Clickety Click

The bingo call for 66 in 50's London used to be clickety click, and that's the new number assigned to my time thus far on this old earth. More like rickety chick if you ask me. To mark this passage, I asked my grownup children to join me at a demonstration of Japanese flower arranging and lunch last week, in place of receiving a wrapped birthday present from them. Mostly because I value their presence over anything else but partly because there's nothing I want that could fit into a box that a person could carry. What I sometimes wish I still had is my own house, one that's all paid up and decorated to reflect the complicated but artistically inclined me and keeps itself clean and tidy. The stores are a bit short on those this year, so I settled for ikebana and a salad. My children will never appreciate how hard I try to make things easy for them.

But yesterday was the real birthday and I hogged it mostly to myself. I drove the pretty forty minutes backroads route to the coast, walked on a glassy smooth beach in my tall wellie boots, overtipped the handsome but offhand waiter at lunch, forcing myself to be forgiving and less critical of others, just for practice, bought a few small luxuries for special Christmas stockings and took a nap in my car in a parking lot.

I also went to a hardware store, a secret guilty pleasure of mine, and bought a smoke detector, wire cutters, solar powered flashlight and insulating strips for the front door. Although I've been desperately trying to simplify my life, by the time I got home, an octopus would have come in handy to help bring in all the stuff. I'd taken along a bag of chips and a flask of apple juice as my drive time snack, so the sticky bottle and ripped apart plastic bag had to be juggled in with hat, keys, gloves, sunglasses, used up tissues for the perennial runny nose, windbreaker jacket, long scarf, and shopping bags.

I try my best to bring things in from the car in one trip, because I'm lazy to begin with but also, when I get home, usually the first thing I have to do is run to the loo. Somehow, struggling out of sandy wellies at the door with hands clawed around bags, shoulders draped in excess gear, seems to exert acute pressure on my bladder, obliterating the benefits of a lovely outing surer than gritty sand (oops)wiches at the beach. In hindsight, I now realize I could have just worn everything and jammed excess stuff into my pockets but I was too tired to think of that at the time. I'm afraid I can only expect more of the same at my new age: naps in parking lots, the need for spare arms and brain parts, pre-emptive visits to the loo.

I'm taking more short cuts when I can, too: for instance, I'm wondering if the new smoke alarm will work just as well if I don't actually wrestle it out of the welded plastic package and just leave it propped on a shelf someplace. Due to my decreased strength, I'm not sure I'll stick the self adhesive weather stripping on properly and I imagine it will end up dangling in the doorway like some newfangled fly trap. Larry's not the type to notice things like that, bless him. I've already figured out I'll need to use two hands to operate the scissor shaped wire cutters, not that I'm dealing with barbed wire fences around an old folks' funny farm. At least not yet. I bought them for the chicken wire I sometimes use in flower arrangements, unlikely but true story. I can barely lift the arranged vases onto the tall pedestals at church these days and wonder how much longer I'll be able to keep it up. When I noticed that the elderly Japanese lady giving the flower demonstration last week had her son and daughter plus three others helping out, I knew my flower power days were numbered.

When I first read about 15 years ago that old age wasn't for sissies, I hadn't thought it through carefully enough. I always thought it applied to everyone else. Like death. Somehow I'd have a free pass. I suppose it isn't too late to rebuild lost muscle but I'm not so sure about the brain part. Results on test games and exercises for the brain are inconclusive as they say. I hope I read and write well, but I did that in elementary school, so that's hardly a comfort. Does it count if you're still aware that you actually are breathing even if you are in fact slower and weaker?

I thought I was being pretty damned smart yesterday by avoiding a Denny's birthday freebie grand slam heart attack breakfast, before walking on a deserted beach out of cell phone range. In fact I forgot about it altogether and opted instead for seafood stew in a garlic broth, served by a waiter far easier on my old lady eye than Denny's in tennies. Oh, and I'm embarrassed to admit, that's another thing: I've started noticing the strong muscled bodies of younger men, something I never thought about before, honestly. But what earthly good is that to me these days? Is that just God's way of helping women forgive the roving eye of their menfolk? Well just shut up God.

So here's what I am looking forward to. The little luxuries I bought in the overpriced heavenly designed boutique are stocking stuffers for the team of lovely young women who assist my desperately adorable daughter as she staggers unpredictably through her day, trying to make sense of her body and mind's unreliable reactions (rather like myself). I'm planning a modest Christmas gathering for them, a thank you for the gift of peace of mind they give me and the fantasy of hope that when I'm gone, my son and one of them will eventually fall madly in love and they'll all live happily ever after. Now that's what I'd really like for all birthdays and Christmases from now until the date of my final departure. But that doesn't fit into a box any more than my dream house. So meanwhile, I'll have to settle for little gatherings and small celebrations for as long as I can, making them loving and beautiful and say thank you and I love you a million times. As my body seems to weaken and my logic becomes more eccentric, my heart seems to want to fatten up with gratitude and sentiment and I think I'll just let that happen.

Poor Dad is Dead

Just found out my father died seven months ago in London and his wife didn't bother to let us know. I know ! Horrible isn't it? I'm numb, which happens to me when I'm too angry to handle it all at once, or too anything really. Others are speaking for me though: whaaat? how could anyone be so cruel? I can't imagine where her mind must be to do such a thing? The focus mostly on the wicked step mother, which technically she is. Kinder people have suggested forgiveness for she knows not what she did, or excuses due to possible dementia or grief on her part.
I'm just trying to come to grips with the loss part. It's easy to get to the mad part, and I don't want to go the the sad place, but that's where I need to be.
But the tears flowed when someone asked me to describe one fond memory of him: he used to bring us breakfast in bed on a tray on Sundays around noon when my sister and I were teens and sleeping late. I wondered at the time why he did it because it was so unusual for him to do anything for anyone else. Another memory, affectionate and odd: when we went to lunch a few years ago and I ordered for us both, telling the waiter I'd have this and my father would have that. He got teary eyed, telling me that he was very touched by my telling the waiting that "my father will have..." somehow that phrase punctured whatever armour he wore around his heart.
My cousin "Egg" tells me that my father loved me very much, thought the world of me. She also knew him as self-centered, which he was and which I don't really want to probe, as it meant many painful experiences, not worth reviewing here.
So last night when I found out via a friends email, when she discovered the news via my father's neighbour, I sent emails to family, friends and acquaintances, for the sake of Old Lang Syne, and to know that there are people in the world who are not cruel, who don't wish me harm and who have responded to the news with sadness and shock and loving concern.

There are some events in life which one shouldn't suffer alone, births and deaths are two. I've been through both, alone and not alone. Alone was unspeakably painful. This time, the pain is speakable and I claim it for a wee while. Tears have flowed only when talking about the fond memories, and I'm glad for that. I don't want bitterness to creep in, and actually feel none.

Thanks Dad for your gifts of music, humour, wit, super sensitivity (not sure about this one) powers of observation, loving me the best you could, for finding a woman who loved you enough to take care of you at the end, doing grunt work I couldn't provide or share. May your spirit rise high and free. Thank you for getting a posthumous message through to me to google you and snap up the one available copy of your vinyl lp David Mack's New Directions for Jazz Orchestra. I sent you a cd of this with your birthday card this year for my friend Barbara to deliver by hand as you weren't receiving other gifts or mail since you became bedridden. I had suspicions that letters and gifts from America were being diverted somehow, but chose to blame the erratic postal service instead of anyone close to you, telling myself to be generous kind and loving in my thoughts and deeds. Well screw that idea for today at least.

I will regret forever that we did not have a proper goodbye. Thanks for the genes, good bad and ugly, thanks for all of it and blessings on your journey old man. I loved you dearly.

Crashing Bores

The social climbing couple who crashed the White House banquet for the Indian president last week accomplished their goal, no doubt, but oooh bad news for Michaele's stylist. Honey, the sari was draped BACKWARDS fergoodness gracious sake, and that's not all. I was relieved, frankly, to learn that her bill with her stylist has been unpaid for years because I wouldn't pay for that shaggy 'do either. Looked like it'd been styled by a shredder !! And did you notice in the CNN loop that when they were holding hands striding across the screen, she dragged her husband backwards in order to hold what she might have thought a coquette's pose, legs astride by the way (well she's a horsewoman, makes sense) while he just hung there limply at the end of her hand - and I'm not talking about their bedroom action here, how would I know, ahem - as the cameras clicked?
The stylist might also have pointed out to Ms. Crash that there's not much you can do about saggy upper arms when shaking hands with the Prez and Mrs. Prez except cover them decently WITH THE SHAWL END OF YOUR SARI DARLING assuming of course that you are actually willing to take an honest look in the mirror past your chin and realize age is revealed by other parts of your overexposed body. When I met the Prez ( at a book signing) I know for a fact that when we shook hands, other parts of me were moving in sync, but I had them encased in long garments to protect the sensibilities of all parties present.
I felt sorry for her actually, well him too. The only way they could improve their shoddy image would be if they offered to donate proceeds from selling their sari-ass story to charity, preferably one that performs plastic surgery to impoverished children who were born with defects or were accident victims, including war tragedies. If you're going to make a public nuisance of yourself, at least be a generous one, that's all I'm saying. Otherwise darlings, you're just boooring.

PS the good news is Mr and Mrs. Crashing Bores showed up the weaknesses in security in the Big House, very important that, so well done, I think.