Category Archives: Aging

New Year’s Resolutions

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I am feeling pressure to make New Year’s resolutions.

In order to meet with social approval, they must be lofty, require some form of ascetism (as in, give up chocolate), be kumbaya in nature (donate more time and money) and not be too challenging to those in ear shot.

But I am not so generous, socially conscious or loving.  I am in my ME moment.

So here are my unsociable New Year’s resolutions:

  1. I will make sure every sweating person at the gym wipes off the machine after use or I will call out that person.
  2. I will eat chocolate once a day — and not that healthy dark chocolate stuff, but the milk chocolate with some hazelnut goo inside.
  3. I will spend money on “glam” things — going gray naturally requires more accessories than one might think.
  4. If you ask my opinion, I will give it to you.  So, chances are, if you are asking my opinion, I am going to tell you not to do what you want to do.
  5. If you look like hell, I will tell you.  Even if you don’t ask.  Let’s call that “my idiosyncratic charm”.
  6. I will try to do a head stand.  No world peace.  Just something manageable with six spotters and a personal trainer.
  7. I will drive into the countryside to reaffirm my disdain for bugs and other things “natural”.  I will come home to NYC and kiss the dirty pavement.
  8. I will love my family — the ganza mishpocheh — and friends more and deeper than last year.
  9. I will do something totally cool and groovy.  (Stay tuned.)

Happy New Year everyone.  Be careful what you say to me or ask me in 2011.

~ Blogger

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Rule No. 1: Don’t check me out if you are receiving social security benefits

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I have been wallowing in old and recent pictures of the family.  You know, the end-of-year auld lang syne thing, except without the drunken protestations of undying friendship.

Jews, as a rule, are not innately happy, because if you are happy, then the Evil Eye will visit some horribleness upon you and your loved ones.  Preventing the Evil Eye from coming is hard work when you’re up against all the Yuletide cheer.  It requires devotion to cynicism (which is extremely difficult this time of year — as you may remember, even Ebeneezer Scrooge gave in to the Yuletide cheer), remembering every lost loved one, predicting doom and gloom in the New Year, and staying up nights thinking up disaster plans if your family is suddenly homeless.

While I was protecting my family and the world from imminent disaster (say Keynahora — don’t ask why, just say it) by tearing up while looking through photos of my mother of blessed memory (don’t worry, no bringing in the Joni here), I noticed in the pictures that over time, the muscle tone in my arms went from “awesome” to — er — “pretty good for middle-age”.  I decided that I needed to return to arms — not to “awesome”  but — to “omigod, your arms don’t look like they belong on a middle-aged woman!”   I determined that if I said “keynahora”, the incantation said by my grandmother right after she kissed the mezuzah and put money in the pushke (box for charity) enough times, no harm would come to my family if I indulged in a little narcissism.

Turns out I didn’t need to say “keynahora”, kiss anything or anyone because the Evil Eye got the last laugh.

Background:  I have silvery hair, and have taken to “glamming out” a little (earrings, lipstick, scarves, jewelry) to balance the harshness of “going gray”.

TWICE tonight at the gym, men who are easily 20-25 years older than me were checking me out.  I noticed they tried to meet my gaze and I looked back to see if they needed something.  Seeing that they were holding my gaze, I turned around to see if there was someone else intended for the gaze.  Just my reflection.  Uh oh, I think.  I am gray but I could be your daughter.  Eeeeeewwwwww.  Besides, you are at the gym either because you were too speculative in the last years and need to continue to work (greed is a boomerang) or you are just here to check out the women (shame on you because, statistically speaking, you have a wife at home with sagging arms).  In either case, I don’t date MEN — and therefore men on social security — and I am married (as much as one can be in New York) to woman with whom I have a family.  And does Medicare pay for that Viagra?

The other thing I noticed is that all young women (gay or straight) have tattoos just above the cracks of their tushies, and they make sure those tattoos are visible to all by wearing revealing gym wear.  (I can look.)  You can tell the non-straight girls because they are doing military pull ups and the really hard kind of push-ups.  And some don’t even have that ooky muscled-up with no breasts look.  But I digress.

The harsh truth that hit me is no girl was even glancing in my direction.  So, what I am saying is that women may gender-bend, but they don’t generation-bend, although I look fabulous for 50 (I am 46-almost 47).

So, I didn’t need protection from the Evil Eye.  I need protection from REALITY.

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Bringing in the Joni [Mitchell]

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It is that time of year again, when the days get darker and the weather colder.  And the despair.  Same despair as every year since 2002 when Mom started down that slippery slope to the end of her life.  The dark days, my sister and I call them.

Dear Mom:

We moved eight times ’round the seasons since you died.  We have rode those stupid, stinking, painted ponies eight times ’round the carousel of time.  And still, tears well up in both your daughters’ eyes just thinking about the fact that you are gone.

We have a lovely party for Dad’s 90th birthday.  We tried to keep the photo montage balanced so it wouldn’t be a shrine to you.  Your eldest (SOB, to my blogging friends) was strong and held me back.  We had to remember (ok, I had to remember) that we needed to be all about Dad that day, even though somehow being all about Dad means being all about you, too.

SOB tries to think that these past years allowed us to get to know Dad and allowed him to shine.  That is true. He is a wonderful, kind and generous man.  (Ok, generous in spirit, and in his gifts to his family, but on a day-to-day basis, a person needs a crowbar to open up his wallet.)  And don’t let those years of his croaking out notes on the saxophone fool you, he is a maestro when it comes to pushing our buttons in a tour de force — a veritable Liberace, but without the candelabra, crazy outfits or the ookiness.  But, he is aging more quickly these days.  And he will forever be lost without you.  As are we all to some extent.

Your grandchildren are fabulous young men.  BOB’s (brother of blogger’s) elder son asked us recently, “what do you remember most about Mamaw?”  I could see SOB’s eyes welling up.  Mine were, too.  I think we were caught off-guard by the question.  We were sitting at the dining room table — your table — and we were so awed by our nephew’s desire to know more about his grandmother.  Sometimes my son asks, “what would grandma say?” in a given situation.  I do my best imitation although I am scared that I can’t summon up your voice as well any more.

We’ve lost a fair amount of family since we lost you — Ricky, Uncle Billy, POB’s (partner of blogger’s) mom, Rudy and Yvette, among others.  Rudy and Yvette needed me and I hope I made you proud by my actions.  We have had some notable additions.  SOB now has HOSOB (husband of SOB) who is fabulous and loves the family (who could have imagined?).  He made latkes for Hanukah.   I think he thinks that there is a special “conversion by cooking” clause in Judaism.  I keep telling him he has to dunk in the dirty water in the mikvah.  He is already practicing his aliyah for SOPOBAB’s (son of POB and blogger’s) Bar Mitzvah.  You would adore him.  He makes SOB laugh and smile in a way that makes me wish you could just come back — for just a moment — and see the smile on her face and the look in her eyes and know that SOB is happy and in love.

Also Cousin Gentle has joined our nuclear family pod.  It is so good to have the New York City contingent around our table on a Sunday night, eating, laughing, reminiscing and creating new memories.  You should have seen all the boys (and I am including Dad and POB’s father) around the train set that SOPOBAB got as a present.  Some moments are priceless and you want to freeze them in time.

Maybe there is a Heaven and you are there and see everything.  I know you never believed in it (“when you’re dead, you’re dead” you often said), but I cannot accept that there is a black hole in the world where your heart and soul once were.  You cannot have dissipated into the air.

Sometimes, your death gives me strength.  If I could get through that, I could get through almost anything that happens in a given day.  The economy has been hard these past years and I worry sometimes (ok, most of the time), but your life and death have given me a perspective that keeps me sane (mostly sane).

One last thing I wish you could help me navigate.  Matzah balls are supposed to sink; POB’s float (whoever heard of such a thing).  I know she cooks the Passover meal and it is her mother’s recipe and Passover is all about her mother (z”l) — as it should be, but when do you think I can start negotiating for the sinkers again?

I love you, Mom.

~  Blogger

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Excuse me, did you just call me a whore???

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Ok ok ok ok ok ok .

I was nearly getting beheaded on the subway by the Grizzly Adams-sized backpack being wielded by a tall, outdoorsy-looking tourist (why is he in NYC, do you think?).

Then I take a cab and after repeatedly asking the cab driver not to talk on his cell phone, because my head was pounding (concussion?), and having him slam the divider shut, I got angry.  I opened the divider and told him that as a matter of law, he had to stop talking on the phone.  He denied he was talking on the phone.  Maybe he was talking to his demons, but I am not a shrink.  He started speeding to my destination because he was angry at me.  I yelled “Stop!!” followed by a heart-felt “WHAATTT IS WRONG WITH YOU???”

He called me a whore.  Ok, no one has ever called me a whore (or at least not in such a dismissive, contemptuous tone).  I started yelling that he needs to learn how to drive, etc., but no cursing.  I was being as polite as possible under the circumstances.  He jerked the car forward and started to call me things related to my womanhood in a very condescending way.  Such denigration of women was so foreign to me that I was a little gobsmacked and so I didn’t end up denting the car.

I believe that people can find common ground, but right then I wanted to haul him over to the police and have him stripped of his hack license (assuming he had one).  I think I would still want to kick him you-know-where even when I calm down.

I lodged a complaint with the Taxi and Limousine Commission.  I am ready to appear at the hearing.

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My sister-in-law, the keeper of the flame

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SILOB (sister-in-law of blogger) and I don’t have much in common.  I don’t know that much about her, mostly because BOB (brother of blogger) has banned potentially touchy topics, such as sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, religion, politics and the first-coming-versus-second-coming discussion that can be VERY tricky among Jews and Christians.  So, there isn’t much of interest to talk about, except our kids (my nephews are FABULOUS in case anyone wants to know).  I may have failed to mention that I curse like a sailor which may or may not be offensive to her.  BOB insulates her so well from us that we assume that she really doesn’t like the New York family.

Except for my mother.  When my mother died, SILOB said simply and beautifully that she was the daughter-in-law that my mother never expected (not Jewish, GOP, Texan) and my mother nevertheless threw her arms around her and made her welcome.  POB (partner of blogger) could relate; my mother — having had two girls and one boy — never expected to have TWO daughters-in-law.

Families are complicated.  Love isn’t as complicated.  What is complicated is what you do about the things you don’t like — or don’t know — about the people you love.   My mother seemed to have bridged the divides with her daughters-in-law well before her death.  So much so, that SILOB walked 60 miles in San Diego for the Susan G. Komen organization in my mother’s memory.

So, EIGHT years after my — OUR — mother’s death, SILOB keeps the dream of a cure for breast cancer alive.  She literally walked the walk.  She keeps my mother’s memory alive in a positive way (SOB (sister of blogger) and I try to, but sometimes, we just wallow in self-pity.)

It is a testament to SILOB and my mother and their relationship that eight years on, she fights breast cancer “for Elsie” [our mom].

I haven’t tried very hard to get to know SILOB these past 13 years.  I have allowed every inadvertent or intentional rebuff (mostly from BOB) be an excuse not to try harder.  But there is something very basic we share — the memories of Mom.   And that is one of the strongest ties I have to most people in my life.

To SILOB, the keeper of the flame and the fight for a breast cancer-free world.

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Carly Simon and music-to-fling-yourself-out-the-window-by

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Dear Mom:

These days have been rough with Dad.  Your mind was strong and your body was weak; his body is strong but his mind is fraying around the edges.  After a day insulating him from predators, I had to listen to Carly Simon, about life being eternal and love being immortal.  And then I had to self-torture more with her song about the death of her mother.  Not satisfied with this self-flagellation, I had to listen to Joni Mitchell sing the Circle Game.  Then, I had to go back to Carly and listen to Anticipation.  You get the gist of my emotional day.

Dad is in good hands, I promise.  We are protecting him.  He is relieved and grateful for us.  I said to him, “Remember when you said to me once, when the world was too much with me, ‘take my hand and you will be safe’ as we walked to the all night pharmacy so I could get some sedation and sleep?”  He said, “yes,” although I am not sure he did.  So I said, “Dad, you take my hand or you run to my office and we will protect you.  It is our turn now.”

The circle is complete.  Dad has to hang around until 120 because that is how old G-d let Moses live and he has to balance out your dying at 76.

I don’t care how crazy or forgetful he gets.  He needs to be in the world.  And you know how he pushes ALL my buttons and makes me crazy.  And I lose patience.  And he knows that I love him and SOB (sister of blogger) loves him and BOB (brother of blogger) and POB (partner of blogger) and WOBOB (wife of BOB) and his grandchildren and his nephews and nieces and friends all love him.  And he is not alone.  And never will be.

I miss you more than you can know, Mom.   It would be great if you could do something about the START treaty and the DREAM Act.  Also, whisper in Sarah Palin’s ear that she should stay a reality TV star.  Given the day, I know I will see you in my dreams.

~Blogger

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The Tipping Point

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Over the past 15 years, I have, sadly, observed at close range the effects of disease on those I love.

There seems to be a tipping point at which the disease starts to win.  It can’t be determined purely as a medical, or scientific, matter.  It is an internal psycho-social-spiritual moment in which that person stops living with, say, cancer, and starts dying from it.  From the outside, that formerly healthy-person-fighting-a-deadly-invasion starts looking and behaving like a sick person who is defined and constrained by the disease.

Even mental disease is that way, in some senses.  For a while, you see your aging loved one as a capable person with some lapses and then, one day, the lapses define the person.  But the psycho-social-spiritual moment doesn’t come from within the sick person.  It comes for the family.  We must determine the tipping point because our loved one cannot.

Worse yet, our loved one doesn’t understand that the tipping point came yesterday, and with it, soon-to-be imposed constraints on our loved one’s autonomy but not, I hope, on his dignity.

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A true 40andover moment

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I was having dinner with a friend and we were talking about early days of our relationships with our spouses.

She reminded me that there was a time when we had to wait until after 11pm for the phone rates to go down to call our friends/boyfriends/girlfriends because phone calls were expensive during the day and in the evenings.  This would be like explaining LPs to an MP3 generation.

And calling your parents “collect” on Sunday night from the payphone on the hallway of your college dorm because few people had phones in their rooms and you didn’t always have enough change to drop into the payphone??  And how you couldn’t talk for long because people were waiting to make calls and the collect call was three times as expensive as a regular call?  Try explaining this concept to someone with unlimited rollover minutes and texts who often considers the potential benefits of having the hands-free ear pieces surgically attached.

We have come so far and gone nowhere at the same time.

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Unintentionally keeping up with the Kardashians

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I went into the local General Nutrition Store to look for topical remedies for peeling cuticles. (Already TOOOOO much information.)

Like most consumers, I left the store with many things — none of them was the purpose of the visit.

Not only did I buy skin emollients which promise youthful transformation in minutes, but I bought whitening stuff for my teeth.  I picked it out and then saw that it was the kind that the Kardashians use.  I paused.  As a point of principal, I should put it back.  But, it is the only non-gunky kind of teeth-whitening I have found in a while.

So, add me — age 46 — to those, reluctantly, keeping up with the Kardashians.  Just the thought alone will make me seek therapy for years.

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Veterans Day

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Yesterday was Veteran’s Day.

I was thinking a lot about war and life yesterday.  When I became a mother and god-mother, I understood that if my son (or god-daughters) went to war, I would have to go as well, because anything that is worth my child’s life, is worth my life.  (And the corollary: if you mess with my children, you mess with me.)  Of course, I think it would be hard to take your mom into battle.  But if you know me, you know that the enemy should be really, really, scared.

So, I am grateful to the young men and women who routinely put their lives at risk for the high stakes political chess that our world leaders play with way too much glee and ooky blood lust.

And I am grateful to the veterans of prior wars for their sacrifices.  It is hard to imagine old men and women in their prime, as spies (www.dailymail.co.uk/…/Tragedy-WWII-spy-Eileen-Nearne-escaped-Gestapo-died-alone.html) and soldiers and nurses on the front.  They look so old and enfeebled now.

Today, as I was leaving my office, I saw two old men in wheel chairs.  Using “old” is somewhat euphemistic.  “Ancient” is more appropriate.  Incapacitated and dependent.  When I see random ancient people on the street (as opposed to family), I cannot think of them as once young and vibrant.  I just see strangers with no past and probably not much of a future.

Except the two old men in their wheelchairs with their attendants were wearing war medals and insignias of their military service.  All of a sudden, they were not inconvenient and uncomfortable reminders of my future decrepitude.  I know that when they were young, they were warriors.  Given the number of medals, they were brave warriors.   And they have stories, of war and peace, love and hate, passion and indifference.  Maybe these were good, generous, upright men.  Maybe they weren’t.  Probably, like all of us, they fell somewhere in between.

Two of my uncles were reluctant warriors in WWII.  One was captured and imprisoned.  I know his story, which is powerful (www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Shapiro.html).  It was hard to know these things about my uncle.  I know it was hard for my uncle to remember, transcend the evil, and have his story known.

It wasn’t until my other uncle, Uncle Al, died about 9 years ago that I learned he fought in the Pacific in WWII.  He never talked about it (or maybe we just didn’t see enough of him to draw him out).  My father thinks he was at Guadalcanal.  Of course, that generation never talked about the war, even when the effects of the war crippled, or at least altered, the trajectories of their post-war lives.

Truth is that I didn’t know this uncle very well.  He was the third of five sons and got short shrift by three generations of our family.  He was a quiet man with great artist skill.  I wonder if I would have interacted with him differently if, while he was alive, I knew to look at his life through the prism of the bloodshed he must have witnessed and (possibly) perpetrated in some of the most grisly fighting of WWII.

Today, we have veterans who need our support.  Whether or not we agree with the politics, their mere willingness to go to war to protect and defend us is heroic.  We owe it to these young men and women to learn their stories, help them re-acclimate to post-war lives, and protect them from their deepest, darkest memories of combat and, yes, deal with the bad things they did “over there”.

It is hard to imagine that some of our warriors and their families have not yet been granted US citizenship.  It is hard to imagine that some of our warriors and their families are treated like second class citizens because of sexual orientation.  It is hard to believe that anyone thinks our returning veterans don’t deserve the very best in medical care and social services.

I just hope that no one has to wonder, when the veterans of our generation are in wheelchairs with attendants, if they will be remembered and honored.  I hope the next generations remember that they once were warriors, protecting and defending us.

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