Perspective

Depending upon which scientists you ask, homo sapiens have been around for 70,000 to 100,000 years, give or take 25,000. If you do the math, that means that to date there have been over 100,000,000,000--that's one hundred BILLION--of us born. Subtract 7,000,000,000 from that number--that's how many of us are still here--and what's left are a whole lot of people who have been here, done that, gone now.  That's 93,000,000,000, give or take a few billion, who are no longer with us, yet they have one thing in common with us: No one gets out of this world alive.  (If you started to count 93,000,000,000 right now, you would be done counting in 2,976 years.)

Why am I telling you this, you ask? Well, that is a very good question. Thanks for asking. I have heard that you have been very unhappy about something that is happening to you, something that is a very natural part of living: the aging process.  Sometimes, putting life events into perspective helps. Let's give it a try, shall we?

Perspective

To take your situation and then compare it with
billions of others who have experienced and are
 experiencing the exact same situation, and then with 
the  help  of this perspective,  you can see that your 
situation is not unique to just you, and what 
is happening is not all that unusual...or bad.

                                                                ---Mikidikipedia            

I wanted to share Perspective with you because, over the years, it has helped me navigate through some very challenging times. When I step back from my self-absorption, my center-of-the-universe mindset,  I can see that it's not always all about me.  We are all in this together. You, me, that person over yonder, and all the people everywhere. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. We are homo sapiens, human beings, a unique, one-of-a-kind species--the only one on earth with a brain capable of complex thinking and a soul with a conscience. From the beginning, all one hundred billion of us have shared the same needs, desires, and feelings. We may all look different, but we are the same.

LIAR! LIAR! Pants on fyyyyeeeer!

Okay, I lied. We're not all in this together. It's a dog-eat-dog world; every man for herself. We live in a shallow, fickle world where youth and beauty matter over substance and wisdom.  I was just trying to use perspective to help you feel better about your situation: Ya know, your deteriorating body, brain shrinkage, and imminent demise. But I can see that perspective isn't helping. You're still frowning or is that just sagging jowls? Oh, I'm sorry. Have I hurt your feelings? Would it make you feel better if I told you that you're not alone? There are 7,000,000,000 people in the world right now. Half are women. That's 3.5 billion. One billion of those women are no longer young and have lost the world's lusty focus. That's one billion little old ladies sharing your exact same situation. Isn't that comforting? You're one in a billion. Now don't you feel better? What? No?

Okay, then. Never mind.

What Goes Around

What goes around ...

"Oh, no! What did you just say?!" his mother asked--half  question, half frustration. What had he said? He couldn't remember. Only a minute had passed, a mere sixty seconds, but there was an interruption--the waitress had asked if they were ready to order, but he had forgotten what he was saying. Just as well. His mother was not happy with him. What had he said or done wrong now? It seemed that his behavior--every single thing he did--was an irritant.

"Please! Look at the menu! The waitress will be back in a minute, and she's going to ask what you want to eat," she said as she looked at her watch. Her schedule was chockablock full, and she had taken time away from her busy life to pick him up from kindergarten to take him to lunch. The least he could do, she thought, was appreciate her sacrifice on his behalf and focus on the task at hand. Wait! Wait! Now he remembered what it was he had been talking about earlier, so he put the menu down and started the story where he had left off, but then the waitress was back, and his mother was frowning, and he had to pick the menu back up again.

"Just pick something! It's not that difficult." But it was that difficult because he had been so excited to hear that his mother was stopping by his school to take him to lunch, he couldn't focus. Plus he couldn't read that well either; picking something from the menu would be impossible, so he did what his five-year-old brain told him to do: He got out of his chair, ran across the room to where a young boy about his age, wearing a very large cowboy hat, sat, eating a chocolate sundae. He told the boy he liked his hat to which the boy replied it was his dad's hat,  but the conversation ended there when the mother escorted her son back to his chair and told him to stay put and tell the waitress what he wanted to eat.

"No! You cannot have what that boy in the cowboy hat is having!  You must eat real food before dessert!"  

...comes around.

"Oh, my goodness! What did you just say?!" her son said--half  question, half frustration. What had she said? She couldn't remember. Only a minute had passed, a mere sixty seconds, but there was an interruption--the waitress had asked if they were ready to order, but she had forgotten what she was saying. Just as well. He was not happy with her. What had she said or done wrong now? It seemed that her behavior--every single thing she did--was an irritant.

"Mother! Please! Look at the menu! The waitress will be back in a minute, and she's going to ask what you want to eat," he said as he looked at his iPhone. His schedule was jammed-packed full, and he had taken time away from his busyness to pick her up from the nursing home to take her to lunch. The least she could do, he thought, was appreciate his sacrifice on her behalf and focus on the task at hand. Oh, Wait! Got it! Now she remembered what it was she had been talking about earlier, so she put the menu down and started the story where she had left off, but then the waitress was back, and her son was frowning, and she had to pick the menu back up again.

"Just pick something, Mother! It's not that difficult." But it was that difficult because she had been so excited to hear that her son was stopping by to take her to lunch, she couldn't focus. And in the confusion of getting ready to go, she'd forgotten her reading glasses; picking something from the menu would be impossible, so she did what her eighty-five-year-old brain told her to do: She got out of her chair, walked across the room to where an older, heavy-set lady, wearing a large-brim bright orange hat, sat, eating a humongous banana split. She told the lady she liked her hat, but the lady thought she said she liked her cat to which she replied she didn't have a cat, but the son's mother thought the lady in the hat had called her an old bat and things went down hill from there...until the conversation came to an abrupt stop when the son escorted his mother back to her chair and told her to stay put and tell the waitress what she wanted to eat.

"No! You cannot have what that nasty old hag in the orange hat is having! You're not a five-year-old, Mother. You must eat real food before dessert!"  

Got Old

If you had told me, when I was thirty-five, that someday I would have a drawer dedicated to just my pills, I would have laughed you right out of the house. I have always been extremely averse to taking pills. No chemicals in my body. No thank you. But then a funny thing happened on the way to today. I got old.

Oh, I'm sorry, Tom. I'm not supposed to say that. Never, ever mention "old" unless it relates to other people. Not us. "We're not old," my seventy-three-year-old husband says. Forever the optimist, Tom goes about his life as if the aging process knocked on his door and when he answered, it said, "Oh, I'm sorry young man. I must have the wrong address."  Whenever he says he's not old, I tell him that all delusional old people think that.  I reminded him of the time when eighty-year-old Harriett posed like a Victoria Secret model in her bathing suit in front of a full-length mirror and said to me, "Do you think I should get breast enhancements?" but, instead of getting my point about people refusing to accept certain truths in life, he said, "What's wrong with that?"

Actually, at sixty-nine, I'm not old, but Tom is. There was a nationwide survey done a few years back and the question was, "In your estimation, at what age are people considered elderly?" The answer: 73. Recently, when Tom was not acting his age, I reminded him of the survey. "You're old, Tom. There are some things that old people should not do." But he just turned his back on me, stepped out on the strut of the airplane wing, and jumped.

If you had told me, when I was thirty-five, that someday I would be married to an old man, I would have laughed you right out of the house. I have always been extremely adverse to old. No old bodies near my body. No thank you. But then a funny thing happened on the way to today. My husband got old, and I got my very own pill drawer.

My very own pill drawer

Java Nirvana

I awoke this morning to a loud clatter coming from the kitchen. It startled me as it always does every morning at six. Beans. I moved one leg over to Tom's side of the bed. Empty. I reached for Maggie Mae. Gone. I submerged my head deep under the down comforter to drown out the noise. Useless. I was wide awake way before its time. Bleep! (My grand daughter may read this someday...so unless she is under the covers with me, she'll never know what I really say, but it isn't "Bleep.")

The early morning coffee bean clatter is a month old so I should be used to it by now, yet it continues to shock me awake with the same response, "What the bleep!" I shouldn't be surprised that we have switched from grounds to beans now because for the two decades that Tom and I have been together, he has been on a quest to make that perfect cup of coffee.  To make perfect coffee, one must have the perfect coffee maker. In order to find that perfect coffee maker, one must buy every coffee maker that has ever been made. Tom has done that and except for the latest one--the noisy one that serves as my alarm clock every morning--they are all lined up side by side in our pantry because you never know when you might need an extra coffee maker.

Finding the perfect coffee maker is only half of the journey when seeking that perfect cup of coffee. There's the coffee itself: Tom's tried Maxwell House, Folgers, Eight O'clock, Hills Brothers, New England, Community, Seattle's Best, Starbucks, Cafe Du Monde, Sumatra, Amalfi,  Jittery Joes, Lavazza, Maraba. And that's just in the past two months.

I am unhappy to say that the search for perfection in a coffee cup is over. Tom has found his java nirvana, and it is (drum roll please) World Market's Island Blend Coffee, a heavy-bodied blend of beans medium roasted to perfection.  The beans are ground in our new Breville, the only fully customizable coffee maker that delivers fresh coffee to meet your high expectations of perfection in a coffee cup.

Did I mention I'm not happy. I can't stand that coffee. It forces my face to react violently. My reaction to Tom's idea of perfection is an ugly thing to witness, so don't come visit us early in the morning. The good news is Tom's search is over. Now I have to ask... can we get rid of all those coffee makers in the pantry now? Can we move the coffee maker to another part of the house? Can we go to McDonald's now because that's my idea of perfect coffee.

McPerfect Cup of Coffee

Don't Even Think About It

Whether you think you can

or whether you think you can't

You are right

                                             --- Henry Ford

It's funny, isn't it, how our minds work. We believe without question everything our brain tells us.  If it says it, it must be true. "Oh, you can't do that," my brain says, "so don't even try."  I see other people doing things that I wish I could do, but I would never attempt it because the command center, that gray mass between my ears, has said, "Don't even think about it!"

"DON'T! EVEN! THINK! ABOUT! IT!" There you go. The all-powerful, all-knowing boss of me has spoken. No alternative thinking allowed. Don't question whether I can or I can't. Just abide by the edict I've been given. I can't do it.

"But, wait a minute," I say. "Whose brain are you?  Shouldn't I--the person you call home; the person who takes you everywhere with me; the person who nourishes you and wears a helmet to protect you when I ride my bicycle--Shouldn't I be the one to decide if I can or can't do something?"

"NO! DON'T THINK YOU CAN BECAUSE I'M TELLING YOU YOU CAN'T! GO SIT BACK DOWN ON THE COUCH AND PRETEND YOU'RE A POTATO!"

"But what if I don't want to do that? What if I want to believe--contrary to what you are always telling me--that I am capable of doing it?

"THERE YOU GO, BELIEVING IN YOURSELF AGAIN! STOP IT!"

"I'm thinking I can do it."

"NO YOU CANNOT DO IT!"

"I think I can. I think I can."

'NO YOU CAN'T."

"Watch me."

"Don't even think... ."

"Done. Did it."

"Okay then. Never mind."

Hate is a Terrible Thing to Waste

"...hate you for what you have done to society, you boomers have destroyed society with your feminism, your liberalism, your pro-homosexuality, your multiculturalism, etc etc etc. In short, you baby boomers ruined America. Can't you just hurry up and ..... already, so that we young people can start fixing the mess that YOUR generation created?"

                                                                                                --Anonymous

The above comment was left on my blog last August in response to a cartoon character that I had drawn the day before. I didn't print his entire rant and I left some words out because my grand daughter may read this someday, and I don't want her to know that somebody out there wants harm done to her nana. This person, full of intolerance and hate for anything different than his own narrow-minded view of how the world should behave to please him, went off over a silly little cartoon about bugs bugging the daylight out of my grand daughter's precious nana.

Bugging Daylight Outta 

Precious Nana

I must admit I was finger-tied. That's like tongue-tied but I was typing with my fingers at the time.  I wanted to respond but what do you say to someone who hates you and wants you "Gone Granny" because you drew a cartoon of bugs bugging an old lady, which in turn contributed to the ruination of America.

Once I got my fingers to work again, I responded to Mr. Anonymous and I took total responsibility (actually, I did include a few other baby boomers with me; I couldn't do this much damage to society without a little help from my friends.) His concerns were my concerns, I told him, especially the etc etc etc. I lose sleep over those dang things. Etceteras concern me a lot. Have you ever noticed how they have to have the last word, and who are they, really? They make an effort to fit in, yet they hide behind vague notions of things. Yes, they are similar but don't be fooled; they are not the same. They're different and I don't like etceteras that are different. In fact, I hate them and I think they should all be eliminated. The sooner etceteras are gone, the sooner we old people can start fixing the mess they created.

Hate is a terrible thing to waste, but do it anyway. You'll feel so much better for so many reasons, like etc etc etc.

One Rambling Aging Baby Boomer's Perspective

In the early morning hours of the first day of January, ten years into the twenty-first century, I began writing stories in a little black journal for those in my family who are on the same life path as I but trailing far behind me. The intent of this journal was to share my experiences, along with life lessons I'd learned along the way, and the wisdom I'd gained while traveling down that sometimes-treacherous road years ahead of them.  My hope was to save my loved ones from the mistakes I had made. How could they possibly navigate their way through life without a how-to guidebook?

With a cup of coffee in my left hand, a pen in my right, I starred at the blank page in front of me and imagined a time in the distant future, after I'm gone, when a member of my family would discover my little black journal. "Hey everyone, come quickly! Look what I found," would be the call heard from the attic where an antique chest covered in decades of dust had just been opened and inside sat my little black journal. Later that evening, when my family was finally done sorting through one hundred and twelve boxes of pictures, memorabilia, and miscellany, they would all gather around the fireplace, pick up my journal and take turns reading my stories.

At noon my hand began to shake uncontrollably and then cramp. And that was the hand that was holding the coffee cup. My pen hand was fine and eager to write more, but after six hours I had completed only two paragraphs. With cross outs and revisions there was only one sentence left that was to my liking. I imagined a time in the future, after I'm gone, when my family would gather at my house to meet with a real estate agent, make hurried decisions about which black bag they should put my things: GOODWILL, TRASH or RECYCLE, and then go back to their busy lives.

At 12:01 p.m. I threw my little black journal in the trash, opened my computer and began typing a blog...a whimsical blog that refuses to speak of lessons learned or wisdom earned or be a guidebook or take me seriously; a rambling blog that tells unauthorized stories about me that some readers feel are too raw, revealing, and unflattering; a tenacious blog that continues to tell my stories after five years and imagines a time in the future, after I'm gone, when my family may want to read them; an honest blog that, under all that whimsy, reveals the truth about life. The truth, that is, from one rambling aging baby boomer's perspective.