Yesterday was Monday and the day before? Sunday. Yesterday, I recounted -- sitting with M at an off hour lunch-dinner coming home from an "airing" -- recounting how I had few memories of my father ... of Dad .... or even of Daddy except in the sense that he left me of what it was like to hold a chain saw or a rotary saw or to lean mindfully and precisely on a table saw pressuring a piece of lumber along a guide. .... At the end of 65 years, together, he was hardpressed to find the same even-ness in treating Mom ... 'tender was the night' but full of his sadness and the occasional outbursts of a soldier-boy grown old as he watched Mom's expressions and receptions ooze away. Maybe that describes a corner of the map that comes with Playing in the Last Quarter ... an important quarter? Yeah! And an important corner of that Quater ... Remembering, Forgetting and Working Through, one oldster described as he grew older ..... full of its mixed metaphors, aye? .................... Yesterday, a Third Quarter Warrior who had just been through one of those surgical wars emailed me saying that he, too, didn't have many memories of his Dad .... his Dad died when he in 2nd grade or something. A lady wrote to me that she cried after reading some postings and, at the same time, someone sent me one of those LOL's ("laughing out loud" abbreviated so people have time to check their Facebook Page and to Twit or Farm ....) I call them the Big Two feelings ... Glee and Sadness .... the two most powerful signs that we're still with it, still alive. One is modelled on wagging tails and hello's. The other on different-directed tails and unavoidable good-byes. .... .... Oh, yes! The corner that I mentioned. ............................ How often do we mention something only to watch it fade entirely away, as one liturgy says, "as a Dream flies." .......... I was thinking of Sunday with its airing that I mentioned, yesterday ............. Fourth Quarters are more for "airings" and "romps" than runs. Airings with M. Have you noticed how Old Orphans tend to appear in pairs when they're in the early years .... and then they surface in gendered packs a little later on? "Back to the Corner, Howard! You were talking about the Corner." Take yer time, Sonny .... I'll get there............................. There's more, true, there really is more. The 40-55 year olds who occasion my office, the young ones, they are typically running up my office path just in time. They arrive, betimes huffing and puffing .... The 65-85 crowd? they get up progressively more slowly from the waiting room chairs where they've been sitting for a bit .... The youngins are just experiencing the slowing down of processing and occasional retrieval problems ... You remember, maybe (and that's a maybe), the first few times you knew where you were, in what room of what home, but not certain what you came to find. By now, I've come to stop women in the aisles of supermarket. "If you or your husband were thinking of dinner, what would you be buying?" Haven't been arrested by the store-Dick, yet, for harassment! I remember when M thought I was going deaf because it took about 2 extra seconds to sort through her communications in my mind. I remember a couple of years later when it began happening to her. ........... ................. Airings with M ............. driving slowly with the top down and people honking their horns from behind. "Old man! Git outa my way. I'm running." ... Memories that are important and memories that don't come .... maybe they weren't important. "Oh, don't worry ... they'll come back." Just love those people who predict the future for me. I'm not violent ... you needn't worry about the big block headlines:
OLD MAN SHOOTS FALSE PROPHETS .... ....... 'Doctors attributed to an overdose of Geritol a man's sudden shooting spree in which he was heard citing the mandated treatment recommended for soothsayers and necromances in the Old Testament.' ..............................
................................................For me, pictures become important. Orphans fight over them as parents' homes are emptied .... Who gets Great Grandma and Great Grandpa? .... Who gets the sketch that Mom made when everybody sketched in High School? ..... Memories .... .......................... ........................... oops! Gotta run (LOL). GuntherDog needs to pee, again .... The old guys bladder just isn't what it used to be. ..... ..... ..... I do really like to watch him run, though, and joy in his lifting of his right leg (GuntherDog is right-legged) which, for the moment, trumps my exploration of the Corner. ....... Here, I come, Gunther! Bye
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