The bright side of Old

Pain, the manageable kind, tells you at least that you’re still connected to your body glove, though you might wish you could turn off that switch (maybe at bedtime?)

Oldness, as it sets in, hopefully brings with it the compiled wisdom of your life, and not too much bitterness that makes you look at the young with envy.

Your creeping infirmities will be put into perspective when you notice some of the “young”, in their 40’s or 50’s, with bowed backs, bad legs, addictions, or wheelchair bound.

Sometimes, you receive spontaneous smiles from strangers, and it makes your day.

People ask for your advice.

If you’re lucky, there are grandchildren.

You get cheaper haircuts and movies.

Your auto insurance costs less.

You can take naps, and no one says anything.

Free money from the government every month.

And, you can stay up until 3:00 am and write blogs on the iPad your daughter bought you.

Rosebud

Dad handed me a golf ball and his hunting knife.
Said to hold it firmly, cut quite carefully,
A little at a time, and I’d see something surprising.
As I cut, the tight and hard skin started separating.
Beneath it was enticement.
Brown bands bound with such tension
That, when cut, their explosive force
Pushed the skin apart more rapidly,
All the insides wanting out.
One more cut, and ah!
With the pling pling pling of the breaking bands,
Off came the hard white shell,
And I was showered with strips of brown rubber.
Still there was more, and I cut further,
Laughing as the lively bits spat all over.
At last, I saw a black grape sized ball beneath.
Was this the end of fascination, and what should I do
With this spongy thing?
Dad said “Keep cutting, unless you want to bounce it for awhile.”
Too curious for that, I chose the cutting.
Inside of the black grape was the final fluid,
The lifeblood.
Green syrup seeped.
Crestfallen.

In a different season, one Christmas, unasked for,
Was a present I was told to leave until last.
Dad had gotten it.  I knew by his wrapping.
He’d always use the same paper, no ribbons or bows.
He had thought to go the hobby shop and bring it home:
A miniature steam driven power plant.
You had to fill the boiler with water,
Then place tiny white blocks of fuel in the burner underneath.
Light with a match, wait until the steam started simmering,
Then tweak the big flywheel, and Magic!
A piston slowly started pushing, but, ah, it stopped.
Wait for more violent steam, and a whistle blew!
You tweaked the wheel once more, and it went and it went.
It was a moment between us, and I’m sure my young eyes
Must have brightened for him then.

More than five decades have gone.
Him along with them.

The tiny white fuel blocks had a name stamped upon them.
“ESBIT”
If you have never seen Citizen Kane, look up this old film.
Then you will understand that ESBIT was my Rosebud.

Whatever will be, will be

Awkwardness, embarrassment, and ridicule are some of the things that natural daydreamers must live with, and more so if they talk too much.

Some of the most permanent and recurring etchings in my own psyche must be due, I think, to happy chemical accidents within the cerebral cortex.  I’ll second guess you now by saying that I did grow up in the 1960’s, and, yes, I did experiment with some questionable substances for a short while.  May or may not have had a lasting effect on said area of the brain.

Inspiration for this little essay came from recent scientific articles about new discoveries, and from my overactive daydreamer’s imagination.  My triumphs and my tragedies have, most times, resulted from absorbing the world in an emotional, empathic, and imaginative way and then communicating it back, in the same manner.  Practicality was not my strong suit, but I was bright enough in that area to make a living.

These episodes of the dreamer’s lucidity come to me higgly-piggly, sometimes unwanted and inconvenient.  There are others, though, that I struggle to express the effect of, and can say only that they may be of wide welcoming vistas, singularly comforting and reassuring emotions, strong senses of deja vu, or short spiritual experiences of joy.  I have learned to hold these very closely and secretly, especially after being effectively told that I was a seer of “Ice cream castles in the air”.  Certainly, some of the lyrics of this song (“Both Sides Now”) by Joni Mitchell are a dead ringer for my feelings.

The human mind, from the caveman to the great philosophers, musicians, artists, and geniuses like Einstein, surely is a wonderful piece of work.  I imagine that its potential is unlimited, and that whatever we can imagine will one day be.  As in this song:

“Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.  The future’s not ours to see.  Que sera, sera.” *

 

*By Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.

Image credit to:  http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/sep/13/physicists-in-tune-with-neurons

 

 

Man in the van

This afternoon, I went to the market.  As I was locking my car, I noticed an old man in the driver’s seat of a van.  His head was down, as if sleeping, and my idle mind thought “Oh, he’s probably having a nap, waiting on the wife.”

In about fifteen minutes, I came back out.  He was still in the same position, so I went over to his window to check on him.  He had a book propped up against his steering wheel, and looked as if he might have fallen asleep while reading.  I stood there for another minute or so, to see if he was breathing, and he was.  I left without trying to wake him up.

My wife said I should have.  I think she was right.

Periwinkles

They headed down the valley
With their wine and picnic lunch.
The periwinkles blooming
They gathered by the bunch.
Happily remembering
The times that they had spent
As children, in the old ravine
Inside a makeshift tent.
With jam and jelly sandwiches
They’d huddled from the rain
And hoped that in the days to come
They’d be there, once again.
Soon they would be parted, though
Still children, and they wept.
They’d always been the only ones
Whose promises were kept.
Two decades passed, the wheel had turned
They never did forget.
And often looked within their hearts
Without the least regret.
Close unto this very summer
He thought of her once more
And prayed that he would find her
As lonely as before.
A fairytale friendship
Remembered o’er the years
Had sent him on this errand.
He’d not forget their tears.
Now he was a grown man
And thought she must be married.
Indelible the memory was
That in his mind he carried.
Back to their old school he went
To ask where she had gone,
But none knew of her whereabouts.
They said that she’d moved on.
Please tell me where, and name the town!
He cried, and someone spoke-
The old and grizzled janitor
Whose memory then awoke.
Away now, with the precious answer
He went with all good speed,
And sought her out, for days it was
He’d not paid any heed
The search had finally led him
To a dark and dingy bar.
She’d worked there as a waitress.
T’was said she had a scar.
And that was how he found her.
He would not have recognized
Her face, so drawn and haggard
But still, she mesmerized.
She waited on his table. He touched her hand and said
“Lissa, do you know me?”
She slowly shook her head
He spoke his name, and handed her
A jam and jelly sandwich
Her eyes grew wide, and then she cried
O’er the scars that marked her damage.
A man she’d met and stayed with
(She was so all alone)
Had used her as his punching bag
And cut her to the bone.
Remembering the long ago
And the tent in the ravine
Her heart within her melted
And they quit the ugly scene.
To his own, he took her
And let her rest in bed
He waited on her day and night
And caressed her weary head
Whole had she become now
And when this day had dawned
They went to pick the periwinkles
Of which she was so fond.

Dejection

His ears have been ringing for thousands of days,
as from a hard slap, but it stays and it stays.
A similar sound to a siren that plays
without losing its pitch pipe perfection.

A strangling snake seems to coil, and to tighten.
Never to loosen, never to lighten.
Its singular purpose to cow and to frighten,
‘Til its victim has no clear direction.

His nose, it is running.  His stomach, it churns.
There is no surcease from the acid that burns.
The doctors have done all their tests, and he learns
that there is “no disease, or infection”.

“My bones out of joint”, as was said in the Psalm
“My heart melting like wax”, with no spiritual balm
“I am poured out like water”, there’s nothing to calm,
and no miracle cure or injection.

All too common, our souls tell this harrowing story.
We cry out to someone (the Power and the Glory?)
We regret, we repent, and we say we are sorry.
We’ll accept any kind of correction.

Will forgiveness be ours, now our life is in doubt?
Can our guilt and our sin and our debt be wiped out?
If we care, then we’ll know what this story’s about-
We are called His Divine Imperfection.

My Wife Story

She works all day, all week
Nigh to thirty years at the same mundane place
Nothing to show but her name in the company newsletter
And a couple of gold pins

But wait….there are many friends she has made
She is a charitable soul
Helps the food bank
And a family that’s in need
Offers rides to those she knows
That are walking in the wicked weather

We have a house, bigger than we need
It’s half empty now
I’m retired, with flagging health
It’s been a year now

Home she comes, after each long day
Yet still looks for more work to do before her chair time
(“What’s that spot on the floor?”)
Cleans invisible dirt, rearranges the cupboard
I bring the tea, now it’s chair time
Back she reclines, attracting the three lap cats
Off she dozes

I see her bones are getting tired
But she will not hear a mention of it
Keeps storing and storing more nuts for the winter
There’s an illness she has that she will not attend to
I am exasperated to tears sometimes
But she says she feels fine, just let her alone

Forty plus years we have spent in this marriage
That means something
Fights we have had
Silences we have had
Tired of one another we have been
Unfaithful in the heart have I been

But as I set this down, I think
That without her,
I would drown.

Loss and blame

A person very close to me met his death, at a young age, some years ago.
Cancer it was, and it spread very rapidly, a “good thing” for those of us who loved him.
Like many of us, he had his faults and sins, and had been an alcoholic and a heavy smoker for some years. I understand the emptiness of people who fall into these addictions, and I have seen the finger pointing of some who blamed him for his own demise.

I cannot and do not, because I loved him and sensed that many times he was looking for help that no one could give. If anything, I wear my own guilt for not seeing it sooner and trying harder.

There was a night, in better times, when a few of us went to a New Year’s Eve party. He had planned, wisely, to stay in a nearby motel. My wife and I had chosen to drive, so I had to abstain from drinking more than one beer. It happened that he and I were alone at the table when he got up to make a second or third trip to the bar. He came back with two bottles of beer, and slid one to me, saying “come on, it’s New Years”. I said I couldn’t because we had a long drive ahead of us. In a few minutes, he had finished the two, then looked at me with a downcast expression, and said “I love you”. That was all.

When we first heard of his diagnosis, I panicked, and wanted to see him right away. He had an appointment with the Oncologist the next day, so I went along with him and his partner. As we were walking down the hospital hall, he turned to her, and then to me, and said “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” All three of us wept then.

He was given only a short time, and was adamant that he would spend it at home, so a hospital bed was brought there and he had periodic visits from a nurse. On the last two nights of his life, I stayed at his home, but had gotten very sick with influenza. At one point, he actually got out of his bed and stood up, saying he had to go pee. I embraced him tightly, and said “it’s alright, just go”. It was as black as coke. With the emotional stress and illness, I had to leave the next morning.

That afternoon, he was gone.

Sing Sing

I sing.  I have sung to myself since the tender age of 12, when music first reached me.  I begged for a guitar, and one finally came at Christmas time.  A couple of days beforehand, I did a devilish thing.  Searched our apartment while Mom and Dad were out.  Found the guitar underneath their bed, already wrapped.  Peeled back the tape, and opened the box.  I was fascinated, thrilled, and guilty all at once.  By the time they came home, I had taught myself the opening riff to “Day Tripper” and had put everything back as it was.

That was more than fifty years ago, and, since then, I’ve always had a guitar of some sort.  I have played and sung for my own pleasure, and (shyly and tentatively) at campfire gatherings and such.

A decade ago, I started a new job, and became friends with a fellow who happened to be a player as well, although I did not know it at the time (nor did he know that I played).  He invited me to his home for a get together, and showed me a music room that he had set up downstairs.  He and a couple of other fellas had kind of an informal band, and they had been playing together for some time.  I enjoyed sitting and listening to them, and my wife and I were invited back again, as they had a monthly music night.

One night, he and the band were practicing “Paint it black” by the Stones.  They were getting the guitar parts down pretty well, but had trouble with the vocals, whereupon my friend Michel said “Lee, why don’t you get up here and try it?”  It was a song that I knew well, and, struggling with stage fright, I stood for the first time in front of a microphone.  I passed the test, carrying the tune the way it was supposed to be sung, and was eventually asked to join the band.

Since then, we have practiced each month, and have performed in public at such venues as churches, school functions, and as a part of outdoor concerts.

If you have ever been part of a band, you will know that there is a group dynamic at play, much of the time.  Seldom (at least, in our case) is there harmony.  Pardon the pun.  Personalities clash, there are disagreements on how to play, who should sing, and it sometimes becomes a competition.  I know that each of us wants the result to sound good, but it frequently takes a long time, with many false starts, and, occasionally, the dropping altogether of a song that we cannot come together on.

At our monthly practices, we are fortunate to have a certain captive audience, composed of spouses as well as friends who come and go.  Many times, there are guest musicians who join in with us.  Michel has a big dining room, and, with the addition of some makeshift tables, sometimes upwards of 30 of us sit down for potluck dinner on music nights.  Each December, we have gathered for Christmas carols at his sister’s house.

These are just some of the things that I do so look forward to in life.