Making Peace with it All

There are languages in which the words for "wholeness" and "peace" coincide. Maybe, indeed,

To make Peace with what is

is

To accept the implicit Wholeness of that which has come to be.

The Fourth Quarter is ripe with opportunities to embrace changes that --if one were to think of oneself as the Creator -- one might have done differently. Oh, the changes that the forces of nature and time seem to have imposed on the human form. The integrity of our aging cells are no match for the natural forces that work upon them. Among the visitors whose anguishes about these realities propel them to visit my office in tears or rages, I can think of many such vexing issues.

Gravity and changing metabolism do their tricks on Buttocks, Breasts and Bellies. Women's external dress just seems to get looser and their undergarments more supportive as their bodices bloom in size and direction. Men seem to learn how to wear suspension cables to avoid the embarassment of pants and belts falling from waists that are no more.

Even the scholarly seem to forget where they hid the Ginkgo Piloba and the Aricept that might help them retrieve a word or understand what is being said to them quickly enough to preclude the listener's louder repetition of what was just said. 

Hey, I said "Bidlibus is GRUNSK" 

I know, I know. I was just busy making the connection

and trying to figure out if Grunsk is BIDLIBUS or Bidlibus is not GRUNSK!

I have known too many a scholarly man or woman who has kept their brains active and still ended up in the State of Addled Oldsters doing their best at word and name retrieval and dealing with a CPU that processes at a fraction of the speed of their grandchild's uncluttered Central Processing Unit.

Grandpa is thinking.

From 55-65, I found it difficult to remember last names; from 65 and on, I have learned to begin party pratter with:

I know you!  

BTW ... I'm obviously talking about someone else, as I recall all the names of my potential heirs. It is important to know the names of all those who either want to throw out all my valuable posessions and those more plotting others who want to posess them ... right down to the last tchochka.

The list, in fairness, of changes that may be troublesome is quite large and touches on all aspects of
life in the Last Quarter. And one must do little else than listen to Television to hear about some of the more common ones.

Skin thins; pants get peed on; penises only rarely stay erect for 4 hours no matter how long you wait for that Messianic event and vaginas need synthetic oils to get going; hair thins like skin and we all look so much wiser when our forheads get all scrunched up and we appear to be deeply thinking; vagueness, too, seems to mimic wisdom; those once so pretty eyes now have four or five whisker-like etched arrows that point to 'dem peepers;' facial features become more prominent; and toenails hide an ancient Fungal culture of mischevous looking characters who shamelessly saunter about on your toes on the Telly!

Yesterday, it got to me. M, I and our kids have an old house down on the Delmarva penninsula. It's still on stilts but likely has already been earmarked by God, Nature or Anima Mundi as evidence of mankind's Babel-like hubris, here the insane belief that we can build anywhere in the vicinity of Seas that rise and fall as they may. It's a four hour drive and M, I and GuntherDog typically arrive a bit tired; yesterday was no exception. 

To get right to it, flicking on the AC led to a whisper of cool air coming out of half of the air vents and the Hot-Young-Chick Weathergirls were threatening Bikini weather. Just, FTR, Neither M nor I nor GDog should ever again be seen in Bikinis. (Alas, we'd look more like Bikini Atoll than young and chic weatherfolk.) 

OK. No problem. I'll check out the compressor and then crawl under the house and look.

Compressor was chuggin' along but who knew that the AC was done with flexible ducts? Another loss in the Fourth Quarter has to do with not only the difficulty balancing on rooftops and bending into crawlspaces, but the fact that contractors, indeed, know about those disabilities and offer expensive solutions, leading with those that "don't cost that much, Sir" and only slowly arriving at the actual solutions that require deciding whether to giveup your AC, your coronary meds or your first-born grandkid.

Ringing in my ears that rage against the passing years:

You can take care of that.

Echoing back was just one word, though:

Schmuck!

No, no. The moisture must've frozen onto the ducts over a hard Winter, weighed down the flexible ductwork, and shut down the airflow in them.  Then, need I add, comes another reality of the Last Quarter, namely, that the kids who might've helped in cleaning out the Augean Stables with you decided to emancipate themselves from Child Labor, decades ago. What to do?

Think I'll furrow my sweaty brow, look off into the distance, 
and pretend to think on it .... 

As I grow older.