Senior Sunday

I was on my way up to see my nonagenarian friend at her nursing home, as I do several times a week, and stopped, as is my habit, at a specific Starbuck's along the way. As this is the Labor Day Weekend, and traffic is comparatively light (though not as light as I would have thought it would be) I decided not only to get a sandwich but to purchase and read The Wall Street Journal. In the non-news life exploration section was a single review of two books about aging. Ah, that happy subject! A few blog entries back I stirred that pot, but is it my fault that I ran across these articles that thrust my mind back to the minefield that is getting old--ER?  I submit that it is not! So onward in the wretched reverie that makes so many retch, so to speak.

The two authors, Ian Brown and Willard Spiegelman, one just 60 and the other in his 70s, have distinctly opposed views of what the reviewer labels, "Life in the Fourth Quarter". The former is wildly pessimistic in view of all the things he says are failing in mind and body, the '"slippery indignity of the stinking slide' into decrepitude". Whoa! If I was jarred by a friend's comment that we were all decaying, this one really delivered a gut punch. I had to double check. Did they say he was 60?  Really, is it that bad?  I guess so, since he is anticipating nothing on the "other side" or rather, he anticipates there is no "other side." The other writer's themes seem to more accord with mine, a couple of years older though I am than Mr. Brown. Mr. Spiegelman presents essays, I am told by the reviewer, Gerard Helferich, and they look back with some sense of satisfaction, as well as the hope of a future, albeit not as long as what has gone before.

Having savored my Turkey Pesto and mentally consumed the articles that interested me in the Journal, I was back on the road to the nursing home. I have to say, I have seen more sort of family oriented movies courtesy of my visits. I say, "sort of" because even this one, "Baby Boom" from 1987 had a spot of non-G rated nudity. So, there I was, amid fifteen or so eldsters, and one nurse, Jackie, fully engulfed in the story of a woman who did finally have it all-a child and a career--but on her own terms, a nice Hollywood fiction. And there was even a young James Spader with a nice full head of hair playing a corporate young gun. I was going to leave right after the movie. I was even offered some cake and ice cream, which in my current focus on the need to lose weight so I don't have a stroke (also an age related theme), I declined. And then a cloud of pink in a large red hat appeared. This I understood was the pianist. I hadn't quite absorbed the outfit when she said something like, "I know you want to know about what I am wearing." I might have described it as a pink tee shirt with some embossed picture sewn onto a lace table cloth. And that's what she said it was. She had created the couture of the day. And then she sat down and without music in front of her played tune after tune breaking only to say hello to a friend who had come into the room, a man she noted had never neen married and for whom she was seeking a mate. She added, looking directly at me, "I'm a match-maker too!"  I replied, "I am not surprised." I don't know what the man's, I think his name was Jerry, issues were such that he had never taken the marital leap, but I took me and my issues out the door while the Lady in Pink continued to tickle the ivories with amazing facility.

Here's the thing. She was a bolt of life. Eccentric. Unnerving in her likely lack of boundaries.
She was probably only a little younger than the people she was entertaining, and she was taking her future, however time limited it might turn out to be, by storm. I admired her.

Last night, a bunch of us went to the last Hollywood Bowl of the season, featuring the wonderful and reliable John Williams, a movie music legend, he of the Star Wars tracks, fro 1977 to date. I brought a light saber I ordered on Amazon so I could join all the other fans in waving light during the accompaniment of oncoming storm troopers on screen.

I guess you could say I have always been a bit eccentric. I might be something like that lady at the piano today, in just a few years. I guess I am on the way, and here's another thing, I think I like it.

As my cousin said in her Facebook comment to the posting of my picture, "A Jedi in pearls."

And why not? I sometimes think that maybe in this fourth quarter I will finally overcome the fears and inhibitions that kept me from exploring so much in the first three. Like Mr. Spiegelman I know that a lot is dependent on continued good health (despite lots of genetic and life style risks that lurk in my background), but I do pray it is so.

I am older. I know in this picture I don't look much like I did 30 years ago. . .my teeth need whitening, I have a double chin, or two, and as I said, I need to lose weight, lots of it, but I do not plan to go 'gently into that good night."  I hope to learn to dance before the earthly curtain drops, regardless of whether there is oblivion, or as I do believe, something More.