The Old and the New in Collision

Visited a Resource project, yesterday, in Philadelphia with our youngest child. She had heard that they were selling pews from a 19th C. church and thought one would compliment her furniture in their living room. M went out for lunch with her, last week, or maybe it was shopping .... to go into the less high-brow sections of the city there was still a function for Dad. My daughter's younger kids stayed with their Dad and Grandma M, their oldest at a center for talented writers, as we wound our way through the White, African American and Hispanic sections of the Big City ... indeed, to a place not far from where I ran a school for disturbed inner city high schoolers 40 years ago. (Just had opportunity to publish a memoir of that experience in a volume on Education edited by Michael O'Loughlin ... another remembering ... akin to this Playful blog about the Fourth Quarter).

We arrived having travelled through the alive and teaming parts of the cities ... places where people still go out to meet each other in the summer on the stoops that are just like those I once sat upon and under sprinkling fire hydrants which I do not recall. Actually, my most vivid memories of the Deep South I was born into ... South Brooklyn ... Coney Island, to be precise ... are the smells. There were many cats roaming or prowling (depending on how you feel about cats) and waiting for one of the midweek days ... Wednesday or Thursday ... when the horse-drawn fish monger and his truck would come to W. 5th Street. He would travel our side of the street from the corner which housed a saloon with rumored "bedrooms" upstairs to the other corner where Abe and Minnie sold candy up front and ran numbers in the back. Nice old couple ... nothing like Bonnie and Clyde! 

If someone ordered fish, the fish man would pull the victim out of the ice chest near the back and prepare it ... gut it ... on a cutting board that was at the very back of the wagon. The heads and entrails would be gifts to the cats who would greedily take their booty to parts unknown. The smell lingered ... hell ... the smell lingers, today, as does the image from the stoop ... the bus terminal with its caged but broken windows across the street.

How different than the empty, shut-windows, air-conditioned suburbs in which my children were raised ... with but the occasional appearance of someone mowing a lawn or with the smells of cooking seasoned flesh arising from the backyard barbecues. I suspect my neighbors have long known about my feelings towards Suburbia ... and, anyhow, 'you can take the kid out of the ghetto' but you can't stop the neighbors from saying 'there goes the neighborhood' when he moves in.

The Resource Exchange was a wharehouse reclaimed by some artists ... indeed, the bearded man we worked with for the pews had attended Tyler Art School where I taught for many years (not as an artist but as a Mathematician) ... he arrived in the years after I had retired. The wharehouse was full of the discarded functional pieces of a world that didn't pay much attention to the old or outdated.  Lamps, Cabinets, Stage Lights, Empty Picture Frames and many other sorts of nearly-lost objects, including a Confessional. Oh! How I longed to buy that confessional, though in the end I settled for a pew which the young craftsman will cut down for me a bit. I could move back and forth ... confessing and forgiving ... "My Father" .... "My Son" .....  

What an afternoon ... back to familiar smells of living and sights of children playing in the streets. Bopping around with my youngest (who, not so young any longer, also shares my office) and bantering without any of the usual department/furniture store shtick and snarkiness with a young visionary who saw purpose in saving things from their unnatural ends in dumpsters.

Before I knew about Antique Boutiques, my Mom and Dad would take us to then-called "Junk Shops" to look for those wood and brass treasures that adorned their shelves at home ... It was my job to polish the brass.

The Old and the New flow together ... everything flows together ... Roll on! Roll on! Manongahela! Roll on to the Ohio! Roll on past Allequippi ... Down to the Mississippi ... Clear to the Gulf of Mexico!

 

Recognizing Limitations

As I bemoaned just recently, that while the companion dogs we love in every Quarter die much too soon, their loss later in life may have a different meaning. I am pleased to share, though, that GuntherDog seems to be ambulating better, today, and even running a bit. All this is happening at the same time that I am, for the first time, closing my office on Fridays. The Old Workhorse who thought nothing of leaving the stables 6+ days each week now is committed to three-day each week pasturing ... just grazin' on grass and sittin' on m'ass (and maybe writing a bit more and ... and Playing in this Last Quarter).

Years ago, I knew the day was coming ... and wrote (1998?)


Thoughts of Leaving Someday
From ditties et lettre
du Abe Isaacs
Six bookcases lining the wall and filled on the inside with jacketed books and above with two philodendrons (one split-leafed), two sansevieria that bloom every third year or so, an old microscope, test tubes on a rack, an oak bowling pin, a bulb that he found on the beach. On another wall is a glazed bookcase from his grandfather — a shaman of a different ilk — that one filled with sacred books in no-longer-spoken languages. Hanging are diplomas and certificates and pictures of der Alte Hexenmeister from Vienna. There are, as well, five chairs, a desk, an Edwardian fainting couch and an awareness that he will and must leave this office some day.

The Last Quarter is not only about losing functionality but about the opportunity to Play with grandspawn, hang out with Lady M, run (well, jog) with GuntherDog and spend more time with RI, my 1974 Raleigh International, who has been calling out to me for some time, now. RI turns 40 next year.

Bye ... I'm off, today.

A Blog that Kvetches and Moans

In a just-previous posting, I ended with talking about visiting an older fellow in Zurich, Rafael, who, beyond listening, did little else 40+ years ago than advise me to accept my feelings, at that time a hefty amount of sadness. I was leaving the the passion of my early years, Mathematics, and thinking of retraining in an area that involved more than only a commitment to ideas and theories (when I google the Covitz-Nadler Theorem of 1968, I no longer understand it or why I was so interested in it), but a commitment to my human kin, to people. I was travelling with M and our two older kids ... with my worldly posessions, so to speak, when I stopped for a while to seek the good counsel of that fellow.

Afterwards, I found another older fellow and talked to him about sadness and other matters for a number of years. Harold died in 1986, long after we had stopped meeting to discuss my human frailties. Aye! That's one of the paradoxes. We go to folk  to share the vulnerabilities of life and to feel a degree of closeness, to fill the emptiness and loneliness that are frequent co-travellers on our life-voyage. But hat relationship, too and like all others, ends with still another loss. Can one fault the logic of the loner, the anchorite, the hermit ... who chooses to avoid connections so as never to feel loss? ... Well! Life is not about logic, alone. I have long believed that those of our long-past ancestors who never developed the belief that to be connected is to be safe wandered off in prehistory from their Mothers and were driven from the gene pool by being eaten by tigers and bears. To live is to seek connection.

Still, one cannot avoid that connection which yields glee ends with loss with breeds sadness which drives us to fill that wistfulness with new others ... A cycle of the twins ... Sadness and glee. In an ideal situation, this occurs smoothly ... one wave washing over us and cleansing us .... another wave, different than the first, coming and washing over us differently. Some get stuck in one or the other. That sucks. For those who fail to experience both, to my way of thinking, experience neither. Talk more about that, someday ...

Interesting to me the response of concern I received from a number of readers here or at least backdoor on Playing in the Last Quarter. Somehow the impression was left that I was very ill or depressed. I think neither is the case.

Right at the moment? It's a wave of concern mixed with a bit of sadness. M and I had children ... all grown and gainfully employed ... one just finishing Second Quarter matters ... two others looking at 50. Then, there is our odd child ... GuntherDog, the one who has a troubling so-called positive oedipal complex wherein he snarls anytime I approach M ... like when I walk into the room. Like a good oedipal Father, I don't take his complaints about me too seriously, though there must be something in my repeated claims to my bi-pedal type acquaintances that I keep hearing Gunther bark: "you're a schmuck."

Gunther has his ways. In the morning, I rise 4'ish, pee, brush my teeth and invite him to come downstairs and go out to do the same. Until a few days ago, Gunther would jump down from his chair and run to the top of the stairs, where he would sit and wait to be petted repeatedly. "No petting and I go back to Mom, Schmuck!"  I'd obediently do so and, then, start going down the stairs ... he'd fly down them, I'd marvel with pride at my dog-son's ability to have all four legs in motion at the same time as I, a sensible Player in the Fourth Quarter, would hold onto one or to two railings, dependent on my degree of morning stiffness, and comfortably and at a genteel pace walk.

The past two mornings began the same but Gunther was no longer flying down the stairs but, rather, walking down at my pace or less. "How the great have fallen!"

 Well ... just having innured myself to having two middle-aged kids, it appears that GuntherDog, too, has entered an arthritic phase. And I? I'm wondering if I'll ever hear his adolescent rage at his Father, at me ... will I evermore be the target of his charming: "Dad, you're such a schmuck ... how could Mom ever love you when she has a vital guy like me to sit and listen to the News and Hockey Games nestled against her. Hell, Dad! You don't even like hockey."

Who knows? Maybe it's not arthritis and the Great and Awesome GuntherDog will fly down the stairs, again ....

In any case ... May the archangel of healing, Raphael (not my Rafael but Ezekiel's), visit my GuntherDog and make him smile, again.

Woof! ... err ... Amen!

House of Fears? What could have motivated me?

Thunder and Lightning came through last night ... maybe it would've been a light-on-sleep night, anyway. I have a whole variety of types of sleep; don't recall that from years gone by. Last night, I'd wake up with dreams in which something wasn't complete ... a house? a room? some writing I've been trying to do? Maybe that was it, I said to myself about 1 AM. It occurred to me about an hour later that my last posting was titled: House of Fears but I ended up talking about confusion in language. Was I confused? I do notice in myself and other Players in this Fourth Quarter near to me that logic has become looser. Sometimes, I may say something just plain incorrectly. "I'm going to the Living Room to eat" can mean "I'm gonna eat in the Dining Room." I have the usual failures to remember names of people but also names of things.


Howard, it's called the remote control (not the clicker)!

I was trying to think of the name of the little control valve on modern cars that keeps the injection system woirking at the right pace and even rhythm ... (Gimme a pair of SU Carbs and I'm OK, though.)

Hey, if you're Playing in this Quarter, I suspect you know.


But, yesterday, from House of Fears to a discussion of confusing ideas seemed rich ... I was confused -- so, I thought to myself in the Still of the Night -- ... I was confused in talking of confusion when I thought initially to speak of Fears.

So, be it! I'm prone to point out, recently, that there are only two infallible people on Earth ... and they're both the Pope! And me? I'm not the Pope. Maybe suicides need perfection ... The dead are perfect in life  (well) death. Any case ... gave rise to pause to think of my major fears. Some come to mind quite easily: becoming so confused that M locks me up; becoming so restricted in activity that I arrange to have myself locked up; getting lost; losses of those near and dear to me; the end of this wonderful experience of filling in my own canvas ... of the everyday pleasures of watching myself and others 'be.'

I watch many of my compatriots, though, and maybe this is what I had in mind, yesterday ... I watch them afraid to be who they are. So many who are afraid to play .... afraid to be too happy. Kind of like they carry around the voice of a parent who says: 'You always go too far" or "Stop that! You'll work yourself up into a dither" .... or maybe they'd work themselves into glee.

And the fear to be really sad. A fear to experience whatever emotion or  craving that I have right now. I once stopped for a bit at the CG Jung Training Institute in Zurich ... Must've been Fall of 1970. I was saddened by recent events. An older man, Rafael Lopez Pedraza, wondered with me if that sadness wasn't what made me most human at that moment. He never thought it necessary to add that, if that were so, human life was valuable enough to make it worthwhile to cherish that feeling, whatever it was.

Past few days the past has come to visit. Old visitors came to wonder how the past unfolded for me and for them. Faces and voices I was pleased to hear from ... Like my Father, I easily tear-up at such moments.  A cousin called two days prior to his 72nd birthday ... to say 'hello' ... Our minds have had certain vague similarities and interests. He talked about a "laughter group" he belonged to sometime ago. People would gather to laugh. Then M and I ran into a 46 year old man who came to live with us in the late 70's when Khomeini rose to power and his parents felt that their two boys were in danger. We took one. His parents got him to the States and a local religious organization found us with sons who bracketed his age by rougly seven months on each side. He was niow standing there with his youngest ...

Do I fear the unfolding of generations and new skin ... and the molting of the old?

Maybe, Rafael would tell me to cherish the fear, as well. Maybe, I should.

House of Fears

I began writing to myself and a few limited others recognizing that some/many of the Older Adults (as they may be called in civil company) confuse the restrictions on their activity as sufficient reason for giving up ... life becomes, for them, a series of visits to a veritable stable of mostly young physicians, television, food and feeling miserable. A major liability in the Fourth Quarter -- or so it seemed to me -- was confusion and conflation of the words used to describe their conditions of day to day living.

In the early postings and from time-to-time since, I've emphasized the difference between sadness and depression. Sadness is a later form of the night-time baby cry: 'I am hungry or lonely or my diaper is cold and wet; please come and sit with me.' Sadness seeks to bring people closer. 'Come hither, I want you near to me. I miss you. I love you.' Depression pushes others away. 'I'm taking to bed. No one has anything for me. What can anyone do for the dead? Go, away!'

Sadness can coexist with Glee. Depression knows but its own smelly sheets and isolation and, if it ever comes out of hiding, it shows itself to be saturated with rage. 'You've never wanted to be with me, anyway, and now you've troubled the little bit of peace I get by withdrawing from you all; I hate you.'

But the confusion of Sadness and Depression is but one of the many conflations of meaning that occur in the Last Quarter.

Pain is confused with a necessary misery  ... what the Buddhists call Duka and Judaeo-Christian types think of as an absence of gratitude. It is true that the Docs have discovered with controlled electrocution (the tests are called EMG's ... right, Doc ... I call it torture ... jest jesting, folk) that the nerves in my legs don't transmit data as they once did. The results are fascinating. While some balance is lost due to the numbing of toes (who knew that toes were these microprocessing balancing devices that keep 6 feet +(with most of the mass above 3 feet) from toppling over. I don't walk downstairs without holding on to the railing),... still my feet are exquisitely sensitive to walking on pebbles or shells at the beach. Ouch!

I think it's a hoot.

Change in function is confused with disability. The heart-Docs say that the sinus bloc, the part of my heart that is supposed to give me rhythm and is only supposed to get excited when there is danger or sex or a moving treadmill nearby, tends to get all hot and bothered when I swallow quickly or sip a bit of alcohol. I was jogging in a 10k (6.2 miler) run ... just for fun ... the fast young folk are finishing in 28 minutes or so and I throw a party if I finish in 'less than my age.' My heart rate which sits around 40 beats per minute when I'm jogging usually goes to 105. This time after a half mile, I was at 228. Not quite 4 beats a second. Shewwww! Damn. It was a good day. I got to talk to nervous paramedics who saw me walking back to the finish line and tell them to chill ... I'd be fine. 'I'm not goin' in your truck.' Felt wonderfully adolescent like the days when somethings could 'take my breath away.'

Our functions change as we mature. A visitor came in after surgery ... he was constipated. I asked him: 'Have you tried prune juice ... most everybody in the Last Quarter drinks prune juice!' He came back two weeks later smiling.

Another visitor kept hitting other cars on his way home from his office AND coming to mine. 'Hey, Bud ... ever think of cutting back from 65 to 40 hours.' He came back happy, as well, though some years later he had to be driven.

People with limitations (hearing, visual, ambulatory, ...) have been saying for years that their differences don't make them "disabled people" but people who do things differently.

Am I beating a dead horse? I suppose.

Let me end by thanking the manufacturers of Cialis for explaining that Older Adults can still have sex; they just have to soak in the bath-tubs of their childhoods, claw-footed tubs, afterwards, for half an hour and, then, apparently, 'start all over, again.'

What does the song say: Keep on truckin', Mama ... truckin' them Blues away!

A Note from King David

The Psalmist said: They who plant with tears, will harvest with joy."

Maybe Old Lusty King D. thought similarly to my previous posting.

Two Ways to Conjure up Being Human ... Maybe More

Most people who write to me do so at my e-mail address (hhcovitz@aol.com) and one, yesterday, wrote backdoor to me about how reading the Choices poem and other postings makes them sad ... " I was just reading your blog about the choices whether to pull the honeysuckle or feed the azelea and I felt so heavy and burdened." They went on to describe a sadness, too ... 'a heavy burden of sadness.'

I can say much in response but will start by admitting my sin.

...................    Confession: I am sad. As I recall, I've always welcomed waves of sadness.

..................     Disclaimer: I do not always experience sadness and it only rarely intrudes on my glee.

But let me go on .... I do go on and on ... new intransitive verb: to blather and blog.

On the Readers Right to Know ..... I take as a given that there are many ways to understand the condition of being a sentient and thinking two-legged type of the human type ... what it means to be a member of Clan Anthropos who still has the capacity to think complex thoughts and not to be controlled purely by their nose ... by their instincts. I once wrote that I never met a cur who required candle-light to get hot over any estrous bitch who might fortuitously pass into his territory. I think most of the views of being human accept that what drives us is different than what propels the other beasts.

So much for agreement. One of the areas of stark disagreement is between the relationship of feelings to each other (we're open, as are the beasts, to a range of feelings) and the relationship of feelings to thought. One such camp of thinkers sees the thought as father to the deed ... "change yiour thoughts and you'll change what you feel" is their mantra. The American Psychiatrists are now altering their manual of what we call what ails you ... they call it DSM ... this version? DSM-5. Many things will have changed but among the changes will be the inclusion of protracted mourning periods as a treatable illness.

Lemme tell you a story of the last fist-fight I was in. My secretary had lost her child, about 20 years younger than her older kids. For those of us Players in the Fourth Quarter, we have no trouble remembering when Leukemia was most typically a death sentence. Chemo, Bone Marrow ... none of it saved maybe 10 year old D. I was at the Mass before burial. The Priest admonished D's parents not to cry for he was, afterall, now with his Pater qui est in Caelum ... his heavenly Father. Afterwards, the priest cane up to me and introduced himself.

P: "You work with D's Mom?"
H: Yeah etc.
P: "Did you like what I told D's Mom and Dad?"
H: It was fine and heartfelt.
P: "No, my Son, you don't understand. I was asking whether you agreed with me."
H: Well, yes and no. I hope to help D's Mom to carry on ... one footfall after another. But my guess is that she may need to cry for several years.

Long story but within moments this representative of God thrrew a first punch at me ... and then a second. As a kind Soull from Brooklyn raised to respect the clergy, the first punch deserved, in my mind, a pass. But I was from Brooklyn and the second grazing one received an "eye for an Eye" ...

Now, I'm not suggesting that it was in differing with the Good Church Pastor of God that I decided it OK to put his drunken expostulating hulk on the ground. No. But differ I did.

Another prominent way of thinking is that it is the no-thought and unfelt-feeling that are Pops or Moms to the deed. In this other way of thinking, embraced feelings and thoughts don't typically get acted upon ... though many seem to fear them and that possibility. Many people that I've met fear that an expression of sadness will lead to depression ... to the absence of pleasure, the withdrawal from life, love and the pursuit of happiness.

What to say? I belong to those who take it as a given that if one welcomes a feeling, particularly the Big Two (sadness and glee), they wash over us like the cleanest wave on a sunny day at the beach. When each of my parents died, my grandparents, friends and teachers ... when my dogs have gone to guard in the World Beyond, and, even, when I recognize that the years are passing by at an apparently more rapid pace than I once thought they would ... and that those years are taking away some of what was ... from me? and from those I care for and about ... I welcome that wave of sadness just as I welcome the playful personna that would join my grandspawn who in some fantasy way connect me to the 7 foot carving in the back yard of Melmo the Magnificent. I welcome it to cleanse me and because fighting a wave typically takes people off their feet and knocks them on their asses.

Plato, Freud, and many others but especially 'me' (as I'm still here and writing) ... believe that the healthy life allows action based on feelings and thoughts, providing only that some energy is put into determining whether it is harmful or intrusive to the well-being of self and others ...

Final comment ... I do think sadness is a sign of a dis-eased human process, but only when it cannot be experienced in a peaceful melange with glee. Betimes, I can tell my glee and sadness apart ... like waves playing with each other ... at other times they, like the song says, "come together!"

Choices ... in Blogisphere and the Real World

Years ago, fascinating about the daily paths taken, I wrote:

Choices

How did that honeysuckle get there?

In, amidst, and all around the azaleas.

The blooms of spring or the surprises of summer?

The one choking, the other standing firm.

I guess I’m not much of a gardener!

Gardeners, they all seem to know

Which to pull and which to let grow

On these the first days of Summer.

The little choices are the ones that fascinate me.

• What to say at a dinner table ... or after dinner?

• Which friend to connect with and which friendship to let wither on the vine?

• If I awake early, whether to get up or just to rest until necessary tasking calls? (like if Gunther Dog needs to pee or if I have an early visitor)

• Whether to write on a given day and what to write?

• If I disagree with someone, when and if to speak and when to avoid engagement ... to hold my piece?

Certain suffering people try to orchestrate all of these choice by turning them into mandates of what must and what must not be done ... kinda like the curses of the Five Books of Moses (well, at least the last four) ... Often these people are driven, it seems to me, by a general prohibition against pleasure. As if: 'If it's not pleasurable, I must do it; if it is, then I must not.'

Most of us have what some call faith. For me, faith is two-fold ... even here in the Fourth Quarter when the decision making apparatus has grown creaky ... like an old door that has been both used a lot and not used recently enough. Acting with faith is a multi-component matter.

It was years ago that I confronted the dilemma of the azaleas and the honeysuckle. I knew that there was a hierarchy of value in the garden ... and azaleas, for most gardeners, trump honeysuckle. I knew that if I didn't kill the honeysuckle, I'd be fighting to protect the azaleas right to exist as long as I was the owner of this property ... the temporary steward of this often-wild garden.

I knew that I wanted both the honeysuckle's wild but sweet blooms of June and the azaleas' more formal flourish around Mother's Day in these parts. Recognizing a wish is of some great importance and the rest of the "story" is irrelevant without the wish ... the spark .. the desire.

If I know that I want something, I have an equal desire that it not cause too much pain to myself OR to others. This is a tough one. It's been said by many in a variety of cultures and different words that any choice one makes opens certain windows and closes others. Angels, according to some traditions, are the manifestations of a God's will ... the words of His/Her mouth immediately produce a messenger, a cherub to carry out the mandate of those words. Angels have it easy; they got a letter from the boss! We mortals have conflicting wishes and our decisions impact the cone of possibilities that remain after our act. (If nothing else, I found the production of children came with such a lesson.) I have no druthers, in the end, but to choose.

Finally, I must act or, else, all is for show and naught ... and I must do so with a sense that I can and I will steward the outcome ... at least, while I have energy and breath to do so.

For me, none of this changes while Playing in the Last Quarter. Indeed, it's near that time of year to pull bushels and bushels of honeysuckle vine and to feed the azaleas ... ah! so that they, too, may live to fight another Spring.

  

Even in the Last Quarter there are Suprises

 Life unfurls like a piece of parchment ....


it is said that it is best to unfold ancient letters slowly ...


 to unearth chalices with the reverence of one who digs into an ancient mound without knowing how tall that cup once stood ...


  to begin making love without memory or desire ...


  or, maybe, just with desire.                                         

Writing about Old Dogs?

Dreaming about memory! I kept having dreams that I was presenting the Belgian film,  Ben X, again, this time? with daughter, which we are, indeed, doing 3 weeks from today to an audience of School Counselors and Therapists. An older psychiatrist who visits me weekly was sitting at our table and I had forgotten to bring the film and didn't want him to know. An old estranged friend was due to come, as well. We were students, together, 40 or so years ago in post-professional training institute until he was kicked out of program ... unjustly, I suspect. He never came. He had, years ago, gone on to successful life helping people with issues around death. I had lent the film to my closest friend who lived c. 80 km away from venue. I didn't want anyone to know about my memory loss and how I'd forgotten to retrieve the film for the agreed-upon talk. I had annoying variants of Dream all through the night.

In it, I was stalling by talking about my work in the 1980's. Another shrink was there who had been present (one, though, that I'd never met before) the very day I began thinking about those ideas that led to the work.

-----------------------------

I don't know when I began dreaming about changes in my life. Maybe? I always have. Change is everpresent. Change is the rule of the Universe. But change in the Last Quarter seems often to center on loss of function. I see a lot of people each week who are between 60 and 83 years old. They are my friends ... they are the visitors to my professional office. Most of them drink prune juice! Some take meds that help them pee. Others meds that keep them from dribbling into their pants. Some, like me, have a degree of numbness in their toes and feet. I never knew until the past few years how import the imperceptible adjustments made by the ten toes are related to balance. I know, now.

Memory is maybe most disturbing to people. Word and name retrieval from the aging archives of the mind .... (is that an old Moody Blues song?) .... I have a lost and found in my office for things left behind; it is never empty. Pincer and hand control? Raisins fall out of hands ... glasses meet the faucet in the sink .... glass bowls break on the floor ... arthritic pains are not news, any longer. For me? cardiac arrhythmias were becoming quotidian (thank you, God ... I found a word for "everyday things" ... well, truth be told, "everyday" woulda been better but was momentarily lost) .... a new med has made them less frequent. M's beginning to develop some arrhythmias, as well. Did she catch them from me? Hard to say. What we seem to remember best is that the other's memory just ain't what it used to be! Maurice Chevalier and Hermine Gingold sitting on a bench in the (was it) 1958 production of Gigi singing: "Ah, yes, I remember it well." Well, I remember some of the lyrics to that duet but, to paraphrase my grandparents: "Thanks God for the Google."

Maybe all this relates to going to see my Doc, today ... he must be 45 or so. I think his Dad musta died young because when I and M gave him news I received from an overzealous Derm suggesting I had a terrible skin lymphoma (one of several misdiagnoses I've received over the years), he blanched. I had to spend the next 15 minutes calming down the young fella who I know has a penchant for hypochondriasis ... I worry about him growing up!

Enough for today. Think I'll go and drop some raisins in the kitchen.  

Woof! Woof!

It's already Wednesday ... my last note ... upbeat ... littlest grand-spawn charmer wading into the salty waters perched on Grandpa's shoulders .... the different charm of a kid who has to pee in the back seat of a car in a downpour with no toilet in sight .... Father's day gone ... and GuntherDog Playing his Last Quarter tricks.

Oh! GuntherDog. You're still ambivalent about me ... We rescued you/You rescued us 9 years ago and are still a Mama's boy. The twins were maybe 6 months old then. Their delivery had brought cardiac complications for their Mom ... their older Sister who graduated Middle School just two nights ago was 5 years old and doing the "dog begging thing" that her Mom had done with one of our previous pups ... Shayna Rosa the Wonda Dog. It had been 4 years since Shayna died and it had reduced to every now and then that I had the pleasant delusion that she'd be there to greet me when I unlocked the front door. We relented and Gunther moved on in.

Shayna was one of those special dogs ... not by her breeding, mind you ... her heraldry and her pedigree were undistinguished ... a Shepherd and a Collie? or was it a Collie and a Shepherd coupling in some yard or behind some garage ... no record of her ancestors. Our Bernards were different. They came with records of begats ... and Danny Regensberg begat Carmen of the Doobies ... and Carmen begat .... No. No! That wasn't what made Shayna Rosa special. Shayna had a love for all God's creatures. When our last Bernard came as an 11 week old pup as a gift for our daughter's coming of age 13th birthday, Shayna -- maybe 4 years old -- immediately took on the role of Mom. She cleaned her and taught her how to run under the half gate in great circles and figure eights. When the Bernard developed seizures, Shayna would sit with her until she regained 'reverse' .... the poor pup would walk into a corner and not remember -- momentarily -- how to back out. Mitzie was, one might say, precociously old at moments like that. I didn't appreciate memory loss then the way I do, now. When Mitzie had a final seizure and died on a Thanksgiving night 27 years ago, Shayna Rosa guarded her and refused -- without taking a piece out of my leg -- to allow me to carry her off.

Then, there was Muncasz the Hungary Cat who showed up at the back door looking for a handout. We already had Matyos who was, actually, Hungarian, not just hungry ... who our eldest brought back from his living in Central Europe. Matyos had problems with another cat coming into his domain (Matyos was one of the Hungarian Kings of Yore) and Muncasz took refuge on the third floor.

Shayna Rose knew exactly what to do. She started sitting at the bottom of the stairs and, day be day, edged her way up the stairs ... approximating visits. Then, for a week or so, she'd sit at the top of the stairs, until, at last, Muncasz and she proudly walked down the stairs. Matyos still hated the new cat. He'd look out the window, see an alien cat, and blame its presence on Muncacz ... pouncing on him and catterwalling, as he did. As Muncacz and Shayna Rosa aged, they'd do their duets. Muncasz walking on the keys to the piano and Shayna howling melodically. Shayna stopped singing for a complete year after Mitzie's death .... Muncasz would do his piano key walk ... Shayna would sit nearby silently.

Poor Gunther. What chance did he have to compete with the Great and Loving Shayna Rosa the Wonda Dog. I prefer not to recommend reading to any other creature but if you haven't had the chance to read Eugene O'Neill's Last Will and Testament that he wrote for his pooch Silverdene Emblem O'Neill, I do recommend it.

So, back to you, Anonymous ... While you may aspire to be reincarnated as a dog, I suspect it takes many such rebirths to arise to the level of a Great Dog ... those dog-shaped (and cat-shaped) dignitaries who shared their loving and dignity with us in the First Three Quarters of Life ... and beyondare impossible acts for us mere mortals to follow ... those Kings and Queens who now live with us as ghosts.

Sorry, Gunther, you are doin' a good job, yourself! Couple more incarnations .... it's comin'.  

Aye, Perception ... That's the Rub!

My youngest grandchild permitted me to walk into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean with her perched on my shoulders. It was Father's Day. Two of my six grandchildren were far away in their home .... 500 miles away from where we beach. But four were there. This littlest little girl ... the last of them, I suspect ... perceives grandpa with a degree of suspicion. Our home is still Grandma's home. Grandma's arms and Aunt J's arms are still the warmest besides her parents. Cousins? Especially her 6 year older identical twin cousins are way ahead of me on the hierarchy. How does one choose to perceive the matter.

Hell! She let me walk into the waters with her on my shoulders and shared her Dorritos with me. (For those who don't know Dorritos? They're the antithesis of healthfood. Their multiple laboratory created dyes remain on your fingers for hours after you lick those very same fingers. The little one let me bear her into the waters. It just don't get any better than that.

Father's Day was over ... the other Fathers and their families left the house in Virginia, as well. The twins travelled back North with me and M; they shared the back seat with GuntherDog ... Almost home, one of the twins needed to pee. At 9 -- I can recall it -- that urge to pee is paramount. The road stopped due to construction and volume. Just before that two crazies came screaming by going well over 90 and lacing through the lines of traffic. The skies opened ... One of those Summer downpours. We got off the road and headed towards a department store. M and her Grand-daughter ran off to the front door, coming back a few minutes later ... just about soaked to the bone.

We got back on the road and the girls, after three hours of playing with a computer tablet that their Uncle gave them, got a case of the giggles and low-level 3rd grade dirty words. GuntherDog settled in and we arrived home. Grandpa peed.

Fathers' Day don't get any better than that.

So, thanks for the offer, Anonymous, but one of the tricks of Playing in the Last Quarter is becoming your own dog. Half way home, there was a big fluff-ball Newfie sticking his/her massive head out the back window of a pick-up. So, go Anonymous (may I be so bold as to advise) and become your own dog. Get thee one of those dog smiles ... learn how to shake the rain water off your back like a long-haired Newfie or a St. Bernard and put one of those silly dog grins in your eyes ... go chase your favourite stick ... then take a nap with your favorite bone!

A Visitor?

A visitor dropped by ....

AnonymousJune 13, 2013 at 8:01 AM

Your blogs make me laugh and cry! Why?

 

I don't get many commenting visitors, here, while Playing in the Last Quarter. In my offline world? Mostly people who occasion my office and grandchildren. But yesterday "anonymous" dropped in to say that my writing makes them "laugh and cry." That pithy comment clarified much for me. The psychologists identify many emotions ... some, the Big Five. I forget what they are in part, I think, due to my sense that there are two central ones ... Anonymous identifies them as laughing and crying ... I usually think of them as glee and sadness but the verbs work better for me. Thanks.

 

I've talked about this, before, but it bears thinking about it, again. Dogs are, in my experience, better at it than we people-folk. I remember one of my St. Bernards, Schreber. He was a big fella and stood about two inches taller than I when on his hind legs. On Tuesdays and Thursdays -- maybe in the early 80's -- I'd come home at 9:00 and Schreber would get all happy and excited ... front paws on my shoulders, tale wagging, tongue lapping my face. Dogs know how to be happy. When I'd leave, he'd retreat to his couch ... well, it was actually a family couch but Schreber did a good job of occupying it -- his demeanor would be different ... tail drooping .... not a Swiss yodel seen on his face. "Why are you leaving me? We could go out and play ball. We could eat a turkey, together ... I'd share ... promise ... I promise."

 

I don't know whether it's reasonable but it is my belief that folk who learn early in life how to juggle glee and sadness ... how to feel them both intensely .... continue to welcome both the hello's and the good-bye's that dominate the Last Quarter.

 

Hey, Anonymous! May you continue laughing and crying, as Jack Kennedy might have said, WITH VIGOR! 

 

Thanks for sayin' 'hello' ... Adios!

Are You Ready for the Last Quarter

Well ... pointedly, speaking ... am I ready for the Last Quarter. Past week was not a horror story and, still, some weeks seem heavier (there's a baby boomerism, for ya) than others. Do we got the visceral fortitude or have our innards been partially eviscerated? "Gird your loins," the prophets said.

M has a broken wing ... tear in a bicep. H called and kvetched like me. Two couples came for dinner, B-J and M-R ... B-J seemed pretty good ... M-R was tired like the hosts M-H. Between us we had allergies to all of creation but singly we still had the teeth to carry on. That day, I had presented a very disturbing film about an autistic Belgian High Schooler who gets bullied. An 83 year old, an Overtimer, was sleeping. His maybe-a-couple-years-younger ladyfriend was trying to rouse him. It was a young audience, maybe no more than 60 on average. My youngest child who shares my office came, too. She kept the average down. Good thing her much older brothers stayed away ... Damn, they're getting Oldie and Moldie! I guess I can't change their names or send them back once they begin looking 50 in the face. Ach du lieber! Every store has its return policy.

Next night went to a meeting ... end of year social. G talked of having no memory. K about the pain of watching his lady decline. J, the host, tripped over one of his dogs and had the usual response: blaimed the pooch. Everyone of us still working. Watch out World! You think this kind of meeting is inspiration for the muses who support Zombie cinemas? The Night of the Walking-to-the-Loo?

Where am I going? Who am I tripping over? Shit! Who am I kidding! ... Well! Whom am I kidding?

On the way out, the youngster of the group (her first is just going off to college) started a conversation about some oblique reference made earlier about my having failed to graduate high school. I found myself drawn into talking about my odd early academic career, as if I was some soldier home from the Bulge. "I never took an undergraduate degree, either." ... The old soldier pulling out his sword, as if he could still swarshbuckle ... Pathetic? Laughable? Ah! It was actually fun.

I remembered Tommy Merton's prayer ... well, not the exact words but the general idea: My Lord, I have not a clue of where I'm headed. Ah, the urethral pressures and the fullness remind me each step of the way: H -- you're headed to the toilet ... don't stop ... don't slow down ... and don't pay attention to the look on GuntherDog's face that screams "Dad ... You're such an Old Schmuck." While Gunther doesn't actually talk, he clearly is concerned about HIS future, though not concerned enough to stay out of my chair. He's layed claim to both M and my chair. In the chair, he has that "You and who else look." Ever notice how Last Quarter types have smaller dogs? and smaller meals, too. I think only their bellies get bigger! I think I know where the bit of poetry I wrote for my 60th birthday is hiding. I'll find it but, for now, it ends with its main character, me, pulling out his shpritzer, gleefully peeing and proclaiming his mantra: he who pisses/never misses.

And then there are the few young people who visit my office, bemoaning their 30th or 40th or 50th or 60th birthdays, paying very little mind to my position in the front pew. Gimme a break!

Another H died last week ... like me, he was an HC, but a quarter century older ... an ancient gladiator who plied his trade till recently. Lots penned sweet things about their memories of H, especially in the first three days after hearing of his death ... or passing, as many call it. The messages are thinning, now, ... considerably thinning ...  though some may remember on the first anniversary of his death,

I think Gunther (or is it me) has to pee, again. Bye.

Where Did They All Go

I was sitting in a meeting, last night .... There was one young person ... Couldn't have been a day over 55. And no one was beyond their 91st year. D was missing; he's late 70's and can't walk the path to the venue. B hadn't been at a meeting in a couple of years. S & I had something of a kerfuffle, last month. S is about 90 and maybe I did him in by my harsh comments. M is just 65 or 66 and her car broke down on Turnpike; so much for Ford Hybrids. And K seems to forget or, else, she has other stuff to do. Add to that all the ghosts that we each carry ... While the group meets to discuss problems of childhood, by now and as far as I know, everyone is an orphan.

Not popular to describe Older Adults as orphans. Who was that English child actor (Freddie Bartholomew, maybe) who played the poor orphan in 1940's films. I looked around the room last night and could almost picture the dirty faced kid characters played by him ... Dickensonian types. As far as I know, none of us grew up with a lot and all have lived comfortable lives ... married or widowed, homes with the usual trappings, kids, grandkids who visit ...

So what's the problem? Maybe there is no particular problem Playing in the Last Quarter. Choices have been made. Can't give those kids back and there's no repeating a 50 year old marriage; the math doesn't work.

And, yet, as I listened to myself talk at the meeting, I could hear a stridency ... old soldiers drawing out their swords. I complained about something we were reading. 'Why hadn't the authors cited a conversation that RMB had with SF in 1912? Hadn't that covered these very same points.' I was a little embarassed inside myself driving down a curvy road as I realized that I had not turned on the headlights. Tooling down the road in my two seat convertible ... What a sight! Cantankerous aging fellow railing at the world that is and mourning for a world that maybe once was? maybe never was? ... with his headlights off!

Didn't hit anything! Lucky.

Funny! Who/What turned this man to lore?

Arrgh!