we co-wrote an absolutely brilliant song when we were on washington island in the summer of 2019.
[i’m thinking i already posted about this. 1900 + blogs and redundancy is a thing, i guess. my apologies – i know some people really detest redundancy. i, on the other hand, don’t really mind it at all. you can tell me the same delicious story over and over and i will still be a happy listener. (these rules don’t apply to david, of course)]
anyway…now, every-single-time i see a butterfly (and even yes-yes, technically, a moth as well, yup-yup) i cannot help myself. i immediately think of this song and sometimes – ok, most times – i start singing it. “butterfly, butterfly, spread your wings. butterfly, butterfly, fly. butterfly, butterfly, flutter by, to the big blue sky.” (see audio file waaaay below if you are dying to hear this brilliance!)
we cannot help laughing.
really laughing.
like the kind of laughing when your cheeks hurt and your ribs begin to ache, tears start streaming from your eyes and you might even snort. THAT kind of laughing.
we were so inspired back then by our butterfly song, we decided – while still on island – to write another song – fun in the sun – and we tried to record it (see below)…ridiculously harsh sunlight, anything-but-flattering-up-angle, very-very-insanely-close-up…but the moments are recorded no less. for all time.
the red admiral butterfly – that fluttered by and landed right next to us on the adirondack chair on our patio – according to the great google – symbolizes spiritual awakening, transformation, and renewal. all beautifully restorative. truly a gift.
but there is nothing like a good laugh to put things in perspective. for all time.
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.
we are clearly the three musketeers together…20, d and me.
our discussions range from ridiculous kidding to profound artistic center to current events. we cook together and spoil dogdog together. he has been a constant – for thirty years – and our friendship is cherished. he is my brother; after my own big brother was on the other side, he chose 20 to be so.
he has a thing about faces. and so, because he sees them everywhere, so do we. happy faces, silly faces, sad faces, worried faces, upside down faces. i have stopped in my tracks to snap a photo of a face – regardless of the place – just to send to him.
and then, at the coffeehouse in madison, there was this face on the door. 😐 d was engrossed in something else, but 20 and i went off into fits of laughter – talking as if we were the face on the door. it doesn’t take much to entertain us.
it’s a good learning.
because – really – isn’t that the point? to see the tiniest thing with someone you care about and laugh the biggest guffawing-snorting-tears-running laugh. to admire the tiniest thing with someone you care about and be awestruck with the biggest swelling heart. to share the tiniest things – and the biggest things – with someone you care about and know – deep in your soul – they are standing there with you, every fiber.
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.
it’s a no-win. the classic rock-and-a-hard-place. a lose-lose. a pickle. a crunch. a conundrum. a double-bind. a dilemma.
yup. there is no truly right response here for that man.
i have learned to preface things i talk about – for instance, “i just want to tell you this. i want to go on and on. i want to _________ (choose: rant/think/ponder/ruminate) aloud. please do not try to solve this. please just listen.”
but sometimes, yes, indeedy, sometimes i just talk. with no preface. and then, in the way of conversation, especially in the middle of the night pillow-talking, he talks after i talk. and – whammo! – that’s where he makes his mistake.
so…we didn’t go to nearly enough places and i am sort of stuck in buyer’s-remorse, retail-regret, choice-underload.
i, eventually, chose frames – they resemble john denver’s and john lennon’s. a little bit bohemian. a little bit retro.
it had been a long, drawn-out affair. i tried every frame on at the vision center – well, not the really expensive ones because – though we had vision insurance at the time, my portion only covered contact lenses and no back-up glasses. we went to costco and i went up and down the optical wall, trying on, taking off, trying on, taking off. it was exhausting. we went back to the place where i had my eye exam – there would be a discount for buying glasses in addition to contacts.
nearly everyone at the vision center got involved. i had gotten it down to five different frames and – standing in front of the mirror trying them on over and over and over again – finally resorted to asking lovely sarah, the my-age vision assistant. i tried each pair on for her while david watched. we eliminated two frames. one made me look exactly like harry caray, which is not a good look for me. i loved the anderson cooper look, but all those frames were too wide and extended well beyond my face. apparently, i do not have a big face. or – women don’t mind frames that extend into their widest peripheral vision, making their hair stick out. there are many, many, many large frames out there. even bigger than the ones i had in 1985.
i had tried tortoise shell and red, maroon and clear. i had tried hexagonal and cat-eyes, square and rectangular. i had tried my-little-pony and under armour, karen kane and bebe and vera bradley. and now there were these five.
sarah turned to her colleague and asked for her help. the colleague had me try on the three frames – over and over – and then she turned to another colleague and asked for her opinion. the customer who was being served by that vision-center-person piped up. eventually, there was a vote. and everyone in the store voted. the black metal round frames won. i placed an order, laughing, and was relieved it was finally over – the stress of choosing a frame that fit my face – which, i might add, turned out to be a child’s frame. we left.
but i still think about the frame in my mind. also round, but plastic and black and just exactly right – making my forehead look smaller, the indent of my face less indented, the wrinkles around my eyes disappearing, the dark circles lighter, my eyelashes longer and my eyes more expressive.
david picked out his frame in about two minutes. so it was hard for him to understand the hissy fit i had over finding the right frames. a dedicated contact lens wearer, i have never really liked any of the glasses i have owned. i wanted this time to be different. so i tried to explain to him all the parameters the new – perfect – no, no – quixotic – glasses must fall within. purple stuff came out of his exploding head. but my hissy fit helped.
we picked up the finished glasses and, putting them on, they seemed a little blurry. i sighed. i haven’t tried them again. but i will. i’m hoping they will be ok. and i guess i’m still wondering if that truly perfect frame exists out there somewhere.
i can still locate my 1985-ish glasses. they are huge tortoise shell frames – bigger than my face – that sit way above my eyebrows and way down on my cheeks. i have no idea what i was thinking, but i suppose they were all the rage at the time.
well, guess what?
they are again.
giant frames, wide frames, frames that cover all expanse of your visage. yikes!
i look – decidedly – like a bug wearing any of these. like a fly – with big eyes – or an ant or – adding to my list of lookalikes – a meerkat or a spectral tarsier.
these are not good looks for me, i have decided. it didn’t even take pondering. it’s quite obvious.
so, re-using the 1985 glasses doesn’t work. i can’t find my glasses from the mid-90s but i know – i remember distinctly – that those do not sit low enough on my cheeks to cover the sometimes-dark-circles i have inherited from my poppo. somewhere in there i sort of remember a pair of big clear glasses. fortunately, they have gone the way of one of the charities that collects eyeglasses. i, in addition to ordering new lenses, was stuck having to look for a new frame.
but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
mostly, the experience of deciding what kind of lenses – lenses! – you want is complex.
i am a contact lens wearer and only need glasses when my eyes are tired at night and maybe we’re driving and i’m behind the wheel. in that case, i want the lenses that specifically deal with darkness and oncoming headlights and the possibility of rainy wet streets and glare off puddles and asphalt, orange barrels that populate every road in our vicinity and on every highway we choose to travel, equipped with deer-alerting alarms.
so – the anti-dark, anti-glare, anti-highbeam, anti-barrel, anti-deer, anti-sleepy lenses, please.
we each have our strengths. and, on the flip side, we each have our weaknesses. i am a detail person. he is a big picture person. sometimes that equates to a lovely full-length view of the world. sometimes it’s a total pain in the ass.
most of the time david is kind of mushy, endearingly compassionate and not all male-blustery-like. this is a good thing. we tend to be on the same page a lot – until we are not. and then, those are the moments the dog senses that his best laying-down-spot is in the bathroom. we aren’t really yellers, but, since our dog is as empathic as we are, he just knows that our tone is changing and someone is miffed and he is going to get out of the way. soon, he checks back in to see how things are going and is generally relieved when – even before leaving – we turn to him in miff-middle and reassure him, “it’s ok, dogga,” anticipating his departure.
there have been a few times that d has done the guy thing…you know, the well-it’s-not-working-for-you-so-let-me-do-it. i wouldn’t be honest if i didn’t say that it is royally annoying. i also wouldn’t be honest if i didn’t say that i feel total vindication when the whatever-it-was-that-wasn’t-working doesn’t work for him either. empowering. somehow i think you know what i’m talking about.
it’s in those exact moments – either way – on either side of the miffmobile – we all need to remember it’s good to laugh.
yep. that makes us pretty analog, i’d say. there is nothing in our vw superbeetle, big red or littlebabyscion that even resembles the digital world.
so when we got in my niece’s volvo or my sister’s nautilus we felt a taaad bit lost. my niece said, “hey, while we’re gone feel free to use the car!” as she walked out the door. we looked at each other, laughing. there was no way we would use her car. sheesh. we don’t even know how to start those cars. we would need a littlebitta instruction – remedial help – before taking to the road.
i guess we have some catching-up to do.
some day.
in the meanwhile, we will languish in not-knowing.
reverse threading 