View of a Few - Ronald Franklin

 

George Franklin

 

June 2010
June has always felt like my own personal space.  My Month.  I was born in June, made a couple of life altering decisions in June, and began or ended a couple of careers in June.
I look forward to the weather in June—‘Summer time and the livin’s easy’—my birthday, Fathers Day, stuff that makes me feel important.
However, this condition of “Old” that I have been experimenting with of late, may necessitate a mental and emotional adjustment.  Maybe these important, personal, June events should be placed in the context of the Real World.
Another birthday?  All it means is that I am still here.  Big deal.  So is my Mom.  When she turned ninety-five, I asked her how it felt.  She said, “I’m an old lady and that’s it!”
Hell.  I’m still on the young side of Old!
I stopped drinking in June, many years ago.  That was significant, then.  It kept me from death and made me less of a burden on a few family members.  But, among my peers, those  still alive and reasonably fit, at age seventy-two, do not have a drinking problem.  They have solved their problem, never had a problem, or died.    I don’t drink.  Again, so what?
As far as ‘life altering decisions’ are concerned, I have only one problem, that I can think of, to solve.  I can’t afford to die right now, so it may be necessary to write a book—and successfully market it—in order to pay the ‘final expenses’.  I am in no hurry.  
The ‘Kids’ are in their thirties and have more problems to deal with in the twenty-first Century than I ever did in the twentieth.  They are doing just fine.  They taught me more than I taught them, and I shall strive to pay for my own funeral. 
That leaves the Weather. 
It is not practical, and not necessary, thankfully, for me to claim the weather, personally.  I will gladly, share with my peers, my Mom, the Kids, and everyone else, sober or not, the Sun in June.
 

May 2010
Favorite Things                                     
May has pretty well everything going for it.  Nearly all of my favorite things come out, or come back, or become active in May.
 My favorite things are Girls, wild roses and old Tomcats.  Also grass, leaves and red trucks.
The grass comes up and covers the ground.  The leaves come out and cover the trees.  The sun comes out and uncovers the Girls.  Cranky old Cats who laid around the house all winter, slink, softly,  over, around and under, ready to fight, eat any bird who is unaware, or love any lady cat who is aware.
Even old men go down the sidewalk with their heads up, in May.  Old men are not among my favorite things, but I understand them and have some compassion for them, having been one, myself, for the past number of years.  
Old men are not, usually, like old cats.  Old cats are blissfully unaware of failing bodies and social conventions.  That is why I admire them.  Even, envy them.
Old men know, they have been told thousands of times by the Media, that there are no more fights, no more conquests, no more wild meat for them.  But, they remember what it was like when they were alive.  In the month of May, they prance a bit.  Good on them.
I have seen a wild rose near the end of May.  On the south side of the rock behind the house on the farm where I grew up, there was, sometimes a rose.  Wild roses, specially the first one, made me feel stuff I could never put into words.
Red trucks, of course, made me want to drive them, with big loads on them, up and down steep hills, maybe with girls watching.
I owned some, here and there.  Never could get over the feeling of being in a big truck.  Never could figure out how to make any money with one. 
So, I don’t do red trucks any more.  I got a red car.  My concession to senescence.
Perhaps, this May, I shall go back to the farm, sit on the rock facing the southerly sun and wait for a rose to bloom.  Perhaps I shall take an elderly tomcat to sit and blink beside me.  Maybe, because it is May, I will try to persuade an elderly girl to sit and blink on the other side of me 

April 2010 

In order to make a point, it may be necessary to destroy my entire act, my carefully developed writing and conversational style. Damn it! I have nurtured it for years!

I am, basically, a depressive cynical, Amoral, Apolitical, Areligious, hopeless person. In order to avoid being avoided by adults and beat upon by the big kids, I mask my true self with facile laugh lines.

The system has worked pretty well. Well enough that I often successfully write humorous newspaper articles.

I avoid addressing issues of any kind because they almost never have any affect on me. Having no expectations, I have no disappointments.

However, I must now, destroy my phony credibility. Not only that but I must do great injustice to my lifelong cynicism. I may not ever regain my act. Either of them.

As this is being written I am a patient in the Thunder Bay Regional Health Centre.

I came in here, reluctantly. My presenting witticisms ran along the line of “as long as an old guy is able to walk around, they won’t do a Hell of a lot.”

My underlying hopelessness told me they would, superficially, address one of my, several, complaints and send me home with antibiotics to treat a virus.

No expectations, tired laugh lines.

Not so!

It took a couple of days to establish communication. It was that long before I realized they were listening to me. I never tried to get at the truth of my various aches and pains until I let go of my disbelief in the system – any system.

The people here have all been unfailingly professional, courteous, compassionate and attentive.

This body is rather the worse for much hard wear. It has never been maintained properly except in crisis.

The natural ability of the body to repair itself is no longer quite up to the task.

After sparring and mumbling for a while I managed to divulge to these compassionate professionals – and to myself — my secret worries that I was falling apart.

They are addressing everything that may – or may not exist. I am grateful to these people and to one or two friends who insisted I come here, for treating me seriously – and compelling me to treat myself seriously.

It makes a mockery of one Persona and at least one Mind Set. I should really go for it.

Even the food here is okay.

There! That might wreck the act. Acts.

 

 

March 2010 

Having felt poorly during the last week, I have not done much in the way of writing, or eating.

I did, however, make it to the bridge table three times. It seemed necessary. Wanted , maliciously, to breathe all over everything and, particularly, to breathe on those other old card players. It didn’t even fizz on them. They thrived on, in a disgustingly healthy manner, all three of them.

Had to mention, casually, three or four times about how infirm and feeble I had become, before they said, ” Yeah, well, deal the cards and try to remember what’s trump.” Not a drop of compassion in the room.

It wasn’t only the bridge players. They, of course, remain glued to the same code of ethics they used in the school yard, fifty or sixty years ago, when they were twelve. Never show a flicker of humanity toward a playmate unless he is bleeding, in profusion.

No. The person who teaches me computer stuff, was particularly cavalier when I drooled pathetically on the key board. ‘Cavalier’ has a meaning, from the Spanish, of ‘high handed’. The connotation would be, the nasty, merciless end of ‘high handedness’.

She said, “Take an aspirin and some Kleenex. Get over it. You have an article to write.”

I had to do it too. The reality of the ‘teaching’, is this: She reminds me how to open a file, and how to send an Email——-every week.

It was tempting to get in the car, go back to the old Home Town and whine to Mom. Had to, wistfully, reject that thought. Mom was born in 1915 and taught me to milk cows when I was six. When I was thirteen I got a chest condition in March. Some bit of allergy to dust off of trees. When I told Mom, she laughed. She thought it was hilarious. I was six feet tall and could throw a good sized calf over the fence. I was not allowed to be sick then either.

On reading this over, I find myself giggling and chortling. It really is hilarious. Damned sense of humour. Probably inherited it from Mom.

Probably got her genetics too. God, I might have to live for twenty five years yet!

 

February 2010

Old Susie, a noted world traveler, called from the West. She said, ‘Dad.’ ‘What?’,I worried—She has called me ‘Dad’ for nearly thirty years. ‘Come to Vancouver for a couple of months.’

It turns out that Old Susie is going to be at the University there for a while, has found an apartment with an extra room, with two parking spots. And everything.

Immediately, eleven reasons sprang to mind as to why I would be unable to go to Vancouver. She was ready and waiting.

I can’t afford to go. ‘Say what day you are coming and there will be a ticket for you at the Thunder Bay Airport’.

I don’t want to leave my friends. ‘You have three people you play bridge with, and two people who don’t play bridge, and the bridge players can’t be classed as friends because you guys fight all the time.’ Then, I don’t want to leave my two friends. ‘They will be glad you are not under foot for a while.’

And so on. Like, ‘ I’m quite busy, really.’ ‘Rubbish! You sit around and read. They have books here.’

Well, I did some considering. There are fond memories of the old days in Vancouver. Had some good friends there.

Then I did some reconsidering. Haven’t seen or heard from most of them in twenty-five years. Let see, Old Gordie would be ninety-seven. Joy, the stewardess would be in her fifties. I don’t think they make stewardesses that old. The bikers would also be a generation on. Some of them were kind of battered in the Seventies. The Gypsy girl would be sixty-six. She, I suspect, is just as psychotic as she was at thirty.

Perhaps I am the only one extant. Do I really want to find out? Do I want to reconnect with them, if they are still around? On rereading that last paragraph, do I dare? They sound like a scary bunch. What in Hell was I doing, hanging out with them anyway?

The point is, I am a different being than I was in nineteen eighty four.

Before I make any moves, in any direction, it is probably time to decide who or what I am in the present and decide what I’d like to be in whatever amount of future there may come to be for me.

Actually, at present, I am a balding, overweight seventy-something lay-about, emotionally attached to a life that existed half a century ago, without energy or direction.

I do not know what to do. I would like to find a source of energy.

Old Susie has energy. So do most young people. They haven’t, yet, had it leeched out of them by Society.

Maybe I should enroll in some lectures at her university, or any other one, and hang out quietly where that energy is. Maybe I will.

 

January 2010 

The Guys that I sit around with three afternoons a week are all pretty well perfect. So am I.

Perhaps I could qualify that statement, just a bit. It occurred to me how ascended and evolved we all were when New Years Resolution Time loomed, recently. None of us have any nasty habits or addictions left to stop doing. We have quit everything, almost.

We don’t drink or smoke or do drugs or eat too much. Most of us stay away from Dens of Iniquity—I, personally, have trouble recalling what a ‘den of iniquity’ looks like, or tastes like—we don’t, actively, lust after girls, and we never jay walk.

At this time of year, we sit, passive and smug, safely beyond the stress of making and breaking resolutions. Been there, did that.

My peers and I have a bond. We have our character defects, which we have dealt with to some degree. This is a good thing. We deserve a pat on the back.

One pat on the back. All we have done is rearrange our lives so that we appear in public as indistinguishable from normal people, people who had no need to deal with character defects. The fact is, lots of citizens never did drink or smoke or gamble to excess, and none of us sinners ever complimented them.

In addition to having become non-practicing addicts and wastrels, my friends and I have gotten old. We learned how to discontinue our addictions of choice, but most of us have not replaced negative behaviour patterns with new, positive ones. We sit around the table and argue about the rules of Bridge, often at an abysmal level of intelligence, sometimes it breaks up the game. We do not settle disputes by reading a rule book. We conduct ourselves like eight year old boys, crazed on sugar and take turns slamming out the door.

We are in our sixties and seventies. We would have been dead years ago were it not for the strength derived from a common approach to our individual problems with addiction. But, we have turned away from helping others. We have turned inward.

We play and argue and gather together because we know we can tell each other and hear from each other, the Truth. From sad experience we have become cynical. The world around us does not deal with, or expect to hear, the truth. Business, the Government and The Media, really do not pretend to be factual. The Young whose energy is the natural resource of Society, are bombarded by an ever increasing barrage of unreality.

So, we sit and we argue and we avoid doing anything new. We sometimes watch from the sidelines while we play cards. We can spot most any con game ever tried, from across the room, and we turn our backs.

We can also spot the truth. Some people hurt so much they have nothing left but the truth. We can handle it. We’ll stop playing bridge to listen to it.

December Issue

Christmas tree 1948

It was the Saturday before Christmas. My brother Gordon was nine and I was ten.

We had two projects, in addition to regular Saturday chores. There was a Christmas tree to get, and we had instructions from Dad to do something about all the mice in Wilbour’s shack.

First thing in the morning, was firewood for the house. It had to be sawed up, with the swede saw and carried in to the basement. Lots of it. Then we took the cattle to the well and watered them. There were more than a dozen at that time. Hay had to be forked down from the big barn into the feed way in the stable, and the stable cleaned.

While we worked we planned the Christmas tree job and what to do about Wilbour’s mice. Wilbour was a cousin of our Dad. He lived on a homestead across the river from our farm. In retrospect, I perceive that Gordon and I were a source of considerable stress, to Wilbour. Unfortunately, for him, he sometimes tried to discipline us.

Gordon figured we should take the .22 and shoot the mice. That did not seem like an option, to me. Wilbour had fire arms and could have done that himself. He had already shot out a window. He shot a deer in the yard from inside, without opening it. He may have decided that guns don’t do well inside the house. He said it filled up the place with smoke too. Gordon was not convinced.

There was a very large Tom Cat named ‘Tippie’ who had both barn and house privileges. I strongly suggested we take him instead and Gordon agreed, reluctantly.

Mom fed us lunch and we set out. Dad had told us to ‘bring a feed of oats for the horse’. Gordon asked, “How big a feed?” Dad said, “Much as you can handle in a gunny sack.” So we had to take the sleigh. It pulled pretty good on the path. We carried the cat all the way across the fields almost to the swamp, then set him down. He didn’t know where he was so he followed us across the big swamp, across the river and up the hill to the cabin. We had some trouble getting the sleigh up the hill from the river. It took both of us. The bag of oats probably weighed damn near as much as we did.

We left the cat in the shack and went to the bush where Dad and Wilbour were skidding trees. We had not found a tree in the swamp. Those black, swamp spruce were too skinny and bare.

Wilbour asked, “What are you guys doin’ out here and it one o’clock in the afternoon? You might as well of stayed home.”

I said, “We’re getting a Christmas tree.” He said, “How’re you getting’ it home? You’ll never make it. Day’s just about over and you just got here.”

Gordon fired, “Yeah, if it wasn’t for Dad and us bein’ here You’da stayed in bed all day.” Actually, Gordon outnumbered him in a battle of wits. Even at nine.

Dad fell a big silver spruce with a nice crown on it. He chopped off the top at about seven feet. I dragged it inside the cabin to thaw out so the limbs would not break off when we hauled it home.

We observed the cat eat two mice, at least, then lay two on the floor in front of the tin heater. He likely got more that we didn’t see.

We took the ‘gunny sack’ with us when we went back, because we always needed bags at the farm. We didn’t take the sleigh because I figured it was easier to drag the tree with the butt over my shoulder. We took the cat, of course.

Carrying the tree went okay if Gordon held up the tip of it and followed along behind me. However, about half way across the big swamp, the cat sat down on the path and would not go any further.

It was starting to get cold and cats freeze to death very easily, so, Gordon held the gunny sack and I put ‘Tippie ‘ inside. Gordon carried him all the way, hanging from his back, and I had to drag the Christmas tree all the way to the house. That cat was about a third the size of Gordon.

The stars were out when we got home. The tree and the cat were fine. Tippie climbed the tree on Christmas day.

Gordon and I survived as well. We are still around, sixty-one years later.

Merry

Christmas.

 

 

November Issue

There have been rather a lot of Novembers in my life, some of them dark and foreboding. Some November events have taught me stuff I needed to know about myself and about other people.

We grew up on a farm at the edge of the wilderness, nothing north of us but the CN track, then, no people, all the way to Hudson Bay. November was the waiting time, the last chance to get ready for Winter.

It was—still is—a quiet time, deep, without compassion. Last opportunity. Prepare yourself now for the cold or freeze your ass later and it will be your own fault. November made me alert for a while—still does.

I didn’t learn very much during this insipient alertness, one or two factoids which I did not use often enough and didn’t consider,consciously until now, these many Novembers later. As a matter of fact, early on, I rebelled against learning, thinking and being responsible. I became an alcoholic and didn’t entertain a coherent thought for years. Except for one or two flashes in the ‘alertness of November’.

The first three weeks of November 1963 were wonderful. I was working in the bush. The days were hazy, quiet, mysterious. The grass was still growing on the lawn. No snow, no flies. It was great.

On the morning of the twenty-second, there was at least a foot of snow. Couldn’t work. Went to town, got paid and went to the Bar.

During noon hour the assassination of President Kennedy was announced. I sat and watched and listened, and drank, all day. Could not understand my emotions, or express them. About the only acts available to me in those days were to fight or act like a silly ass. Neither was acceptable, so I sat incoherent, inebriated and confused. Didn’t talk. Listened, and remembered. Seems like yesterday.

The anger I was feeling, the disbelief, the sadness I was unable to process, was being expressed by others. People who I usually despised and ignored because they were idiots, took turns, all around me, saying the things to each other that needed to be said, wisely, compassionately, with complete lack of ego.

On the TV, Walter Cronkite and Senator Everett Dirkson talked and showed their pain exactly as honestly as the guys in the bar. There was no acting by the newscaster or by the politician. They were just two men sharing a tragic family event.

Three little gems I tucked away that day. No matter how nice the weather is in November, Winter really is coming. People, no matter how flawed and imperfect they are, or how flawed I perceive them to be, are able, in real need, to come together, to be perfect. The only idiot I met that day, was me.

Forty six Novembers later, I understand, finally, most of the time. There have been other Novembers of note. Seems like there have been more Novembers than some other Months. Hardly any Februarys.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to be real that day. The Editor of the Observer, the late Fred Marshall, bustled in and sat down on a stool. He wiggled around, rubbed his hands together and asked, ‘Well, what’s the latest on the assassination?’

Several people looked at him and looked away. After a while, Mac Maclellan, a usually silent, but dangerously witty fellow, said,’ Well, Freddy, He’s still dead.’

Sure glad it wasn’t me who handed him that line.

October 2009

About twenty-five years ago, a bureaucrat in his cups, told me about laws that were ‘on the books’ but not yet, usually, enforced. He said— maudlin and defiant—”If we wanted to we could require everybody to get a permit to mow his own lawn, every time he mowed it.”

As far as I am aware, this law, if it exists, has not been activated. I am quite ready to believe that it does exist and that it could be activated. Take a comfortable Democracy, lace it with apathy, mix in short sighted, school teacher type activists, and sooner or later it will cost money to legally cut your own grass.

It is necessary to point out, of course , that, not all teachers are unable to think. Some of them are the best thinkers of all. Not, however, the ones who arrange, at the expense of huge amounts of energy and obscene amounts of money, for our government to pass laws, democratically, which may place these same people, also known as ‘concerned citizens’—and the rest of us—in contravention of the law, by mowing the lawn.

The original motivation had something to do with saving the ecosystem from loggers and, probably, farmers—people who were too busy scraping up a payment on the tractor to organize opposition to the tree huggers.

In a democracy, if there is no opposition to a proposal put before the government, or if the media is motivated to put a negative spin on one side, then nearly anything could become oppressively legalized. Consider the billion dollar debacle of Fire Arm Registration. There are very likely, as many unregistered hand guns in Ontario as there ever were. They are in the hands of people who make their living pointing guns at concerned citizens.

It is not possible to legislate proper management of the environment. It is not possible to legislate personal safety. The activists don’t think very clearly and the thinkers don’t act.

Personally, I do not, very often, either think, or act. This morning I got up cranky, aching with arthritic joints, mourning lost loves, regretting missed opportunities. Had to write a column and lashed out.

Teachers avoid thought. It interferes with teaching. Street people learn survival routines and don’t need to think. Politicians, realizing that political survival depends on the avoidance of self definition, flee from thought, and do not ever consider actual solutions to problems. Thinkers, perhaps, take a historical perspective—human nature doesn’t change much from millennium to millennium. Humans are self centred animals who do not, naturally follow rules, do not, usually, consider larger realities. They will, at times, help each other, just often enough to avoid a melt down of society—so far.

I gave away my guns and quit cutting trees down some time ago. My motivation may have been concern for the environment and for the safety of my fellow humans. Or, not being a thinker, or an activist it may have been because I could no longer see well enough to shoot, and my bones ache too much to climb up on the skidder.

September 2009 

Carried in on the edges of a late summer breeze are the flutters of long ago memories, long ago habits, faded patterns of old life routines. Ghosts.

Sixty years back, late August on the farm. Haying, hoeing, summer-fallowing, pretty well done. Garden not ready to take up, oats not quite ripe. Time to take a breather, think, pull a job out of the List. The endless list.

School. A real gut wrencher there. Kind of like, ‘Oh, Great!’, and, ‘Oh Hell!’ in one shot.

But, not yet, not quite yet.

There are berries to pick. They make us pick blueberries. It is not all bad. We have to pick one eleven quart basket—I remember them about the size of a washtub—then we can go explore in the rocks or go down to the lake.

These memories are selective. Sore muscles, exhaustion, black fly bites, heat stroke, are no longer significant. I remember them, but, having survived them, dealt with them, they no longer have any hold on me.

But, the emotions, the feelings, they drift in, each year in their season. Longings, excitement, fear, resentment, regret, confusion, hope. The soul of a naïve eleven year old reflected from a blueberry patch in nineteen forty nine. It could have been any year and it could have been any event, any one of a hundred childhood routines. The past visits and takes over my mind for a while.

Sometimes I do not want it to leave. I perceive that there may be a choice. There is real time, where the management of an aging, complaining body takes precedence over emotion; where emotions are jaded and damped down by the disappointments and the realities of—Reality. Or, there is the Blueberry Patch of a perfect August, where a perfect body can run and run and run, where there was hope and fear and longing and all the fields were golden.

Perhaps I shall make such a choice one day. But not yet, not quite yet.

In an attempt to go back, physically, I went blueberry picking, back to the farm. A friend, even older than me, with a somewhat Quixotic bent, went along.

It rained for four days, we suffered physically, psychologically and financially. We acquired a number of blueberries at a cost of approximately one dollar each.

Before we returned I went to see Mom, who is ninety-four.

I told her of the project. She asked where we were staying.

I replied that we were in Gordon’s Shooting Cabin. She looked worried.

When I left she said, ‘Give me a hug.’ She grabbed me by the neck and hauled me down, she was sitting in a chair. My cap fell off.

She said, ‘where are you staying?’ I repeated, ‘In the cabin at the farm.’ ‘Oh yes, you told me.’ Then she said, ‘I could forget anything—at the drop of a hat.’

I was nearly to the car before I realized how very good that line was.

But, you don’t really forget, Mom. You can’t forget. Neither can I.

When I dropped my friend , and his costly blueberries, at his house, we told each other we had enjoyed the expedition, that it had been worth while. It was too. I felt all sorts of emotions, in real time. And my body survived. Several new aches and pains—in real time.

 

 June 2009 

At the top of the stairs, with two turns in it, is my room, full of books. Boxes and boxes of books. They have been accumulating for many years, and have been moved several times. At one time they were sorted into books I had read, books I was going to read and books I was never going to read. Lately they are just in boxes, taking over the room.

Eilo, who knows how to do nearly everything and won’t play bridge, suggested, recently, ‘We should build some bookshelves and make this into a habitable room.’ It was probably the first time he saw my book room, maybe the first time anybody saw it. Two chairs, a TV you can hardly find and fifty-eight boxes of books.

There were some boards which Rodney had given me from his basement. I don’t think Rodney will play bridge either, but he golfs.

So, I measured the distance from the wall to the TV, considered the width of the stairs, figured there were enough boards to make a good size book case, and loaded the boards in the truck.

Eilo has visiting privileges to the workshop of his son Dave,and we went there.

There was one plank, ten inches wide, perfect for the ends, and four identical boards, just right for the shelves. The shelf boards were exactly the same length. I thought, ‘well, Hell, they are longer, but I can move the TV, so we won’t have to cut the boards.’

I believe we intended to make all the pieces and assemble the thing at the house. However, it seemed prudent to put a few screw nails in it to make sure everything fit right—and take it apart to transport it.

It was difficult to make our book case stand up straight. It leaned this was and that way. Pretty limp.

We went to town and got some plywood to make a back, to stiffen it up.

These days they have cordless drills that are really handy. You can use two of them. One, you drill holes with and the other you screw with. You can put lots of screws in really fast. Like a whole box. Which we did. The plywood really stiffened up the thing.

But, we didn’t take it apart. We put it on the truck and hauled it to my place.

Eilo is several years older than I am, so I decided to get Robert to help me haul the thing upstairs. Robert does play bridge, but he is as strong as a horse.

Robert said, ‘The book case is no problem. I can carry it myself. You don’t need to help me, even. But, it will not go up the stairs. It is too long. There is just no way.’

Oh yeah. I knew that, didn’t I? Back before I discovered cordless drills.

We loaded it on the truck and went back to Daves’ shop.

But we didn’t do anything for two or three days. The weather turned cold, my arthritis was acting up, Eilo had another project, and I had to play bridge.

On Saturday we got back to it. Dave was home and he observed us, from a distance. It reminded me of the way Dad used to watch me and my brother work when we were twelve.

We cut the book case in half and made two. I wanted to cut it down the center with the power saw—The one Dave had been cutting firewood with, the only power tool I felt comfortable around—but Eilo wouldn’t let me.

Soon we had two book cases in the truck. Shorter ones, of a size that Robert could get up the stairs with.

I was sitting on a stool by the shop, with a shoe off, massaging my right big toe, which, along with my left knee and my right shoulder, hurt like the devil, partly due to the weather and somewhat due to crawling around in the shop trying to help Eilo.

I said, ‘You know, anybody past seventy who insists on trying to do carpentry work in weather like this—there was snow in the air—should just go and shoot himself.’ I was trying to look noble and suffering and wise.

Dave replied, ‘Yeah and he probably would if he could remember where he put his box of ammunition.’ Dave is about fifty. Irreverent, cheeky pup.

I hauled the new book cases home. Didn’t wait for Robert. Still smarting, muttering, ‘I’ll show you’, I carried one upstairs all by myself and filled it with books. I emptied three boxes and gathered up a pile of loose books. Fifty five boxes to go.

And I found a book ‘The Complete Works of Charles Fort’ which I bought in 1989 for forty six dollars and lost before I got it read.

I am going to read it before I do anything else.

  May 2009 

One of the little tricks I use to make a point, and get a chuckle, is to make myself look stupid, to be the straight man. The point becomes obvious to the reader, the straight man has to be hit over the head with it. It works pretty good in the production of articles for Thunder Bay SENIORS. The Observer, me, a bit obtuse, reporting on the labeling, and categorizing of ‘older adults’, while, apparently, not seeing the irony, in order to make the point, that there is a Hell of a lot more to old age than we expected.

It is not all bad and it isn’t all good. It is a lot wider than portrayed by the non-seniors who do the labeling and categorizing. It is just as scary as adolescence, but there are fewer unknowns. Old age is for adults, with an adult sense of humor, a well aged sense of humor, where quiet laughter and acceptance replaces fear and anger in the face of the unknown.

There are lessons to be learned along the way. My ‘little trick’ is a case in point. I took it too far.

Old Susie from Calgary had been after me for about four years to come and visit her, at her house. She grew up at my house, and had decided it was her turn, I guess.

I hadn’t done much flying for a while and didn’t put away the stuff in my pockets. Acting dumb. They took my pen knife and a lighter. They made me take my shoes off and they were slightly annoyed at the Air Port.

In Calgary, I had not double checked the time and had to wait two hours to be picked up. It was unnecessary for me to be that slack, it was unacceptable, really.

It didn’t end there. My daughter put me in a basement room, with everything anyone could need and a TV set five feet wide.

I woke up at two-thirty in the morning. Didn’t feel well, couldn’t get my wind, had a number of aches and pains.

Old Susie, a trained first aid person, heard me moving around. She asked me one or two questions and took charge. I didn’t assert myself, or, I didn’t define myself. In a very few minutes I was in a hospital, needles in both arms, oxygen, a doctor and the whole crew. Again, acting dumb and laid back caused problems for other people. If one is chronologically old and has a pain in the chest—they really move.

They kept me all day. They did every procedure I had ever heard of. They established that I had not had a heart attack, that I did not have blood clots in my lungs, that the blood profile showed no anomalies. They were very real people, professional and compassionate.

I have much admiration and respect for the people at Foothills Hospital, and for Old Susie In Charge, with whom they consulted. They told her to send me back to Ontario to see my Doctor. Which she did. And I did.

My Doctor did the blood work all over again and decided I was probably allergic to air tight basements and, or, Calgary air.

I learned that if I relax and let others make the decisions, they will, and I thereby lose my definition of self.

The lesson here, for Senior Me, is, to not play dumb anymore. Obviously, I do enough dumb things without trying. The thing to do, is to learn how to accept gracefully the help and energy of the younger ones in my life when it is required. I need to tend to the little details, keep abreast of Airport security and Emergency protocol, for example. I need to be interested, and interesting enough to attract the energy of vital people, at the same time accepting a role as a support person in the case management —of Me.

This daunting scenerio is a very real, fair description of what I, as a senior adult , should aspire to be in the society of which I am a part.

Imagine! I’d have to erase from my brain, every opinion, every conviction, every bit of training in logic, ethics, business management that it took fifty years, or more, to acquire. To say nothing of ego, bias, bigotry and distrust of organized religion.

One suspects there are serious possibilities of adventure in the later chapters of life—if You are up for it.

 

April 09 

Near the end of the month, Winter, not ready to give up, had covered the immediate World with ice. The outside door at the back of the house was welded shut by it.

I pushed and pushed, beat on it with fists, got all hot and claustrophobic, broke into a sweat and squealed a bit, quietly. Then I kicked the door a few times. It flew open and I skittered down the steps.

Friend Alfred was out behind, salting a trail to his garbage cans.

As I sauntered, suavely to the car, He said, ‘You got out did you?’

Guess I squealed louder than I thought.

‘Be very, very careful walking!’ he warned. It was liked being admonished by Mom when I was nine. Fully recovered from getting out of the house, in full and conscious control of myself, I was slightly annoyed at him. ‘Next, He’ll be wagging his finger at me. Who does he think he is, treating me like he’s the Boss? He isn’t even seventy yet. Till May.’

The traffic was not moving fast, but I didn’t mind much. I was not in a hurry. Let them dawdle if they are scared of a bit of ice.

One young guy in shorts and jogging apparel, like, ear phones, pink head band and a beard, four hundred dollar sneakers, trotted healthily on the side walk. ‘Yeah!’ I thought. The only reason I didn’t scoff at late tantrums of winter and do exactly the same thing was because, well, I hadn’t thought of it.

While parking the car, it slid and bumped the SUV ahead of me. I backed up a bit. Damned long nose sloping hood. Can’t see where the front is. I jumped out, lost my balance and, while looking in my pocket for a loonie for the meter with my right hand, waved my left hand frantically, barely regaining my composure. There was no damage on either vehicle, but my licence plate bent when I backed up.

A lady in the parking lot waved back at me and called, ‘Be very, very careful!’ I think it was the Lady from the Bank who told me,last year, that she could lend me money, but, they would not insure the loan, ‘for people in your age group’, ‘if anything should happen’.

I had almost, not quite, forgotten how miffed I had been about that. After all, I wasn’t asking for a loan, I was just thinking about a new car. One that didn’t have a long sloping front. It wasn’t as if I was about to drop any time soon.

I walked carefully across the lot toward the place where I drink coffee. An old man, also walking carefully, approached me. I said, ‘Be very, very careful.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I got the wrong shoes.’ He had on leather soles. I never wear leather soles, even in the summer, unless I go dancing, which I have not done for a while.

Leather soles! In a skating rink. It was all ice. A chill went up my back. It lodged there in that place where the Boogie Man used to be, when I was a kid. I walked very carefully.

A teenager, one of those who never acknowledge anyone but a peer, and who are never heard to speak actual English, said to me, ‘Be careful. I almost fell down three times.’ I walked very, very carefully.

Even after I got into the Mall, I shuffled, carefully, to my usual table to do the cross word puzzle.

The guys at the next table, whose names I don’t know, but who always talk to me a bit, said, ‘Hey Dryden, (They call me Dryden. I was born there in the nineteen thirties) we didn’t think you would make it out on a day like this.’ I read the obituaries. There was nobody named Dryden in it. Yet. Shuffled timidly back to my automobile. There was a parking ticket on it. Made me feel better. At least I am, in some small way, still a threat to Somebody.

 

  

March 09 

There used to be a guy named Homer, back in the BCs. He wrote poetry, only it didn’t rhyme or anything, particularly after it was translated from Greek to English or whatever. One of his non-rhyming poems, a really long one, was called the Iliad. There was another one, remembered fondly, or not fondly, by British school boys of an earlier era. I know the name of it, phonetically, but my spell check doesn’t do Greek. The word might, I suppose be in the dictionary, lots of old Greek words are, but, dictionaries are no longer cool. I’m trying to quit. I shall just refer to it as Homer’s Other Thing.

Actually, I suspect that lots of twenty-first century writers have never used a dictionary, wouldn’t know how to turn one on. Some of them, obviously, have never even heard of ‘Grammar’. I do not allude, here, to spelling or grammatical construction used in Thunder Bay Seniors articles. I allude to unnamed publications one must pay money for, in order to read.

Homer wrote about ‘wine dark seas’, ‘purple horses’, ‘silver fishes’. The range of colors in his descriptions were mostly very dark or very light. There were few shades in between. A myth, accepted by many scholars, is, that Homer was blind.

In order to make a point, I shall reject this ‘blindness’.

Homer, twenty-five hundred years ago, wrote about an era, earlier than his. His contention was, that the world started out in black and white. The spectrum, with greens and yellows and blues didn’t happen until later. No shades until, probably, about the time He came on the scene. He was not blind, he was painting a picture of ‘the old days’ as he perceived it.

The twenty-first century is peopled by, and is governed by, or will be, by a post Hippie generation which perceives the beginning of History as coinciding with the date of its own birth.

So, nothing much has changed in twenty-five hundred years, except, they no longer spell, or do math.

We, as senior citizens, have a perspective. From our vantage point, out of the loop, we, all alone bewail the scary state of the world. The cycle repeats. Where is intelligence, when will they ever learn?

Maybe they have learned. The Indigo Children don’t need to learn grammar, or spelling, or arithmetic. They learn, as infants, to access information. They bypass rote learning and subsume solutions. There may be intelligence among the young, an evolution of awareness.

Now, the point. If we, worried seniors, actually, fairly comfortable in our exalted concern, ever met this new intelligence, face to face, would we be able to recognize it?

 

  

February 09

February has been mournfully whined about as ‘the dead of Winter’. Maybe that means we are right in the middle of it, two months done and two to go. I don’t know. I’ve always liked February. We are done with January, it is a short month, there is usually a warm spell and then, March. After that, Spring, sometimes.

Business people, in most businesses, other than snow removal, scrape through February in survival mode, hoping for customers. It is the lowest revenue month.

I had a take out Pizza place for a few years. I owned it along with the Bank. Well, the Bank owned it along with me. Actually, the Bank owned it and I owned the liability. It was back in the eighties when loan interest was running about twenty percent—I hardly ever long for the good old days.

Anyway, there is a point. People, in February, sit tight and sit tight until, during a blizzard or an unusually warm day, they get a bit weird, say “To Hell with it,” and order a pizza, everybody does. During one ‘February thaw’, we had our biggest single revenue day ever.

So, there is hope in the doldrums, even for retail businesses, like, maybe shoppers come out on at least one day, like groundhogs?

Actually, I have never seen a groundhog on the second of February, and I have never met a credible person who has seen one. But, I have a thimble full of faith. On the farm, skunks sometimes came out from under the barn in February. Maybe they got flooded out, and maybe it wasn’t water. They did come out, because the dog cornered one and it was certainly a skunk. So, why not groundhogs? Even if they don’t see their shadows, or do see them, or whatever the story is, it is only six weeks till Spring. According to the myth.

Squirrels do not hibernate, they just stay in their holes in January, like people. They come out in February, when the sun starts to have a bit of heat in it, which it does by noon, even if it is thirty below in the morning. They chatter and swear and twitch their tails in the real or imagined mellowing of the air. So do the squirrels.

Canada Jays nest in February. They must know something. They would hardly hatch out eggs at that time of year if they didn’t believe Spring was coming soon enough for the chicks to survive. Hell, if a Whiskey Jack is willing to take a leap of faith, surely I can take a chance on toughing it out for a few more weeks. Besides, I live in a house.

On the other hand, considering that I only have ‘a thimble full of faith’, and considering how I no longer am required to hustle pizzas for a bank, I think I’ll stay inside—till the February Thaw.

 

 

Jan. 09 

Every new year I make resolutions. The one of longest standing, I’ve been making it since age eight, has been to be Honest, Stalwart, Loyal, Help Old Ladies, be True and Constant—that damned, insidious, boy scout fostered ethic.

As an adult, I do not, of course, keep the resolve. Probably didn’t as a kid, either. The only constancy I have evidenced has been a constant lack of commitment.

Another annual Resolution goes way back, though not so far. I have been making it since 1960. Every New Year, I resolve, solemnly, that, next year I shall spend the winter where there is no snow. Never did ,any year, including this one. It’s that compulsive inconstancy. Damn it.

One Fall, long ago, I was released from a hospital, after several surgeries. They told me to take it easy for a few months. When I asked what I should do, they said, ‘Go lay on a beach for the winter.’

Friends of a friend offered free use of their condo in Maui. All I had to buy was my food. Instead, I went home to Mom and Dad at the farm. We were snowed in for weeks. Neurotic behavior, I always hated cold and snow.

One time, when I could have gone south, I went to the Arctic. In February. It wasn’t daylight yet.

There have been short winter trips to warm places. A few days. I came right back, in order to suffer, probably. Or, in order to avoid honoring a commitment.

On the other hand, when I chose to go home to Mom instead of laying on the beach in Hawaii, it was because that was what I really wanted to do. When I continued to work winters in the bush year after year, freezing the odd toe or ear, there was a perverse sense of accomplishment and belonging.

That lifelong duality of personality. An organism at odds with itself. Things I longed for were denied by me. Me wanted to do something else.

In books of psychology—which I/Me have read, trying to find answers—it is suggested that a fractured or incomplete personality sometimes becomes integrated, later in life. If it survives till later in life.

Well I am still alive, it is later. I doubt that I am an ‘integrated personality’, but there are certain encroaching realities. Comfortable ones.

There is no longer a need to go to the office every morning. There are ways to warm up the car without even going outside. One can make it through most days without having to wear mittens. My friends and favorite enemies are nearby with time to visit or play cards, in warm houses. Somebody gave me a fake Christmas tree, so I have absolutely no need to go to the bush, even once.

I still long for the sun, but spring is only four months away and it doesn’t take near as long to wait a few months as it used to. As for the reality that I don’t have the price to go wherever ‘Down South’ is, I have made a compromise. Instead of fretting about my inconsistency, I have made great strides with rationalization.

And, Northern Januaries are a lot more like they are now than they used to be.

 

 

Dec. Issue 

On the nineteenth of November I was down at the Corner Store contemplating, deeply, about whether to buy a Chronicle-Journal, or a Globe and Mail. Tough choice. One has the best comic strip and the other has the best crossword puzzle. Also, of course, now that I am trying to learn how to be a retired person, there is the monetary aspect. One costs several cents more than the other.

Any way, I decided on the local paper. Loyalty. And thrift, it was nearly twenty cents cheaper.

As I stood in line to pay for the paper, there was music playing somewhere in the store. Silent Night, solo, on a trumpet.

“Great Scott!” I shouted, silently. I wasn’t ready for Christmas. It wasn’t even December yet! I had not used the DVD player or the radio I got from the kids for my birthday. In June.

I was hardly finished with Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving dinner was at Sharon and Rodneys’ house. I ate at least three times as much as I needed to, because there was so much food, all good. I was just trying to help. Didn’t want any to go to waste. I suffered from over eating. Then had two pieces of pie. But it was fine by me. It was a Nice pain.

This thing of being retired may not work out. I find stuff to do to fill in the time. The time all gets filled in. The days and weeks go by in a flash, and I never get a day off.

December. A couple of months ago I thought about getting snow tires for the truck. Didn’t get around to it, what with bridge games, planning to sort out my books, thinking about getting in shape, and such like. Probably won’t get them now. They may have all gone to Quebec.

Fondly, well, somewhat fondly, I remembered last year when I had a job. There were days off, when I could catch up on all the things I don’t, now have time for. There were holidays I could plan for, that didn’t sneak up like they do now.

In fact, I went so far as to telephone Mighty Mouse, a person I used to work with. She brought me up to date, not about Work, about the projects she takes on, other than work. She takes courses at the University—another thing I haven’t had time to do—takes trips to Toronto, and, I believe she put new eaves troughs on her house, by herself.

Would I be forced to find a job, I wondered, in order to get back on the World? In order to get revved up for Christmas?

But, I decided, I must soldier on. My commitment to learning “retired” and “old”, must take precedence over all.

If they are playing Silent Night on a horn in November, I reasoned, I shall be a benevolent Senior, wear a smile, spread fellowship and seasonal good cheer around the Mall.

I put on my store bought clothes, drew myself up as straight as is possible and marched—slowly—smiling , around Intercity Mall.

Some distance away, another Senior, a Blue haired Lady, probably nearly as old as me, pretty well preserved, was scowling in my direction.

“Well”, I thought, “Here we go already.” I walked toward her, fairly beaming with Christmas brotherhood. The closer I got, the louder she scowled. When I went past her, she gave me a look that stuck four inches out of my back.

Obviously, my well intentioned act as the early Geezer Ambassador of ‘Ho Ho Ho’ and Jingle Bells, was a hard sell. I felt as though the zipper on my trousers was unzipped. So, I checked. It was.Best Wishes to You.

 

AUTUMN LEAVES

The Music Place

 A group of us were invited, by Dave and Gary from The Music Place, to an evening of food and music, hosted by Raag-Rung Music Circle,and held in The Italian Cultural Centre.

It was an uplifting experience, for a number of reasons.

About three hundred people attended. It looked as if every age group and every ethnic group was represented.

When we went up to get our dinner, I heard comments from ones who, like me were unfamiliar with East Indian cuisine, worried about spicy dishes. None of us needed to have been concerned, for there was a wider range of tastes, flavors, textures and colors than any meal I had ever eaten. And it all worked together. Delicious.

The music, played on Sitar and Tabla by two astoundingly talented musicians, was also unfamiliar to me. I had heard Indian classical music before but had never really Listened to it. However, having dined well I leaned back, closed my eyes and took it in. It was a journey. One could ride on the rhythm. They were absolutely synchronized, which, of course,is what music is all about. The astounding thing, given the ever changing pitch, rhythm and tempo of the Sitar, is, how they did they do it?

I looked around the room and everybody was silent,still. There was no fidgeting. Old, young and infants, all seemed to be focused till the end.

The Northern Woodlands Ojibway Dance Group then, presented social, traditional and contemporary dances, interpreted by a very knowledgeable narrator. For the last dance, the audience was invited to join in. There were Irish girls, Finn boys, East Indians and Ojibway dancers. They all looked happy.

It was a night when everybody was on the same page.

 

Beginning to look like summer is over. Days getting shorter. Squirrels busy in the oak trees. The easy livin’ days are about done.

That is what I was thinking as October rolled around. Felt about as vital as a gnarled leaf drifting around the yard, in the impersonal whims of dusty breezes.

Hadn’t been working since the end of May, and realized that nobody had noticed I was gone except me. Work, it appeared, was a hard habit to break, after about fifty years of it. Nothing to pit myself against, or to strive for. Poor me. Poor little egocentric me, a wrinkled, brown leaf. Didn’t even turn red or orange.

Well, I did a few things in the summer, but none of them were about Me. I was of some slight, peripheral, passing handiness to two or three people. They made use of me because, obviously, I was not busy. I was not asked to do anything of a challenging nature. There seemed to be obvious reasons, to them, why I was not asked to do anything challenging.

I read a lot of books. There are a lot of books at my place. I was going to sort them out. Every time I opened a box, there would be at least two or three books which evoked memories, fond, infuriating, or other, and I would reread them. Spent weeks reading books I had already read. This was not conducive to alleviating my feelings of uselessness and self pity.

A friend was in hospital. I visited her every day and ran errands for her, and I went over to feed her cat.

She was getting tired of being sick and was getting a bit testy. There were a lot of people in to visit her. She had to be nice to the visitors, so she was a bit testy with me. Growled a couple of times. Then I would go over to commiserate with the cat, who would get fed and attack me.

I phoned my brother and whined about unfair treatment by friend and cat. He said, “There is such a thing as justice, after all. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving person.”

I went directly to the Extended Care place where Mom lives and told her exactly what Gordon had said. She replied, “You listen to your brother. He always has had a clear head.”

So, I drove real fast down the highway, thinking, ” to Hell with them all. I don’t need them. I can look after myself.” Just about lost it on a curve, whereupon that damn adult who had left me in charge all summer, came out and said, “You are correct. You can look after yourself. Lots of people can’t. You are also correct that it is not about You. It was about you for fifty years. Now it is pay back time.”

Fall is the best time of year. Autumn leaves are beautiful, and useful. Autumn leaves are the maturity of Summer green and they are the harbingers of what will be.

 

 September 2008

It occurred to me a while ago that, in order to qualify as a writer of Seniors oriented articles, I should be old.

Well, I am old. What worried me, is my attitude. I talk about advanced age, and I write about it, but, I don’t feel much different than I did when I was middle aged, or even, almost young.

Felt guilty, like an imposter, like I was trying to be old and didn’t know how.

It was a worry. What to do? There don’t appear to be any available courses at the College in senescence. Probably, there isn’t anyone there old enough, or senile enough to teach it. I was at the College for a while, years ago when I was fifty-three. Even then, a couple of teachers called me ‘Sir’.

Listening to the conversation around the Bridge table—some of them are almost as old as me—was non-productive. They talked mostly about sex and fist fighting.

Retirees of my acquaintance spend the summers at their camps and go South in the winter. When I see them, very infrequently, they seem a bit uncomfortable in my presence, possibly because I don’t have a camp. Well, more likely it is because I have always had a job.

I realized this much about senior citizenry. There are social mores. Projects are fine, but Jobs, you know, just aren’t done.

Honestly determined to gain experience and credibility, but unable to access data, I decided to leap right in, to get it first hand. I quit my job.

This first move may have been somewhat rash. I found out that most people who are seventy don’t have jobs, because nobody will hire them.

Any of them who do have a job, hang on to it as long as they have a breath left in their bodies. But, I had to start somewhere.

In the two months since my quest for admission to ‘The Golden Years’ began, I have made some, modest progress.

Having always been an early riser, I strove to stay late in bed. It was very difficult. It was as difficult as to stop smoking, but I persevered. One day last week I made it till nearly ten in the morning.

Of course it was not all sleep time. I had to get up three times to go to the can, which is to be considered positively. In exhibiting possible signs of prostate problems, an old mans’ ailment, why, Hell, I’m on my way.

I have been learning to nap. Never napped before. Might miss something. A cat is giving me lessons.

We sit and doze. We don’t even lay down. We let our eyes fall shut and loll our heads. I am not nearly as adept as the cat. But, I’m learning Nap.

I have found that Seniors take courses. It is quite acceptable as long as whatever you learn is not viable in any way. As long as you cannot make any money from it.

I am taking guitar lessons. It is absolutely certain that I will never make money playing a guitar.

After two months I am able to pick all the way through ‘Red River Valley’ without making a mistake, in under five minutes. I play real slow.

It is almost the same as dozing. I’m on my way.

June 

June is one of my favorite months.  Most of the other months are okay,  but, June has a lot going for it.
Back at the Farm, years ago, the Spring plowing and the seeding would be done before the end of May.  The garden would be in and those damn potatoes, about an acre, planted.  The only thing I hated worse than planting potatoes was digging them.
By the first of June there was lots of pasture for the cows.  We didn’t have to put down feed for them any more.  And we didn’t start cutting hay till July.
It was very important, in those days to go in swimming on, or before, the twenty-fourth of May.  The river, of course, didn’t get to be the least bit warm until on in June.  In the middle of June, we could actually, sometimes, enjoy swimming.
For years I wondered, secretly, why we had to get in the water as soon as possible.  Maybe it was ‘bragging rights’ at school.  You couldn’t just go in the water, you had to actually swim.  Gordon, my brother, took a header off his bike, into the creek on the School Road, on the nineteenth of April.  To make it official, he frogged around a few strokes before he came out. 
He had the record that year for sure.
It may have been more than ‘bragging rights’ at school, because, Dad, usually managed to fall in the river sometime in the Spring.  He’d be trying to get across to the back place, on a log jam, and step on something that wouldn’t hold him.  He would come home soaking wet and proud as Hell.
Dad and Gordon were a little bit like bears with furniture.
I had to go along, in order to keep my place at the table, but I just could not believe that I enjoyed ice cold rivers.  In later years I became a maverick.  I would not go swimming till July twelve. 
And I stayed away from the farm during the planting and digging of spuds.  I did, however, show up quite often for the eating of them.
On the first of June you can look ahead to four months of easy living.  You don’t have to wear a whole bunch of clothes.  Gordon wouldn’t wear shoes  after school got out unless Mom wrestled him down.  She usually let him run barefoot, except for church and visits to affluent neighbours who might think we were poor.
School got out in June.  I still miss going to school, just to feel again that last day.  My birthday is the first week in June and Father’s Day is in June.  So is the day I quit drinking.  Special Days, special month.

Mother’s Day

On Mother’s Day we always went to church. Then we would go to Grandma’s and sit around in the afternoon.

We couldn’t go outside to play. We had our best clothes on and there was mud and water about. Just had to sit. Mom and Grandma would talk about the rest of the Family, about getting the garden in and about who died.

Mothers Day, it seemed to me, sixty years ago, was kind of like a funeral. I did not, at that time, connect it to my Mother. Figured it may have something to do with Grandma, or Dad’s mother who died while the War was still on. But it was not like a holiday. It was more formal. There were no cards given, like a birthday. And Grandma didn’t get the day off . She always had at least four fresh pies laid out and a huge roast in the oven.

Of course,Moms and Grandmas did not get ‘days off’. That would never have been considered by anybody. Including them.

Nope. We sat around , uncomfortable, and watched Dad, in his suit — he really did not do well in store bought clothes—trying to stay awake.

Mom never gave us instructions about Mothers Day. We were programmed for birthdays, Easter and stuff like that. Mothers Day kind of snuck in, unexpected and slightly mysterious. That may be why I didn’t twig to Mothers Day being for Mom.

She, probably, expected someone—Dad—to clue us in.

We are talking late nineteen-forties here. The media consisted of the ‘Dryden Observer’ which we might see once a month , out at the farm, and the radio. Dad bought a battery pack for the radio once a year. The battery lasted about six weeks.

‘Fibber McGee and Molly’ and ‘Amos and Andy’ till the battery ran down, but nothing about Mothers Day. Guess it did not coincide with our six weeks.

When I was eight or so, I asked, ‘What’s Mothers Day?’ He said, ‘Well, get them a flower, maybe. And, probably we should do the dishes.’ ‘Is it for Mom too?’

‘Yeah,’ he said.

It was somewhat disturbing. She had never said anything, and if we were supposed to help her, it wasn’t as if she was sick or anything.

Nearly two thirds of a century later, at ninety-three, she is Mother, Grand Mother, Great Grandmother and Great Great Grandmother to a vast array of us. She knows us all. She acts as Mother and Grand Mother to quite a few senior citizens who have lost their Moms. She played the piano for half an hour at her last birthday party.

We all know who Mothers Day is for and when it is.

Mothers Day is every day Mom .

The Small Person 

The small Person called me yesterday. ‘Guess what happens in six days?’ she asked.

Well, I was able to guess right. She has a birthday about this time, and has reminded me every year since she was three. Birthdays are important to her. Other people’s birthdays are important to her too, and all holidays, like Thanksgiving, Easter and April Fools Day.

When she was eight she said, ‘There is Valentine Day, my birthday, your birthday, Gramma’s birthday, then school gets out, then Mommy’s birthday, and it just keeps on going.’

It does keep on going. The years fall away, faster and faster.

It seems like no time since she trotted around the house wearing a tall New Year’s Eve hat, blowing on a horn, in her mother’s high heel shoes, for three days into January.

Then she was a teen-ager, arranging dinners and parties and people in honor of important events. We had a cat once, named Christmas, who, more than once had to slink around the house, covered with ribbons, mortified.

Shortly after that, she phoned, on Christmas day, from Australia. It was about forty degrees celsius. Didn’t seem right to her at all. They should have DONE something.

This past December, she called me, from a clothing store, in Calgary, three times, in twenty minutes. Needed sizes, and colors.

It is past April Fool’s Day. I still have not had an appropriate occasion to wear two of my shirts.

Her call, yesterday, was from an oil rig in Alberta. She sounded exactly the same as the three year old. I could almost see her eyes shining over the phone. She made more money in the last three months than I made all last year. She will be thirty-one

Her eyes were not shining about the big wages, it was her BIRTHDAY that was important.

The tears in my eyes were not because she makes four times as much as I do, either.

My tears, my prayers, my hopes, are that , no matter how far up and away, she goes, she will never lose that three year old.

Happy birthday, Small Person.

 

 

The Varmint bought a new TV set.  The screen goes about half way across the living room.  Everybody should have one.  I guess.
He gave me his old one, which is about thirteen years newer than the one I had, which had also been given to me by him, and his siblings.
The Varmint has been calling me ‘Dad’ for three decades or so.
It worked fine.  So far as I could tell, the same stuff was on it as my old set, but I was not certain.  I don’t necessarily watch as much as click through all the channels.  And then do it again.  However, technologically, TV wise, it was a quantum leap.  That is, from twentieth to twenty-first century.
The Clicker stopped working on the third day.
I put new batteries in it and it worked for a while.  Then it quit again.  I asked the Varmint if he’d had trouble with it.  He said, ‘No.’ When I wondered if maybe batteries only lasted a week, and pontificated about ‘planned obsolescence’, he looked pained and went away.     
While getting more batteries, the reason for the ‘pained look’ dawned on me.  For the Varmint and other twenty first century people, the useful life of a computer is not much more than a week.
So, I would click through the channels, shut off the thing, take out the batteries, and go to bed, or whatever.  On my fixed income, it seemed like a reasonable solution.  I was not about to update batteries every week, let alone computers and TV sets. 
My car is ten years old and I won’t update it either, on account of they never made anything nicer than a 1957 GMC three quarter ton with corner windows.  It had to be red, of course, and four by four.  There is one in town.  Bet he wouldn’t trade me for my car that is forty years newer.
Even with taking the batteries in and out, the clicker, sometimes, didn’t work.  Usually when I wanted to watch something.
Oh yeah, there are two shows I always watch, if the clicker works.  Antiques Road Show and Lawrence Welk. 
Fortunately, the Varmint never reads my stuff.  If he did, he’d likely take back the TV, and a really nice leather chair he gave me to doze in.
It turned out that my ‘reasonable solution’ was not, after all, based on a ‘fixed income’.  It was the product of a fixed mind.
The clicker has a whole mess of buttons at each end of it.  Two messes of buttons. Sometimes I had it turned around backwards.  Those were the times the thing wouldn’t work. 
It works fine now.  Don’t take the batteries out any more.
Figured it out myself.
It took about four months.