How Terribly Strange...?

The "round toes" of my "high shoes"

Old friends... sat on their park bench like bookends

A newspaper blown through the grass... falls on the round toes... of the high shoes

Of the old friends....

Can you imagine us years from today? Sharing a park bench quietly....

How terribly strange to be seventy....

(from "Old Friends," by Paul Simon)

Paul Simon was twenty-six years old when his song, “Old Friends,” was released on the Bookends album. I was fourteen. I played that vinyl record (a gift from my junior high boyfriend, Doug Olson) over and over and over that year and the next. To Simon, at age twenty-six, the thought of being seventy years old must have been unfathomable, as it was for me. Paul Simon is eighty-three now… and still doing music.

I am seventy. And I have to say, it has not been “terribly strange” at all. In fact, being seventy has been a lot like being sixty-nine or sixty-eight. Am I a bit more wrinkly? Well, sure. Does it bother me? Not a wit. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, I hope that with each passing year, I am becoming more “real” (although, just to be culturally current, I would use the term “authentic”).

At fourteen, though, I could not envision myself at fifty, much less seventy. By the time my grandmother was in her fifties, although she still had her sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurdity of life, she was diabetic, wore dentures, and had trouble getting around. I was already clinically depressed at fourteen, and I could not imagine finding joy in a life such as hers. “No,” I thought. “Just no.”

At fourteen, my vision of what my future would hold was darker than I can describe with words… and I do know some words.

Turns out, in my fifties, I wasn’t like my grandmother at all (though I loved her dearly). At fifty-two, I moved to a cabin in the wilderness where in winter I regularly shoveled my truck out of several feet of snow in order to get to work, hiked almost daily, stacked cords of firewood, and befriended young bears, raccoons, and the little fox that wanted the other half of my burrito.

At seventy, I still have my own teeth, in case you’re wondering. And I’m still hiking, though not daily, just once or twice a week, as I no longer live in the mountains. I’m walking three miles a day, though, and managing to climb over downed trees or up over boulders when I do hike. And, like Paul Simon, I'm still playing my guitar and singing. Who knew seventy would be this much fun?

Honestly, I’m feeling pretty blessed after seventy turns around the sun.

That includes experiencing the miracles of Nature through 280 seasons.

And let's see, at an average of two cups a day, that’s approximately 38,690 cups of black tea I've enjoyed (given I began drinking the stuff at age eighteen). Ahhhhh… that morning comfort!

I’ve been owned by eleven cats (13 if you count childhood family cats).

Nineteen dogs have blessed my various homes. (Some were short timers, like my beloved June. All were adored.)

I’ve rescued and held a hummingbird twice.

I’ve rescued and held (with leather gloves) a baby opossum, returning it to its anxious mama.

I’ve felt the muzzle of a yearling bear as it snuffled my bare hand.

I’ve written and published eight books, and I’ve seen my byline in numerous national periodicals, including a published poem or two.

I literally laughed and sang my way through a career teaching teenagers what to love and what not to love about literature, as they taught me what music I should listen to and how to stay socially current.

I’ve lived to see all four of my children fledge, struggle, find their wings, and fly to responsible adulthood. (My biggest blessing to date.)

I’ve lived to see five of my six grandchildren do the same. (Jordan is still a teen.)

I’ve lived to hold two magnificent great-grandchildren in my arms.

So, I’m just saying, seventy does not seem strange at all. Seventy feels warm and comfortable, like flannel sheets in winter and a cup of hot chocolate with Irish cream and a good book.

Despite the current political climate (don’t get me started), seventy feels hopeful. Yes, it’s awful right now, but the young people coming up are brighter and cooler than ever, and as much as some might try to hide diversity from them, it’s right there in their social media feed, so yeah, they will be the champions of inclusion. Trust me. Just wait.

July 1 begins my birthday month. I’ll be seventy-one next week. Here’s my prediction, based on waking up above ground with open eyes and an open heart for the past 25,909 days: Seventy-one will feel a lot like seventy. Only just a bit more wrinkly.

Full Circle

For my 20^th birthday, my husband (oh my gosh, that was so, so long ago… when I had a husband) gave me, among other things, a huge wooden desk, circa the 1940’s, that he’d purchased at a used furniture store. My other gifts—purchased thoughtfully to celebrate and support the launch of my career as a writer—were a four-door file cabinet, a brass stamp holder (because back then, all my submissions went through postal mail; we didn’t have internet yet), a stapler and a box of staples. All of these items except the stamp holder, which was stolen when our house was fumigated, I still have—including the original box of staples (missing a hundred or so).

The desk, back then, was already old and worn, with multiple scratches and coffee rings marring the finish on the top. But it was big and solid and vintage, and I filled it with file folders, manila envelopes, pens, pencils and notepads. Oh, and plain white paper for my IBM Selectric typewriter. And then I started writing.

Just a few short years later, when I was 23, we needed a photo for the back cover of my first book, so my husband took this one:

There’s my typewriter and the stamp holder. A thick, kidney-shaped sheet of glass came with the desk to protect the top, and you can see it reflecting the light from the desk lamp. You can also see my leather-bound, Thompson Chain Reference Bible in the background. I wrote my first book at that desk, typing away between 4:00 and 6:00 in the morning, stopping when my son, who was an infant, woke. He’s 39 now.

I loved that life. My oldest daughter is a poet and a teacher now, with a son who is the same age I was when I began writing that first book. But back then, she was an adorable four-year-old with an incredible imagination and a mind that never slumbered. I would spend the first hours of the morning writing, then stop when my son woke, fixing breakfast for the kids and my irascible husband who would criticize the way I stirred his coffee or buttered his toast (made with the bread I baked myself every week). But then the hubby would shuffle off to work, and the kids and I would be left to have adventures and read books and sing and dance until lunch, after which they would nap and I would return to working on my book.

Happy, happy times. I wanted to live my life that way. Or, almost. While my husband had initially been supportive of everything I did, his criticism and disapproval eventually became toxic. Two more children would join our family before I finally decided I could no longer live with his negative energy or the verbal sparring that had become the daily norm for us. I left him, went back to college full time, then began teaching high school, then returned to college to get my master’s degree, then began more teaching as an adjunct professor at night. I still found time to write, but I had to fit it in the tiny cracks of space I found between child-rearing and working and taking care of the house and the yard and doing the shopping and so many other things. But I longed to return to the long slow days in which I immersed myself in my two greatest joys—my kids and my writing.

In June I retired after 27 years of teaching. In August, I bought a little house I want to live in for a long time, with lots of natural light and quiet mornings, much like I had when my kids were little. I decided to make the den my writing cave, so I put in a new floor and painted the walls a pale green, then set up all the comfortable, familiar writing tools—my good old desk, my file cabinet alongside it. The typewriter has been replaced by a laptop, and on the desktop now is a huge copy of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary and atop that, the Cambridge edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Two nights ago, I came into this room and sat down at this good old desk to spend an hour writing the previous blog post. Before I began, I stopped for a moment to thank the Universe that I have finally come full circle, with long days in which to write and care for my babies, although the “babies” now are two spoiled cats and one very quirky dog. When I looked up from my acknowledgement of blessings, my eyes fell upon that old picture of me sitting at this desk. I’d found it in a box during the move. Now it sits upon the desk, a reminder of how fleeting time truly is, how every moment we spend with our children is an investment in their future, no matter how small or idle the activity we’re engaged in. And it reminds me as well that yes, I can do this; I’m a writer. It’s time to get to it.

Heart-wrenching truth from a nonagenarian

(My mama... young and beautiful, circa 1938)

Full disclosure: For those of you who are not profound introverts, you may not realize that those of us who are need a minute after we leave a store such as Target or Trader Joe's to sit in the car and take a second for a long sigh of relief. (Yes, we are tense and somewhat anxious the entire time we're shopping—too many people, too much sensory overload. Oh, and don't even try to get me to set foot in a Costco.) So when I left TJ's on Thursday, I got in the truck, took a deep breath, started the engine, poked the button that gives me a local NPR station, put the truck in reverse—but didn't back out of the parking space. I took a moment to look around me, to make sure I wasn't about to mow anyone down in my distracted hurry to return to the safety of my home-sweet-home—and that's when I saw the elderly woman sitting in the passenger seat of the SUV parked next to me.

Her body language reminded me so much of my mother when she was in distress—head bowed over her chest, the fingers of one hand splayed across her forehead, as if the pain were mental as well as physical. It wasn't scorchingly hot on Thursday mid-morning, but temps were well into the 80's and rising quickly. With both windows down in the truck, I felt the heat, and I recalled the scene two years ago as I walked out of a pharmacy to find my truck surrounded by police cars and an ambulance. In the car parked next to mine, a man in his twenties had left his elderly grandmother sitting in the heat while he went off to shop. She'd fainted, and he'd called 9-1-1 when he couldn't rouse her. The gathering crowd was hostile when they realized, as the cops questioned him, what he'd done. And rightly so. This woman in the parking lot of Trader Joe's looked to be in distress. I couldn't leave.

Nor could I get out of the truck right away to check on her. Again, full disclosure: For an introvert, interaction with strangers is tremendously challenging (unless the person is in extreme and immediate danger, so yes, no worries, I would jump in the lake or whatever to rescue your loved one even if we'd never met and I would feel severely awkward for a long time afterward). From what I've observed, extroverts have no trouble whatsoever jumping into a conversation with someone they've never met before and asking direct and personal questions. Introverts not only lack this sort of valor, we generally spend a long time before we initiate conversation rehearsing what we're going to say. ("Excuse me... Are you okay?" Is that direct enough? "Excuse me... I don't mean to bother you. But it's a bit warm to be sitting in the car. Are you alright? Is someone coming back for you soon?" Okay, that's too verbose—she could faint by the time I got to the end of my speech.)

See what I mean?

I put the truck in Park, turned off the engine, and sat for a few minutes, willing someone to emerge from Von's or TJ's or wherever, offer profuse apologies to the woman in the car, then leave. Only then would I be able to get the hell home and on with my life. Because I couldn't leave her there, sitting in the heat. But no such relief occurred. We sat, the woman in her car, who occasionally looked up hopefully at the sound of an approaching shopping cart, only to be disappointed, and me in my truck, conflicted about whether I should intervene and angry at myself for being conflicted.

When I couldn't take it anymore, I opened my door and got out.

"Excuse me... " (I had decided to go with the simplest approach) "are you okay?"

The woman's face, dappled with age spots, opened in an enormous smile. "Oh, I'm fine!" she answered, chuckling, adding as a qualifier, "Well, I'm ninety-six." She paused. "Going on a hundred!" She laughed gleefully. Brown hair framed her face. Her short bangs were carefully curled under. I couldn't help thinking of how fastidious my mother had been about her appearance until the day she died.

"Are you sure it's not too hot in the car?" I bravely and directly asked, proud of myself all over the place for breaching the scary wall to make the inquiry. Now that I saw her smile, she was no longer a stranger.

"Oh, no, I'm fine," she said again. "I have a hurt hand." I saw now that she had her right hand resting on a pillow. "My daughter just took me to the dentist." She made the face a child would make about the same experience. "She just ran in to get some things. She'll be right out. She takes good care of me."

Some positive affirmation escaped my lips here. I don't remember what it was. The woman went on talking. Again, I was reminded of my own mom.

"Don't get old." She laughed again. "You know, when your hands don't work, you can't pull your pants up. You can't fasten your brassiere." She held up swollen, arthritic hands. I started to mumble something regarding how much I worry about my own hands, which have already begun to ache and swell, but she continued.

"Stay young and beautiful."

"Well, you look lovely," I told her, omitting the word "still" that makes me cringe every time a younger person uses it in reference to an older person.

"Oh," she said, "well, I still color my hair!" She laughed and nodded toward my silver threads of wisdom. I laughed too, then, and suggested perhaps I might have better luck finding a man if I started coloring mine again.

We talked like old friends after that, about the early onset of gray hair, about finding a good man. We discovered we both have four children, two boys and two girls. She said that all of her children are "wonderful," and I said the same about mine. Her husband died twelve years ago. "I don't know what I'd do without my children," she sighed. "I don't know what I'd do without mine," I said.

We continued to chat about our kids (a brag fest, for sure), and eventually she looked at me and said again, "Well, stay young and beautiful... if you want to be loved." That is what My Daughter the Poet would call a "gut punch." Whew. It nearly winded me with its truth.

I do want to be loved. And so do you.

But I'm just going to conclude this narrative without further comment on that.

I never asked her name. I should have asked her name. An extrovert—bold and young and beautiful—would have asked her name. I just wanted to make sure she wasn't overheating in the car. But I felt like I made a friend, a very wise and sweet friend.

I wished her well and thanked her (yes, I thanked her) for chatting with me. She waved and smiled as I started the truck. Then she turned her head to look hopefully again for the daughter who still hadn't returned.

A Glimpse of the Future

On several early mornings now, while driving Thomas at a snail’s pace up to the bike trail for our long morning walk, I have passed a very old man walking along the sidewalk on 7^th Street. In his gnarled left hand, he holds the leash of a medium-sized dog, perhaps a terrier and cattle dog mix. The fingers of his right hand curl around the handle of a doll stroller, and he pushes it before them as he and the dog walk ever so slowly down the street.

Though I’ve seen them several times now, I haven’t been able to determine what’s in the doll stroller, but it looks like a small cooler, the type one would use to carry a bottle of water and perhaps a sandwich. Or possibly, if one had a worrisome wife or husband at home, extra medication… and contact information. I can only conjecture.

The dog is not an old dog. It is not stiff or plodding in its gait. It’s blocky, cattle dog head is held high, pointy ears straight up at attention. Its eyes are bright and clear as it surveys the landscape around them. One would think that such a dog would long to trot forward, sniff the grass, examine the shrubs along their route, and pee copiously. This dog does not. It matches its pace to the slow, methodical pace of the very old man as it marches majestically beside him.

My friends and I (those of us who love our dogs as if they are our children) wonder, “How will I walk my dogs when I am very old?” Let’s remember the doll stroller, shall we? If nothing else, it will offer something solid to lean on as we make our way down the road.