Old Age Day by Day January 20, 2012

Twas a dark and dreary day, rain dripping down the gutters, but already the green is green again, not grayish, and the plants are drinking, drinking, drinking like thirsty children.  So, today is definitely not an outside day.  Other arrangements will have to be, well, arranged.  I'm thinking the new Mission Impossible movie, followed by picking up my foster granddaughter, seeing her do gymnastics, and out to dinner for something healthy like mac and cheese or burritos or the old staple grilled cheese sandwich.  Ice cream to follow, of course.  All the food groups: bread and cheese.

In the meantime, I can finish my Lescroat book and call a couple of people.  I had a long talk last night with my best bud who is wallowing in snow and ice in Washington state.  I got claustrophobic just listening to her shut-in woes.  I remember so well being in the same state in Colorado, and unable to get the car plowed out, stuck in the house and with no heat.  Some days I just paced the house with my baby in my arms.  So there is no reason for complaint here, and I appreciate the coastal balminess of my area.  Rain on, oh mighty skies, rain on.

Old Age Day by Day January 19, 2012

Well, we're back from our hot springs visit.  We have been soaking in 100o water, and got so relaxed we were limp as noodles.  We had only two meals a day because we slept in, walked to a cafe to eat, floated in the pool, showered and ate again.  Then we read or last night, we watched a strange movie from 1962 with Karl Malden, Angela Landsbury, Warren Beatty, and Eva Marie Saint, called "All Fall Down" written by the playwright William Inge and directed by Frankenhiemer.  It had some beautiful cinematic work, but the psychology was so patently ridiculous.  It reflects the era when mothers were blamed for anything that went wrong with their kids.  However, Landsbury was so strong and sympathetic and Beatty so ineffectual an actor that it all backfired.  There were still many insightful moments about family life.  I wish I'd been there and edited the script, but hey, I was only sixteen at the time.

Bill had two dreams afterwards in which he was Beatty's character - enough to give anyone nightmares.  Beatty sure couldn't act.  But I guess he was more successful as a director.  Weirdly, in this film he plays a gorgeous hunk whom women fall all over.  What a stretch for him!

Anyway, our trip was a success, the rain held off until today, and all I need to do is visualize myself in that pool: this morning it was drizzling and steam was everywhere, as if we were high up on a mountain lake, and it was like been rebirthed.  I love that pool.  I've been going there for 25 years, and I never get tired of it.  It's a natural wonder of my world, that's for sure.

Old Age Day by Day January 17, 2012

I had a long telephone discussion with my 3 year old granddaughter last night.  It ranged from the dinner menu to visits to fairy castles.  About her grandfather who just died she wondered if he knew that he was dead.  I thought he probably did, but would be loving her still and watching from the heavens.  It made me remember my daughter of the same age struggling to understand the deaths of my parents.  It's impossible.  We adults barely are able to grapple with the subject.  But she will hear many stories about him, and have photos, and he will be a part of who she is.  But the truth is this is what loss looks like.

It's fiercely cold here for us, but the papers say we are going to get rain soon, very soon.  Our poor plants and trees could use it, plus our air quality.  There is a stillness, a waiting right now.  I can feel it in the air.  Something is coming.

Old Age Day by Day January 16, 2012

I watched a little bit of the Golden Globes last night, entranced with the dresses.  I pay little attention to who wins, as it seems sentimental and arbitrary.  And since "Tree of Life" is not nominated for anything, I don't really care who wins.  I'm not surprised at "The Artist" and "Hugo" taking awards, as they are both love letters to Hollywood, and narcissism loves well, itself.  I had to leave after a few minutes, as we were having our younger daughter's boyfriend's parents over for dinner.  They are nice and friendly, but it's awkward since are only real connection is that our kids live together.  Finding common ground beyond that is a process.  I made my chicken pot pie, which, if I do say so, is the ultimate in comfort food. 

Tomorrow we go for a mini-vacation for two nights.  The dogs will be kenneled, and we will sleep in and wander aimlessly and soak in their hot springs swimming pool.  It's supposed to rain, but who cares?  We can read, wander around the town with umbrellas, and eat out.  Sounds like a winner.

Old Age Day by Day January 15, 2012

Today is the first dreary day for weeks.  Perhaps there will be rain in our future, but I'll believe it when I see it.  My husband and I saw Susan Graham in concert last night, and was she ever delightful!  I'm such a fan.  Her Xerxes was such a triumph.  The hall was not filled, and I wondered if it was the economy, the football games or just that singers don't quite get the love, unless they are huge superstars.  Anyway, we had a great time, and the ease of her voice and her confidence was morale boosting for sure.

Today, back to the basement, grocery shopping, and vacuuming.  The sublime to the mundane.  Such is life.

Old Age Day by Day January 14, 2012

On Wednesday I talked to a friend's hair stylist.  Ostensively, I was checking out her salon, while my friend got her hair cut, but in reality I was there to give some advice if so asked. The woman is Croatian, and she came to this country twenty years ago with her boyfriend, they married, and have a daughter now 16.  He was a batterer, and she divorced him, but he is still interfering in their lives, threatening them, and scaring them.  She has all this anger at him, the police, the courts, the lawyers.  She has a right to this anger,  but it is counterproductive.  She needs to focus on getting help from a battered women's shelter, and counseling for herself and her daughter.  Otherwise, her daughter will end up in a similar relationship.  She asked me what she should do.  I told her she needed to focus on those who could and would help her, not the establishment.  I asked her if she knew what aversarialism was.  I explained how she needed not to continue to go head to head by herself, but let the shelter use their liasons with the police, etc.  She needed to focus her energies in a way that would change her life for the better.  I suggested she probably had two years at most for her daughter to learn how to protect herself from her father, recognize a batterer, and feel some empowerment instead of victimhood.     In other words, I gave her my old safehouse spiel, and tried to do what I could to wake her up to save her own life.  I'm good at this; I did it for 12 years.

But I will not be coming back, for a haircut or anything else.  Because the ball is in her court, and only she can save her life.  And even then, she needs perserverance and luck.  What I can do is trust she will do what she needs to do not for herself, but for her child.  What I did was talk turkey.  I took the threat seriously and told her she needed a village to get through this.  But she will need to drop the anger, which is keeping her from methodically doing what needs to be done.  She is caught in the battering cycle of rage, woundedness and helplessness.  I hope to god she gets out.

old Age Day by Day January 13, 2012

I'm reading the new Elizabeth George.  It's like slipping on a much loved sweater, warm and comfortable.  I now think of the characters as old friends.  She harkens back to Dorothy Sayers, and Lord Peter Whimsey, but Tommy Lynley is updated and modern, and his sidekick is of a different class and gender.  This would not have happened in Sayers' day.  Times have changed.  So far there are many difficult relationships, complex and hard to label, which makes George less the romantic and more the realist.  Sayers was romantic.  Including Peter marrying Harriet Vane.  George knows better.  I find reading the book a comfort from sad news and uncertain times.

I went by myself yesterday to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  It was a slipping into the past when the cold war was hot and spying mysterious.  Now we all seem to know how ugly and unethical and wrong what our governments do is, but then we thought there was a threat that could be eliminated or contained by mirroring the conduct of the enemy.  Actually, quite a few in government still believe this. 

The acting was superb, with Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Colin Firth and Ciaran Hinds leading the pack.  But the younger actor Benedict Cumberbatch was great as well.  And the movie does remind us that we haven't really given up our belief that the end justifies the means, and that we can destroy our own public servants for the good of god and country.  So there is a sadness about the film, beyond it's gray coloration and apparent bleakness.  What have we learned?  It's hard to conjure up anything to answer that question.