At some point it will be too late

Most people are not afraid of dying.

They are afraid of never having lived.

                                   Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

I write about divorcing over the age of 60 and what that life is like. I’ve made oblique references to the aging bit, but never head-on. Why would I? Why would anyone over 65 address aging? We all know we will age and die. But who honestly believes the process of aging will happen to them? I didn’t. I never considered the reality of living in a body that would betray me daily.

The culture tells me that with the right exercise, correct diet, good mental health habits etc. I can slow down, even halt the deterioration of my body and mind and just wake up one day dead. For most of us, it doesn’t work that way. Rather it is a slow slide toward the inevitable. We don’t slide at even paces, but the destination is the same for all of us.

I’ve been divorced three years. The fog of shock, rage, and grief over the loss of 37 years of my life is only beginning to lift. It’s like emerging from emotional hibernation. There is a limit to pain tolerance. Reaching that point, the heart shuts down and goes into a form of suspended animation.

I’m stumbling around a bit, squinting at the light, and halfway wishing I could go back to sleep for several more months, but that’s not one of the choices. Life compels us to wake up and be alive for as long as we can.

A mutual acquaintance introduced me to a nice man. He’s pleasant, soft-spoken, and taller than I am. Most men aren’t taller than I am so this in itself is a new experience. After a couple of dinners, I call my 42 year old son. I do this because I have no clue how to tell my adult children that their mother is dating. I decide to go for the easy one first. One doesn’t spring this sort of news on a daughter with five children in the house and expect anything good to come of it.

Hi Chris, it’s Mom.
Hey Mom.
Son, I met a very nice man and we’ve been to dinner a couple of times and…
DO I KNOW HIS MOTHER!

He’s been saving that one since he was sixteen.

Chris is onboard. He thinks this is a fine thing even if he doesn’t know his mother. Since I haven’t been on a real date in forty-plus years, I have questions. Chris lives in California where they know about this sort of thing. So I ask my questions and he does have answers. I raised that boy right.

Closing out the conversation with one last question, I say "…or should I be coy?" There’s a pause and in a voice that’s tender at the edges, he says, "Mom, there isn’t time for you to be coy. Go and have a good time, and do it now. Go do it now."

As I shut off the call, I realize something has shifted in our relationship. Together we faced the unspoken truth that I am growing old and will die sooner rather than later.

But I won’t die today; no, not today. Today I’m going to see True Grit with a nice man who is taller than I am.

 

The healing power of pee

Every Friday is Movie Night at Nancy and Jim’s house…the one with the five children in it. On Movie Night, the children select from three movies. They do this by vote. Simple majority wins, and the one-year old doesn’t get a vote. At intermission, Nancy brings up brownies or popcorn. I prefer the popcorn because a brownie with gin and tonic just doesn’t do it for me.

I love Movie Night. I don’t have a standing invitation, so I try to wrangle one as often as possible. Movie Night takes place in the upstairs play room is which under the eaves. It has no exterior light and is like a large cave. (It’s a great kid's house.)

There is no seating in the play room, so they just sprawl about on the floor or fight over the tacky, really tacky, kid’s recliner with red upholstery. I bought it when their mother was busy having a baby and wasn’t paying much attention to me. Hey, when opportunity knocks...

Last week I brought the preapproved movie which meant no election, no losers, no vote recount, and no squabbles to mediate. When Grammy comes to Movie Night it’s win-win for everyone. I garner lots of points from all quarters. I have no shame. None.

When I get there, Bru and Hazel meet me at the door shouting, "We made you a nest for Movie Night." This is the result of the last Movie Night I attended. I sat on the floor because I don’t fit in the red recliner. At home I sit on the floor a lot, but I move about. I sat on the playroom floor for an hour and twenty minutes transfixed by Despicable Me. Getting up, I found myself paralyzed from the neck down.

I’m certain their mother and father told them to make sure Grammy doesn’t paralyze herself up there again. It’s understandable. Clearly they would prefer not to have their ninety minute opportunity for adult conversation interrupted by a fire truck extracting me through an upstairs window.

The toddler doesn’t attend Movie Night because she pushes all the control buttons and pulls the plugs from the outlets. The four older children and I head up the stairs. When I saw the play room it took real effort not to burst into tears. Not only had they made a nest for me, complete with a purple unicorn Pillow Pet, they had made nests for themselves, two on each side.

We all get snuggled in with a great deal of thrashing about, tugging of covers and establishing boundaries. JD flips on the movie, How to Tame Your Dragon. Gradually, I begin to recognize the faint familiar odor of kid-pee. You get into a nest made from kids' bedding; pee odor is inevitable.

Laying there with a four-year old’s head on my chest and a six-year old boy's leg slung over mine, snuggled up my pee-smelling nest, with a gin and tonic in a faded plastic cup, smelling hot popcorn coming up the stairs, I can feel everything that’s wrong, and hurt, and broken inside of me being put right.

The movie wasn’t bad either.

Three Kings Day Celebration/Dia de los Reyes

Celebration

The 7th was the Feast of the Epiphany, so belated Epiphany blessing one and all.

Epiphany celebrates the day when the wise men came from afar. This is important if you display a crèche (nativity scene) in your home because one doesn’t display the wise men until Epiphany which is the celebration of their arrival at the manger. (Don’t befuddle yourself over the logistics.) My afar is behind the Japanese pot where they spend the Christmas season.

Epiphany is useful because:

• You know when the Christmas season is officially over. No waiting for Wal-Mart to tell you.

• There is no frantic rush to get the decorations down by New Year’s Day. There are five more days left of the twelve days of Christmas which ends, well, twelve days later with Epiphany.

Last year I decided to host a Kings Day party on Epiphany. How cool would that be? Oh, if I had only known.

When was the last time you attended a Kings Day party? Like never? All this is to say that the guests saw it as exotic at best, but they were game. They’d never attended one before. I can assure you they never will again.

The highlight of a Three Kings party is cutting and eating the Kings cake. I have no clue what goes into a Kings cake except five pounds of sugar and a baby Jesus figure. You may remember I use my oven for storage and I have no cake pans. No way this was could to be a homemade cake made in my home. So I take myself to a market specializing in Hispanic food products and sure enough, Kings cakes stacked to the ceiling. I left so pleased with my cake and myself.

Party day arrives. I never miss a teachable moment, especially with a captive audience. I share some of the practices of both cultures and close my lecture with the highlight of the celebration—eating the cake.

Back to baby Jesus in the cake. The guest who finds baby Jesus in their piece will have blessings the rest of the year. Excitement builds.

I cut the cake, and the very first piece I serve has plastic baby Jesus in it—but only the bottom half. All levity is sucked out of the room. Everyone is tentatively poking around in their cake desperately hoping they don’t find anything.

We hear a shriek from the kitchen, and we knew who found the upper half.

I had whacked that plastic baby Jesus right in two, neat as you please. I assumed baby Jesus would be metal. Talk about bringing festivities to an abrupt end, that’ll do it. The guest with the top half looked at me with horror and said, “Well, now what?!” Damned if I knew.

I won’t be having a Three Kings/ Dia de los Reyes celebration this year…or ever.

On the grounds of a church I pass daily is a sign reading, Finding Christmas. I didn’t know it was lost. But then I wouldn’t because I’m an Episcopalian. We don’t lose major feast days. Also, we have Advent.


Advent is a four-week lead-up to Christmas complete with an Advent wreath. It has four candles, and we light one each week so we can stay on track. For a gazillion years the candles were purple. A couple of years ago, Mother Church decided for some arcane reason to change the liturgical color of the season of Advent from purple to blue. And yes, we do have colors. That’s how we know what season we’re in and why we don’t lose things like Christmas.

Changing the Advent color from purple to blue is worse than daylight savings time. I tried. I really did. The first year was an exercise in frustration because you can’t find robin’s egg blue candles in the winter or any other time of the year for that matter. The second year I had the robin’s egg blue candles. I got the wreath all decked out and it looked like a damn nest for the Easter Bunny.

This year I unpacked the purple candles. It looked like Advent again and that’s why I didn’t lose Christmas.

Some things were not meant to be trifled with.

This post is a stream of consciousness because my consciousness needs streaming, and I’m starting to wear myself out. Clearly the burden needs sharing. Lucky you.

It’s coming to you feathers, guts, and all. I’m not going to edit it. Streams of consciousness can’t be edited or they become pools of lucidity, and I’m not in the mood to be lucid.

Why on earth would anyone with the money to buy one, purchase a gumball-yellow Lexus? Why does Lexus even give the public the option of gumball yellow? Have they no shame—they being Lexus. Where is the logic of gumball yellow in a car dealership equipped with a service department waiting room complete with vibrating recliners, brewed coffee, and a conspicuous absence of Field and Stream? I only know this because a friend, who buys a new Lexus every three years, takes me with her to have her oil changed so I can sit in the recliners and drink brewed coffee. I drive a ’98 Toyota with a cracked windshield. I’m lucky to get a milk crate to sit on where I go for service.

Why, I ask again, does a luxury car maker even have gumball yellow on its color chart? There is something very wrong here.

I saw the gumball yellow Lexus on my way to eat lunch with my grasshopper-eating grandson with the stunning amber eyes you may remember from a previous post. He invited me no less. I mean it wasn’t like Invite Your Grandparent or in loco Grandparentis Day. It was an act of volition on his part. I was touched.

His mother sent me about a dozen texts reminding me about it, where to go, how much money to take, etc. I cut her a lot of slack. With five children it’s a kindness to her if I just settle into the role of the sixth child. Hell, for I know she may see me that way.

While waiting for his class to come to the feeding area, I get to see a little kid barf in the hall. WOW, I think. Here’s a conversation starter for 4th grade boys if there ever was one.

Every little boy, and most men I know, consider bodily secretions and sounds, along with the orifices from which they issue, subjects of high humor. Fart in front of a young male, and you won’t have to add anything else to the relationship for the foreseeable future.

So, we get all settled in, six 9-year old boys and me. I start in on my lunch of sloppy joe, mandarin oranges, and rice pudding. The alchemy of combining school lunch dishes remains immutable.

Trying to be one of the guys was ill-advised. I told my kid-barfing-in-the-hall story whereupon one of my luncheon hosts tersely reminded me that we aren’t allowed to talk about barf at lunch because it’s bad manners. Humiliation is being thusly chastised by a small creature that spends most of his leisure hours with his finger up his nose.

All in all it was a success. One told JD that his grandmother was pretty and another complimented my pumpkin earrings. I just hope JD doesn’t tell his mother about the barfing debacle.

Most of my friends have their fiftieth or thereabouts class reunions coming up. Mine’s next year and I’m not going.

I’m being roundly admonished for not attending and, by the way, not by any of my classmates. That would leave the admonishing to current friends who lost twenty five pounds, had cosmetic surgery, rented luxury cars passed off as their own in order to attend their own reunions.

They tell me of old wounds healed, revenge extracted, former sweethearts reunited, etc. They are missing the point(s). I’ve healed the wounds, revenge gives me a sour stomach, and former sweethearts are married or dead.

The real reason I’m not going has nothing to do with their perception of me. It has to do with my perception of them. I want to keep them the way they were when we parted. My only image of them is youth, when we were wild and hopeful, beautiful and strong, full of passion and lust. Why on earth would I put that at risk?

Nope. Not going. However, I am considering cosmetic surgery. I’m researching neck lifts. I don’t want to look younger. I merely don’t want any part of me to flap in the wind should I perchance find myself on the bow of the Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio holding me around the waist.

I’ve streamed enough. I’m tired and going to make myself some comfort food and watch NCIS on my PC thereby perpetuating the delusion that I’m not watching TV because I don’t have one.