More signs of geezerdom

Ever more compelling evidences of encroaching geezerdom may include the following:

·         The enjoyment I get from using my floor steamer makes my day.

·         Reading in bed is a big pastime.

·         Strolling around Home Depot and Sears with Mary looking at window coverings and patio grills counts as a date night.

·         I enjoy eating the same Rice Chex and banana for breakfast innumerable mornings in a row.

·         I find reruns infinitely more entertaining than most things currently being produced for television.

·         When I choose a shirt in the morning, it’s all about comfort, frayed collars be damned.

·         I catch myself thinking it’s been a long day and then realize only twelve hours have gone by since I awoke this morning.

·         I feel the flash of annoyance at the antics of the youngsters downtown, just before I recall doing the same thing forty years ago.

·         Most of my favorite tunes had been around for a decade before my now-adult daughters were born.

·         This blog is approaching 500 posts and I have still done nothing to liven up the format. Haven’t even looked at the options.

·         I spent an hour sorting out tools in the garage yesterday and really enjoyed the experience.

·         The younger neighbors who’ve moved into the neighborhood the past few years would likely view me as Mr. Wilson – if they understood the reference (see the reruns item above) and they’d be correct.

Ba-dum, ba-dum!

Q: Why did the squirrel cross the road?
A: Turns out, he didn't.

(Squirrels - 0 / UPS trucks - 1)

List time again - yowser!

In the small notebook I carry in my shirt pocket (my short term memory) I’ve recorded several quotes that I consider worthy of sharing, which brings us to the list du jour:

Quotes that got my attention and that some of you may never read if I don’t share them here:

“BehindGod’sEyeToiletBowl, USA” – My buddy April’s name for an imaginary town in the boonies

“You can’t save time – no bank will take it.” – David Melvin, during a management workshop

“Do unto others as they would have you do unto them” – Also David Melvin

“I have 99 problems and cerebral palsy is just one of them.” – Maysoon Zayid (Please watch her on TED)

“Three things that are useless to a pilot: altitude above you, runway behind you, and fuel back at the airport.”  – WWII B-24 pilot Norman Ray, quoted by Stephen Ambrose The Wild Blue…

“I don’t have the power to… Oh wait, I do, because I’m Sheila!” – Sheila

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard in A Writer’s Life

Baked apples

I’ve had some issues of late of a gastro-intestinal variety. Not to worry – that’s as much detail as I’ll be revealing here, so the squeamish among you can continue reading.

Combine the fact that I slept about twelve hours last night and so was feeling antsy with the feeling of uselessness from not getting any chores done. Add in a dollop of desire to do something useful that didn’t require the expenditure of much energy. Top it all off with three apples that I really should have eaten before that last business trip.

I haven’t had baked apples in forever. So I spent some time being domestic. And now, they’re cooling on the stovetop and this whole level of the house smells amazing.

I got the recipe (okay, confirmed the recipe, since it turns out that making baked apples takes pretty much the same ingredients and in the same proportions as one might have imagined) from one of my cookbooks and it took all of about ten minutes from pre-heat to setting the timer.

One of the things Mary and I have decided on is more home cooking. This is both a dietary and a frugality measure. I simply don’t spend enough time with my cookbooks. Or in the kitchen.

We don’t need to swear off cookies or Mary’s favorite white cake. We simple need to stop buying those things at the store. I love baking but I likely won’t spend enough time at it to overdo the intake of sweets.

I want to be able to see my own knees. And I want to be able to see them well into my eighties.

I wonder what else I’ve forgotten is right there in my cookbooks.

The pumpkin carriage

Over the course of their children’s education, from kindergarten through high school, attentive parents find themselves volunteering for all sorts of odd projects. Bake sales and magazine drives do little to tax the mind of the mindful parent. Which is not to say participation in such events is entirely free of stress. But at least these events are fairly standard fare and thus well understood by the other parents and former parents who are called upon to serve as customers.

But there were many things we volunteered to do even though we didn’t really know how we would get them done. We’d never run concessions at the ice rink until the evening we found ourselves in charge. Serving as Girl Scout cookie managers was something of a pain. Both times.

Mary did more than her share of service as a PTA officer and as I’ve said before, I did my share of scooping for the ice cream socials and sweeping up after the various functions. We took vacation days from work the first week of school in order to make sure all the other parents’ kids got on the right buses, found their rides, or hooked up with brothers or sisters for the walk home.

Volleyball matches found Mary scoring and moi wielding the red flag of the line judge and I might say I cut quite a figure, marking my unerring and inalterable rulings with a certain artistic flourish.

The times we served as chaperones and duty drivers are uncountable, ranging from simply riding along on field trips to Mary leading a choir tour to Korea. That one involved several months of preparation that amounted to a second part-time job for both of us.

But easily the volunteer activity that makes me shake my head to this day is the time we volunteered to build the pumpkin carriage for Cinderella. The thing about building a pumpkin carriage is that there just aren’t any plans to be had at the local builders’ emporium. And certainly none of our friends among the usual suspects of parent volunteers had any idea how to build a carriage to the following specifications:

·         Shaped like a pumpkin (okay, duh);

·         Able to be drawn by two actor/horses;

·         With a bench seat fit for a princess;

·         And a step upon with the coachman could perch;

·         Designed  to be folded to fit in the wings of the high school theatre when not in use;

·         And built on a non-existent budget.

In short, an actual coach. Shaped like a pumpkin.

We did it. Mary and I have always been good at figuring out how to do things but this one definitively had us in a quandary for awhile. I must say it turned out wonderfully, was much heralded by the actors and audience members alike and presented one of our prouder parent volunteer moments.

And I still can’t imagine what mental aberration led us to volunteer to build it.

Broadcasting

As I type this missive, I am sitting in front of a computer with a remote meeting application running, waiting for about thirty people to log in so I can lead their training session. There’s not much else I can do once I’ve cleared my desk of other work and with my computer tied up with the app and the hosting site and the presentation set. And I’m loath to really direct my mind to other work, since I’m afraid of repeating a past incident in which I worked while logged on and then accidentally shut down the wrong application just when it was time to begin jawing for my public.

  It’s sort of an odd thing, watching the participants gather. For the next hour plus change, they are reliant on me to bring them something of value. And the value is measured in the context of their worlds, not mine. And that scares the bejeesus out of me.

 I’ve sung before ten thousand (and fallen right off the stage in front of the same crowd wearing full high priest regalia – don’t ask), presented at conferences, taught classrooms full of fairly bright people. I’ve delivered eulogies for family members and others, sung for weddings and bar crowds and offered toasts as best man.

 None of those activities scares me as much as presenting in “synchronous remote learning” mode.

 Here’s the thing  - you can’t see the audience. The latest hosting sites and apps allow you to interact with your viewers to some extent but it’s not like having them in front of you. It’s really tough to read body language when you can’t, you know, see the bodies.  

 I can write to friends and strangers without being able to see them but talking in front of an invisible and largely mute audience is tough. Plus, there’s that thing about them expecting me to say something useful.

Hm-m-m…

 It’s a conundrum, is what it is.

Rain

I truly love watching rain.

Now, in order for you to understand what I mean by that, I suppose I should provide the setting in which I currently find myself. After all, as I’ve said in earlier posts on a variety of topics, for me it’s all about context.

I am sitting at my desk downstairs with a window out onto our back yard. My view is framed by the tie-back curtains Mary sewed many years ago, forming a proscenium that suggests intentional staging of an event.

Looking through the window, I see the water dripping steadily off the wind chimes whose stationary stance shows the lack of breeze. Across the yard between the fire pit and the dog run, Odin’s basketball has a wet sheen to it. The big boulder that provided a focal point for untold hours of our daughters’ make believe adventures is a darker shade than would be the case after a few dry days. Near the office window  a silk tree is growing its seasonal branches and on the branch that extends toward me and closest to my window, I can watch drops form on the down-facing bud heads, can watch them grow until gravity overcomes surface tension and they fall, only to start forming again.

The ivy over the old pond reminds me of the first few moments of the “Little April Showers” sequence in the old Disney Bambi movie, with random leaves recoiling individually as the rain hits them one by one and in no particular pattern. I can almost hear the music – well, okay, so I can actually hear the music because as soon as I wrote that last sentence, I Googled the song and watched the sequence – you should, too.

Moss on rocks and trees and the old concrete walk has taken on the impossibly vibrant green that only comes from a rain shower on an otherwise bright day. And everywhere I look, if I just rest my eyes instead of trying to focus, I can actually see the rain coming down. It’s not the gully-washer I saw north of Atlanta that time or the monsoons I’ve seen in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, nor is it the dull, dreary mist that I imagine one might encounter on Scottish moors or the streets of London. It’s just your standard, honest rainy day.

And I’m sitting here in my office, dry and warm with a Great Dane curled on the carpet behind me.

For this moment, while I gather my thoughts and prepare to do battle with The Book, I am as at peace as a man could ever be.

The Writer's Life

Struggling is an apt word in my life lately.

Oh, don’t worry that I’m actually beset by troubles - I’m not. Daughters are doing well and making me proud, Mary has still not noticed there are bigger fish in the sea and the sea itself is calm.

The struggle lies in where to put my time. The older I get, the more aware am I that time remaining is at once finite and undefined, leaving me embroiled in a constant mental struggle to determine how this most precious resource should be spent. (And of course, kicking my own ample caboose for the unconscionable waste of much of it in my younger years.)

I’ve been quite ill this last week and as I’ve recovered, regaining mental capacity before physical energy, I’ve spent a great deal of time restructuring my approach to my book project. In its current incarnation, it is entirely possible I’ll have a readable draft ready for torturing friends who can’t refuse me in about four months. But don’t count on it – just in the last six months, there have been several identifiable ‘fresh starts’ as I’ve realized the story wasn’t going in a useful direction.

‘Fresh start’ number (5?) began today. Which means time for blogging is at something of a premium.

Sorry about that. I promise to be back with you as soon as possible.

More conversations

(Some of you recall Sherree posing a question on Facebook recently, asking with whom we would want to spend an hour sitting on a bench overlooking the waves crashing on a gorgeous beach. As was the case with Toni and others, I posted the first comment that came to mind, positing that Elie Wiesel would be a great person with whom to share the bench.  But then Toni suggested in her blog that the question deserved a fuller answer and I have to agree. Hence…)

Now, I’d love to spend the hour with Mary. With only one choice, I choose Mary. And there are several of you who would make stellar bench-sitting partners. Let me just say that I’d give anything for a bench sitting session with Sherree or Sindy or April or Sheila. I am blessed to count a number of strong women among my besties and any time spent with any of you is enriching.

My uncle Bill Branconier passed beyond my reach several years ago. He was quite a guy and one of the original ‘Currahee’ paratroopers during WWII. Every one of my cousins on my mother’s side has wonderful memories of sitting in a circle in front of him in my grandmother’s backyard, enraptured by his tall tales. He was far and away the most accomplished schanachie (Irish for bald-faced liar) I’ve ever met and he could keep a dozen or more kids enthralled (and quiet) while the other uncles and aunts enjoyed visiting with each other. But he never did tell us about his life as a young man. As with many of the Great Generation who had been there and done that, he wasn’t one for discussing his combat experiences. But I’d sure like to hear whatever he’d be willing to share.

 Elie Wiesel stays on the list. He’s spoken to me frequently over the years through his speeches and written work. Night should be on every high school reading list. He advises us that one of the worst things one can be is a bystander. I’ve a thousand questions to ask him or I would be completely fine just sitting with him for an hour listening to the sound of the waves.  His presence would be enough.

My youngest sister would be a good bench partner. We don’t understand each other and that bothers me. I’d like to spend the hour talking about anything but politics or religion.

Vala in the hour before she took her own life. Twenty-seven years passed between the last time I’d seen her and her last day. We were engaged at one time and had great plans for our future together. But she took a different road that ran out too early. Vala always had demons and I don’t kid myself that I – or anyone – could have changed her decision. But I’d like to have tried. Or perhaps, selfishly, just understood.

My Mom. I’d ask her every question that I never did but wish I had. After she passed, I spent a lot of hours with my Dad talking about everything under the sun. I knew a lot about his life and times and thoughts. Mom was perhaps the smartest person I’ve ever met who never went to college. She was the keeper of the family tree and could tell you anything you wanted to know about our heritage. But she almost never spoke to me about her own life and aspirations. How she was redirected by polio. What she would have wanted to do and learn and see. I’d give anything for her to see my daughters following their passions. That would have pleased her. There’s a lot of her in each of them and they’ll never know what that means. Besides, she would have loved the view from that bench.

Toni. Just sitting and watching and listening and talking about writing. And maybe other stuff.

Leon Uris. Diane Gillespie. Sandra Day O’Connor. Pat. Bill.

Or, just myself.