“we got the chance to be young and the chance to grow old.” (kate)
in her next breath, her voice huskier with emotion, she added, “not everyone has had that chance.”
in the arc of the art of living, we hold gratitude for this very life.
and, hopefully, somewhere in there we have gained some wisdom. hopefully, somewhere in there we have held love and relationships before material gain. hopefully, somewhere in there we have chosen truth over institution or divisive politics or agenda. hopefully, somewhere in there we have helped someone else and we have tried to grasp what it might be like walking in their shoes. hopefully, somewhere in there we have stood in a sunrise or sunset, incredulous. hopefully, somewhere in there we have seen extraordinary color and shape in art, heard exquisite frequencies of pitch and timbre in music, moved in a dance, read words we store away to never forget. hopefully, somewhere in there we have granted and been given grace. hopefully, somewhere in there we have felt the flimsy threads of a floating dandelion seed, the solid rough granite, the dirt, beneath our feet, the breaking wave on a shore or a stream as it flows through our fingers, rain and sun on our faces, the embrace of a beloved, the wind carrying the love and wisdom of the arcs of all before us.
hopefully, we hold life itself – breathing – tenderly.
if you asked me what word best describes our up-north trips, it would be laughter. pontoon boatrides and utv drives, hikes in the woods and lots and lots of food and drink and snacks, and it is still laughter.
there is nothing – truly, absolutely nothing – like being with other people who are in the same – ummm – age bracket you are in.
i remember my sweet momma and poppo gathered around their pool in florida with multiple other couples. yadayadayada they’d go on and on about their trials and travails. i was stunned back then by the ordinariness of their conversations, by the chapter of life.
but i tell ya, they had nothing on the up-north gang. we will literally talk about ANYthing. any sordid detail, any grimy description, any mighty middle-age challenge, any blahblah that floats into our brains. we share life, we tell stories, we compare notes, we make suggestions, we google and sort and — yes, laugh.
the other day we took a walk in our neighborhood and met up with a couple friends walking the other way. after the initial hellos and whatchabeendoins, we took the fast track to a fascinating conversation about – drumroll, please – medicare. never would i have ever thought we would have stood on the sidewalk chit-chatting about medicare plans, but there we were – for a long time – the waves crashing on the shore next to us – comparing and contrasting information about supplemental plans and advantage plans. thrilling, eh?
it actually was. thrilling, that is.
because everyone needs to be surrounded by people who “get it”, who “get” where you are in life, “get” the tribulations, “get” the worries and the stuff you have to figure out, “get” the aches and pains and physical morphing that seems to be happening to us. together we can do this.
sometimes we get carried away. we think we are still – say – in our thirties – or maybe forties – eh, even our fifties – and we get in littlebabyscion and just driiiiive. without stopping. we love a good roadtrip!
this is no longer what it used to be.
it USED to be that we could drive looongdistance without getting out to stretch. it USED to be that we could drive looongdistance and sip on venti coffees to our heart’s content. it USED to be that we could drive looongdistance without finding restrooms. it USED to be that we’d drive looongdistance and snack our way across the country. it USED to be that we could blithely hop out of the vehicle at any point and skip around the rest area. it USED to be that we could drive late into the wee hours of the night and still be wide awake. it USED to be we could drive 17 or 19 hours in a day. it USED to be that we were intrepid.
this is no longer what it used to be.
now, we drive, still snacking our way across the country because some things never change. but after about two hours we stop. we locate a restroom. we slooowly peel ourselves off the seat of the car and unbend our bentbodies. we stretch, groaning. we ponder walking away from the car. maybe we get a lesssssliquid espresso. we study google maps. we calculate our next stop. we check on when the sun is setting. we take a deep breath. we drive again. and repeat. and we love it! even now.
it’s a true story. we’ve had plenty of heat index temperatures higher than normal. everywhere. even in wisconsin. so the other day, anticipating two full heat-dome days of feels-like temps of 110 plus, we looked at our little old a/c unit in the window and figured it was time to turn it on. ahead of time. to get a jump on the oppressive heat.
it’s an old unit – 20 years old, maybe older – and it was going to have a big job to do. the more recent air conditioners clearly are more efficient, energy-wise. they are maybe sleeker looking. perhaps they blend in better and are less noisy. they have different components than ours, different mechanisms.
our old amana window air conditioner is simply a workhorse. it cools. it is dedicated to cooling a room. it gets the job done. we have not devalued it because of the year it was built or the time it has spent as an air conditioner.
we stood in the dining room – by the window where the unit is installed – and proudly looked at our old air conditioner. in a fast and ever-changing world, it might seem beyond its time, beyond working well.
but it is dutifully unfaltering. its old-air-conditioner-wrinkles belie its steadfastness, its expertise at cooling. it has experience, history, tenure doing its work in the world. at this moment in time, to us, the people who wish it – need it – expect it – to do really good work, it is clearly invaluable.
it may not be a younger air conditioner, but – particularly on these 110 degree days – it is mighty relevant. i’m happy we are smart enough to recognize that.
and this, my dear friends, is the fable of two people in their 60s out in the heat-dome of the work world.
it UsedToBe that i could drink coffee any time of day or night, as many times as i wanted, as much as i wanted.
NotSoMuchAnymore.
now, i am careful to drink coffee in the morning. not afternoon. not even a minute after noon. and definitely not evening.
and – we have started cutting back even on the morning java. we drink sips out of our hydroflasks from our girl, which don’t allow for glugs because – if you didn’t already know this, hydroflasks keep coffee incredibly hot and you would burn your mouth off if you glugged. so, our sips last through waking-up-pillow-time, through breakfast, and a bit beyond – into writing our blogposts. and then…that’s it. no more. despite how amazing the scent of coffee wafting through, well, anywhere, is, we cannot have any.
there have been few exceptions. a cuppa after a dinner out. an espresso on the road.
but – on a day-to-day basis – we are no longer the javamasters we once were.
for two people whose entire written narrative at the inception of our relationship was titled “cuppajava”, this is profound.
there is this moment – and we have experienced it sans glee – when you go from happily sipping, enjoying caffeine to its fullest – to feeling slightly OutOfIt and a little bit headachey and buzzy.
i am a fan of happy endings. i would guess that’s something on which we likely agree. i mean, who doesn’t love any sort of happy ending – quiet or gushy – any part of the happy spectrum.
and so, in the past couple of weeks – with people we love close-in struggling with serious issues – i want to linger in the happy ending. perspective has slapped us upside the head a few times over these weeks and, teetering a little on shaky ground, we are holding firmly to happy conclusions.
on days when hikes generate deep pondering or the dinner table yields questions about uncertainty, googling about things we know little, we tend to list to an evening of a little couch-sitting and a movie of choice that will – most definitely – have a happy ending.
this could be a hallmark movie. or it could be my big fat greek wedding, which makes us laugh every single time, dozens of times later. it could be about time or love actually or the proposal. it could be sweet home alabama or ps i love you or the family stone. the fuzzy purple zippy dvd holder is the keeper of our cherished movies and we can pick pretty much anything from it and sink into the couch cushions, sighing.
we don’t feel like we are sticking our heads into the sand. we don’t feel like we are fancying escapism (though who doesn’t?!). we don’t feel like we are pollyanna-ing our way into the lull of sleep. we are painfully aware of the precariousness of it all.
instead, we feel like we are reminding ourselves of the possibility. we are immersing in the potential of goodness. we are restoring that place inside from which we draw strength that we might pass on to others, the place from which we can hold others close, lift them up, ask the universe for grace and their healing.
we are taking a deep breath and seeking the happy ending. remembering that they do exist.
in december i have to chooooose. good grief. already?! the pressure.
we have had the good fortune of friends who have that-timed-it before us. and so, we are relying heavily on their medicare smarts. we even had an in-service up-north with our gang. handouts and everything.
so, when it comes time to actually signing up, we are hoping that it will be with ease.
because the fact-of-the-matter is that medicare – like most government programs – is not streamlined, not easy to understand, nothing less than dense, filled with loopholes and scary ramifications, rules and rules for rules.
and this is supposed to be a happy-happy social good-health-for-all program.
shopping is not really the joy it used to be. i haven’t kept up with the fashionistas and i have a tendency to wear the same thing – some iteration of jeans and a black top – so it sort of limits the options i give myself.
but, there comes a time…yes…i have reached that time…when some of the clothes in your closet no longer fit – shall we say – properly. it sneaks up overnight, season by season. and suddenly, you move into the next season and have nothing but your grown son’s hand-me-down basketball shorts to wear. these do not generalize to every occasion. as a matter of fact, these don’t generalize outside the house and the backyard, though i did wear them hiking in hot and humid north carolina mountains last fall. so there is a bit of an exception to the basketball-shorts-caveat: if you know no one and there is no chance of knowing anyone or any chance of meeting someone you might want to know, it is ever-so-possible to wear the hand-me-down shorts.
regardless, it was time to shop.
i groaned as i entered the department store. one must be in the right frame of mind to try on clothes. one must be out of one’s mind to try on bathing suits, so that will have to wait for a whole ‘nother day. i went to the rack with bermuda shorts and capris. and discovered this newfangled-to-me thing called “comfort top” or some such lingo.
now everyone knows that the button-zip fly on jeans (and shorts and capris) wreaks havoc on whatever top you choose to wear – no one really wants to accentuate their midsection and yet, the zipper-button combo does just that. tunic meets zipper-fly. not good. so, there was merit to this comfort top premise…no buttons, no zippers. just a “smooth slimming panel” – that made me think of both maternity clothing and the elastic-waistband-pants i vowed never to wear.
nevertheless, i tried them on.
i will not burden you with the rest of the shopping experience.
suffice it to say, i left with the comfort top capris.
i have yet to wear them, however…it’s the beaky rule…save them for a bit…
i’m wearing the hand-me-down basketball shorts right now, trying to deal emotionally with the move i have made into “comfort top” wear.
he’s being quiet about it all. that’s probably a good thing.
middle-aging is tougher than you think. it’s a time of tinylittlechanges and some prettybigchanges. your body starts to betray you, despite your best efforts to keep it going. the messages all around us are dedicated to making us feel that Youthful is the only worthy look, that fit and slim and silky is the only worthy body. our body image begins to slowly sink, just as our blue jean waistline begins to rise. it’s all one big test – and it’s prettydamndifficult sometimes to stay centered and grounded.
lingerie is one of those testing devices. just at the time you may be leaning a little less two-by-four-pancake-flat and you suddenly have a tad bit of – whoa – cleavage, and those sweet and sexy b-cup (wow! b-cup? seriously?) brassieres might be an option, your upper arms begin doing the whinga-whinga thing. i mean, really? there is no justice there. and here – raised in these body-conscious-united-states – it all becomes a disappointment.
try starting a new relationship in middle age. there are many challenges – people become more and more engrossed and invested in their own “way” of doing things – so that is obvious. but then, there’s the thing…you pull out old photographs and say, “this is what i used to look like in hiphuggers, in a bathing suit, in silk. i just wanted you to know.”
we were watching something on television the other night. the skims commercial came on. kim kardashian was the model. suffice it to say this is most-definitely-not dedicated to the older-middle-age gal watching. their other iconic top fashion models are no less fetching. though, truth-be-told, this is no different than other sexualizing advertising campaigns – like kate hudson’s fabletics or victoria’s secret. sigh.
in the meanwhile, i’m grateful to have fallen for a guy who is steeped in reality-based bodies, whose approving glance i see time and again, and who, clearly, loves burlap.
somehow i’d like to think of myself as anything but wilty. only i’d know it wasn’t so. i am. wilty. so is he. we are both wilty. not quite the same as the wilty kale we put out next to the garage for the mama bunny and bunbun, but most definitely wilty.
and so, as we drove away, with our cut-in-half halos for the off-trail “ammals” (thank you, jaxon, for this most-adorable non-wilty pronunciation), d said – in his i’m-enlightened-now-and-want-to-share-it voice, “that’s it!! they’d hire us if we weren’t so wilty!!!”
we laughed and he guffawed at his wit and utter sidesplitting jocularity and then we looked at each other – we neeeed to write that down!! so i grabbed my iphone and summoned siri, the great goddess of handless note-taking.
“what would you like it to say?” she politely asked. i answered and she dutifully jotted our note.
and then we looked at it.
uh-huh.
“they’d hire us if we weren’t so wealthy,” she transcribed.
hiLARious.
goddess-schmoddess. siri has her own unique wilty sense of humor.
reverse threading 