Stone's birthday - August 27

Sixty-two. That's us - two peas in a pod, except he has better hair than me. It's usually back in a pony tail - especially when he's playing IT consultant and dressed like a conventional person. We've been together for seven years, now, and it's been an interesting ride, to say the least. We've been discussing birthday plans - nothing extravagant, it's not like he's ninety or something, but certainly we want to acknowledge and celebrate in our own, quiet but hopefully meaningful way. My kids are planning a cook-out on Sunday - we'll celebrate Stone's and my daughter Kim's birthdays together. She will be 38 on Aug. 31st, he'll be 62 today. It'll be fun and busy and energetic and nice for him, since he has no offspring of his own, and has (informally, but very committedly) adopted my four. But we - he and I - will also celebrate more quietly by ourselves, as well. I'm at work today, but tonight we'll have his favorite supper, and I'll bring him flowers, a card, and some sort of "healthy" birthday cake. (When I was on the Atkins diet for lo, those ten-odd years, my kids would make me a "hamburger cake" with cheese frosting and always too many candles.) Stone & I are not doing "Atkins". I ate enough red meat during that period in my life so that I don't even want to look at it anymore, nevermind eat it. No, we are eating lots of high fiber foods - multigrains, vegetables, chicken and a lot of those faux-meats that are soy-based. When you marinate them properly, and gussy them up with sauces and stir fry ingredients, for example, they are actually very palatable. About six months ago, Stone's doctor informed him that his glucose levels were too high and that he was "pre-diabetic". That's when he started eating what I had been eating for the past year or so - the high fiber, etc. - and we started a modest exercise regime - walking (with our quarterstaffs) at least three times a week. Not a whole lot else, but he lost seventeen pounds, his glucose levels dropped right back to where they belonged, and his doctor was astounded when he went in for his follow-up visit a month or so ago.
Stone and I really ARE "two peas in a pod" in so many ways - too many, really, to even count. But, we both have a love of reading (our house overflows with books), both are very committed to our artwork - he with painting, me with sculpting - we both write some, both enjoy the outdoors and some minimal kinds of gardening (the kind we can do in urns - very low maintenance) and we enjoy hiking about in the woods and talking about philosophy, personal belief systems, politics, sociological trends, social programs - what works, what doesn't - and etc. Amazingly, despite the wide range of discussion subjects, we have never, ever had an argument within the context of our personal relationship. (Yeah - we sometimes find ourselves on the opposite sides of a philosophical debate, but that's stimulating and fun - about ideas rather than the realities in our everyday life together.)
So, in conclusion, it's a nice day today, and we'll have a nice, quietly celebratory supper when I get home. On Saturday, he'd like to go to Old Sturbridge Village, which is located about 20 miles from where we live, and is the reconstruction of an entire New England village, circa the mid-1700's. So, we'll do that, and spend the day traipsing about chatting with all the historical re-enactment folks. Back in July, one Sunday, we had headed out to a reservoir a few towns over just to do a little hiking, and came upon a Revolutionary War re-enactors event. There were patriots and loyalist camps, and even a mock battle, which we watched. I have to wonder what the attraction is in re-enacting war. Bad enough that we have to suffer through the damned things - what's the point in romanticizing them through re-enactment? There are groups that do Civil War re-enactments too. Oh, well. I suppose, somehow, that the Revolutionary War and the Civil War are seen as "righteous" wars - wars that accomplished something important. Unlike the "unrighteous" and immoral war we are fighting today over in Iraq. I don't imagine they'll be doing any re-enactments of THIS war a couple of hundred years from now.
But here I go again, running on. That's why I can't write a book. I'm too easily distracted from what I'm supposed to be writing about. Here I was, doing a nice little tribute to a very good man on his birthday, and I end up talking about war.
Ah, well.

This n' that -

Ronni Bennett has wrapped up a perfect argument with regard to who should (or shouldn't) vote for John McCain. I am appalled, frankly, that the Republican party still has the audacity to HAVE a candidate for the presidency. Haven't they done enough damage over the past eight years? How do these wealthy folks whose major stress in life is trying to figure out how to SPEND the money they have lying around because we middle-class (and sliding) folks are footing the bill for everything the government does - well, I mean, how do they live with themselves? How can they enjoy $5,000-a-plate meals knowing that 18% of the children in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA are living in poverty? We have more kids here in poverty than any developed nation in the world. How can John McCain and his wife own so many residences that they can't keep track of them while the greatest percentage of increase in homelessness has been among families with children? How can ANY presidential candidate justify the money they spend on their campaigns - the money they spend just to GET elected, when their campaign chests could most likely come pretty close to wiping out hunger and homelessness throughout the entire country? I have to say that I can't get excited over any candidate at this point in time. I don't see how ANY of them, Obama included, is going to make things any better. Our national debt has reached the point of no return; China OWNS us. People are losing their homes, losing their pensions, losing jobs, losing health coverage. The cost of education is rapidly escalating beyond what the ordinary citizen can afford. What else is there to lose? What kind of world will our grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in? Oh. Sure. I'll vote for Obama. I'd vote for Mickey Mouse just to keep McCain out of the white house, but I've got to say that I am increasingly pessimistic. And, to be perfectly realistic, I've got to wonder whether my vote will make any difference, anyway. Bush and the Republicans stole two elections already, and suddenly they're going to play by the rules in this election? If you believe that, I've got a few bridges you might be interested in buying! Maybe I'll be in a better mood tomorrow.
Ciao for now,
Z

Thursday, then Friday....

And so on and so forth....

Stone has gone up to Canaan, N.H. to help a friend cut firewood for winter. It's about a 2 1/2 hour drive - maybe a little more than that, actually - and he stayed there last night and will probably stay tonight, as well. Our friend lives on about 40 acres of primarily undeveloped forestland right in the heart of the White Mountains. She and her third husband (and soul-mate) bought the property about five years ago with plans to build a simple house for themselves and turn the rest into a non-denominational retreat for friends, acquaintances, and future friends and acquaintances to come to for renewal and rejuvenation. They had just about six - maybe seven - years together when her husband died unexpectedly of sudden heart failure. They had cleared a large amount of property, but hadn't started building their house. When he died, they were living in a rented house in town. Since then, friends have come forward to help her, and the house, designed after old New England barns, with a basement that she spent all last winter in, and two floors above, is framed up waiting for a permanent roof, wiring and plumbing. Last winter was very hard on our friend, and she's been anxious to get the roof finished so that the rest of the interior can be completed, and she can move herself upstairs where she'll have some sunlight and bright space. So, whatever capital she has will go into that roof, and friends - including Stone - will help cut and stack firewood so that she'll have a free source of heat for the winter months this year.

I was looking forward to some "Me" time - relishing the thought of some SPACE, since Stone and I have been together constantly since last November when he was summarily fired from his job as a software engineer for a major New Hampshire medical center. Odd, don't you think, that it happened right on the heels of his sixtieth birthday? This, after some ten years of employment with glowing annual evaluations and steady pay increases? Now, suddenly, it seems that he "works too slowly". Ah, well. He's filed an age-discrimination suit, but we know how unlikely it is that anything will happen on that in the foreseeable future. Better to take stock of our resources and move along from there. That way, if anything should come of the discrimination suit, it will be a lovely surprise, but nothing that we'll count on, for sure. He was able to collect unemployment up until mid-July, when it reached its limit, but then the 13-week extension was signed into law, and he has applied for that. We're just waiting on them processing it. Luckily, of course, my job actually covers most of our living expenses, and he has applied for his SS retirement, which is due to start coming at the end of October. Then, hopefully, he can find some part-time work that will get him out of the house on a regular basis, as I do think that the isolation is wearing on him at this point. And I know that it would do wonders for our conversations if he had something to tell me about each day beyond having cleaned the cat box and watered the tomatoes. But, to get back to what I was saying, I thought a few days apart - and being alone in our apartment would be "just what the doctor ordered" for me. You know - an opportunity to eat a candy bar for supper if I wanted to - and loll about watching inane TV shows if I felt like it (the only TV he and I watch together are documentaries or some highly recommended movie - we've seen "What the Bleep..." a dozen times. We really must get the sequel.) or just plain loll about doing nothing at all.

It didn't turn out that way. One daughter was parked in the driveway when I got home from work. Her husband had somehow managed to lock her out when he and his mother left earlier in the day to take my six-year-old grandson to the zoo about 50 miles from home. My daughter came in to wait for his call saying that they were home and she'd be able to get in. So we sipped iced tea and chatted for a good hour or so, and then when she left, I had no sooner started to undress so that I could take a long, leisurely bath in my deep clawfooted tub when my other daughter stopped in with her little girl, and they stayed for nearly two hours. I had some of my clay out on the worktable, thinking I might play around with it a bit after my bath, but my granddaughter ended up making an array of turtles and fish and birds that I'll fire up next time I'm doing a batch of my stuff. Lately, I've been focusing on faces - tribal and otherwise - to use for pendants on leather thongs, and some small spiral goddess figures. But you never know what I'll be doing next. Maybe I have ADD - I can't stick to just doing the same sort of thing over and over again. So, by the time I got to my bath - and out of it - it was time to get myself to bed, and was I ever surprised to discover that I couldn't get to sleep! So much for some relaxing "alone" time!

So the picture is me with my quarterstaff. I didn't know it was called that until I read one of Ronni Bennett's Time Goes By blog posts. I'm learning a lot now that I've dicovered some folks my age here in cyberspace. I've also joined the Elderwoman network - the brainchild of author (and so much more!) Marian Van Eyk McCain. Something tells me that I'm going to have to start using my brains again, and I'm looking forward to it! Anyway, the picture shows a rotund me who has gained about seven - maybe eight (I refuse to step on the scale) pounds while visiting with my sister in N.C. I DID do some hiking and rock climbing (really!) but not nearly enough to offset all the eating. I moved around and exercised, yes, but if you only knew how much I ate....and am still eating. Good grief - I've got to get a handle on this. I've given myself until the end of this week to splurge. Then, I'll have to get back on the wagon. Ugh.

I guess I should do a little work. I AM at my desk, after all.

Z

North Carolina

This is the scraggly little peach tree out in my sister's backyard in Hendersonville; she's lived there for eight years, and this is the first year it produced. The peaches were small, but juicy and sweet. They would make wonderful peach preserves, but I don't think sis will make any. With just herself and her husband, who picks at a little of this and a little of that, but doesn't really actually eat a whole meal at any given time, she's not very motivated to create wonderful foodstuffs. She does enjoy puttering about her yard; her house is built atop a little wooded knoll that nestles, nearly completely hidden from passersby, at the corner of a major suburban route and a smaller country road. She's completely surrounded by trees and huge, flowering shrubs. Her house started out, I think, as a basic two-bedroom ranch style, but with a full basement that when renovated (before she & her husband bought it) added two more bedrooms, two more baths, and a laundry room. The main floor of the house has a huge living room with french doors opening into an equally huge sunroom in addition to living room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and bath. She complains about how much work it is, trying to keep up with so much space, but of course it's great when she has guests.

Our relationship has evolved over the past several years, and as we've grown older, we've grown closer, and more able, I think, to understand - and even empathize with - the way our own personal choices in life kept us apart for so long. And also, the way our personal choices led us to our current life situations. With understanding - and empathy - a lot of old bitternesses and resentments have fallen away, and we've been able to appreciate each other as "family" - as our very real connection to where our people came from and where they're headed.

I am not an easy person. I never have been. Not with women, at any rate. My relationship with my mother - or perhaps the lack of such a relationship - left me feeling uncomfortable and unsafe in the company of other women. Because my father and I were so close, I suppose - the long mornings and afternoons spent trudging about the woods, the skeet shooting, the horses, the ocean - I always tended (often with less-than-desirable results) to trust and confide in men rather than other women. Thank gawd that's all behind me! Well, it was primarily one man - my ex-husband - and as it turned out, he was probably the LEAST trustworthy person on the face of the earth! I might as well have put my fate in the hands of the pizza-delivery guy or some anonymous convenience store clerk. And, at age 61, living with his second wife, he is STILL dabbling in little side affairs. Good grief, will the man EVER wind down?

Peaches - if fresh, juicy and sweet enough - can provide a great deal of comfort, and that's the truth.

My eyes are blurring. I just got new glasses a couple of weeks ago. What's going ON?

Z

Accepting cronehood; struggling to embrace it

I am no spring chicken. I am, in fact, well into my crone years. I've arrived here somewhat incredulous, and often in denial of the obvious. Yes, my 73-year-old sister and I still climb up and pose ourselves on the jetty at Sakonnet point (see picture, right) but certainly not on a regular basis. I am envious of people my age who live in the country and are hardy and hale souls who tromp about in the woods and find interesting bits of twig and lichen that they hang or display fecthingly in their houses. I'm envious, and yet know full well that I'd last only briefly without a bit more social interaction - although I DO like my "space", and tend to get quite frustrated when I don't have enough time to myself. I'm still in the process of figuring out who I'm supposed to be, I think, and that seems a bit affected and silly at my age, but I'm afraid that I just don't feel quite "finished" - am still wondering, I guess, if "that's all there is"? I wonder if others at my age feel quite so unfinished as I do. Increasingly - not daily, and not even monthly: more like once a year or so - I see an obituary for somebody my age, and think, Omigawd, what if I died tomorrow? It's certainly perfectly possible, and if I did, there would be so much left hanging. I feel, most of the time, like I have years and years ahead of me, but my sister, who is eleven years my senior (I thought ten, but on the trip I just took down to North Carolina to visit with her, she corrected me - it's eleven) has aged considerably since last fall - even had a valve replacement done on her heart back in February, and is now functioning with the help of a pig's valve. Odd. She seems a bit more fragile, although I went with her to her "walking place" - a sweet little park with a duck pond not far from the center of Hensersonville, and we did two laps around the park together. I had my quarterstaff, which is a tad shorter than I would like, and since she had none, I decided to find myself a new one while I was in North Carolina and leave my old (shorter) one for sis. She's 5'2 to my 5'6, and she has always been tiny and petite while I was and am sturdy and prone to the stockiness that I have battled since I was in my 20's. Part of accepting (if not yet able to embrace) cronehood has been to re-evaluate my body, which isn't all that bad, but neither is it "all that good". I have dieted on and off for years and years - frequently with success: during my pregnancy with my last child, who is now 27 years old, I gained 50 pounds, and lost it within six months on the Atkins plan. I continued with Atkins for ten years, and stayed slim and athletic all that time. Then, I was seduced one year while vacationing on Cape Cod by a jumbo hot fudge sundae, and haven't been on Atkins since. I've gradually climbed back up a good 25-odd pounds, and have taken ten off here and there, but haven't kept it off. I do well for a while, and then stop doing well. More recently, I've been wondering why I need to worry about being on the heavy side. Who cares? My (second) husband of the past seven years doesn't seem to mind the way my first husband did - that one was always commenting that it looked like I'd "gained a few pounds" no matter how thin I was. Anorexic, even, for a time. Now, I'm happy to say, I have a healthier relationship with # 2, and as a result, seem to be developing a healthier attitude towards my body. We eat quite well, actually. Lots of fresh vegetables, lots of fiber, fruit, and no more red meat. I use a lot of the soy-based meat substitutes, and if you marinate them to add a little flavor and serve then in a stir fry or salad, they are every bit as tasty, and far less fatty than real meat. We do eat chicken and turkey and I do an occasional pork roast, but we've cut the red meat out entirely, and now I don't think I could eat it even if I didn't have anything else. Too much of it, I guess, all those years on Atkins. But, back to my ambivalence about cronehood. On the one hand, I like the idea of relaxing my standards some - around appearance, I mean. I still have to dress professionally for my job, but I mean mostly about weight. There is simply no need for me to kill myself trying to be thin, even though if I had my druthers, as they say, I really WOULD be a slim and elegant old woman with silver hair in a long braid down my back. Or, with silver hair cut EXTREMELY short in a little wispy helmet, which I could do easily enough, but not being slim at this particular point in time, and NOT having a long, swan-like neck atop which to display this short wispy little helmet, I would end up looking like a scoop of ice cream with a cherry on top. Okay, not that bad, but not good, either. I need the hair to balance out the wide shoulders and thickening waist. My legs are still pretty good - reasonably sized, and with slim ankles, but there are a few quarter-sized spots where the veins have broken, and my calves aren't as firm and muscular as they used to be by a long shot. But, again. what's the difference? I'd LIKE to be slim, trim and athletic well up into my eighties or nineties, but I don't think it's so important to me that I'd work particularly hard to achieve it. I'm really in awe of those who do.

As an aside - after years and years of being an over-achiever (you know, the ones who arrive early, stay late, and spend evenings at home sending and replying to e-mails) I am finally realizing that killing yourself at work doesn't earn you much more than the occasional accolade, and the same free coffee in the employee lunchroom that even the underachievers get. I'm slowing down, thinking about what I want to do - and where I want to be - when I retire (unless I get fired or something) in three years. My husband is already retired, and keeps busy with his art (he paints, sculpts and writes) but is contemplating getting some sort of part-time job just to get himself out of the house. He's taken on a volunteer project - evaluating and redesigning the computer lab for a neighborhood center in the city where we live (He spent 35 years as a software engineer) - but it won't get started until October, and in the meantime, he's feeling a bit restless. Not to worry - I left instructions regarding preparation of a pork roast for our dinner. That will keep him busy for a time.

Over and out.

Shorter seasons...

It's true. The older you get, the more quickly the seasons - and days, weeks, months and years - pass. It seems like summer barely gets started, and we're up in the last weeks before fall takes over and the sun grows weaker and weaker. I knew I hadn't posted anything on this blog in some time (I admit it; I couldn't remember how to get back to it - elder blogger, indeed!) but had no idea it's been quite so long as this. It's been a busy, if not exactly eventful, summer. I just got back from visiting with my sister for a week down in North Carolina. I'm back to work tomorrow, so I need to get myself off to bed. 5:30 in the AM rolls around way too quickly. But, I'll get back here tomorrow sometime. I'm glad to have found my way.

Preserving the Family Stories

Here we are, Sis (second from left) and I (far right) visiting with our cousin, Susan (far left) and Auntie Eleanor (third from left, next to me) last fall in Little Compton, RI. The house behind us is Auntie Eleanor's and the roof - and siding shingles - look like they haven't been changed since I was a child, visiting her 50 years ago. Auntie Eleanor is 96 years old now, and to tell the truth, Sis and I hadn't seen her when we did this last "grand tour" for more than 20 years. Closer, actually, to 30. Omigosh! More than 30! The last time I saw Auntie Eleanor was at my Dad's funeral in 1974. She was just a spring chicken, then. She was very pleased to have us visit, and smiled happily as we sat there in her unchanged parlor - everything a little dusty, and with the dark patina of age. Her home, unlike my childhood recollections, is a very small "Cape Codder" - kitchen, pantry and bathroom across the back of the house with a central entranceway, and living room and dining room across the front separated by a small front entrance with stairs leading to four small upstairs bedrooms with low slanted ceilings. As children, we never went in the front door, and I don't believe anyone else ever used it, either. The house is situated at the bottom of a hill with a dirt/stone road running down to it. It's a family compound, really - a private road with only related folks allowed to build houses there. But, unlike the Kennedy compound, these house are quite modest, although those built more recently by grandchildren are a little more spacious and upscale, so to speak. But, there's still plenty of land between each house - land, and trees and lovely, lush and tangled shrubs, including a lot of wild grape vines and currant bushes. I remember Auntie Eleanor's currant jellies well, and with relish. But the reason we all used the back door at Auntie Eleanor's is because they built the house with it's back to the road. The front of the house just faces a narrow "front" yard surrounded by shrubs and bushes and the like, with only a small dirt path winding around to access the road at the back of the house. My cousin Susan and her husband have since built their house across from the "front" of Auntie Eleanor's, with plenty of space, bushes, trees and even a small field and driveway separating them.


Auntie Eleanor is quite fragile now, and her mind wanders a bit - she has forgotten that so many of her contemporaries have died, and she remembers visiting with so-and-so "last week" when it was really a few decades ago, but it was still really quite lovely to see her again, and lovely, if a little surprising, to see how unchanged her house is. I suspect it's because she wants it that way, because she certainly has grown children - some of whom are older than I am - whom I'm sure would oversee renovations if she wanted them done. But no, everything is the same - and considerably worse for the wear, but overflowing, I'm sure, with memories both good and bad, as with all families and lives.


There's an old piano on one wall in the dining room, and the top overflows with family pictures. Eleanor as a young and beautiful woman in period dress, her handsome husband in his Army uniform - for years and years, now, I've thought that our Uncle was a "Navy man", and at least an admiral or of some elevated rank, but no - there he was on the wall in a place of honor, dressed in his khakis. And, on his gravestone, located across town in an old cemetery where my grandmother and many other family members are buried, there is a brass plaque identifying him as "private first class" in the United States Army. I couldn't help but contrast and compare how differently the service men and women of today are looked at. Back in my Uncle's era, soldiering was a pround and honorable thing. Auntie Eleanor and my Uncle had a genuine love affair, I believe. She remains wild about him to this day.

I was the "baby" of my family. My sister was 12 and my brother fourteen when I was born. My mother was a nurse who had just gotten back into the workforce, doing what she loved when she discovered that I was on the way. My father had insisted that she stay home with my brother and sister until they hit their teenaged years, and now, at 40, she wasn't having any of that! So, I had an Irish "nanny", whose family became as close to me as mine was - except for my sister. When my sister wasn't in school, she carried me about on her hip everywhere she went. We joke about that today, as I've turned out to be a good four inches taller than she is, and have always been bigger boned and more gangly altogether. She also reminds me that she carried me until my feet started dragging on the ground, and I still didn't want to be put down.

Oddly, after I got married, my sister moved down south to Florida with her second husband, and I rarely saw her for more than 30 years. Our kids don't even know each other very well; they only visited with each other three or four times in all the time they were growing up. And her children, of course, were older than mine - until she and her second husband had two together who are close in age to my two older girls. (I have four children: three girls, ages 39, 37 and 30, and a son 27.)

Now, with children grown, my sister and I have made it an absolute "must" that we get together at least once every year, and sometimes a little more frequently than that. We've missed a lot of each other's lives, but we're not planning on missing what we have left.

That's all for now.

Z