Finally!

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth since I wrote my last blog.  I just have been dropping into bed every night, exhausted.  Well, maybe I exaggerate a little, but it has certainly felt that way.  In the intervening two months, we learned about, went through and recovered from my husband's spinal surgery.  I use the pronoun "we"  quite deliberately, because although he was the one under the knife, he was the one at risk and it was he, who spent six weeks in a space-age collar that totally restrained his neck movements; it was I who worried and hovered around him to keep him from falling before the surgery, I (and our daughters) who paced and worried during the surgery and I, who packed almost our entire household after the surgery (since he could not lift anything over a gallon of milk).

He was not idle, while confined to his alien neck brace, as I did most of the manual labor.  He made lists, contacted people, labeled everything that didn't move, grumbled about the collar, and accepted me yelling at him every time he absentmindedly tried to lift something he shouldn't.

Physical fatigue was not our only experience; no, not be a long shot.  We also manged to overtax our somewhat less responsive brains (than compared with years past).  We planned for essentially, four separate vacations around the world, even though they are really one continuous but, quite elongated event; negotiated the leasing of our house; down sized our belongings; and generally changed our entire way of life.  

Now, finally, the summer is over, his neck is recovered and the collar is in the trash, the house is leased, our belongings are stored and it is our last night in the home we have so loved.  The quiet of our county surroundings is sending us a loud message about how we will miss this reticent retreat, our safe harbour from the chaos of the world.  The peeper frogs and the crickets are chanting their goodbyes and asking us why we are going.  Something we have been asking ourselves this entire summer.  Yet, despite our many trials and worries getting to today, we know that to be retired, physical ailments not withstanding, we still need to grow. We need to dare.  We need to create our own adventures. Finally, all the pieces have been put together and we are about to go off and learn how to be old people.

Sweet Fourth of July

We had a sweet, but quiet (we have no grandchildren) Fourth of July yesterday. Our daughter and her boyfriend came for a BBQ. The food was good, the weather warm, the conversation lively and when we tired of this combo, the air conditioner refreshed and the TV entertained. 


 When I was a child in the 1950's Fourth of July meant potato salad, fried chicken, deviled eggs, peach cobbler and home made ice cream. We were often at my uncles' farm in central Pennsylvania. The picnic lunch came first, at Whipples Dam. It was a place, like so many others that the men of the WPA developed during the Great Depression, where extended families gathered to enjoy the out-of-doors and each other. To me, it was my special happy place. I was happy because all my family seemed happy. All the adults forgot their worries, they were more lenient with their children, and that was saying something for dyed-in-the wool, old school Presbyterians, and the weather always cooperated, even if it rained. 


 In the late afternoon, after stuffing ourselves at the picnic, we would go to the street fair that was held in the middle of town. Closures at each end of the street allowed free access to what was probably only a mediocre traveling carnival with a lighted Ferris Wheel. But to me, Disneyland never fascinated more. Cotton candied to death, and pockets jingling with coins, I wandered up and down the isles thrilling at each sight, sound and smell.  A few hours of time elongated into endless time as I experienced freedom in where I would go, what I would look at, and what I would spend my coins on. Funny, though, I kept crossing paths with my parents. When dusk came, the magic really blossomed. The carnival lights twinkled Christmas tree colors and the temperature softened to short-sleeve warm. By this time Mom and Dad were always in eyesight.  


Lastly, when darkness completely spread across the sky, the clan gathered at Baily's Field. Blankets and lawn chairs covered the grass and I laid on my back to watch the fireworks. Lazer light shows have nothing on the spectacle of sky glitter falling towards me. It seems now that the Fourth of July was a holiday created just to entertain and thrill me. 


Yet, the memorable and wonderful Fourth of July holidays of my youth compare equally sweet with the gentle Fourth of last week. I thrilled from the time spent with our daughter, watching her enjoy the company of her boyfriend, listening to my husband tell the same old stories, the political conversations I had with a new, but captured audience, cooking new recipes and feeling confident that the happiness of the Fourth of July holiday truly continues to be especially for me.

Memorials

We visited the World Trade Center Memorial last week.  Seeing it, in a state of partial completion and in the midst of new construction, the magnitude of the original devastation is hard to imagine.  First, we not having seen the actual devastation, and despite having seen it on the news, on TV specials and spread across the cover of every magazine published, it is still incredibly hard to actually feel and experience what that carnage must have been like.  Second, it is even harder now to imagine what the scene was like given the fact that the memorial is such a serene sight, full of evenly shaped trees, subdued gray stone and soothing water falls.  How could anything this peaceful have ever been the sight of the worst single terrorist event in US history?

As is true for most everyone alive at the time, we will not forget where we were and what we were doing, when first we heard the news.  However, as horrific as this event was, it brings to mind three other major events and some other, just slightly less notable, events that are burned into my mental landscape: my full realization of the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  As I write this, I am inclined to think that the entire year of 1968 (the year I graduated from high school) with the RFK and MLK assassinations, and the city riots goes down as one of the worst years in my and the US's life time. And oh yes, later there was the Watergate scandal and the day the only president in American history resigned.

Looking back, it seems there were so many events in my brief six decades of life, and I would be quite happy if there were no more such events for the rest of my stay on this planet.  But were these really a lot of events, or is this just everyday history?  Is this the way of the world?  Time filled with events that illustrate the human struggle. Or, can it be that certain segments of history are filled with more turmoil, more violet activity and more events that are beyond the sensibilities of us humans?


I am always impressed with the memorials to past events, and I am moved by the swirly and intense emotion captured and displayed in rigid stone or burnt bronze.  It is amazing how the static can convey the dynamic.  It is important to remember these events, and honor those who were trapped inside a tornado of human strife.  However, beyond the purpose of remembering, beyond the purpose of honoring, there lies a more critical message,  the message of "learn from mistakes".  Every memorial should have a way of causing us, the viewers, the rememberers, to ask, "what could have been done differently, what interventions could have helped, what actions could have been taken" to prevent such anguish.


We need memorials, many more memorials,  but not just to the tragic, but also to the good, the wise, the kind.  Where are the memorials for the social workers who spend their life times helping to find homes for abandoned and heart broken children?  Where are the plaques for teachers who wade through daily bureaucracy daily just to make a connection with a student and inspire learning?  Where are the statues to ER nurses who work double shifts and always have a kind word and a gentle hand, not just for the adorable helpless children, but also for the falling down drunks who they see over and over?  Where are the parks dedicated to the ordinary individuals who spend their lives facing their own daily dilemmas while constantly finding kinds words to give or offer sweet gestures of support?


Yes, the WTC Memorial is marvelous and the new trade tower and other buildings will be magnificent to behold. But, we need to remember and honor the kind, the caring, and the diligent.  If not for them, then for ourselves, so that we might be inspired to be better human beings and eliminate the need for places like the WTC Memorial.

Beginners and the Interruption

Recently, I watched a movie titled "Beginners" with Ian McGreggor and Christopher Plummer.  I don't want to give the plot away, but suffice to say that it was about people who didn't give up on beginning new things.

Retirement is making "Beginners" out of us.  Work,  - it has always been ahead of us.  Now, by choice, it is behind us, at least the kind of work that is required to make a living.  If and when we work again, it will be as an avocation, letting us do something that is within us to give.  Maybe for money, maybe not.   


Right now though, we want to be traveling beginners,  seeing some of the world that we have only seen in movies, TV, and books.  It's more than sights and sounds that draws us to traveling.  It is the idea of speaking another language, of watching the world as presented by  non-Americans, to see family customs that mean just as much to others as our customs mean  to us, and to talk with people about how they see us, which pulls us beyond the borders of our very circumscribed lives.


I wanted to write more about our proposed travels, but life and age just got in the way, hopefully, temporarily.  Before I could finish this post, we had news that my husband is going to need surgery for Spinal Stenosis.  The cervical bones in his neck have significant degeneration,  resulting from nothing but ageing.  I could go into a lot of detail about the condition, because heaven knows, we have been bombarded with a ton of information in the last two days.  But right now, that is not the point I want to make.  


Here's the point.  Honestly, can you think of any more inane reason for surgery than the mere passage of time.  Yes, we all get older and medical science says that once you stop growing, around 18 years of age, you are actually beginning the dying process.  But, I am asking, why?  Why should the ticking of a clock, the rotating of the earth, and the orbiting around the sun be the sole reason your bones wear out?  Who came up with that design trait, anyway?  


Neither my husband, nor I want to be young again.  Been there, done that, and have several ridiculous T-shirts to prove it.  But, we do want to live as we are, having only trauma or disease as factors for enduring surgery and the requisite recovery process.  Alas, it is not to be.  We have no control over the passage of time.  We have no power over the clock in our DNA.  And, we certainly have no revolutionary, recently revised, completely affordable wonder pills that will stop the forward motion of time, mass media advertising, not withstanding.


So, at this moment, we are beginners for a very different reason.  We are beginners at having to face the reality of how aging not only changes you physically, but interrupts your plans.  Nonetheless, we will for sure, get back to being traveling beginners, as soon as possible.  Because, what we are not beginners at, is being able to get back on track when faced with a temporary detour.  Ironically, this is trait that was mostly developed over time as we aged. 

The Ride

I am watching my husband through the window.  He is lovingly preparing his dual sport motorcycle  for review tomorrow by a perspective buyer.  You may think from reading the previous sentence that I have a dedicated "harley-chopper" fanatic, a dyed-in-the-wool biker who would rather cruise the high- and by- ways of the American road than just about anything else.  Well, you'd be wrong.  


My husband bought the motorcycle at age 55, . . . as a tether, a tether to a mental age that represented to him the precise moment between youth and old age.  Yes, he liked the freedom feel of an open air ride.  But more than the frenetic physical sensation, he liked the freedom feel of being just the right age; mature enough to know how to be responsible, and young enough to enjoy the pure pleasure of it.


Not being a real biker, he used the bike only occasionally.  Yet, no matter how much or how little he rode, he came home rejuvenated.  He wore a smile of silent appreciation of himself.  It was an aspect of his life that he didn't have to share with me, and that was a good thing, because motorcycles terrify me.  He'd rip and rumble his way into his own world, full of thoughts, sights and sounds that were his, exclusively.


Now, at age sixty-two, he is selling it.  The practical reason is that we will be traveling for about a year and a half, and the bike would just sit.  But, the more important reason is that he is moving on.  He is looking, albeit reluctantly, to new ways of seeking excitement, of finding pleasure and thrills .  He's going to do it, we are going to do it, by being out in the world, in new places with new people. 


Still, he will miss his motorcycle. He will miss the ride that let him glide through the perfect age.

Waiting . . . .

My husband and I, through circumstances not of our choosing, have approached retirement differently.  He has eased into it over the last two years, by working progressively less and less, until he is now officially retired, and only works part time at about two days per week or less, just to keep busy and to bring in a little extra income.  I, on the other hand, am still working full time.  I now only have about six working days left, which should make me euphoric....  It's not. ... I am somehow suspended in this never-never land of not really working, meaning not moving forward in the tasks of my job.  I am only working on ending or suspending my tasks until my replacement takes over.  Unfortunately, I am also not moving on, meaning I'm not getting on with retiring.


Six days is just a shamefully short period of time,  and I should not even be writing about the agony of waiting, let alone actually feeling it.   But, ...   


This dilemma of time and whatever it is I am feeling, brings me back to quantum physics.  Apparently, time and space must blend and change speeds together in order to keep the speed of light constant, or I guess, the universe(s) would just cease to exist. (Truth be told, physicist don't have a clue what would happen.)  Nonetheless, it seems that in my little corner of the universe, time and space have blended together (or more accurately, conspired) to have me experience each day and the space of my office, at an ever agonizingly slower pace. And, I suspect that on the last day of work, I will be trapped in a quantum time flux of a constantly repeating  twenty-four hours.  I suddenly have a whole new appreciation of poor Bill Murray's character in Ground Hog Day.


So, here I am waiting.....   Waiting for movement,  waiting for change, waiting for finality, waiting for time and space to get off the stick, already, and get me retired !!!!

Magic

Magic exists at all ages.  As a child, your life is filled with magic.  You can be a beautiful princess in the morning and a special nurse that saves all the hospital patients in the afternoon.  When you are a teen, magic is a bit more tricky to come by.  But occasionally, your gangling armed, slightly rough buzzed hair cut, can't find his way out of paper bag, date is magically transformed into the most sophisticated and handsome man about town.  As an adult, magic seems to appear when you least expect it and most need it.  My magic usually manifested itself when I was able to lay my hands on a report that everyone was telling me didn't exist and if it did exist, it would just show me exactly what they already knew, but actually (magically) did exist and supported what I had been saying for a week. Sometimes, the magic hid in my closets, where I was able to lay my hands on precisely what I needed to help one of my daughters complete a project that was assigned two weeks before and she just remembered it was due the next day.

Now, in my 60's, I have found a totally new magic.  This magic is based in reality, the rarest of all magics.  It is the magic of a memory, triggered by a sound, a sight or a smell.  This magic instantly transports me through time and space and I am bombarded with images flashing on the I-Max theater screen in my brain, complete with Surround Sound. One whiff of a lilac bush and I am standing on my grandmother's back porch, with the sun flickering in my eyes, the summer breeze tickling my bangs and the smell of grass, old wood and . . .  lilacs, luscious lilacs, filling my nostrils.  I am able to relive, with just as much enthusiasm as I had when I was six, a  sense that it was, and is right to be alive and happy.

Not all magic is happy magic, but all magic is right magic.  Sometimes, a turn of a phrase or reference to a family event reminds me of those who have disappeared into the magic of death.  But, even this magic is O.K. This magic gives me strength, it shows me that I can endure, it reassures me the world just keeps spinning.  As I  go on in this adventure of aging, of exploring the world, of meeting new people, of trying different ways of living, I will rely on magic, all kinds of magic.

RR