Still Learning

Despite my aversion to drastic changes, I’m a fan of certain innovations. My newest fascination is with the  hydro-tech expandable garden hose, a wonderful improvement over the heavy vinyl hose I dragged around (and tripped over) in my youth. At 80, I’m not as agile as I was at 16, nor as strong. I still love to garden, however, and find using a garden hose more convenient than lugging a two gallon watering can from spigot to plot. 

The rental house I’m in is not equipped for gardening ease. The former owner was a junk collector and his yard was a final resting place for old rusted machinery and other sundry old and rusting objects. When he died, the new owner spent three months removing said materials and, along with them, the contaminated top soil. When I rented the renovated property, I was impressed with the numerous wood-chipped garden beds surrounding the house. I envisioned a multitude of flowers and bushes in the front, an herb garden, and a vegetable plot in back. Alas, a shovel revealed they were like the news videos lately - they looked real but they were fake - four inches of loose stone covered in two inches of black bark mulch. The soil underneath was pale brown and flinty. 

Reluctant to give up my flowery dreams, I bought some rectangular, waist-high planters, a large metal oval structure, and a couple of shepherd’s crooks for hanging plants. I bought top soil and compost and potting soil (a novel experience since I’d always had good soil and/or a farm nearby for composted manure. Buying soil was out of my comfort zone), and filled the containers. I bought plant starts and unpacked the seeds I’d saved from previous gardens. I bought hanging baskets from which spilled petunias and ivy, geraniums and begonias. I bought a watering can. 

Oh, the loveliness of it all. And oh, the self-chastisement when it finally occurred to me to find an outside water source. There was one, but it was located in the very middle of the back side of the house. An innocuous (and inefficient) spigot jutted from the cement basement wall. It looked older than I did, though I knew the house was almost 30 years younger than I. When turned, the flimsy flat handle came off in my hand while water spurted in four directions at once. I tucked a gallon water jug under the spray and managed to tame the water long enough to fill the watering can and an extra jug, getting soaked in the process. Eight-year-old me didn’t mind the wet. Eighty year old me minded the weight. It took six trips to the spigot to fetch enough water for all the plants. I dreamed of garden hoses that night.

The next morning I went garden shopping yet again, looking for a hose that might reach the 150 feet around to the furthest plant without costing the earth and breaking my back in the bargain. What I found was that in the years I wasn’t paying attention to garden hoses, one had been invented that was light weight, expanded when it was full of water but contracted when empty, and didn’t kink! I bought two blue and white versions equalling 150’ with solid brass fittings, an on/off valve, and a spray nozzle. 

I happily coupled the hoses, screwed the coupling to the spigot, and turned on the water. Nothing. Nary a drop. I looked at my new hose. I looked at the spigot spraying the side of the house despite my best attempts at tightening the connector. Ah! The on/off valve was off, not on. It also didn’t budge. I turned the water off. I found a screw driver and loosened the valve. Nothing. I beseeched YouTube to teach me how to use my new hose and was told that often the on/off valve was sometimes tightened to an extreme at the factory and that I merely had to keep trying to turn it until it yielded. Huh. At that moment my landlord appeared. I beseeched him to help instead, and with a flick of his massive thumb, he opened the valve. I took a hammer to the other connector, turned the water back on, and whoosh! 

That evening I took my new hose for a trial run. Water still leaked from the spigot but with less exuberance so I placed a bucket underneath to catch the runoff, un-twirled the hose from its holder, hauled the whole length around the side of the house and commenced watering. As I made my way back in the direction of the spigot, I looped the hose over my arm. Even when I’d finished the last garden box, the weight of the loops still didn’t seem to equal the weight of the full watering can. I was delighted. I was also dry. At least until I turned the water off and began to unscrew the coupling. Then all the water still trapped in the hose gushed out in four directions, soaking me from head to foot while the hose itself writhed on the lawn like a giant blue snake. Apparently I still have something to learn about hydro-tech.

Saying Goodbye

I met J more than 55 years ago when we were carrying our first-borns. Several years ago, she became my landlady as well as my friend when she and her husband, G, bought the house next door to theirs that included the attached cottage I rent. I have a screened gazebo in my backyard where I sit to read in the summer. I’d hear her back door close and she’d come down the path between our houses calling out, “Here I come with my tea to interrupt whatever you’re doing!” We saw each other almost every day until Wednesday, November 2nd, the day she died. 

 Though we had a lot of ideas in common – we shared political, religious, educational and philosophical views – she was much more pragmatic and practical than I, and I don’t think there was anything she couldn’t fix. Because of that, she made an excellent landlady. If I called in a dither because a radiator pipe sprung a leak, she’d call the plumber, then over she’d come with a basket of towels to mop up the mess. One day she grabbed the tail of a writhing snake that had somehow ended up in my bathroom and casually tossed the reptile into the woods. She helped me build bookcases and a patio fence, we Christmas shopped together, gardened in side-by-side plots, and always we talked, compared and shared viewpoints, and laughed. We laughed a lot. 

 Sometime around 2009, after declaring the two of us to be on, at best, a 20-year life plan, J and I decided to co-compose this blog we called Laughing On the Way Out. In it, we recorded some of the things that happened first to her, then inevitably to me, as we approached late middle age. We agreed the slope toward old age was slipperier than we'd thought. There was the morning she called me to tell me that she’d just spent 15 minutes trying to scrub a shadow from her kitchen counter that she’d mistaken for a stain, or that she’d been halfway to a town to the south before she remembered she was supposed to be going to a dentist's appointment north of home. So many things we'd taken for granted, like being able to notice whether we were groomed and dressed properly, or that we knew where our glasses and keys were, or we were sure, when we set out, that we knew where we were going - these suddenly became things we had to question. And so it went. Arm in arm, slipping and propping each other up and laughing hysterically at our failings, J and I were heading off down the hill. And if you’re sitting there reading in disbelief because these things haven’t happened to you yet, relax, there’s still time. 

 Today though, instead of J, I find a J-sized space in front of me. Though I'm missing her and feeling sad, I still get to choose how to fill that space. I can fill it with sorrow that she’s gone, bitterness and anger toward the illness she suffered, or I can fill it with joy that I knew her, pour all my memories of her into it until it’s full and brimming over. While she was here, J was so appreciative – she was happy with the life she’d made for herself. She appreciated her farm animals – the cows even when they broke the fence, the pigs even though they stunk to high heaven, the sheep though they ate every brussels sprout either of us tried to raise. She loved her chickens and especially her cats. And she was appreciated in return. She was civic minded, volunteering year after year at the voting booth and working as an aide at the school. She cleaned houses and polished silver and mowed lawns to supplement her income. She was valued and respected by a great many people. 

 There is so much we humans don’t know. We choose what we believe and believe in – we choose that which comforts us, that which gives us hope. But one thing I do know; while J was here, she loved -she loved her family and her home and her friends - and while she was here, she was loved in return. In the end, I believe that’s what matters most. 

 I leave you with this thought from JOHN O'DONOHUE, an Irish poet, author and priest: May you know that absence is alive with hidden presence, that nothing is ever lost or forgotten. May the absences in your life grow full of eternal echo. May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere where the presences that have left you dwell.

Moments

I used to have the stereotypical blonde moment every now and then. Called senior moments now that my hair is grey, they are the times you forget something vital and don't remember it until your daughter, who lives 60 miles away and whose house you left an hour ago, answers the phone with, "We have your pocketbook, Nini!"

Of course, you knew she had since it wasn't in the grocery shopping cart when you went to pay and it wasn't in the car when you ran out of the store, waving hastily at the clerk to hold everything, you'd be back in two ticks. And then you weren't because you were tearing the car apart looking for the blessed bag that was an hour away at your daughter's house right where you'd left it.

And of course, everything you needed - credit cards, medical cards, driver's license, cell phone - were in that one bag you could be relied on to leave behind despite a taped note on your car's dashboard exhorting you to remember your pocketbook and the annoying little chimes on your iphone reminding you to grab your pocketbook on the way out the door. For the past six years you've been reminding myself with such reminders, and in those six years you've left your purse behind an embarrassing number of times.

Daughter obligingly took said pocketbook to the Post Office, wrapped it securely, and put it in the mail after being assured it would reach me the very next day. It did, intact and with a text message on the phone from daughter the day before saying it had just been mailed. Of course, she added sheepishly, she'd had a blonde moment of her own when, from the depths of the box in the Post Office clerk's hands, she heard my phone whistle to alert me that a message was on its way.

I relayed all this to my friend and cohort in aging, J, who has her own pocketbook issues. She laughed sympathetically, offered to take me with her on her trip to town, and reminded me to be sure to grab my bag before meeting her. I obligingly flung the strap over my shoulder, closed the door behind me, and met her at the end of my driveway. She grinned at me when she saw my purse and off we drove.

Ten minutes later the grin turned to grimace when she reached into the back seat for her pocketbook. "Why," she began, "where's my purse?" We both looked at the empty seat. She fumbled under the driver's seat. I searched the space between the driver and passenger seats. She got out of the car and looked in the empty trunk. Then she looked at me. I snorted. She giggled. We guffawed. "Who's going to take care of us?" we asked each other, only half in jest. Then we drove back to her house to fetch her pocketbook.

Angel Food Oooops

There comes a time in many a woman's life when she has to admit that she isn't the cook she used to be. My time is obviously now. I've been baking since I was knee high to my mother. I can't count the number of angel cakes I've made in my 72 years, but the one pictured here took the cake, literally. Rather than taking it to new heights, however, the accidental addition of an extra cup of water brought it to the brink of disaster. 

Today's efforts to produce a chiffon cake (pictured below) ended in a marvelously high dessert that scented the whole cottage in eau de chocolat. That is, until I propped the cake in its pan upside down on a bottle of balsamic vinegar to cool, whereupon it tumbled off the counter, pulling the bottle of vinegar with it, whereupon the cork popped out of the bottle and doused floor and cake alike with a river of the aromatic liquid.

I mopped up as best I could - cake top, floor, cupboard doors, table legs. Then I called J, my friend and partner in aging catastrophes, to come for a cup of tea and some "vinegar chocolate cake."

"Oh!" she enthused. "I've made chocolate cake with vinegar before. It's quite good."

"No doubt you did it on purpose though, right?" I queried.

There was a pause.  "But..." she began and I could hear a quiver of laughter in her voice.

"But," I reiterated and told her about the bottle and the crash and the river of aromatic liquid.

By this time she was laughing helplessly. "This reminds me of the angel cake you made, the one with too much water. The crust was quite good, though." She hiccuped.

Like its predecessor, the chiffon cake had some quite edible parts, those slices where the vinegar hadn't penetrated. And with enough whipped cream, even those bits that smelled like salad tasted almost like chocolate.

Oh dear.

My Love Affair With Office Chairs

Perhaps I’ve lived alone too long. Perhaps in my 70^th year I’m becoming a bit dotty. Or, perhaps I’m merely fussy. I’m sitting in my newest acquisition, an office chair of exceeding comfort. It’s my seventh office chair in 15 years. For one who doesn’t really have an office and only uses the chair for a bit of computer time, and that not even daily, a seventh chair might seem excessive. I don’t have them here all at once, of course. That would be excessive, not to mention eccentric (and uncomfortable since my accommodations are quite small), but as my friend J pointed out, there has been quite a succession of chairs moving in and out of my quarters.

The first chair came from a friend’s office, which was being refurbished. Since the old chairs were destined for the trash, my friend rescued one for me. I brought it home, rolled it up to the computer and sat there quite comfortably for a couple of years before the height adjuster lever gave out and I found myself much nearer the floor than was comfortable. (No, of course I didn’t sit there continually for a couple of years. There were interruptions such as mealtime, bedtime, work, etc.) At any rate, the chair needed replacing so I kept my eye out at my favorite Transfer Station and sure enough, my patience paid off. A beautiful rolling chair covered in brown velveteen appeared. J and I hoisted into the back of the pickup and brought it home.

The chair was perfect. It was comfortable, stylish, elegant, even. It was also big. Far too big for the space allotted it. I tripped over it and pushed it out of the way for a couple of weeks, then J and I hauled it out to the barn to wait for our annual tag sale. In its place I put another Transfer Station find, a much smaller chair with an ugly red seat and wheels that rolled only under duress. It, too, lasted a few weeks before being unceremoniously hauled back to the TS.

Next I tried a smaller version of the velveteen chair. At least it looked smaller in the second hand shop, fitted in as it was amongst some larger lounge chairs. It was softer than the first and shorter so that even when the height adjuster lever was in its highest position, I still had to reach up to use the keyboard. Out that chair went to join its compatriot in the tag sale pile.

I replaced chair number four with another large office chair which, though much too big for the space, won my heart with its leather cushions, it’s workable height adjuster, its smoothly rolling wheels and its general now-THIS_is-an-office-chair look. In fact I liked it so much that when I’d tripped over it and shoved it out of the way for a month or so, rather than take it back to the TS I hauled it out to my screened-in gazebo and spent the summer months lazing about in it. Finally the back gave out and I was in danger of spilling over backwards every time I sat in it.

Chair number six came home with me from a yard sale last July. It was smaller than its predecessors, had a cushioned seat, hard wooden arms and rollers that needed attention, but the price was right and I needed a chair. I was quite fond of it despite its drawbacks because the height adjuster level worked. I was finally able to fit my knees under the desk and still reach the keyboard. Until a couple of weeks ago, when the height adjuster lever got stuck in a lower setting. (I was trying to make a minor adjustment to accommodate a cushion.)

As luck would have it, while I was visiting my daughter’s family the following week, my son-in-law brought home two office chairs from a building in which he was doing carpentry work. “We don’t need two!” my daughter exclaimed.

“I’ll take one!” I offered. My grateful daughter hefted it out to my car.

I’m sitting in it now. It’s lovely. My knees, even with a cushion on the seat, fit under the desk. The height adjuster lever moves up and down as though proud of its functionality. The wheels swivel smoothly, the colors match my décor. I’m thoroughly smitten.

Last night I could not sleep, so got up, made some tea, and sat watching the stars spin through the night sky. “Did you sit in your new office chair?” asked J.

“No, I didn’t,” I answered. “But I did gaze at it fondly for a bit.”

She looked at me as though she thought I was eccentric.

The other day my sister-in-law, E, and I were on the tag sale circuit. We'd just pulled out onto the road from the last sale on our list and were headed home, congratulating ourselves on our brilliant finds and assuring each other we were done for the day when a tag sale sign at the edge of the road dragged the steering wheel from my hands. E and I looked at each other and shrugged. "May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb," I said as we clambered out of the car and set off at a trot toward several tables piled with unexamined treasures. 

Half an hour later, our hands full, we returned to the car. I'd rolled the front windows up while we drove so we could hear each other talk, but the rear windows were halfway down. As I opened the back door to set my purchases on the seat, the keys in my hand caught on a plastic bag. I disengaged them and tossed them into the front seat. As I did, I must have squeezed the button on the car door opener because I heard a beep. It didn't register though. I slammed the back door, reached for the front door handle and nearly wrenched my elbow. The door wouldn't open. Nor would the back door. I'd locked us out of the car. 

"Well, hellfire," I muttered. I tried reaching through the open back window to the front seat but my arm was not long enough to reach the keys. "I'll go see if someone here has a wire coat hangar," I told E. I'd no sooner turned my back on the car when the alarm went off. E looked sheepishly over the hood. 

"I reached in the open window and unlocked the back door," she said, tossing the keys over the hood of the car. Huh. I stood there for a second, feeling impossibly foolish. That had not occurred to me. I got over feeling foolish and began to feel distinctly unnerved. E is a year older than I but apparently she still possesses all her faculties. Why had I not thought to simply reach through the open window and unlock the back door? Was this a sign of early dementia?

As we were pulling out onto the road I remarked, "This reminds me of the Frenchman who locked his family in the car and it took him a week to figure how to get them out."

E turned to me, horrified. "I didn't hear about that!" she exclaimed. 

"It's a joke," I said, explaining that it was a slur on the French intellect. "None of them had thought to simply unlock the doors from the inside." 

"Oh," she said, not cracking a smile. I felt immeasurably reassured about my faculties.

I was relaying this misadventure to J, my friend in aging, who told me a story of her own to make me feel better. "Yesterday my son hurried in saying he needed a bag of ice so I pulled the bin out from under the automatic ice maker in my freezer, emptied the contents into a plastic bag, and set the bin down on the counter while I put a twist tie on the bag. We were in a rush so out the door we sped without a backward glance.

"Later that afternoon while I was making dinner I kept hearing a strange clunking sound, a sort of intermittent ka-thunk, ka-thunk. It continued through dinner and into the evening. During a TV commercial I got up to get some ice cream. I opened the freezer door and WHOOSH! I was inundated with ice cubes. They flew in all directions, there were so many of them. And there on the counter next to the fridge, right where I'd set it down, was the ice bin. I must have looked at it a dozen times but it never occurred to me to put it back in the freezer."

We looked at each other. "Who's going to take care of us?" she asked, only half in jest. 

The three of us can take heart, however, that things can always be worse. A mutual friend fell asleep in his chair one afternoon. When he awoke he looked at his watch and saw with alarm that he had only a minute or two before he was due at the nearby high school with the bus he drove. He wheeled into the drive and pulled up to his usual spot, surprised to see he was first in line. "Hmmm," he thought, checking his watch again, thinking perhaps he'd read the time incorrectly. Nope, only a minute or two late. He sat there pondering for a time before he noticed that not only were there no other buses in line, there were no cars in the parking lot. That was because it was Saturday and school was not in session. 

"I felt really foolish," he confessed, "but there's no way you can sneak home in a big yellow bus." He drove down the road scrunched down as far as possible behind the wheel, parked the bus in his yard, went back into the house, sat down in his chair, and pretended to himself that what had happened had not just happened. 

We're all obviously slipping down the hill toward dotage. But, I take heart from a report I read stating that there are currently over 9 million 80 year olds in the US. That gives E, J, and me about ten years to get our act together before we can use really old age to explain our actions.

Why Is Nothing Ever Simple?

J and I were on our way to Home Depot, a 45 minute trip, to purchase a new, higher (chair-level) toilet and some new floor tile for the cottage bathroom. My brother had generously offered to put down the floor. "Might as well get the toilet in at the same time," he told me. "No point in putting it in and then pulling it up to tile the floor. I'll do it all in one go." Oh, to be a strong man and have the  confidence and know-how to do things in one go.

Not that women can't do both - just not this woman. I could, however, choose the toilet I wanted and the floor tile. So J and I set off in her pickup to do just that. When I climbed in, she tossed me a folded piece of material. "Spread this over your knees," she said. "The heater is working but the fan isn't, so it may get a little cold in here."

I spread the cloth over my knees, pulled my hat a little closer over my ears to ward off the chill, and off we went. Not five minutes into our drive I noticed the window in my door was icing over. I glanced over. J's was doing likewise. "I think..." I began when J leaned forward suddenly. "I can't see so well," she said, scraping hard with her fingernail at the ice forming on the windshield. She looked at me with a wry smile. "Maybe we better go back and swap the truck for the car."

Nothing wrong with the heater in the car. "We're later than we meant to be," J said as we sped off. "We may as well stop and have lunch first before we shop." Eating always sounds like a good idea to me. (It was because of my chubby little knees protesting during a two a.m. visit to the loo that we were getting a higher toilet to begin with.) We stopped at a popular buffet place near the Home Depot and ate a leisurely lunch while we discussed tile colors, the weather, the state of the world, and how our bodies were betraying us into buying things like raised toilets.

As we stood to leave, J put her hands in her pockets expecting to encounter her gloves. Instead she pulled out two large hen's eggs. I felt my eyebrows crawl up into my hair. "Have they been in your pockets all morning?" I asked, wondering how on earth they'd avoided being scrambled given the way J clambered in and out of the truck and tossed her coat carelessly down on the bench in the booth when we came in.

She looked at me. "They've been in my coat since yesterday when I took them out of the laying boxes!" I thought of all the things J does in a day - heaving forty pound bags of grain around, rough

housing with her dog, shoveling snow, bounding in and out of the truck a dozen times, hauling trash to the transfer station - those eggs had been jostled and jiggled and bounced around. The thought of what might have happened if they'd broken while still in her pockets made me giggle, then guffaw. We left the restaurant poking each other and laughing like two silly school girls on a lark. The eggs rode safely home in one of the car's cup holders.

The tile and toilet have since been successfully installed. And other than J locking herself out of her car Thursday and me locking myself out of the cottage Friday, our recent days have been relatively event-free.

Back-Up Wreath

Yesterday at the Transfer Station J and I searched the shelves as usual for discarded treasures. Our local TS is a resourceful place. Adjacent to the the trash compactor are several shelves where residents can bring unwanted but still useful items for trade. The shelves are always full in the summer, especially after tag sales. The pickings in winter are much slimmer until right before Christmas. Before our arrival yesterday, someone had left three giant cardboard boxes full of Christmas decorations. I know there are people who, though they have no reservations about pawing through discount tables at Filene's, will shudder at the thought of looking through a box left at the TS. My sympathy goes out to them. Over the years I've found numerous discarded but still useful items at the TS including a glider chair, intact and without a stain or a loose screw; a Williams Sonoma popover pan; a Cuisinart; a camera never out of its box; assorted cutlery and enough pretty plates to feed 30 people at my daughter's pre-wedding dinner; vases of all sorts and sizes; a futon still in its shrink wrap, and… Christmas decorations.

My parents and grandparents lived through the Great Depression which had a profound effect on the way they lived their lives once it was over. I was brought up with such slogans as make do or do without, waste not, want not, and use it up or wear it out. Nothing in our house was ever wasted or thrown away until every last vestige of usefulness was wrung from it and even then, many of the holdovers so necessary to survival in the 30s remained behind even after my parents passed away – the ball of string in the corner cupboard, the waxed paper bags that held kitchen garbage, the desk drawer full of rubber bands, the straightened and pressed wrapping paper, the rescued bows, the over-stuffed rag bag. I figure I could have gone two ways when I reached adulthood  – I chose the frugal way and it frames the way I now live my own life which, I suppose, explains my delight in our local TS.

J and I spent a happy half hour holding up one thing after another for approval. I make fudge at Christmas. This year each recipient will receive theirs in a charming china dish decorated with tasteful renderings of angels or penguins or carol singers on the outside. My grandchildren will love the Santa that lights up inside with a tiny candle; my daughter-in-law will enjoy the basket her gift will come packed in. I may not have saved more than $10 all told but it's $10 still in my pocket.

Often on the ride home, J and I discuss the pleasure we get in thinking about the money we've saved and how it gets harder and harder to part with our hard earned cash for something we know will, sooner or later, show up at the TS. Perhaps that is why, when I saw a perfectly good grapevine wreath in the shape of a heart, I snatched it up despite the fact that I already have a perfectly good grapevine wreath in the shape of a heart at home.

"This," I told J, waving it over my head, "will be my back-up wreath in case the one I have falls apart." And then we both gasped. Is this what it's come to, then? Are we on our way to hoarder-hood? I thought of the coat I'd snatched up last week even though I already have a perfectly serviceable coat. I thought of the Christmas decorations in my hands and the five boxes of Christmas decorations in the attic at home, leftovers from my childhood and my children's childhoods. I sighed. But, I did not put the wreath back. I brought it home and on the way we laughed at the thought of two old bats combing the TS for back-up treasures to the multitude of treasures we already have.

This morning J called. She was making cookies. She'd hauled out her old Sun-Beam MixMaster and rifled about in the drawer where she had not one, but two sets of beaters. "I remember when my mother didn't hook the beaters in tight and when she turned on the machine, they twisted all together," she explained. "I saw those extra beaters one day at the TS and I thought, 'I might need these someday!' They're my back-up beaters, you see, just in case I make the same mistake my mother did."

I suddenly felt much better about the wreath. Next week I'll return the coat because I don't really need it and someone else will. But I know that someday my little heart-shaped wreath will fall apart - it's already second-hand. And then, you see, I'll have back-up.

I Won't Tell if You Don't

Unmentionables, my mother called them, introducing little me to the required undergarments never mentioned in polite society. Later the brassiere was added to the list of garments one did not mention in public, though one had better be wearing them and they had better be clean in case the proverbial bus struck. Good thing my mother can't read this.

J had a friend (I hope neither she nor my mother is reading this from that nebulous space all departed people inhabit, which is somewhere over my right shoulder). Anyhow, J had this friend who dressed rather hurriedly one morning in order to get to the the post office before it closed. She put on clean unmentionables but pulled on the same pair of slacks she'd worn the day before.

In the annex off the lobby where all the patrons' mail cubbies are stacked, J's friend unlocked her box and began sorting her mail. Another woman at the end of the annex was sorting through her own mail. J's friend looked up, ready to say hello, and at the same time felt something slip down the inside of her pant leg. She looked at the floor and there in a lovely puddle of blue nylon and lace were yesterday's unmentionables!

What to do? What to do? Should she stoop to pick them up? No, she hadn't brought her purse and there was no room in her pants pockets what with her keys and other sundries taking up space. Should she just ball them up and hide them in her hand? No, someone might see her doing that and think all manner of sinful things. No, better to just nudge them casually with her foot until they were in the corner. There. With any luck she would be gone before anyone else came in. And she was.

She told J about the incident and now J's told me (don't ask why were were discussing unmentionables in the first place. I can't remember). "What do you suppose the cleaning lady thought when she saw them there in the corner?" J asked me, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

I imagine she didn't mention it.

Of course, one good story deserves another and while we were on the subject, I told J about the time my husband and I took our young children for a walk along a high ridge that rose up behind the house where we lived. We often turned a Sunday walk into a green mission, bringing along a trash bag to collect trail debris. One son, the most adventurous, kept wandering off the track. He'd come back with some pine cones or a few interesting (to him) rocks. He wandered off again and returned with a lace thong dangling from his chubby little fingers. "Is this yours Mom?" he asked.

I was the only woman he'd ever seen in a pair of unmentionables in all his short five years so it seemed a natural question, but I was mortified. "It better not be," my husband joked as he took them from Son by the tips of his fingers and stuffed them in the trash bag.

I did, years and years later, lose a pair of unmentionables much the way J's friend did. I'd been asked out on a date, one of the first since my divorce, and as it was to be a picnic date, I hauled on the overalls I'd been wearing the day before. All went well until we got out of the car and began walking to the picnic site. I spied something white across the top of my shoe and stopped to pick it up. I should not have.

My date stared at what I held in my hand and his eyes grew round. "How did you do that?" he asked me. He said he'd seen Jennifer Beals slip out of her bra on Flash Dance but he didn't realize women could do that with panties, too. The ground should have opened up and swallowed me then and there but it didn't. I had to suffer through countless retellings of my "circus trick."

Fortunately I'm too old now and too thick in the thigh to be wearing unmentionables tiny enough to slip gently down a pants leg. I don't date anymore either, but I do shake out my trousers every night before bed just to be on the safe side.

Happy New Year

Matilda Ledger, borrowed from Google images

J appeared at my door the other day. "Look at me and tell me what's wrong," she said without preamble. I looked. Then I laughed. Her sweater hung at odd angles, buttoned incorrectly by not one, but two buttons. The hem dipped toward her knees on one side and was hiked up to her waist on the other. "And I went to the bank this way," she sighed, dropping into a chair. "Not another soul in there so all three tellers, sweet young things, watched me traipse across the floor like this and me clueless."

"They'll know what it's like in oh, forty years or so," I consoled her. Then the two of us collapsed in another fit of giggles.

When we could breathe again, we agreed the slope toward old age was slipperier than we'd thought. So many things we've taken for granted, like being able to notice whether we were groomed and dressed properly or that we knew where our glasses and keys were or we were sure, when we set out, that we knew where we were going, have suddenly become things we must question.

"Just the other day, my car went one way while I was intending to go another," J confessed and I remembered the day a few months ago when I had been half way somewhere only to realize with a start that I couldn't remember, just for one eensy moment, where that was.

J and I are not old by today's standards though we've passed the middle-aged mark. She jokes often about being on the 20 year plan (but we've been claiming that for the past few years). We're both still active physically. We both garden and she does farm work, I ride my bicycle and hike, and we try to eat sensibly. Still, it's these little slips, these wrong buttonings, that give us pause.

To counter her look of despair, I confessed to J, rather sheepishly, that when I'd unwrapped the present she'd given me for Christmas a few days back, I'd tasted it. She sat up straight and then fell back, guffawing, her hand over her mouth. What I'd thought, in my glasses-less state, was a piece of divinity was actually a chunk of hand-made soap.

So it goes. Arm in arm, slipping and propping each other up and laughing hysterically at our failings, J and I are heading off down the hill. Along with the rest of you.

Ah, well...

J and I had a rather enlightening conversation yesterday. She's a widow and I've been post-divorce single far longer than I was married. Since we're of a certain age, we spend a lot of time discussing the strange and odd things our bodies are doing as they deteriorate without our mind's consent. Our conversation this time wound round to the fact that neither of us would be able to enter into an intimate fling at this stage in the game, not because our once taut skin is now wrinkled like an elephant's knees or our once healthy hair shows signs of being chewed by mice or because we might cause permanent physical damage with the swinging bat wings on our upper arms. No, the demise of our night life hinges on the fact that our night life has taken on rituals sure to stymie even the most determined man.

It used to be that we splashed some water on our faces, slipped into something more comfortable, and jumped into bed. Those days are gone forever. As gradually as the wrinkles appeared on our cheeks, so the little bedtime routines grew from slapdash to must do. Now, just getting up out of the chair and into the bathroom takes planning, and ablutions include special non-drying, colloidal soaps and emollient rich lotions. There's the anti-aging night cream, the delicate skin eye treatment cream, the spot eradicating hand cream. There's flossing and brushing and rinsing, eye drops, ear drops, anti-ache foot potions that smell like an herb garden run amok and capsaicin cream for aching joints.

Then there's the whole climb-into-bed routine that includes finding just the right sleepwear - old people nightclothes that won't bind or pinch or cling or wedge. Looking sexy has taken a waaaay back seat to being able to turn over under the covers without exposing too much flesh or being tangled, strapped, caught or strangled. The very act of turning over requires strategy because now one's knee pillow must follow along, the head pillow arrangement for the left shoulder does not match the pillow arrangement for the right shoulder, and the whole bed becomes a war zone of arms and elbows and knees as we struggle to alleviate aching hips. There'd be no room for even the most intrepid fellow even if he was willing to put up with the smelly lotions, the shifting pillows, and the fanatic need for absolute dark. 

This must be why one's libido diminishes with age. Imagine having the energy for a spot of hot and bother after all that preparation. Imagine the light of day (or a bedside lamp) shining on what now looks best in pitch black (and the safety of one's imagination). I know, I know, I'm leaving out love and the comfortableness of a long-term relationship and J admits that if her husband was still alive, he'd be fine with all that. But someone new? A stranger, no matter how wrinkled and smelly himself? He'd have to be blind, deaf, and willing to sleep in his own house at night.

Creamed and Steamed

borrowed from jennybsspace.blogspot.com

 A brightly lit changing room is not an older woman's friend. Neither is the mirror. I'm edging toward dim light in a number of ways!

J and I went on a minor shopping spree the other day. Youngest daughter is getting married at the end of June. J has a lovely skirt she is willing to lend but it needs just the right top - something lightweight and shimmery, not sleeveless, but summery. It has to be the right color (the skirt is two layers of voile in shades of cocoa, cream, and peacock blue), and the right length. Too short and I look like a pot-bellied pig, too long and I look like a dressed up Doric column.

I checked out a gazillion tops, give or take. If one was the right color it was the wrong style. If it fell nicely it was the wrong color. If it fit it was too expensive, if it was the right fabric it was the wrong size. I looked at ruffled blouses with plunging necklines, skimpy blouses with floppy fabric flowers strategically stitched, spaghetti-strapped camisoles under drapey sweaters, pullovers with three quarter sleeves that made me look like a chef applying for a 5 star hotel job, and short bolero type tops that left my second stomach fully exposed.

All that pulling on, buttoning up, and taking off under glaring fluorescent lights in front of a clown booth mirror resulted in a severe case of brooding. On the way home and blouseless (now that sounds just wrong but it wasn't), I moaned to J that I used to look like a string bean. "Now I look like a cauliflower," I said, patting my mid-section. "A steamed, creamed cauliflower at that." She didn't laugh. Neither did I.

Over the years, along with the wisdom, I've acquired bumps and sags and bags and spots. I've been stretched and bent, pulled and pummeled, dragged and drugged and it shows. J agreed that she, too, had once resembled a potato stick but now was headed for the Idaho baker side of the plate. I averred as how I would really much rather resemble a slender stalk of asparagus but that it seemed a futile goal at this point. "Maybe we should switch to fruits," J suggested. "You could be a baked Granny Smith apple and I could pass for a steamed peach."

Well, okay. I look pretty good in green.

Perspective

imageenvision.com

I was winding my wispy blonde-going-on-gray hair on bristly rollers this morning (an exercise in futility since it's raining out and the moisture will take out the curl before I get from the door of my cottage to the door of my car), and contemplating the unfairness of certain aspects of my persona. For instance, instead of having thick, shining, naturally curly locks that tumble in reckless abandon to my shoulders, I have thin, fine, stick-straight hair much the color of mouse fur. I was a tow head as a child, a color I carried right up to the birth of my first child. With each successive pregnancy, the color was leached from my hair follicles and deposited in my child's. All four were white-blonde as small tykes while my own hair began to take on the hue of a winter-dead tree. I've sought in vain for a haircut that is flattering to both my face and my hair texture but hair style magazines limit face shapes to oval, round, heart, and square. Bovine is not listed. Sigh.

Where I've been limited in the hair department, I've been burdened with excess when it comes to my nose and my mammary glands. Photographs show my great grandfather's nose holding a prominent place in the middle of his face, balanced with great bushy eyebrows and an equally bushy mustache. I have been spared the latter two features but my nose is decidedly similar, i.e. too big for my face. And what I wouldn't give to have my blouses and shirts fall straight and smooth to my waist without first stopping to leap off a cliff.

I mention all this because I have been going through old photos for a senior history project at the local senior center. Pairing a senior with a middle school student to talk about what life has been like for the past 60+ years, the project covers nine weeks of memory digging and culminates in a scrapbook of student writing illustrated with pictures of the senior from birth to the present. I keep finding photos of myself as an infant, a toddler, a school girl, a young wife - and I don't look at all like the image in my mind. I do remember, however, bemoaning my looks even then. What was I thinking? And why was I thinking that?

I'd like to think of myself as wiser since I'm so much older but old habits die hard and once I'd fallen into the habit of seeing myself as flawed in face and figure, it became almost impossible to think of myself any other way. Looking back now, I see all my worry over how I looked to others was useless. I wasn't half as bad looking as I thought and most likely, when I look back on photos taken now, I won't be quite as awful looking as I'm imagining now. It makes one wonder when we, as humans, started judging our worth by our beauty and our beauty by someone else's standards.

My mother was forever admonishing me that pretty is as pretty does. I wish I'd paid more attention to her; I'd be stunning by now!

What Was That?

I've noticed lately that my hearing is not as sharp as it once was. For instance, when the whole second grade classroom is abuzz and some cherub whose voice doesn't ever raise above a lisping whisper says something to me, I have to bend to her level and say, "What was that?" repeatedly. If a train is hustling by I often can't hear my idling car engine. Likewise, when the phone is not pressed directly against my left ear (my "good" side), I often miss parts of the conversation from the other party and have to uh-huh and mmm-hmmm my way along until I pick up the gist of what I missed. I've gotten along just fine with what hearing I have left until last Sunday. Now I have cause to pause.

J and I were on our way home from a Transfer Station run when she suggested swinging by a fast food place and indulging in one of their inexpensive hot fudge sundaes. Any time the word fudge is mentioned I am all for whatever it is I need to do to get it. Besides, it was a beastly hot day and ice cream sounded like a bowl of heaven so off we went. We pulled up to the talking order board and when the scratchy voice asked us what we wanted, J leaned out the window and said, "Two hot fudge sundaes, please."

"Do you want double fudge for an extra dollar?" inquired the board.

J looked at me. "Double fudge?" I asked. J nodded. "Sure!" we both said at the same time, I to J and J to the talking board.

"Pull around," said the board so we did.

At the window, a young fellow handed J a small paper bag. She passed it to me and I looked inside. Surely our sundaes could not be in there. Just as I suspected, they weren't. What was in there were two apple pies.

"These are apple pies!" I exclaimed. J looked at me with raised eyebrows. She whisked the bag from my hand and gave them back to the fellow saying, "We ordered hot fudge sundaes, not apple pies."

"Oh, the sundaes are coming," he said with a smile. "You agreed to the pies for an extra dollar. They're our special this week."

J's eyebrows crept up another notch. "We did?" she asked me. "Did you hear anything about apple pies?"

"Double fudge," I said enunciating each syllable, then "Apple pie." No way did double fudge sound like apple pie, even if I dragged the syllables out. I shook my head at J. "Nope," I said. "We agreed to double fudge. Who eats apple pies with hot fudge sundaes?"

"We don't want the pies, thanks," she told the window guy, but he handed them back to her saying that since they couldn't put them back we might as well take them and he'd deduct the dollar from our bill.

"Stranger things have happened," he intoned, his own eyebrows rising for emphasis.

All the way home we puzzled over the misunderstanding. Who could mistake double fudge for apple pie? Apparently two hot, tired, more-than-middle-aged, on-the-twenty-year-plan old bats like us because between them, those sundaes didn't have enough fudge to qualify as a single serving, never mind double. It was all very disconcerting.

I've been practicing the two phrases. If I speak through a paper towel tube with a piece of saran wrap held tightly over one end and I mumble, you might mistake one for the other, but you'd have to be hard of hearing in the first place.

Parker the cat who knows the value of an afternoon nap.

The sun rises awfully early on summer mornings and though I don't have to rise with it, I often do. Sleep has become an evasive commodity lately (lately being the past ten years or so). At first I blamed my semi-insomnia on worries - you know, the ones about money and children and things you wish you hadn't said or done that loom like monsters in the deep, dark night. But, I have a job, my grown children all have jobs, we all have places to live and food to eat. And worrying about those things no matter what time of day or night never did present a solution. Now I blame my ever increasing age. I am older now than I've ever been and I can see signs of deterioration. It's the ones I can't see that seem to be causing the trouble.

Books and magazines offer solutions to what seems to be a global affliction. One can go the drug route complete with little flapping butterflies hovering over one's prostrate body, the health conscious route that advises a light evening meal and a brisk walk afterwards, or the natural route which involves chamomile baths and spraying one's bed linens with lavender. I avoid drugs whenever possible and prefer my butterflies out of doors so I tried first the healthy route. Summer evenings are fine for an after dinner stroll around the neighborhood but winter nights fall fast and early. A brisk walk to the end of the driveway involved hat and coat and boots and mittens. Just dressing and undressing made me tired and I'd tumble into bed earlier and earlier each night. My ability to stay asleep did not increase, however, and I would find myself awake and semi-alert well before dawn. By mid-morning I was desperate for a nap!

Lavender on my bed linens smells heavenly but does not put me to sleep. Chamomile baths are out of the question as my tiny cottage has no room for a tub, but chamomile tea does not put me to sleep either. Nor does warm milk, a small glass of wine, or gentle yoga just before bedtime. I've tried reading in bed, counting sheep (and blessings), and meditation, none of which make me fall asleep more readily or stay asleep once I've nodded off. I'm beginning to suspect that the folks who come up with these remedies stay up all night thinking about them.

My latest tactic is to enjoy the pre-dawn hours, to rise slowly, make a cup of steaming tea, sit where I can watch the sun rise or the rain fall, and breathe in the new day as it unfolds. When I wind down around three in the afternoon, I take a nap. So far, that's working just fine.

Grief

photo by Jean Couleurs

My friend J, who is my co-inspiration for this blog, has suffered a staggering loss. Her husband of 45 years died suddenly today after surgery. Friday night he was doing well and on Saturday all his major organs began shutting down. Though when we began this blog we titled it Laughing On The Way Out (for all the foolish things we were encountering as we traveled toward old age), J is unable to muster even a smile right now. Sometimes the things life deals us are not funny at all. This post, written several years ago for much the same reason, is for her...


Life on earth is at best a chancy thing. You cannot know the exact moment when you will leave the land of the living or if your dreams will die before they've been fully lived. One thing is certain—if a loved one leaves before you, whether by accident or design, you will travel to the strange land of grief and you will go alone. The winds of change will swirl about you, pick you up, transform you forever, and set you down in another place.

It is not only the departing who are changed by leaving. The living, the survivors, the ones left behind must become someone else in order to cope, to grow and finally emerge into a different life—the life without. It is a lonely walk through an unfamiliar land, this land without. Things that two did together one does now. There is nothing so empty as the other person's chair pushed up to the table, unless it's the stairwell that no longer echoes end of day greetings and eager footsteps, or the bed that suddenly seems vast and cold and too lonely on either side of the middle. There is nothing so quiet as a room with one person in it, the silence absolute after the death of conversation and shared confidences. There is nothing so solitary as a single plate on an empty table, a single towel hanging folded and desolate on its too wide bar, or a lone toothbrush standing solitary guard in its cup. There is nothing harder than being one when you have loved being two.

J was so happy, so loved, so alive while her loved one was with her. Now she looks and feels as though she's been struck down and in a sense, she has. Grief has her by the heart and for a time she must wrestle with it, pushing her way through the pain to unlock the reservoirs of strength and faith she accrued in happier days. I watch her struggle to come to terms with her loss, to find a place where she can lay her sorrow down long enough to eat, to sleep, to think of something other than what has befallen her.

She tells her story over and over, trying to make sense of it, to fit it in with her own picture of what her life is all about. Perhaps her peace will lie in the creation of a new picture, a new story, a tale that embraces this grief as a gift that, when opened, reveals all the words and colors she will need.

Thoughts Before Sleep

(Photo from http://thuthienpezhai.org)

I will soon be, officially, a senior citizen. I've received my medicare card in the mail, I've been looking over retirement plans, and as my friend J often jokes, I am now on the 20 year life plan. (Actually I'm opting for the 30 year plan with a rider as 95 seems a respectable age to shoot for.)

I have the obligatory bucket list with entries like traveling to as many places as possible, seeing my grandchildren marry, walking across America, etc. But last night as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, another list altogether entered my mind. I laughingly dubbed it my "Just Once" list as it grew to include some rather bizarre desires. Nevertheless, here it is.

I would like just once to:

1. Be taken care of completely without my having to lift a finger. I don't want to be sick to have this happen but remain in complete control of my senses so I can enjoy to the fullest one entire day of having someone a) wash my hair, b) give me a full body massage, c) cater to my every dietary whim, d) turn down the sheets on my freshly made bed, e) hover over me solicitously and f) read me to sleep. I realize that one can attend a day spa and hire a maid to accomplish all this but I have the money for neither, which leads me to...

2. Have enough money so that I can go to bed without puzzling out how I am to pay the bills and still eat. I am not so much interested in spending the money lavishly (or frivolously) as I am in knowing that it's there as I need it.

3. Have a chauffeur. I used to live with a fellow who liked to drive. Now if I want someone else to do the driving I must first drive to them. For example, none of my children live closer than an hour and a half away. Before they can drive me about their neighborhoods, I must get myself to their neighborhoods. I used to sort of like driving but now the merest hint of bad weather, any dire news of highway accidents or strange sounds in my car put me into an apoplectic fit. I go, but I'm not happy about it.

4. Win big. I know one must buy a lottery ticket to stand a chance (some blonde jokes are funny) but those times that I invested a treasured dollar have resulted in disappointment. Just once, I'd like to be the one crying on TV because I've just been given a million dollars (tax free) or the one who opens her mailbox to find a check for an outrageous amount of money from an undisclosed but compassionate source. The only thing I've ever won in my life was a chintzy pillow at the county fair when I was 12. (And I was shooting for the giant teddy bear!)

5. Be slim again, twenty again, and in the position to make an entirely different decision about the life I was about to give up in order to embark on the life I did. I have few regrets, even more blessings and a life now that is quite satisfactory in every way but monetary. Still, I'd like to see what my parallel lives would have been like.

6. Spend a day completely pain free. My feet ache, my knees hurt, my knuckles throb, my back seizes up.  While I'm at it, I'd like my hearing and vision restored to their hitherto perfection. (After I thought about this one, I realized that having experienced that, I'd be more than reluctant to return to my current state. Still...)

7. I would like to know what follows once my 20 year life plan expires and I along with it. I might forget it once I've been shown, or I might assign it to a mere dream, but some part of me would then be able to relax enough so that I can enjoy the next bit of my life story with all the abandonment and delight I felt as a child. (Which, come to think of it, list or no list, is just what I intend to do!)

Adding Insult to Injury

It's bad enough to be growing older at what seems an accelerated rate but it's awful to be ill at the same time. I'm not talking about terminal illness or progressive illness. I'm about to whine about the ordinary, common cold.

It started with a sneeze, which I attributed to the appearance of the sun, which hasn't shown up here for day after cold, gray day. I usually sneeze in the sunlight so I didn't give it a thought until I felt that suspect little tingling that means, "This is not a sunlight sneeze. This is your nose on a COLD. And it's going to be a doozy."

Sure enough, not an hour later, I felt the familiar ache and malaise that accompanies congestion. My eyes began to water. I sneezed at increasingly frequent intervals and went through half a box of tissue in twenty minutes. I sucked down a glass of Emergen-C, popped a couple of aspirin, and lay down on the sofa, thinking a short nap might make matters better. I sat up almost immediately, unable to breathe in a prone position. I gathered pillows, a quilt, the cat (as a foot warmer) and propped myself up on the sofa. An ungodly rattling noise woke me and spooked the cat. It was just me, snoring. I had toppled over and was constricting my own airway.

Soup was what I needed but making soup requires energy. I had none. Tea, that's what I'd have. I sat and stared at the kettle until it came to a boil, disproving that old adage about the watched pot, etc. Measuring the leaves, pouring the water, ladling in the honey took every ounce of oomph I had left. I was almost too tired to sip.

Bed was the place to be. I hauled the pillows and the quilt back to the bedroom, arranged everything just so and climbed in. My back ached so I climbed back out and hunted up the heating pad. In bed once more, I realized I'd left my tea on the kitchen table. Out I climbed and back in, shivering now. Two pillows didn't seem enough. There were two more stored in the trunk at the foot of the bed but the thought of that hundred mile journey was enough to make me settle back, grumbling, against the two I had. I sipped my cooling tea, took note of every ache and sniffle, and let tears of self pity and moroseness ooze down my cheeks. I wanted my mother, and my tissue box was still on the sofa.

Feverish dreams pursued me in the dark of night. When I'm sick I dream of numbers that repeat themselves over and over. I dreamed of tally sticks that wouldn't tally and numbers that floated in soup like alphabet letters, never adding up to the correct amount. I woke exhausted.

I remember having head colds as a child. I remember the sore red nose, the scratchy raw throat, the head and body aches, but I also remember functioning despite all that. A mere cold never sent me to bed. Now the very thought of heaving this sad sack of skin and bones out of bed and into the work day was too much to bear. I reached for the phone and called in sick. We're only allowed three sick days in a row before a doctor's note is required. On Wednesday, I'm calling in dead.

Puckery Places

Not a self-portrait...

J called this morning to say she'd caught a glimpse of her bare arm ("It looked like chicken skin, all puckered and white!") and she was suddenly depressed. It put me in mind of my mother who, in her fifties, stopped wearing sleeveless blouses.

"Aren't you hot, Mama?" I asked her as I helped her weed the garden one July day while the sun beat down on us like a sledge hammer. She was wearing a shirt with loose sleeves that nearly reached her wrists.

"Yes," she'd said, "but I can't show my arms any more. Look," and she'd pulled back her sleeve and held up the offending appendage. The skin in the fold of her elbow was all crinkled and soft while the muscle she used to show off proudly looked as though it had slipped from its mooring to hang upside down from the underside of her upper arm. She pulled the sleeve back down. "They're not fit to look at anymore," she said with a sigh.

I told this to J and she laughed. "Not much of me is fit to look at anymore," she said before she hung up. I knew just what she meant. Not much of me is either. I've never considered myself really vain though I used to take pains to make sure my hair and clothes were fashionable. Lately though, I've taken to letting my hair grow out until it's long enough to donate before getting it styled and my clothes are geared more toward comfort than haute couture.

I've started to wear longer sleeves in the summer as well, and to make sure the only people who see me in a bathing suit already know and love me, wrinkles, sags, and all. My arms look like something left out in the rain too long and my upper legs are mapped like an atlas with small, broken veins. The skin on my face seems to have taken on a life of its own. There are new lines every week and I noticed this morning that my drooping upper lids may soon be meeting the puffy bags underneath, akin to the way my bosom will meet my belly when I sit if either sags another jot. How on earth did I get so out of shape, or worse, into this shape?

Partly it's a change in lifestyle, partly it's more food than exercise, and partly it's the pull of gravity on weakening skin and muscles. At this rate, the inexorable weight of our own bodies and gravity combined will cause both J and I simply to puddle onto the ground like discarded garments. Each time we catch our breath from laughing ourselves silly over some new insult of age, we promise each other to make a greater effort to get ourselves fit, or at least more fit. Neither of us is particularly sedentary - she is a farmer's wife and I chase second graders around all day - but I've recently begun to walk daily again as I did in my youth, and she has taken to lifting more and heavier things about the farm in an attempt to shed some of our excess weight. And I'm seriously considering cutting my hair short if it will take some of the weight off my puckered forehead and hence, my descending eyelids...

A Member of the Clean Plate Club

When I lived with a fit and hearty fellow named Bob years ago, he would heap his dinner plate with meat, taking much smaller portions of potato and vegetable, sometimes eschewing them altogether in favor of hot cherry peppers or a hunk of unbuttered bread.
Dessert was not a word in his vocabulary. He lumped them all together under the generic word cake and said, “I don’t eat that stuff.”

I, on the other hand, consider dessert part of the meal, feeling that no repast is complete without a bit of something sweet. It’s an old habit instilled by my mother who felt the same way. She liked to quote Winnie-the-Pooh and finish off each meal with a “smackerel of something,” preferably some tasty morsel oozing sugar and chocolate.

Her father, my Pepere, was famous at family gatherings for his ability to make room for dessert. “Go ask your grandfather if he wants pie or cake,” my Memere would instruct as she cleared the dinner plates.

“Pepere, do you want pie or cake?” I would obediently inquire.

“Yes,” was his reply. “Two fingers of each,” and he would spread out his thumb and pinkie, creating a five inch span indicating the desired size of each piece. Over the years this sort of indulgence made him into a man of admirable girth.

I seem to be following close behind. For a long time I blamed the three Gs—Genetics, Gravity, and Gravy—for my increasing bulk; genetics (witness my grandfather, not to mention my Aunts Margaret and Rose or my Uncle Roland); gravity—after all, my weight began shifting downward with every birthday after forty, as did the muscles in my upper arms and the skin under my eyes and my chin. Now I’ve reluctantly had to admit that the blames lies in the gravy—and the bread and the butter and, woe is me, the desserts. Everything I eat seems destined to collect at my waistline or in the general vicinity of the waistline I remember having.

A friend that I hadn’t seen in years recently asked, “Where’s that skinny little girl I used to play with?” and I had to admit I’d buried her under gallons of ice cream. Another high school chum who resurfaced after 45 years saw me at the doctor’s office one day. We eyed one another and finally blurted, “Gosh, you look familiar, but…” at the same time. We reminisced a bit and then he took my hand in his big paw (this man was at least 50 pounds heavier than when I’d last seen him in 10th grade chemistry lab) and said, Pao-line, you been livin’ large!”

Yeah. Thanks.

I drove home thinking about the dirty four letter D word, knowing that if I didn’t do something soon I’d need more than a diet to undo those decades of desserts. The three Gs are still exerting a powerful pull but I’m working on a new set of letters now, the Ws—Willpower, Walking, and Withholding. (Okay, when I see something sugary and oozing with chocolate, I add Weep).


photo credit: carifesta.net