February 22.23: Coping, but barely

Ancient friendships. One of my favorite topics.

We were sophomores in high school when I met Donna and Bill, the intrepid photographer whose images often appear here. That was 1958. (All gasp.) My grandson’s eyes glaze over at the mere mention of such Olde Days, but what does he know? He’s never been to a sock hop at the Civic Center. But I digress.

Bill and Donna and I were in Speech and Debate. (They were debate partners and still are.) There are few bonds as strong as those that form when you gather in the school parking lot at 3:30 on a Saturday morning for an “away meet.”

Donna’s birthday is in December, mine in January, and Bill’s in February, and he has made the most of that, trying hard to represent himself as the youth among us. Therefore it has been decreed that no one turns until Bill turns. So today we all officially turn eighty! Bill is not allowed to be the youngest.

I think we were in our 40s in this photo, about halfway to here. That’s me on the left, Donna on the right. Behind us is my parents’ blue spruce, in front of which many historical moments were recorded.

If you have ancient friendships, dear reader, you know.

 

 

February 22.21: Coping

 

Today, dear reader, is George Washington’s birthday. It makes me think of old friendships. No, I didn’t know George.

There are four of us — Ann, Donna, Bill and I — who have our birthdays in consecutive months starting in November and ending today. I have declared — and therefore it is so — that we don’t turn the next age until the last one does. That would be Bill, the intrepid photographer. We don’t turn until he does, and then we all turn together. There is no way he gets to be the youngest.

Ann and I went to kindergarten, grade school, high school together, and ended up in the same college sorority. Bill and Donna and I have a friendship forged in homeroom and in the high school parking lot at 3:00AM as we gathered for “away meets” for speech and debate. The four of us grew up together. I am beyond grateful that we are growing old together.

So today I think about ancient friendships. Although we often make wonderful friends along life’s way, sometimes we are lucky enough to have friends who knew our parents, who knew the homes we grew up in. I marvel at this often, but particularly on February 22.

I lift a celebratory mug of coffee in salute to ancient friendships, and I wish them for you, dear reader.

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,

and to Mama Rosa’s, Hampton, VA.

January 8.21: Coping

A reflection, dear reader.

Today I turn 78. One becomes reflective when one turns 78 in a year of chaos and disease, when fear and rage, loneliness and grief dominate the human stage. But I was born into World War II. How can I not ask if anything has changed?

Food was rationed, bloodshed headlined daily newspapers, freight trains crisscrossed our lives carrying tank parts and spewing cinders, radio was high-tech, my mom and grandma walked to the corner store, a can of bacon grease ennobled every kitchen and bobby pins every dresser. Coal shoveled into furnaces. White shoe polish a household staple.

You have met my cell phone, humble flip-top that it is. You know it stopped working last month and then mysteriously started working again. Then, a couple days ago, it developed new problems. You may congratulate me vociferously: this time I did what any kindergartener would have done and googled the wretch. I learned that the trick was to put the phone into Airplane Mode and then toggle it out again.

Dear reader, who in the name of heaven would have the least inkling to do such a thing by way of problem-solving? I was irrationally proud of myself and at the same time miffed that I live in a world in which my life experience and hard-earned education seem useless.

As you know, this week has been hideous here but obviously something this mortally serious doesn’t just happen out of nowhere. And so I become 78 in a country with its principles in tatters. In a world where I need to know about Airplane Mode to have a working phone.

I have decided to look at it this way: 78 candles is a lot of light.

 

 

 

Vagaries in Gestation: November 14.18

Did you ever look at a close relative and ask yourself that hideous question “Am I like that?” No other question is so hard to answer, I think.

My mother was born 100 years ago today, and was a child of her time, as are we all. That time was one of clear-cut roles and expectations for women, and it crumbled around her during her life. She was, I think, stymied by the changes but willing to challenge her own perceptions. In a grudging sort of way. She stubbornly argued she was NOT stubborn. She was finicky and explosive and opinionated. She believed that anything worth doing was worth doing her way.

She ironed everything but rugs. And I’m not sure about the rugs. She believed in propriety and process, hard work and common sense. She inevitably bungled a punch line. She endured her own mother, although at great cost, believing it to be the moral way. Immersed in an immigrant Catholicism, she preferred Protestant humanness to Catholic etherealness. She wanted to sing “He walks with me,” not “Panis Angelicus.”

If I could fit her into a blog post, she wouldn’t be my mother.

So I salute my mom today and ask the answerless question: Am I like that?

 

Vagaries in Gestation

 

Connections: April 16.18

How eloquent the pie,

sublime the chocolate thrilling,

effusive the buttery crumb

and dainty pastry frilling!

In sweet and wordless voice

they join in birthday fuss

a triple 75

l’chaim!

sticky fingers!

to us!

 

 

My dear old high school friends, Bill and Donna, came last week for our birthday celebration.

It was the Mt. Everest of sugar highs. Utter bliss, dear reader.

Connections

Connections: March 6.18

I remember the days of jumping in pain

on devious carpet of shag

stuck in my toe

by bionic foe

or light saber attached to my leg.

The shag is long gone, my legs varicose,

but a part is still little-boy’d;

Star Wars endures

prequeling perdures

in eternal Wookie and droid.

Connections

 

August 18

 

Today is my brother’s birthday, and he likes pansies.

So happy 70th, Little Brother!

August countdown.