Monday’s Wandering Thoughts
Dad’s 92nd birthday is Wednesday. Mom’s birthday is tomorrow. I’ll be calling her tomorrow, so I called Dad today, as I’ll be pretty busy Wed. with planned surgery.
Dad and I had one of the best chats I recall having with him. We chatted about aging, financing, and Mom. Very satisfying.
Dad has always been a level guy, staying mellow, keeping things in the moment. He’s never gotten too worked up over any of life’s tumbles and twists. And he’s been through his share.
He’s in okay health. Had some stents put into his coronary arteries some years ago. Suffers some COPD. Went through some edema issues twice. Now he’s on a low sodium diet. A cane is employed to walk around. He sometimes needs a walker.
But we laughed a lot about these things which happen to us as we get older.
Something Else
The signs of aging pile up,
Promising on some days to beat you up.
Hair losses, hair changes, where the hell does it go?
Why can’t I get it to look right, why won’t it look just so?
Sometimes you ponder the person you had been.
You think you see them staring back, hiding from within.
Other times you wonder, if you ever were that way?
And if you were, what can you do to look that way again?
The weight you gain, how the body thickens,
Everything sinks and sags and generally looks in ways that sicken.
Then someone tells you how great you look,
and you wonder, is that a joke?
If you think I look good today, you want to say,
you should have seen me back in the day.
I was something else.
Today’s Wandering Thoughts
I found myself thinking about my parents as I dressed this morning. One is from Iowa and resides in Pennsylvania. The other is from Pennsylvania and lives in Texas. They divorced way back in the mid 1960s. Were friends or friendly off and on. Now Mom is bitter and angry about Dad; Dad is reflective about Mom.
I left their homes when I was 17. I’ve visited both as they moved around, remarried, and raised other families. As they’ve aged, Dad tells me he’d like to be closer to me. Mom tells me she’d like to hear from me more often because she worries about me.
But a large elephant marches through their desires. I’ve been married 49 years. Mom visited me once, when I bought her an airline ticket and forced it to happen. Dad visited me once in my first year of marriage, dropping by with my father-in-law for thirty minutes while they happened to be in the area. It just didn’t seem like they were deeply invested in being part of my life.
I don’t feel abandoned by them. Dad admits he wasn’t a good father and wasn’t there. Mom insists she was there as much as she could be. I do see their sides but I’m indifferent to Dad’s efforts for us to be closer or to Mom’s request for me to alleviate worries. I could employ simple sophistry and claim, they made me who I am, but really, I head little from them across my decades of living. Sure, they always sent birthday and holiday cards, but mostly there were months of silence. Yes, I know they each raised other children and went on through a few more marriages.
I get all of that. My feelings about them slice along a spectrum. I love them as they love me, from a distance. I know they made sacrifices on my behalf to ensure I had food and shelter security and a place to call home. But at an early age, as I watched their fights and listened to their arguments, I made a decision to be independent of them. Sure, there are days when I surf the spectrum of our relationships when I want to help them out of guilt or empathy. They become less as I move through my life, age, and deal with my own issues.
My parents both have been supportive in many ways. They tell me they’re proud of me. My wife points out that it all would’ve probably been different if she and I had children.
But we didn’t, and this is where my parents and I stand, like many other parents and their offspring, at a complex crossroads which we never leave.
Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts
It’s a recurring theme for me. I see old people and wonder what they were like when they were young, and I look at young people and wonder, what will they be like when they’re old.
Like her, in the floppy sun hat, green pants, and multiple pastels scarves, short grey blonde hair and wire-rimmed round gold glasses. When did she become that person?
Or take her for example, the blonde early tweener with blue hair and fringe bangs, dressed all in black, with a long-sleeved shirt and tight shorts, white crew socks, and white canvas shoes. She’s a gregarious presence in her small knot of companions. What will she be like in the future?
Weird thing: thirty-five customers by my count in the coffee shop. Four of us are male. Two of the men are working on computers. It looks like the women are all socializing.
Contemplating the dynamics and speculating about people is an attractive way of engaging my mind as I sip coffee and the muse comes to write.
Saturday’s Theme Music
Mood: reflectiveday
Saturday came in. September 14, 2024.
He seemed like he was aged. Not much energy. I offered coffee. He gave a head shake. I took that as no. That’s my culture.
He sat, cold and broody, high thin clouds on a blue day, a sun sluggish with its heat, tired with its shine. Seemed to be studying the trees. The old oak across the street sways high above power and phone lines. It’s an old neighborhood in parts, and that’s how it used to be, black telephone and power lines hanging between poles, home to birds and dangling shoes. The oaks leaves are green but their shade seem to be yielding into the yellow that takes them every year. Saturday seems like he’s considering it like a mystery: when will those leaves change?
It’s 59 F now. Saturday plans to get up to the high seventies, that is, if he can get up. Weight is holding him back. He’s had it a long time but it still surprises his muscles. A car goes up the hill outside the window and another goes down, causing him to look, like they might be guests coming to see him. Everyone sees Saturday and no one sees him. He’s invisible and there, forgotten, overlooked, used.
He pulls out a newspaper from the air, opening up the big, thin pages, humming as he reads. I smell the ink but can’t see the black headlines. The Neurons begin humming with Saturday. Working overtime, I finally pluck the song’s words out of the mind’s grey folds, putting enough together to get a sense of the melody. Performers arrive late to the scene: Bon Jovi. “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” plays in the morning mental music stream (Trademark cracked). A 1995 song that begins with a depressing litany but then rises up with defiance and optimism.
Now, as then, when I heard the song back in the day, I think of the stereotypes attached to it, like the idea that Saturday night is a good time. How that is embedded in our culture. How far back does that go?
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has been brewed and calls. Here’s the music. Have a good Saturday. Cheers
Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts
‘Five minutes’ has changed for my wife and I as we age. It used to be that we’d say, “I’ll be ready in five minutes,” and five minutes later, it was so.
No longer. First, time is faster for us now that we’re older. Happens to most people as they age. What used to take place in five minutes now consumes fifteen minutes. It’s freakin’ amazing. I’ve seen it happen with my mother. She used to say, “I’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes.” That fifteen minutes is now a lot longer.
We face it, too, that, like Mom, we no longer move with young eagerness. We move slower and more carefully. A more leisurely path is followed to dress and prepare to go out. Because we’re at the point in life where we don’t feel a need to hurry, and our bodies agree, slow down, take your time. So, if we tell you that we’ll be ready in about five minutes, have a seat.
It might be a little longer.
Friday’s Wandering Thoughts
I feel terrific. Yes, I have a mild, unproductive, intermittent cough. My eyes feel little hot. I’m dealing with some congestion. My right foot is swollen. So is my left, but that’s just edema I must deal with. My right ankle is sore and suspect, but I’m adjusting to life like that. Ditto with my bloated feeling.
No, the problem today is that I feel terrific. I have high energy levels. I’m optimistic. So, I want to know from my body, from my physical being, What are you up to? Why do I feel this way.
See, I just don’t trust my body any longer. It gives up on unusual things at surprising moments, like putting on underwear. So when it feels ‘good’ and I’m upbeat, I want to know, What’s going on?
My body is up to something. Setting me up to be less alert so it can take me down.
Because that’s the way my body is these days.
Friday’s Theme Music
Mood: superfrifeelife
The pendulum is swinging. It’s Friday, August 30, 2024, and the hours of daylight have noticeably reduced. It’s an advantage at sun soars through blue cloudless skies, working with the air to lift the temperature next to triple digits during the day, like 97 F today. But then the clear skies and longer night lets the temps skivvy down to the upper fifties, delivering relief. Slips of autumn have climbed back into my life. Some maples have shifted into fall fashions. Starbucks is offering fall drinks. School is back is session at every level locally. And football is again rolling across TV screens, carrying news through feeds.
But first: we must get through Labor Day. In the U.S., we have the bookend holidays of Memorial Day and Labor Day. To many, MD marks summer’s unofficial beginning, and LD is the unofficial end.
I read several news articles in depth this morning. One was about how Republicans have softened their climate change stance. They rarely outright deny it these days. I guess that with so much extreme weather killing and maiming our world, they recognize that they look and sound like fools when they do. Instead, they like to problemtize the solutions which Democrats — and much of the world — recommends. Like moving to more sustainable forms such as wind and solar. No, these caus more problems, they inform their constituents, even as they lie about what’s happening.
Last day of my theme of time in the song’s title. As many of age and are forced to cope with changes, we lament the same thing. The Neurons brought the song that asks the question into the morning mental music stream (Trademark timed): “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?” It originally popped onto the rock music scene in the hands of the Kinks in 1965. It’s since been covered by a chunk of performers, most notably Bowie and Van Halen. But I stayed with the Kinks for this day. Ray Davies of the Kinks wrote it and said in an interview:
“We’d been rehearsing ‘Where Have All the Good Times Gone’ and our tour manager at the time, who was a lot older than us, said, ‘That’s a song a 40-year-old would write. I don’t know where you get that from.’ But I was taking inspiration from older people around me. I’d been watching them in the pubs, talking about taxes and job opportunities.”
h/t to Wikipedia.org
I certainly feel the question more now as a young elder (68) than I did when I was ten, at the song’s release.
But let’s face it, things are so much easier today. Let it be like yesterday. Please let me have happy days.
Coffee has been extensively sampled. Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and Vote Blue. Here’s the music, and away we go. Cheers
Today’s Wandering Thoughts
I‘m suffering from usedtoitis today. You may have experienced usedtoitis at some time in your own life. It’s when you start thinking about how it used to be for you and how matters have changed.
Mine is a minor flare up. My wife’s comments to her friend as I was sitting there triggered it. My wife said, “Oh, Michael used to have such pretty curly hair,” and, “Michael used to have such gorgeous sexy legs,” and, “Michael used to be so muscular and skinny.”
Sure, the Positive Neurons chide me, “Hey, at least you were like that once and there was a person who appreciated it.”
The Curmudgeon Neurons reply, “Screw you.”
It ain’t easy going through the aging changes.
Michael Seidel, writer 