Tag: life

Under Over

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This past week I’ve been feeling off. Down, dark and scared of the other shoe dropping at any time. Some moments it’s really terrifying. So I try to soothe myself by eating with a vengeance, or drinking as much as as college boy. I stay busy. I keep myself distracted. I pass the days waiting for the nights, when I take my faithful Ambien and check out. But even then my dreams won’t let me be. My dream life is rich and busy, and most mornings I wake without a sense of having truly rested.

Something has felt different for me over these past few months. Something is nagging at me, and it’s been growing and growing. I’m trying to identify it. So many stressors. Hard to know what’s at the root of my ill ease. It’s a cocktail of many things I suppose.

If there’s any wisdom that I have gained from 62 years on this planet, it’s this: take your hunches – your instincts, your tiny afterthoughts, your conscience (my son and I have always called this the “God voice”), magnify it ten times – and then do what it tells you. Hear the message, heed the message. (Most of the time it’s been a really useful tool for life. I recommend it.)

My thoughts have been consumed lately by one nagging thought, but I can’t tell if it’s the neurosis of an aging woman or an insight from the ether. The voice keeps saying “You just need to outlive your mother”. My mother is ticking along at 90, with only a few short-term memory slips. On the whole, she’s very much who she’s always been. Me, I kinda feel like I’m waiting for some major health shit of my own to hit the fan. So many of my peers have suffered awful and unanticipated health crises; why not me too? I’m concerned; as the cotter pin holding that’s holding the whole Conant project together, I can’t leave until stuff gets sorted.

I’ve had a couple of strange feelings in my body, one being a persistent pain which travels around the upper left quadrant of my chest, sometimes under the breast, sometimes in the armpit, sometimes like a line up the left side of my neck. I’ve thoroughly employed my “God voice” technique here – asking for an assortment of tests over the past year, yet at this point my doc and I are basically giving up the search and are attributing it to a referred pain from a decades-old broken shoulder. But I’m not convinced. What to do? I think I’ve done all I can. Or have I?

I’ve been working on the physical crap inside my house for a while now with some good progress. Elihu’s big move to Brooklyn this summer gave a huge push to our household’s downsizing. He wanted to move out with all of his worldly possessions taking up just the space of two large rolling suitcases. And he did it, purging the rest. Inspired by his progress, I took up the charge and continued the project after he moved out. But still. So much stuff.

Just how is the garage always full after ten years of garage sales? The way in which we Westerners amass physical clutter is astounding.

My mother has begun to let go of the idea that I will eagerly inherit her house and its contents. There was a time, a few years ago, when she’d thought that naturally I would move into her house after she was gone. When I pointed out to her that I already had a house – and that I, as an aging empty-nester would have no need of a large, four bedroom home, she looked genuinely surprised. She’d just assumed I’d want all this stuff. It’s been a journey, but I think she’s finally coming to understand that her Baccarat wedding crystal and her well-worn Limoges china are of little value in today’s world. It’s sad. It is. But it’s the reality of this physical plane. Dust to dust. Only so many museums. Only so much room for our stuff.

As a creative, I naturally have notebooks upon notebooks (let’s not even consider the hundreds of cassette tapes of demos, rehearsals and ideas). Even though the reality is that I will not revisit and reanimate 99% of those ideas, I still wish to keep all of these for my lifetime as space allows. They’re only of interest – and comfort – to me. Once I am gone, into the fire they can go.

What I do wish gone is all the extra paper that I’ve hung onto. Programs, set lists, photos, ticket stubs, doodles, letters, diaries and so on. Things essentially only meaningful to my mother, my son and me. I so wish that I could indiscriminately grab piles and throw them onto the fire pit! But then I see a hand written letter from me to my parents when I was a child at camp, and I think “Oh! Elihu and his children will get such a kick out of this one day!” Myself, I find letters and notes of a personal and intimate nature of interest. But will my grandchildren find this ephemera fascinating or irrelevant? Will I even have grandchildren?

I admit it, I’m stuck. Taking a breather here. The burn pile will grow. I just need a minute.

The Studio is finally on the market after two years of town bureaucracy and lots of other back-and-forth legal nonsense. I emailed the architect to tell him the news, and it bounced back. A quick search informed me that he had died a year ago. He was an old family friend, so this was sad news. But it also seemed to confirm that things were truly in cosmic order. The time had come to let the place go.

My brother Andrew is another item on the unresolved list.

Just last night as my mother and I tried to discuss the topic, I saw that not only were we not any further along in the process of discussing his caretaking, but we had backslid. My mother and those of her generation have a hard time getting honest about personal things, and having a mentally unwell child is, in my mother’s eyes, a failure on her part and a point of shame. So how does she deal with this? Denial. Lack of willingness to see the problem. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t think you have one!

My brother is as hoarder whose house is something you’d have to see to truly understand. He cannot throw things out, whether mementos or garbage. There is no distinction to him. He is a deeply intelligent person, but he has been consumed by his disease for most of his life. He hasn’t had a job in over 40 years. Has no dentist, no doctor. He isn’t even in the system; his dysfunction is such that he cannot follow through on any administrative endeavor. One year I got him food stamps, but he never followed through to keep them. He lives with an enormous inguinal hernia hanging over his crotch. He’s an alcoholic and does nothing but sit in front of the TV at mom’s. She gives him pocket money (his only income). She gives him her car to drive. She makes him dinner every night, fretting aloud about what he will and won’t eat, and what she’s got planned. Some nights he goes on a bender and never shows. My mother waits it out with no idea if he’s alive or dead (Andrew won’t answer his phone). Many times through the years I’ve had to peek through the window panes into his shack to see if he’s ok. But if he saw me doing this, he might fly into a rage, so there’s some risk involved. My brother showers, eats and watches TV at her place, then retreats to a tiny, dilapidated farmhouse at the foot of the driveway. Dysfunction of the highest order.

At present, everything is propped up and working. Mom has a reason to live; she has been a consummate chef and feeder of people for her whole life. She has someone to check in on her, take out the garbage and collect the mail. Andrew has dinner, booze, entertainment and shelter. They enjoy a symbiotic relationship. No need to dismantle things. But one day, shit’s gonna fall. And inevitably, it’s gonna fall on me. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. But I’ll feel better once we finalize the will and get Andrew’s future care plan laid out. If mom won’t believe me that it’s a major concern, she’ll believe our family attorney. It’s on the immediate to-do list. Maybe my heart will lighten a little when we get our plans defined on paper. Maybe.

When I opened my eyes this morning, I turned on my phone and began the search for some dopamine to start my day.

Instead, I found a New Yorker article about a man my age of Jamaican descent who’d lived nearly his whole life here in this country and who had been deported by ICE to a maximum security prison in Eswatini. The agents employed needless violence.

The next story I read was authored by a mother who had lost her only two children. Both sons as teens committed suicide. They were deeply intelligent, insightful young men. But they were driven to such despair by either this world, their temperaments – or both – that they took their own lives.

Following in my feed came a post by a friend whose only child was killed a year and a half ago. She and I were both single mothers of only boys, both jazz singers, both from Chicago. I’d always felt a bond of some sort with her, and her loss has become a part of my life in some small way. I can’t help but feel a mixture of heartbreak and guilt when I think of her situation – and fear for the safety of my own son. But my reality is still comfortable. Hers is not.

This whole fucking world is brutal. And I am feeling it. I’ve got it good, I know I do, but I’m feeling the weight. The Trump era has ratcheted up the stress level on this planet for sure. It’s definitely playing a part in my unease. I long for freedom, peace and comfort for every last one of my fellow humans, but it seems further off now than ever before.

I’m under the spell of overwhelm.

Upswing

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This sure is a crappy time in history in which to be experiencing an upswing in my life. But I’m going to fully embrace the exciting experiences that lie ahead. I’m never unaware of my privilege, nor am I unaware of the horrific downturns that will befall so many souls on this planet in the coming months and years. Nonetheless I am going to put all of my energy into my music, my recordings and performances. Many of my new songs express my feelings about the turmoil of the planet, and that, I have to believe, is my energetic contribution to the world. I send the world my love as I offer up my music – holding my breath all the while, along with so many of you, as we watch the upheavel of our world.

There must be some energetic component to my current state, otherwise I could not possibly understand it; everywhere I’ve gone these past few weeks people have been offering up such lovely compliments. Strangers at the Y say they’ve noticed the progress I’ve made in my fitness, folks I know in town say that I possess a certain look in my eye – some have even offered hugs of what I can loosely describe as being congratulatory. But for what, exactly, are they congratulating me? What is it that I present which compels them to approach me and offer such kindnesses? I have stalled in my weight loss and I am wearing the same old clothes I’ve had for years. I certainly look older than I did even six months ago (this is the witching decade as far as looking ‘old’ takes place – that will have to be an entire essay in and of itself). What then is this ephemeral hint that I am broadcasting? Perhaps it’s confidence. I dunno. Maybe it’s because after a long window of child rearing and then empty nest grieving, I’ve finally discovered something that I am good at – and which I deeply enjoy. Maybe it’s reflected in the way I carry myself. Dunno. Not entirely convinced. But I do feel more hopeful about my prospects for creating and performing than I did a year ago at this time, and maybe that’s the thing that folks are responding to. Really, who can know?

There’s not much more I feel the need to add here. I’ve just felt a shifting of things in my life recently, and having not written much lately, it seemed to merit expression. Thank you for being here with me for this, which feels like a new chapter in my life. Thank you for bearing witness. I really do appreciate it.

Blogging from the Bar

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People are important. People are not important. They matter, and yet they don’t. As with everything else in this world, this is a situation of duality. Both ideas coexist at the same time. But truly, in the ultimate scheme of things, none of us individually really means a whole lot to the totality of our species. It may sound like a depressing thought, but the universe really doesn’t care. The caring part is up to us.

I spent an afternoon recently at the emergency room with my mother, watching – and sometimes even smelling – the folks who came, waited and then went. I saw a large young woman with a distant, disconnected look in her eyes – she appeared to be heavily medicated – and I watched as she was admitted into triage and then carefully walked back to her seat by a member of the ER staff. I smelled a homeless person before I saw her; the pungent scent reminded me of an old farmhouse, maybe a barnyard – and so my associations at first were pleasant – until a funk began to grow – the sweet smell of decay; the smell of a human unable to wash. (My mother’s words from just an hour earlier came to mind: “I took a whore’s bath” she had said when describing how she’d prepared herself to go out to the ER.) The stench quickly became too much for me, but I remained in my seat so as not to hurt her feelings by moving. I saw elderly folks, wearing masks as they waited. They arose from their seats in a feeble, cautionary manner. We all experience weakness and vulnerability, but it’s not a pleasant truth to face.

All of these plain, ordinary people had been in such a state of need, and yet the staff was so kind and tender when they received each one of these patients. I marveled over that. These were not beautiful people, they did not stand out as exceptional – in fact, had I seen any one of them on the street I might easily have passed them by without a second thought (or perhaps with a critical thought, if I’m being completely honest) and yet there in the emergency room they were all cared for and asked after with kindness and respect. It was very moving to watch.

I thought about the deaths of a few people just the day before, on a bridge in Baltimore that had collapsed. I remembered being surprised at the traction the story had had – and yet when I heard in first-person the stories of the families who had lost someone dear, it instantly became real. It’s so easy to disassociate from people because they’re removed from our own experience; do we really feel the pain of those who die in dire circumstances in far-away places on the globe? We may want to, but I don’t believe we truly can. Yet when it happens close to home, and right in front of our eyes, we begin to sympathize in a deeper way. The situation is made human, it becomes real. Of course all tragedy is real, but it doesn’t always feel to be. 

In the emergency room, there were numerous mini tragedies underway all the same moment. On the outside, these folks looked unassuming and unmemorable, and yet each was being treated like the precious human they truly were. It was heartwarming, it was reassuring. It was humbling.

I thought of Pompei in ancient times. The volcano erupting and swallowing thousands of people. When I was in high school, I saw a touring exhibit of plaster casts that had been made of actual inhabitants of the city during their final moments – in the poses they struck upon their deaths. Those frozen figures were both distant to me and yet very real all at the same time. When I hear of disasters on the news, I often flash back to the sight of those anguished individuals, and I realize we humans, no matter our place in history, cannot ever be protected from tragedy, pain and fear. And no matter how it befalls us, not a one of us is beyond the purview of death. At best, we can only hope for a peaceful transition.

Every human who has suffered or died was as real as you or me. Those who have experienced frightening demises may seem a world away, but their stories could easily be ours as well. This thought is never terribly far from my awareness. And that day, while waiting in the emergency room, it came close to home again.

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For some reason my mother and I had a heated argument as she prepared for the drive to the hospital. Since then, we’ve spoken a few times on the phone and, as it comes easy to us, we’ve compartmentalized very successfully and were able to fall back into the “I love yous” before too long, and then things became normal again. 

But goddamit, may I not be as distrustful and defensive as my mother when I enter my elder years! I have taken to using the phrase “It’s not a hardship” when speaking to my mother about a situation in which a decision must be made, because for my mother everything is a hardship. Yet saying this aloud seems to make no difference – it does not reach her. “We can take your rollator in the car or not”, I will say, “We can take Braim Road or Locust Grove – nothing makes a difference to me – but if it does to you – just say something!” But that’s not how my mother operates. Passive-aggressive asides said under her breath are commonly used as a vehicle of primary communication. Not speaking up for her needs is her MO. It’s simply how she’s lived her whole life. Much as I’d wish that common sense and my honest declarations might make a difference, they do not. She makes simple non-issues into topics of debate. I have told her numerous times that I am a sixty-year-old woman, I have run a successful business and raised a brilliant child – what makes her think that I can’t make basic choices as we make our way out the door and on to our destination? I have never received an answer to that query.

When driving my mother home (I have known that driveway for over fifty years) she will still point to the driveway lest I miss the turn. Good lord. Really? This is the level of distrust and control with which my mother lives – at least with relationship to me. It is endlessly frustrating. I do know that she believes me to be a control freak – and in light of the deep and fundamental distrust she feels for me and my choices, I can understand how it affects her responses to me. But still. Really??

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Days have now passed since my mother’s visit to the ER – one which ended up in an overnight stay and a surgery in which a stent was placed in her kidney – and she is back to her usual self. General anesthesia at her age always makes me a little concerned, but she and I appear to share a high tolerance for the stuff that knocks us out. There do not appear to be any lasting effects from the anesthesia. And that is good news.

This near-the-end chapter must feel a little strange for her, perhaps even a little scary, but it’s not something she reveals. I tried to investigate further the other night when we had dinner together, but she didn’t offer up any insights. (I had bought some lamb, string beans and potatoes for her, suggesting she make herself an Easter dinner. In that her prime creative expression in life has been that of being an exceptional cook, I was happy when she offered to make dinner for the two of us. And it was so delicious. When I arrived at her house and she was in the midst of preparing everything – in spite of her steeply bent-over spine and arthritic hands – I realized how lucky I was that my mother, at 89, was still making home-cooked meals like this. In spite of how crazy we make each other, when she finally does leave us, I will miss this time.)

Even though I am glad to have her here with us – and to still know the sense of home and permanence her presence provides – there is a part of me which almost wishes that the Band-Aid be ripped off already. I wrote a song called “House of Cards” in which I ponder this strange place of worry and not-knowing. Will things become dire? Will my mother fall, will she experience an event that changes everything in an instant? Will the entire remaining estate go to pay for her care until she dies? Will she die in a place other than her home? My one main goal is to ensure she does in fact die at home, but one can never truly be guaranteed of that outcome. I also worry about her being bored; her life is very small, very repetitive. It seems her whole day is simply about getting dressed, eating and then going to bed. In between she feeds and watches the deer outside her windows, and she enjoys a drink in the evening while watching the umpteenth episode of MASH or All in the Family. Can this be enough? It would likely drive me insane. But perhaps as one enters the truly aged years the need for stimulation and new experiences wanes. I can’t imagine being in a place like that, but then again, just ten years ago I couldn’t have imagined that my own body would age as it has, or that I would find myself wanting go home and be in bed by eleven.

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I began writing this at a local Irish pub as a means to learn how to use my new Bluetooth keyboard and iPad setup. I began writing with loud music playing, a beer at hand. It’s also where I’m concluding this piece. At a bar, with the energy of people all around, again with a beer at hand. I can’t imagine a life without this experience, and yet I’m fully aware that it’s made possible by relative youth, health and vigor, and a certain place of privilege in which I exist.

But no matter the level of privilege into which we are born, the primal losses unite us all. May I find it in me to navigate the coming unknown waters with compassion and patience. And even as the contours of my life change in those impending and profound ways, I intend to savor every moment of these earthly pleasures, knowing deep in my heart that it will not always be thus.

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Post Script: My song “House of Cards” explores the worry of not knowing how life will play out. “Depression Era Girl” is a song about my mother; writing it helped me to organize the sorts of idiosyncrasies I mention in the post.

Before too long I will have an EP on all the platforms so that you may finally hear what I’ve been doing for the past year. I love songwriting, but it sure feels good to write for this format again and I hope not to let four months pass before posting my next piece. I deeply appreciate your still being here!

Chicago Tribune Commentary Elizabeth Conant: Lin Brehmer reminded me that it’s great to be alive – and a life well-lived is a triumph

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Photo credit: E. Jason Wambsgans

The past few months have been hard on me and my peers. Our world is changing.

We’ve begun to lose iconic people who’ve always seemed to exist as permanent landmarks in our lives and culture, such as WXRT-FM 93.1 host Lin Brehmer. It’s easy to forget that these people are human and that they’re aging too.

I’m at the doorstep of 60, and in the past year or two, I’ve become acutely aware that this is an age at which maladies appear more frequently and morbid diagnoses begin to arrive. Even in my early and mid-50s, I retained that feeling of “everyone but me” regarding aging and disease — an attitude that prevails among the young and early middle-agers. It’s the sense that one has not arrived yet, that age and its concerns are still far off.

In our modern world, we are very keen on extending life, and we have come to expect longevity. It’s easy to forget that just a generation or two ago, if you made it to 60, that was an acceptable outcome. If you died in your 70s, it wasn’t considered a breach of cosmic justice. It was simply your time. Your glorious turn on the planet in corporeal form was up.

But these days, we fight as hard as we can to survive into years of frailty — and then we consider it a victory. I disagree.

I assert that a life well-lived is a victory, no matter what age it finds completion. It may be heart-wrenching to see someone depart, and it might not seem fair, but a life fully expressed is not a failure or a tragedy. Rather, it is a good outcome.

Last year, I went back to my hometown of Chicago for a visit. It was a thrilling week for me, densely packed with reunions. There was music and food, and there were all those streets and neighborhoods that I knew so well, the sight of which made me profoundly happy. WXRT provided the soundtrack.

The DJs’ voices on WXRT were as familiar and comforting to me as those of old friends. After all, these on-air personalities had been with me for years. It felt as if no time had passed since I’d moved away, more than a decade ago. Lin accompanied me as I drove through the city. I can’t hope to describe how full this made my heart. The sound of his voice made me feel loved; it restored my spirit. It made me feel like I really had returned home. I experienced a moment of true bliss that day.

Lin died on Sunday.

I knew he’d left the air in the summer, but I’d also heard that he had returned this past fall. Somehow, I just figured he’d beat the cancer, and he was back; all was as it should be. The news of his death was shocking to me. Understandable but still shocking. And as I began to think more critically about it, I realized that my generation was at the beginning of its downslope.

It’s begun. The time of goodbyes.

Death is nothing new, and our grief is not exceptional. But what does make the experience far different at this time in history is that we are all experiencing these losses in real time and on a global scale because of the internet. For us, there is no softening of the message through the buffer of time. Maybe it’s a good thing because it is certainly cathartic to be able to share with people all around the world our grief and our memories. I’d even say it’s a kind of privilege. But it’s certainly a new one.

For the most part, a death after 60 productive years on the planet is not a tragedy. It’s a sorrow that will subside as time passes. And as we in the 50-plus segment of the population can easily attest, time passes much more quickly as one ages.

Ten years ago feels like the year before last. Last year feels like just last week. Our end dates are fast approaching. But let us not be made too weary by this; all of us have done the best we can, and we will continue to enjoy the ride as best we’re able. Let’s thank our missing comrades for all they added to our lives, let’s smile at the memories and let’s let them go with a wave and a kiss.

Thank you, Lin, for reminding us that it really is great to be alive.

Elizabeth Conant is a musician and writer originally from Chicago and now living in Saratoga Springs, New York. She played keyboards for more than a decade in the Chicago-based indie pop band the Aluminum Group. She blogs at TheHillhouseinGreenfield.com.

This is a commentary published on January 24th, 2023, in the Chicago Tribune.

It is an edited version of the original post entitled “Liz’s Bin”.

Ushering In

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Growing Older, Mommy Mind, Pics4 Comments

When we arrive at a milestone, I think it’s human nature to offer up proclamations about the event’s significance. It feels restorative and hopeful at the conclusion of one chapter, and at the dawn of another, to identify the things that have happened, to acknowledge the lessons we’ve learned from those experiences, and to posit an improved vision for the future that awaits us.

I too feel the urge to summarize, to identify my overarching life themes of the past decade. A quick look through my personal journal entries from the past several New Years Eves shows that although I’ve lived through many, many adventures over the past ten years, my hopes at this time of year are nearly always the same. And each year my failings are also nearly identical. I have likely been wrestling with the same private demons for my whole life. While I do seem to get some purchase onto new ground each year that passes, sadly it seems to be at a much slower pace than I might have envisioned a decade or two ago.

This is not to say that I am the same person as I was in 2009. Good Lord no. Not a one of is, I should think.

It was in 2009 that I first called New York my home. And it was in 2010 when I first began to refer to our little homestead here as The Hillhouse. Shortly after that, I found I could no longer tolerate the emotional turmoil in my life without an outlet, and so my inner life found its way into an outer expression in The Hillhouse in Greenfield. I had no idea what I was even doing back then – all I knew is that I had to write, I had to get what was in me out of me. My objective was not to “have a blog” – I’m not even sure I quite knew what a blog was back then – all I knew was that I was starting my life all over in a new part of the world and I felt very alone. Heartbroken and hopeless. It was too much for me to bear, so I looked for expression and connection through the only means I had available.

Although it may seem far too obvious, I can see that today is a perfect marker, a perfect delineation between my then and my now (and beyond)….

The very first and most obvious piece of evidence I think of is that of my advancing age. At 56 it might not seem that aging should be foremost in my mind – but it is. And it’s more than just vanity. Yes, a great deal of it – if I’m to be completely honest – is about vanity, but more disturbing are the physical changes that are occurring that will come to adversely affect me at some point. There’s the stuff that’s to be expected: weight gain (one must become vigilant about careless food and drink after 50, I’m convinced of it now!), there’s the loss of height, but most alarming is the rapid change in my hands and my joints. My spine is succumbing to gravity, my hips are so much tighter than they’ve ever been, and my fingers seem to lose their grip on something daily. At age 18 I broke my neck, and in the past few months the injury has come back to cause me some concern; I now feel slight electrical tingling in my arms and even my head itself, and from this new reality I don’t know if there is any retreating.

This is tolerable when I think on the few things of value I may yet add to the planet. One thing, of course, is my son Elihu. He is what motivates me to get out of bed in the morning, and I know for sure he is the main thing that keeps my almost 85 year old mother going too. There are a few things I still need to do (doesn’t everyone feel that way?) and if I can conclude this personal business then I believe my growing impairments will be slightly less frightening. I have a list – lest you think I’m just wishing for a few more good nights on the town and a couple more singing dates – and I will henceforth take care to clearly map out the steps and check them off in a timely fashion. First thing on the list: get the kid into MIT. In the coming year all else will be a sidebar. My job now is to support my son in any way that he needs. Once he’s launched, I can turn my attention to the rest.

I look so different, so much older, than I did when we moved here from Chicago. And I kinda wished someone would’ve given me a heads up. Maybe then it wouldn’t have come as such a surprise. But is anyone ever truly ready for this? For me, things were pretty much ‘business as usual’ until I hit 53. Then stuff just kinda started to change really fast. I look at my friends through the lens of Facebook, and I can see the witching hour making itself apparent in their countenances too. Protestations are silly. I am SO not a fan of people talking about “internal beauty” or “80 years young”. Fuck that. Seriously, fuck all that bullshit. The bloom is off the rose already. There is no going back. No 60 year old is more beautiful to gaze upon than a 30 year old, and reduced flexibility and mobility suck. Sure I’m smarter, more experienced and more insightful than I was even a decade ago – but that aint gonna stop my hands from dropping the last wine glass on the kitchen floor or finding my limbs painfully stiff after a half hour on the couch. Sure, I workout regularly – and plan now to workout even more, and yes I will be increasingly mindful of the things that I need to do in order to stay at the best of my physical abilities, but the march of time – the physical declining of my body – this will not ease up as time passes. And this is a reality that is only just now truly settling in. I feel that the more deeply I can make peace with this aging thing, the easier it’ll be to move through it. To move through the next decade, more specifically.

And then there is my mother. She too is proof of the big changes that have transpired over the past decade, as her own physical situation has deteriorated quite a bit in just the past few years. I can look at her and get a fair idea of what lies ahead for me. I have her hands, her bad and scoliotic back, her bad right knee… It doesn’t worry me as much as it might have if I’d had no warning; at least none of this will come as a surprise to me. What is a tad surprising is the way in which my mom has recently begun to make offhand remarks about her death. We were looking at a reclining chair for her a few days ago and she said something about choosing a color that I liked. And I can assure you there was no hint of humor in her voice… While a year ago she would talk about living to see Elihu graduate from MIT (yes, we do like to put this particular cart before the horse), now she has amended that to say that she would be happy just to live to see him be accepted at MIT. And that is a different thing. Her heart is in continual Afib these days, so as a result she’s very easily winded and finds her energy gone after simple tasks. I can understand how she’s losing the resolve to envision things she once did. Her talent and gift to the world has always been that of superb cook and host; with that role diminished to only a handful of dinners a year, and hardly the energy to see those to fruition as things are presently, I can imagine this hits her hard. We Conants don’t really talk about feelings as a family. Never have. And so as we find ourselves in this new territory – on the verge of a decade that promises to bring change upon us more dramatically than ever before – deep inside I think we are feeling the sorrow of imminent goodbyes and major shifts in our reality…

I’ve spent a good deal of time wondering at the things one must do in order to find resolution and conclusion in life. My feeling is that if one takes all the chances one can, if one makes strangers smile and occasionally rescues spiders from the vacuum cleaner, if one is generally a kind person who does things to the best of their abilities – then there should be no regrets, no nagging feeling that their life has somehow missed its mark. I have very few regrets – I might even be so bold as to say I have none – because I know that if I were presented with the same choices in the same time and with the same emotional tools as I had at the times of those choices – then I would most likely behave in the same way. If one simply acts as a good person in their own sphere of influence, then I honestly believe they’ve done a fine job at being human. And I should think that believing this would help a person to accept the changes and losses that life inevitably brings. Of course my ending is not showing itself to me in an acute or obvious way at the moment, so it’s easy for me to say this now. We shall see.

When we moved here just over a decade ago, a majestic beech tree stood in the yard. It was enormous, and right after the view, it was usually the first thing one noticed on the property. A few years into our residency here the tree began to drop its topmost limbs. Where once we could see only branches, now the sky was showing through. I was told by many folks that the tree was in the process of dying. At first it was alarming; we really loved our beech tree and couldn’t imagine the space without it. Maybe it was dying – I mean, after we’re grown and have physically matured, are we all not in the process of dying? – but yet it was still so beautiful. It never ceased to be stunning. It’s probably lost a third of its volume in the past few years – it is not the tree we first knew. But this does not stop it from being regal. It does not prevent us from loving it as we did. These days I can begin to imagine how the space will look when it’s finally gone. Where there once was shade there will be a great patch of light. It will be a huge change on the property. And then, one day, it will not. When the reigning tree has reached its limbs to the sky and then finally dropped them all onto the ground, it will have been the completion of a tree’s perfect life.

And that resulting patch of sunlight will usher in a fresh new chapter.

 

Lean to Green

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Growing Older, Mommy Mind, Pics, The Studio4 Comments

Apparently, I didn’t think this through. Many of the things that I’d wished for over the past several years are becoming a reality now, but it seems there’s a catch to it all. Really? Must there always be a catch? I suppose that’s the way this earth is designed. Two steps forward, one step back. But I remind myself yet again, it’s still progress..

A couple of years ago, when my son still needed me at every turn, when dinner had to be made and chickens had to be tended, I was desperate to leave the years of unending servitude and mundane chores. Although he was old enough then to take some things on, I didn’t ask much of him, but rather encouraged Elihu to live as idyllic a childhood as was possible. Sure he’s always helped when I’ve asked, and he’s always been upbeat and compliant, but still, I have never wished to ask too much of him because I knew his time would come soon enough. Before long the world would ask of him the same repetitive and thankless tasks, and I wished to protect him from the inevitable drudgery for as long as possible. Until now. Elihu has told me that he feels good when he can help out, and now with him being taller than me and having core strength that is fast superseding mine, he is more than capable of carrying 50 pound bags of chicken feed from the car to the coop, relieving me of one task that is becoming just a tiny bit more challenging as the years pass. So I now delegate this and other chores, something for which I am deeply grateful. No longer must I feed and water the chicks in the barn, stooping under the poultry netting, threatening a back injury. No longer must I interrupt my work to get my feet wet in the evening’s dewy grass closing in the flock and collecting eggs in the dark. Now I am freed up to spend more time at the piano, more time getting the kitchen tidy after supper, more time to go through the endless inbox, culling the cream from the crap.

Two years ago at this time, I had yet to play a piano single job here. It had been 13 years since I’d sat at a piano in a hotel lobby. And even back then, when I had piano singles, I hadn’t sung. I hadn’t combined the two. Plus I’d always used real pianos – the technology of a good-sounding, portable piano with ‘real’ action no less – that didn’t exist yet, nor did lightweight, good-sounding PAs. So in May of 2016 I had only just acquired a new keyboard and PA with which to get jobs. I gotta be honest – for as many years as I’d played, for all the experience I had under my belt, and for as eager as I was to get going – I was nervous. Back in the day I’m fairly sure that getting work was influenced by my youth and looks. And maybe even my famous then-husband. The latter idea always bugged me. I tried to silence the concern, but it always followed me; I hated the idea that I hadn’t gotten work on my own merits, but rather my association with someone whose ass many people strove to kiss. But now, all these years later, I was finding that my lack of anyone to vouch for me – starting over, absolutely on my own merits, and with completely new gear – all of it was much more daunting than I’d expected. But I was tenacious, and in the face of full on panic attacks, old fashioned nerves and the challenged sense of vanity of a fifty-something woman, I muscled on. I put in time at the piano, I got a couple hundred tunes in my book, I had new promo shots taken and business cards printed. Starting slow and easy, I got a couple gigs at the Greenfield Farmers Market. And then I was off…

The Studio too was something I’d pushed to the back of my mind over the past several years. There has always been forward movement, but the destination was fuzzy. I’d scolded myself in years past, thinking I needed to simply set aside ten minutes a day to envision the future, to help clarify the picture. But I seldom did. The whole prospect just scared me. I knew what I wanted the big picture to look like – that was easy – but the shit between here and there was beyond me. And in some ways, it still is. But it’s getting clearer now. Kinda crazy the way in which The Studio adventure has panned out. It’s been forward progress in fits and starts. Things look really good, then a pipe breaks. An event feels like a great new era, then a patron sues us (me) for falling on the ice. Deep down, I don’t sweat any of it too much, even when it looks bleak (as it still does from this moment!) because I have a hunch – I call hunches the “God voice” – that things will work out in a surprising fashion. That’s pure faith, I tell you, because at present there’s little evidence to support that reality. But if I were to listen to some of my friends (one more strongly than the others, and yes, G, that’s you!) who give the Universe/God/Creator all the power, and see us as merely passive vehicles to such a power, then I have no reason to fret. But I’m human, so fret I do. But thankfully events are coming to me that shine some light and offer some hope. Some tiny turns of fate are beginning to illuminate new possibility down the line. In a way this too scares me, cuz I’ve never thought this far ahead. It feels strange to see the future that I’ve talked about so much over the years slowly becoming the present.

All this is good, right? I’m working steady piano singles, the kid is able to make himself dinner and take care of the birds, and The Studio is still with us, in spite of lightning strikes and law suits. So what’s the problem? Well, here’s the catch… I’ve got jobs, but they’re all on the weekends. I’ve got events booked at The Studio, but they’re mostly on the weekends. I’m not making money from the place yet (mom’s still spending down her life savings on its monthly operating costs) so it’s not like I can hire someone to run or manage the place, so I find myself in a new, completely unforeseen quandary. So far folks have let themselves in and ‘self-hosted’, but that can’t last much longer with the events coming down the pike. Man. Who knew? I’m kinda surprised with myself that I didn’t see this coming. And I’m hoping that a solution emerges. I’m fairly confident that one will, but from here, in this moment, I don’t see it.

Funny that sometimes we get what we asked for, but when we do, it’s not exactly what we’d thought it would be. It’s a good problem to have in my case, but it’s still a problem. And although I’m making more money, I stand to lose my food stamps and heating oil assistance, and likely my health insurance too. So then I’ll need to make a good chunk more just to come out even again. I call it the ‘dreaded wedge’. That piece of the pie one needs to traverse from poverty to just above poverty. It’s kinda crazy that when one finally makes money, it becomes even harder to make a living. This too is a new situation I never anticipated. I’m earning more, but as a result it’ll be tougher to get by. Talk about irony! I just never thought things through I guess. I still have to fight the desire to cry into my hands sometimes. I’m tired, I’m getting older, my body is changing faster than I’d thought it would, my arthritis makes playing the piano painful, and there’s no reversing any of this. But I can’t stop. There is no option. No other choice but to continue along the path I prepared for myself.

On Saturday night, after a tip-less and quiet night at the restaurant, a complete stranger talked me into coming out and dancing to a local band. In spite of my inner grumblings and initial reservations, I had a fabulous night. A couple in their late 80s danced along side us, as did 20-something couples. All of us laughed and sang out loud together as we danced. We enjoyed an oasis of joy in this relentless, physical world. And when this new friend and I parted at the end of the night, he thanked me for taking a chance on a stranger and coming out. He left me with these words: “Behold the turtle; he makes no forward progress until he sticks his neck out”. Indeed.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Post Script: My deepest and most heartfelt thanks to all who donated to the recent GoFundMe campaign to replace the broken power line at The Studio. It’s a trial not included in the above post, but a milestone I did not want to let go unmentioned. The success of the drive was due entirely to your love, support and belief in me and in this vision of a community gathering place. The Studio would be dark today and completely stopped if it weren’t for all the donations. So again, thank you, dear friends, thank you so very much. xoxo

Pouring In

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Growing Older, Mommy Mind, PicsLeave a comment

IMG_1481

On our kitchen wall, just next to the front door hangs a glass weather barometer. It used to hang above a rusted drip tray on the kitchen wall at Martha’s. Elihu had mused over it once, as all children had through the years, and we’d explained how it worked. Mom recalls that Martha had said he could have it if he liked. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of yet another piece of stuff in our tiny house, but the idea grew on me… When the green-tinted water rises to the top of the spout – and sometimes drips over and stains the wall – we know that rain is coming. I wish there were such an indicator for incoming emotional storms… “When it rains….” as the expression goes…

An old family friend had kept the tradition through the years of calling Martha on every solstice. This year, on the occasion in December, the fellow called mom as a stand-in for Martha. His call was welcomed, as he too was an old family friend. But his news was not good; he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and didn’t have much time left. Sadly mom was out the first two times he called, and by the time she found him in, several days later, he was quite weak. Only two weeks later he died, and on Saturday we attended his funeral. All about her my mother sees her contemporaries leaving this world, and must be a strange and sad place in which to live. There comes a time in life when every time you turn around people seem to be getting married. Then life takes over for a stretch of time with an assortment of twists and turns, until… All the people around you now seem to be dying. Old friends take their place in line one by one, and then, all of a sudden, they’re gone. Just like that.

Yesterday I received another jolt in the form of an angry email from Martha’s niece. In the message she called me a thief, and told me that she knew I’d been in the house since Martha had died, and that the only possible reason for such a visit would have been to steal something. She wanted an end to it all here and now. She demanded the thin, sterling silver bangle that Martha had always worn be returned to her at once, as well as the rest of the things I’d stolen. Seriously? Ok, come to think of it, I do have Martha’s dusty copy of “Yankee Expressions”, yes, I did take that. I was reading it while sitting with Martha one afternoon, and threw it into my bag. It’s still on my bedside table. I peruse it from time to time, very likely in the same sort of way that Martha once did. Regular readers may even recall how puzzled and concerned I was when Martha’s niece announced that items had gone missing from the house after Martha’s death (the items had since been found; they had simply been moved). After posting some lovely interior tableaus from Martha’s house on the blog, her niece had asked me to please remove them to ensure the safety of the house and its contents. I promptly removed all the images, and apologized as best as I was able. There seems to be nothing I can do to ensure a positive outcome with this person. Ugh.

This morning, as Elihu ate his breakfast, I’m afraid the poor dear got an earful from me. I recounted to him the whole thing – after which a look of deep sadness passed over his face. “But I want to keep the barometer” he said quietly. “Sweetie, we’ll buy the barometer from her. She just wants the monetary value of it. Don’t worry, we’ll make a fair deal with her”. I stewed a bit more in silence, until my beautiful son looked up and quoted a saying that he heard Martha use often: “Everything always works out”. I smiled, and wondered it perhaps Martha herself hadn’t nudged that little piece of calming wisdom into my son’s head. Howsoever the little nugget came to him, it was nice to reminded again.

What a strange and heartbreaking week this has been, and it’s only Tuesday! Lest I waste any more precious work time battling folks who ultimately do not care what I have to say – or believe me – I will paste the response I penned to her last night below, and call it a day.

 

XXX, I have no idea where all this has come from. I could have easily taken things all the while over months, years even – objects that I’d known and loved since I was a child. And I did not. The bracelet is the ONLY thing I have to remember Martha by, and I shall not return that which was given to me!! We were all together as I asked you if I might have it, as it meant a lot to me. You were kind and assured me Martha would have liked me to have it. I have no recollection of anything else. I also recall it was a low-key, friendly meeting. I had no idea you were giving this trinket to me under duress. Plus this tiny bracelet is not even worth much! I wear it daily, keep it by my bedside nightly. It is my link to a woman I consider to be my second mother. It is a cherished keepsake. 

 

As mom recalls, Martha told Elihu if he was interested in the barometer he could have it. I wasn’t particularly interested in it – but he was, so we left the rusty drip tray on the wall and took the glass home. 
And yes, I did come back to the farm once or twice after Martha left. Just to sit and be in the space, to remember. To take in that certain way the kitchen smelled, the views from those windows…  It was a living link to my oldest memories. I was savoring that which was soon to disappear forever.
So sorry you feel this way. It is a shock to my very core. Perhaps you and mom can remain friends – I don’t suppose we were friends to begin with, but that will certainly be a challenge going forward. I hope one day you feel differently about me. I’m not a thief, and Lord knows, there were many things – the red bench I mentioned several times – that I would have loved to have in my life as a reminder of the Farm, and for which I gladly would have paid. I would even have loved, bought and used the school bell at the Studio to ring in kids from lunch break at camp. But I dared not even ask – that’s how respectful I was about Martha’s/your stuff. There was also a Harry Belafonte LP I liked and would have paid for – and would actually have listened to – but I didn’t ask about that either, cuz I didn’t want to add stress.
The barometer is a lovely way to share Martha’s story with all the children who come to my home, but if you feel strongly that we came to it by unsavory means, I’ll box it up and leave it at the Farm asap. It would be disappointing to Elihu, and I know he’d like to buy it with his own money if you’d allow him that option. I really hope you’ll consider it.
It seems that distrust and hate are motivating you here. It’s hurtful to be the recipient of such anger – and especially after all this time has passed – not to mention bizarre, as you sound so unlike the person I’d thought you to be. Never, ever would I have seen anything like this coming. I am very sorry that you’re feeling so taken advantage of. I didn’t know you well, but I’ve always liked you. All of this truly breaks my heart. 
Maybe a robust sale will help you to feel more secure about things. I hope it all goes well.

IMG_1473A rainbow appeared as Elihu and I took down the Christmas tree on Sunday. I didn’t even see this second rainbow until just now when I uploaded the photograph! One for me, one for lil man. Maybe Martha really was right when she said that everything always works out.

 

Lining Up

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Growing Older, Pics1 Comment

Every time I hear someone refer to the ‘circle of life’ I cringe. Because I don’t think of life a a circle at all. Seasons, migratory and mating patterns might be cyclical in nature, but our tiny private lives are not. To my thinking the circle idea is just plain wrong. If this were a circle we were in, we’d end up at the place where we started, and we’d do it all over again. (For the sake of this conversation, let’s not concern ourselves with the afterlife – I’m just talkin worldly stuff here.) People are fond of explaining away the death of a pet to their little ones by saying that ‘it’s all part of the circle of life’. I think it might be better to tell the child that every living thing in the world dies. Life always comes to an end. Yes, it can be sad, but it happens to all of us. When I hear someone say ‘circle’, I kind of expect things to start all over again. And in a way they do – only the subsequent rounds are played with a new cast in brand-new situations. There may be similarities in old and new events – but still, that doesn’t make the whole play a circle. It’s still just a trajectory of actions moving into the future. The way I see my life here on this mortal coil – it’s a line. You start at the beginning, and you proceed through all sorts of events until you reach the end. And if you’re successful, you make it to old age. Then you die. You travel from point A to point B, making a line. Not a circle.

The eighth graders are doing the Lion King for their class play, and I’m playing piano. One of the most popular songs from the play is, of course, the ‘Circle of Life’. I’ve become a bit more immune to the expression due to the number of times I’ve now heard it, but as I listen I can’t help but reflect more deeply on the transient nature of our brief lives here on the planet. Yesterday Elihu and I attended the funeral of one of Greenfield’s old-timers, and today we’ll go to a birthday party of two wee ones. Life and death side by side like this make me more keenly aware of this finite timeline we’re all living, and how important it is to live with intention and gratitude as we go along. Our sense of time may slow or speed up depending on our age and our circumstances, but at the end of the day, when it’s time to say goodbye forever, it always seems as if life wasn’t quite long enough – even when it was. I’m sure that Olga, at 94, felt it had been long enough. And I never worry about those who’ve died. All those prayers for the dead strike me as just plain useless and beside the point. I’m not worried about them; it’s those of us left behind who need the prayers. Those of us who are left behind to bear the heartache and loss have a much harder job by far than the ones who are dead and gone. Those of us whose lines are still being drawn, those whose ending points are still somewhere over the distant horizon…

IMG_7482Elihu had never been to a funeral before, so I thought it would be a good life experience for him to have. We didn’t know Olga well, but she was our neighbor and it felt good to know she was always there. Her passing truly marks the end of an era here in Greenfield.

IMG_7485As soon as we walked in we saw the Carrico clan… they live across the big field, and a couple houses over from Olga.

IMG_7509Elihu loves little kids, and we’re so glad to have these wonderful girls as neighbors.

IMG_7496Stephanie’s belly is more like a circle than a line for sure! She’s coming along with mystery baby number four!

IMG_7488Inside, Elihu marvels over the changes that happen in a long lifetime.

IMG_7492Olga, young and old.

IMG_7489It’s nice to see smiles on such a say day.

IMG_7519The funeral procession makes a long line up Lake Ave.

IMG_7521After Catholic Mass at the local church, the family brings Olga to her final resting place in the town cemetery. Elihu had also never been to a church service like this – while it was in reality about forty-five minutes, he could’ve sworn it was three hours. ! Talk about experiencing time differently! (I so get it though.)

IMG_7545It was a lovely day, a lovely service, a lovely goodbye.

IMG_7552The line between the cemetery and the field seems to stretch on forever….

Curve Ahead

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Mommy Mind4 Comments

Where to start? The cast of characters is growing, from Log Cabin Joe to Hillbilly Al and a handful in between, and the sub-plots are multiplying. A house is being built to the great heartbreak of all who live nearby, another beloved house which we all had hoped might stand is going to be torn down, people will be moving in, and people will be moving away. A ghostly visage was spotted, serendipity threw in a few hard turns, neighbors popped by unannounced and set to framing out a new step in front of my house (because I’d asked to borrow some scrap lumber to do so for myself), and a potential blind date turned into a new and interesting friendship. Neighbor Chad, a former professional speed skater and dad to those cutie boys Ryan and Brandon, faces surgery to repair a torn ligament he got from falling out of a tree while deer hunting last year, my new met-on-an-almost-blind-date-but-not-quite friend must wear a heart monitor for another week and remain in the company of people at all times, lest he pass out while alone, with no one to call for help (hence his staying on as my house guest.) A couple more art classes to go at the Studio, some concrete being poured and set, a wall going up in the basement, the lawn to be cut and a coop door yet to be hung, the various comings-and-goings that all of this activity entails, including the requisite gear; earth movers, spinning concrete trucks, tractors, trimmers, boxes of tile, great, heavy balls of clay, five gallon buckets and rags to clean up… All of this is chugging along, plus a small group of family and friends is planning for an intervention with my brother at the beginning of next week. A few days later, Elihu comes home. Whew!

The past three days have seemed almost like a week with all the chaos and activity. My guest, Ken, erupted in laughter at it all (as I casually pulled a dead mouse out of a drawer, dumped it into the trash and continued to start the morning coffee without missing a beat), just imagining the highly entertaining cable series he absolutely insists my life should be. “I’m just wondering where we should put the camera” he’d said, smiling, shaking his head… I’ts not often that friends get a view from the inside here at the Hillhouse. Yeah, I’ve had guests before, but somehow life here has never been quite as animated and unpredictable as it has of late.

Night before last, as Ken and I sat on the couch enjoying a rather deep, existential discussion, I saw behind him, approaching from the kitchen and through the short hallway, a rather healthy-sized bat. Living in the country as I do, you might think this has happened before. And indeed it has happened in every other place I’ve lived – but not here. Until the other night, that is. I was watching with great concern that the poor beast not knock over some precious breakable as she continued to encircle the room, but soon realized that this creature was deftly missing – with room to spare – every obstacle in her path. I was impressed! My friend, himself a pilot, must surely have been sharing my amazement… maybe…. I glanced over at the couch. Ken was clearly not bearing respectful witness to the miracle of flight taking place right before our eyes… Humor me if you will; picture a black Mr. Clean; tall, built; a take-no-prisoners kind of physique that lends itself well to the military and police work (he’s retired from some twenty years of exactly that) – and now picture that same gentleman covering his face with my over-sized pink velvet throw pillow, ducking down and shrieking like a girl every time the bat made another pass around the room. One had to laugh. Thankfully, he had to laugh too. We both did. I admit, that lil creature was movin fast, and to us it felt like a random, unpredictable flight that might easily have ended up in someone’s face. I was finally able to catch her by trapping her in between two frog nets, but then she hooked her way out, and flew off to the mudroom. The door to the mudroom remained closed, while the backdoor to the outside stayed wide open. My second house guest eventually left and did not return. So far as we know.

And there was the apparition. And the change in my route. Why had I chosen to double-back and take Locust Grove instead of 9N as I’d intended? Having just given Ken a brief history of my folks and the Baroque festival, I figured I’d use my mistake as an opportunity to point out soprano Ruth Lakeway’s empty house. When we crested the hill and I indicated the house, Ken told me he saw a woman in the porch. I gave him a look. “White hair, lavender colored, long sleeved top” he said. “Wait, you’re not shitting me?” I asked, in almost a panic. He insisted that as an officer of the law – not to mention an artist who painted and drew landscapes, people and animals, he was trained in observation. He knew what he’d seen. That was enough for me; I turned around and made my way back to the house.

There were in fact people at the house. They emerged from the garage – on the other side of the house – when we pulled in. Still, none fit the description. It didn’t matter at this point, and it was soon forgotten as I re-acquainted myself with the new owners, who were in the middle of a project. They were removing items from the house, preparing it. I kinda knew what was coming next. It was known that the house had done nothing but take on water since Ruthie’s death eight years ago, and that the mildew and moisture had finally won. Although the woman who now owned it had known and loved Ruth as I had, and had herself dreamed of one day living in the sweet house, it would never come to be. The house now had to be torn down. I looked at Karen to see if this was the truth, and her eyes teared up. She insisted they’d had every manner of professional opinion on the matter. It was coming down. I made no attempt to be stoic… I began to cry. It was clear that she was just as heartbroken as I was. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone in my grief.

In her day Ruthie had created a wide sphere of influence through her loving presence in the community and her unique, gentle demeanor. With no husband or children of her own, she had given her time and energy to her church, her voice students and so many more. This house was for me a sacred place, as it was to many others as well. I marveled over our being there, in that moment. Over the circumstances. Had I not made the ‘mistake’ of driving down her road, had Ken not spotted that visage in the porch – I wouldn’t have known this was happening. I wouldn’t have been able to take the lamp from her back porch so that I might use it in mine, I wouldn’t have been able to remove Ruth’s windchimes and then hang them on my own porch in remembrance of her. Did Ken see Ruth? Yes, I believe so. I believe she was helping as best she could to gather me into this event of closure. As we all stood on the front lawn, talking and comparing stories, Ken told them what he’d seen earlier. The consensus seemed to be that this was all meant to be, we had all found our ways there in order for this to happen. There were tears, hugs, prayers and goodbyes. And for me, there was gratitude.

From the insane to the mundane, the silly to the serious, it’s been a crazy mix of life here lately, and yet the next week may hold still more… Mom has finally come around to understanding that Andrew will never, ever get better on his own (yes, we’ve been here before, but I feel this time it’s different) and she can begin to see that he has only good things to gain by taking part in a detox and rehab program, and he has only potential danger and harm if he doesn’t. Plus this heaven-sent former cop of a friend has brought to our attention how devastating it could be should a civil case ever be made against Andrew in the event of an alcohol-related death. This is some serious shit, and although I’ve been making my case for several years now, it’s taken this financial threat to bring it home. That, and a little magical aligning of the stars. We’ve got a great family drama scene on deck, and I’m eager to finally see it through to its conclusion. Which will in of itself be but a beginning to a whole new chapter…

I checked in with Waldorf today, and it seems I’m just about off the hook. They’ve covered nearly every class except for a day or two of the high school. There’s a slight chance they might need me to cover for a bit, but it doesn’t appear that it’ll pose a conflict with my new work at the Studio. This is beyond my wildest dreams, and the feeling of freedom and possibility has me a little giddy. It’s almost like I have too much oxegyn, too much space, too many options, too much opportunity. My unexpected house guest and the little surprise detours of late have stalled my progress for the time being, but it doesn’t worry me. We’re approaching a Great Change. Middle School for Elihu, and with it all the changes of pre-teen life. A new situation for my mom and brother, a new career for me, a new house in the neighborhood, two new families moving in, one moving out. A parking lot going in the woods for the Studio along with a network of roads into the forest, a new heating system and myriad other upgrades. Networking, meeting people and growing programs, seeing plans become real…. I’m at the cusp of a whole new chapter in my life. I’ve been riding it out on a long, slow straightaway for the past few years, and finally now I see a big curve up ahead.

Breathe in, hands at ten and two… I’ll give it just a little more gas, and we’ll be taking that turn before we know it.

 

Time Game

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Growing Older, Mommy Mind6 Comments

For a few months now I’ve been toying with the idea of drawing up a timeline for my life. To make a visual representation of it, sort of like a roadmap from the known into the unknown. I’ve been, as regular readers may know, in sort of a sentimental funk recently, and having made a near-complete inventory of my life and its landmarks, as well as having become more familiar with those of my parents and their parents too, it seemed both a sensible and tangible way by which I might begin to better comprehend and really understand what my own finite life might look like. It might seem a strange project; trying to posit the year in which I might possibly die, maybe it might even sound a bit morbid to some. But I think not. I need to get a handle on this mortality thing by whatever means necessary.

I’m not a person who can simply tally things up in my mind with ease. I’m just not great with numbers. In math class, word problems had me wanting to chuck the book over my shoulder like the characters in a Peanuts cartoon, and if anyone ever asks me to count change back, it takes me a minute to wipe the glassy look from my eyes before I can get down to business. I’m hard-pressed to tell you how old I’ll be in thus-and-such year, because I was born in a ‘3’ year, which prevents sums from rounding to a tidy 5 or 10. (Yes, I could simply take away three or add seven – but this is precisely the kind of stuff that rattles me.) I do know that my son is 40 years younger than me (minus 9 days, but who’s counting?) so thankfully I always know where he and I stand with respect to each others ages.

But exactly how old will I be in 2045? That just sounds so Jetsons-ahead that I cannot begin to comprehend it. It makes me think of my dear old father. How in hell must he have felt to hear that it was the year 2013? Dementia aside, anything past the year 2000 – even for middle-agers like me – always felt like some far-off futuristic land into which we would never enter in our lifetimes. Even though we knew that in all likelihood, we would. I don’t know about you, but ten mintues to midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1999, I still didn’t really believe where we were. (I had the honor of counting down the new year to a very high-brow and refined crowd at a tony downtown Chicago restaurant; the smattering of muffled applause at the event was a bit underwhelming after all the hoopla working up to it. Woo hoo.) So imagine a cat who was born in the 1920s finding his daughter informing him ‘Dad, it’s the year two–thousand thirteen‘…. How crazy must that have sounded? How does a fellow who’s losing his memory deal with that unlikely-sounding date? Myself, I don’t want to be caught off guard. And so this morning I made myself a map.

At this point in our futuristic present, I suppose there’s probably an app for making such a timeline. (If there isn’t, you’re welcome.) And given the enormity of this world, I must remind myself that the chances are pretty great that something like it has been done before. (I remember thinking at dad’s ‘living wake’ how novel that was – but I didn’t kid myself to think we had been the only ones to do so. Anecdotal stories poured in shortly thereafter confirming my suspicion.)

I made my timeline by parceling off a hundred and fifty years in five year increments, noting the births of my parents, my birth and my son’s, and then the death of my father. I made a bracket that spanned the eighty-five year lifetime of my dad, and then I took that eighty-five year measurement and used it as a measure for a possible projected lifetime for mom, Elihu and me. It was interesting to see actual dates to represent our potential years of death. Even though my mom is now seventy-nine and likeliest the first of we three to go (I still don’t actually believe my mother will ever die), I’ve still never found myself literally considering how much time she has left. And me, of course, why I’ve always just envisioned my own life trailing vaguely off into the murky and unseen future without ever really coming to any definite conclusion… (Because I too, in my heart of hearts, will never actually die, you see.)

Ah, but even though I do in fact understand that I shall be dying one day, I’ve never stopped for even so much as a minute to envision how, where… or when. You can see the insight this exercise provides, right? Now I have number. A target to be mindful of. A bit arbitrary, sure, but much clearer than no idea at all. And my son? Well who in hell ever stops to ponder the time in which one’s own child might leave this earthly plane? Me, apparently. So, you may wonder, what is the data? What do those numbers show?

Well, if we were all to live as long as grandpa, then mom will die in 2021, I’ll die in 2048, and Elihu in 2088. Man, that last year just sounds off-the-hook wrong. Two-thousand eighty–eight? That sure seems far-off. But aside from the shock of seeing that distant-seeming year in black and white, I am just a bit stunned at what I now see before me. Damn. Ok, so this may not seem groundbreaking or revelatory; I realize that I can easily just add 85 to anyone’s birthyear and arrive at the posited year of death, but to see it all in a linear form in front of you on paper is something completely different. At least for me.

One thing that caught me a bit by surprise was how small the area was in which my father’s and my son’s lives intersected. Dad had this long, full life, but only a tiny portion was shared with his grandson (and to make it ever a bit more heartbreaking, Elihu hardly knew his grandfather as the elegant and eloquent man he once was). And if I pushed the timeline out a bit to encompass the births and deaths of my grandparents, what struck me then was how far apart our generations were. My grandmother had my dad when she was 45, I had Elihu at 40, so already you can see how wide the space becomes. Also, my son was born exactly one hundred years after my maternal grandmother; on both sides we’ve given wide berth between generations. To give it an even more surreal touch, my great-grandfather (dad’s maternal grandpa) served in the Civil War! He was young, 16 or so, when he as a drummer boy lead the troops into battle. (Obviously he came back safe and sound, because here I am.)

But for how much longer am I here? And once again the largest question of all comes to the surface: just what the hell is it that I am supposed to be doing while I’m here?

I’ve suffered with panic attacks since the age of fourteen, and can say that a contributing factor to panic is the sense of this world being too goddam and overwhelmingly big, and me, the experiencer of panic attacks, so goddam small and powerless within that big world. In large part panic attacks are about control – or more accurately, lack of control. It comes from being acutely aware of just how immense the world is, how limitless the options, how daunting the task of finding that one reason you’re here, that one thing that only you can do… My most difficult challenge in life has always been to truly feel that I’m ok at what I’m doing. That I’m not just existing for naught. Spinning my existential wheels, so to speak. I don’t have the tenacity or desire to be truly outstanding at anything, but at least I’d like to be comfortable just being here. I might not set any records, but I still want very much to feel like my tiny life added to the value of the planet. Having never paid much attention to the constant escape of time, I’m all of a sudden feeling a mild level of panic rising inside… is it too late? And if it is too late – for what exactly is it too late?

In my job at the Waldorf School I am blessed to have personal relationships with a great number of children, from first graders to twelfth graders. Having been there for two years now, I can begin to see how it is that children grow from teeny to teenager. I can now look at an eight year old and begin to guess what she’ll look and act like as an eighteen year old. Sitting at the piano looking out at the second grade class, I realize they’ll be freshmen in high school when my own son is a senior. These tiny babies will be lumbering, smelly, adult-sized humans by then. Truly unfathomable for me only a few years ago, before I came to know what it was to have a child of my own grow older, but now, today, I can begin to get it.To truly see it in my mind’s eye. Seeing the process up close like this fuels the fire and once again the nagging question burns; am I too late? What have I not done yet that I need to do before it’s no longer possible? Until only a few years ago, I had all the time in the world and nothing seemed impossible…but not so now. Now I know about things like arthritis and bad knees. The concerns of old people are becoming concerns of my very own, and it’s got me feeling the heat. Now I can finally hear the ticking of the clock…

At the time of this writing I have 2,050 subscribers. I look at the number and no longer think of two thousand and fifty people, instead I think: how old will I be in the year 2050? Now I know. I will be 87. If I make it. And if I do make it, what will I be doing with my life? Will I be doing good work on the planet, or merely existing? To have an end date in mind really does wake one up. It renews a sense of urgency where there was once nothing but exhaustion, frustration and run-of-the-mill complacency. I may still be a bit crabby about being here, I might still feel I have more on my emotional plate than I’m capable of successfully dealing with, but at least now I have a better idea for how much longer I might even have the opportunity to be such things at all.

Maybe, with an ending in sight, I’ll find the resolve to get down to business. To write more thank-you cards, smile more at strangers, tell more people how much I appreciate them… And maybe I can find the courage to give myself a list of the things that I’d always thought I might do ‘one day’…. The days ahead may well be fewer than the ones behind. If that isn’t enough motivation to square away the proverbial bucket list, I don’t know what is.

To make life seem a bit easier and a little less daunting, I sometimes like to think of it as a game. You gotta play by a handful of rules, you get to use your natural talents when making your moves, and if you apply a little clever strategy you can accomplish things beyond the ordinary, expected outcomes. I’ve got a modest bag of skills to play with, but more importantly, I have an eye on the clock and I’m ready to play the second half. Ready, I suppose, as I’ll ever be. Yeah, guess it feels like game time now…

Post Script: It’s amazing how quickly my math skills have improved since I linked them to this little age experiment! With each handful of new subscribers I find myself easily computing my corresponding new ‘end age’. It’s motivating, for sure. I’m fairly sure I won’t make it this far (Elihu and I have agreed that 90 feels about right for me – but tell that to me when I’m 90) and at current readership, I’m now 96. Yikes. Goodbye dear world! I enjoyed the ride and learned a lot… hope to see you all again some new day….