside, these old beauties, and no matter if their clothes are out of date, their hairdos retro, the makeup smeared. From one old dame to another - these babies have got character. And like people, a couple were lovingly preserved - they'd had their spa treatments and healthy diets and facials and pedicures - and others were overweight and still smoked and wouldn't know yoga if it smacked them in the face.

The window seats attracted me. I imagined myself Jane Austen looking out over the hills and dreaming of dances. Reading a book in a window seat is my idea of perfect luxury. In some houses the rooms were cramped and dark; in others the kitchens had been opened up and led to decks and afternoon sun. I admit it, I like the cramped small rooms. I like dark wood, and I like a door that closes and nooks and crannies. What this says about my mind is probably frightening, but there you have it.

When I was fourteen, my family and I spent a summer in Tidewater Virginia in an old 1700th century mansion, and though my parents and brother stayed in a wing that was one story and more modernly equipped, my best friend and I stayed upstairs in the two story main section, with a huge canopied bed, a walk in closet the size of a room, and ghosts traipsing up and down the stairs at night. I have loved old houses from that time, when we would hunt in the library for old books and their inscriptions in spidery handwriting, search through the dusty attic among the boxes of old clothes and letters. I love history, and am sad that most people today don't see the excitement of it. They want the walk-in shower and subzero. I like dilapidation and a sense of other people in other times sharing the space with me.

Maybe this is why my own aging is not causing more distress. I've been some places and done some things. I like other people with a bit of history to them as well. You don't get that by upgrading and remodeling. You get interesting by honoring your path and not turning your back on it.

Old Age Day by Day May 1, 2010

Last week my husband was in the middle of a bunch of other scientists when one of them commented to the others that a professor was moving his lab to France. Why would he do that? they asked. Another answered, Because he's old.

My husband is in his early sixties and so was the professor discussed. They didn't even whisper their comments, because, I suppose, they assumed he was too infirm to hear. Don't worry, I reasssured him, we are the baby boomers and we're taking over the earth. Let them rest easy in their false belief that they rule the world. We do. Why? Not just numbers, but the fact that we are politically active and they don't seem to notice when their rights go down the drain. They are busy facebooking and consuming and texting. You have to notice the world, and we come from a generation of rebel rousers and trouble makers. Whether we wore bell bottoms, or tie dye or business suits with those little bows, we thought the world was ours to change. And a lot of us haven't given up, not one little bit.

There is this myth in science that all your best work is done in your twenties. A lot of professions have this lie stirring around oppressing people who want to explore and find out about themselves and the world. But every day in the newspaper, with people I know, with strangers I meet I find late bloomers. What kind of a phrase is that anyway? Is it late when it comes and for whom is it late? There are opera singers who began voice at 30, writers who penned their first novel at seventy, fifty somethings who started businesses, sixty somethings who stood up and changed the planet. THERE IS NO TIMELINE.

You get to live your life as you see fit, and assess it only if and when you want to.
And by the way, my husband is writing papers for these geniuses in the lab, and figuring out what to make of their data. They'd be lost without him, even if he is ancient. And he's still singing, dancing like there is no tomorrow and learning new things every day. If only they had as much fun!