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.