Way 2 Age

The reality of New Years eve is rapidly approaching and with it comes the tradition of resolutions. I don't even know what a resolution is but dictionary.cambridge.org tells me it's a decision made with strong determination.

Strong determination? No. That's not me. Most of my resolutions are lucky to survive a couple of days. Maybe I just don't do things with strong determination. I'm lily livered. I kind of cruise willy-nilly through life and wait for higher powers to direct my true course. I hope some inner voice or clarion announcement will magically appear and I will follow because it is the true voice, not because I have strong determination.

On top of the New Years resolutions crisis, I also have a cold that hasn't gone away completely for like six weeks now. Of course I can't just stay in bed and drink lots of fluids and chicken soup and stop making loud histrionic noises (sometimes accompanied with swearing) every time I cough or sneeze. Not only do I claim some ordained duty to work 24 hours a day, my family claims I must buck up and go to Aunt Margaret's for Christmas dinner where everyone drinks and gets loud but the food is really good.

So there I am snorpeling and talking through my nose when cousin Jane asks me how I am. Now this woman is a real power house pharmaceutical business consultant. She is truly knowledgeable and rational. After I get out my gargled whine in reply to her question, she launches right in to tell me exactly what I'm supposed to do to get healthy again. There is no question in her mind. She has a strong determination and I have a strong aversion to women telling me how to live my life.

I also recognize her as a focused thinker so I ask point blank, "Why do women always tell men what to do?" Now in some circumstances, this could be a very bad decision on my part and a high pitched Christmastime family party does seem like a dangerous social mine field to lob such a foolhardy question into. But I'm sick; maybe a bit delirious. Family politics isn't my strong point.

"Because that is what women have been put on earth to do," she replies without even taking a breath.

Okay. I've met my match. I don't take Cousin Jane's words as simply some feminist or motherly view of the world that I'll try to dismiss. After all, she is a consultant. And I start to realize that from a strictly empirical observation, what she said was true. It is very clear to me that women tell men what to do as an imperative of the very fact of the existence of men and women.

So I agree with her. "That's an indisputable fact," I say. She smiles and nods and proceeds to list all the ailments her husband has suffered in the last few years and exactly what she told him to do about them and they are a panoply of horrifying conditions. She is proud of her acumen at managing his diseases with resolve. And she gets away with all of that despite the fact that he is a consultant too.

That brings me back to my cold as I sit in the HMO clinic on Sunday with my box of Kleenex because my wife told me to do that. After all, Cousin Paul did have a bacterial infection in his 'cold' and you can never tell about pneumonia. But alas, it is mass production health care on Sunday and it doesn't look good for seeing a doctor or nurse at all today after a few hours of waiting. I'm getting a crook in my neck from jerking around from my lousy position in the pecking order of waiting room seats to watch the door open hoping that someone in green scrubs will have the mercy to call my name.

Eventually I do get my three minute session with the doctor who is really quite knowledgeable and concerned and gives me a prescription for antibiotics. And I hate to admit it but that worked. In two days I feel like a 25 year old and I also have my New Years resolution:

Always listen to women.

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Christmastime is a great time for us to get away for a few days. Being empty nester's and living in the California wine country, Yosemite National Park is an easy five hour drive from here. Well, its a five hour drive for people that are intent in getting from point A to point B but for me it could easily stretch into eight hours what with stopping for this or that little gadget I've decided would be just perfect in our 24 year old VW camper. I'll give myself the time to do that these days.

For most of the year, the problem with Yosemite is that it's full of people that are intent on having what is for them a perfect vacation. They scream insanely while walking up trails through what I think is a silent, sacred wilderness. They stop their cars smack in the middle of a busy road to be dramatic about the romantic scene of a herd of deer grazing in a meadow.

"Oh, don't move a muscle! Look at Bambi! Don't you just want to pet her?"

I'm sure those people haven't seen their carefully nurtured roses chewed down to nothing but nubs by deer. People that live in forests accept the wild forest animals as wild, not as pets in disguise. Eventually, the love struck move along and the next car does the exact same thing a minute later.

But at Christmastime, the park is almost completely deserted mostly because people in California don't want to go camping in sub-freezing weather. After all, this is sunny California and what's the point of going anywhere without having nonstop fun in the sun? And what do coastal Californians know about snow and tire chains and walking on ice?

For me, this if-its-cold-don't-go attitude works out perfectly because as I age I've grown to become more interested in the solace and quiet of the vast wilderness of Yosemite. The valley is a real winter wonderland in late December with stark, flocked trees and sparkling dew turned to ice, frozen air in the full moon night.

Our favorite meadow with it's plain, open armed view of Half Dome was deserted. With not even a car in the street, the world stood still. Turning from the silent and commanding 5000 foot high face of Half Dome, we stomped through the meadow and then the forest that surrounds the river to the next meadow that holds an open space between Yosemite Village and the Ahwahnee Hotel which is itself nestled in a small wood.

We were cold, happy and alone as we roamed in the dappled moonlight until suddenly (and nothing happens suddenly for me after several decades in that park) we came upon the a view of the grand dining room of the hotel which actually faces west and away from Half Dome. What was sudden and unexpected was a scene that could only be comprehended in terms of a Hollywood production. Just through the trees was a huge, tall windowed dining room filled with the merriment of people dressed in tails and lavish evening gowns sparkling like animated snowflakes under clouds of candelabras in the high vaulted room. Servants (not a politically correct word) all dressed in formal black fluttered about officiously and a string quartet added its high brow sophistication.

The sight was simply unbelievable as we stood in the snow maybe 20 feet from the windows totally unnoticed by the revelers dressed to the nines. I couldn't stop from feeling like poor Oliver Twist standing there in the freezing rain and snow wearing the same jeans I wore three days ago when I was rolling on the ground trying to figure out what tire chains really are. We stood with blank stares, holding hands through two layers of gloves.

I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to be cared for like an orphan child and let in from the cold and brought to a table bearing huge crystal bowls of hot cider. And I also realized that I was a well paid consultant in San Francisco and didn't really deserve even one blessed nod through those beveled glass glinting windows. There was a disappointment deep in my heart of not being a part of that self-important party.

And yet we were also really happy. We laughed at the pretentiousness and the oppression of a ten year waiting list for this party (which probably is the truth) and we laughed at ourselves wearing muddy jeans and I in a jester cap. We shrugged just as the party goers would have shrugged and stomped off again through the flocked woods, out in front of the moonlit Half Dome standing alone in the sky like the true monarch and back to our hippie VW camper (no, it doesn't have flowers painted on it) where we made hot chocolate and had lots of propane to keep us warm and had each other.

No, we aren't on a ten year waiting list to have an idyllic fantasy. At this point in life we have already done all the waiting and now it's time to live life, not wait for some wished for future when everything will be perfect. Everything is as perfect as it's ever going to get right now. The accumulated decades of watching the seasons pass on those high crags on Half Dome and watching each other's face deepen with the wisdom of age is the life we've waited for.

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There is something about Christmas that is melancholic for me. I think I'm supposed to be all joy and light and let everyone know that I'm just so happy it's disgusting and it's Christmastime and that's why.

Maybe it has to do with Santa Claus. How did I come to the exceptional insight at the wise old age of four maybe, that Santa Claus is a ruse? I think my mother caused the downfall of good ol' Santa but it probably isn't fair to blame her. After all, she isn't around to defend herself and we all need some kind of a way of putting in a good word on our own behalf. But now that I have her completely on the run, what happened was she wanted to help me put up a stocking on the mantle in hopes that Santa would find it and maybe fill it with goodies.

This is the point where we have a plan, the hanging the stockings plan, and now all the magic of it can be put aside and practical matters considered. The first problem is the hanging of the stocking. Just exactly how is that going to happen on a brick and cement mantle in a house my father built just last year?

These days, I might immediately give up on everything quaint and haul out the cordless drill, full contractor grade with a battery the size of a brick, and proceed to install one of those new fangled cement anchor screws that could easily hold the weight of the full sized professional home gym that Santa just might leave.

Oh, and the stocking that goes with this super sized structural improvement in the living room? Well, mom was a delivery room nurse (no wise cracks about how I got here, please) so she brought home something called Surgical Hose. What a frightful term. I really don't want to think about what that could have meant but it was a woman's support nylon that was ready to compete with the cement anchor screw and at minimum provide a place where Santa could hang up his entire sleigh, reindeer and all.

All seriousness aside, the magic of the season has gotten short shrift as the hard, cold facts of the world are now the common fare of even two year olds prepping for pre-pre-school. Out goes the real myth of the bountifulness of the earth magically giving us her fruits of apples and oranges and nuts and even candy canes. And with that loss of magic also goes my loss of joy and wonder at Christmastime.

But wait. All is not lost. For people with an accumulation of years, there could be the capacity to stop worrying about dreaded diseases, the complete collapse of capitalism and the impending pall of Christmas evening packed with grand kids all having continuous very important conversations on their cellphones. It might be possible for the wisdom of the years to actually reclaim Santa Claus not just as a mythical character but rather an actual gift of life itself from within ourselves.

That wisdom could bring back the joy of Christmas and be yet another way to age.

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I ran into two pre-teen girls selling sprigs of mistletoe on my way into the grocery store. They had a plastic garden tray, a flat that would hold a whole set of bright and deep violet petunias for sale in the spring. Their flat had neatly arranged rows of small plastic bags, each holding a branch of mistletoe with its velvet green, almond shaped leaves and almost pearl colored beads. One of the girls told me they had just picked these that afternoon. The mistletoe was fresh and sparkling like the girls.

That was a year ago and now the box that keeps last year's ornaments has been dug out from the accumulation of boxes of mementos, books that have overflowed their shelves upstairs, the remains of paper plates and plastic tumblers from the mid summer parties we threw and the old clothes I said I would donate to a good cause but never did anything about.

The ornament box is it's own memory lane and reminders of the forgotten. There was the cardboard box that Christmas cards came home from the store in and has just spent the year keeping that sprig of mistletoe. My wife showed me a glass ball from her first marriage that her husband particularly liked. I suppose it was a cheery green when it hung from their tree. Now it is a sickly faded hospital wall green with the eerie reflection of the glass as though time had faded the color but not the intent. Yet another small box held a rag doll of Dionysus.

"Do you remember Dionysus at the top of the tree last year," she asked. No, the truth is I didn't. The truth is I didn't even recognize who this little creature was but I nodded as I usually do when I don't know and hope nobody will notice.

Dionysus took his place again at the top of the tree, hung by a small length of what was probably gold ribbon that wrapped a package in yet some other year but the mistletoe was a sad shadow of the ravages of just a single year being held in the dry and lifeless darkness of the ornament box. The only thing left was a forked stem and a few crumpled brown leaves. I don't know where the those pearly balls went to at all. There was nothing else in the card box, just the faded Santa sticker on the outside.

Being ever resourceful with small things, my wife hung the remaining mistletoe stem on one of Dionysus' arms and that brought my attention again to the doll and my admitted lack of understanding. At least one of his hands is a tiny plastic bunch of grapes so I can hold on to that symbol but he is wearing a silvery plastic heart necklace with an macabre plastic eyeball glued to it. His other hand is a small round mirror and I suppose mirror-handed Dionysus must mean something.

Maybe it is a reflection back into time as my thoughts went back to those young girls who sold me the mistletoe. I wonder if they are still there again this year and think about how practical it would be to just buy another little baggie of mistletoe again. Or maybe that mirror is just what it is. I carefully slid around the tree trying to find my own face in the tiny round glass on the doll's arm that was also carrying the dry stem of mistletoe like a towel over a waiter's arm.

Without moving, I slid my arm around my wife gently pulling her to my side, "Look. There we are in Dionysus' hand." As she craned her head around so she could see in the mirror exactly where I was looking, I gave her a small love nip on the side of her neck and imagined those smooth, plump pearls on the mistletoe being held very close between us as if our drying and blotched skin were those boxes under the house. My wife squirmed. Just maybe the rag Dionysus cracked the slightest smile.

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December 15, 2008

There was a story in the SF Gate this morning, Tragic end for elderly Walnut Creek couple, about the death of an older Chinese couple. I doubt that this man and woman ever considered themselves 'elderly' although he was 92 years old and she was 90 when they died in a boating accident in Venezuela. They had been together for 65 years when the motorized canoe they were being guided in was struck by another boat on the waterway.

The adventurous couple was off to see the Sapo waterfall, and planned to see Angel Falls, the world's tallest waterfall, the next day. "They were passing through [Venezuela] on their way to the South Pole, where they planned to sleep in a tent," the article noted.

The news story told of the wealthy families they each came from in China, their marriage there in 1943, their educations in the United States, and the young couple's inevitable choice to stay in the states when the Communists took over China. They raised a family and lived full, creative lives. "Together, they were driven to transmit the beauty of the country they left behind. Mrs. Chang won awards painting on porcelain and paper, with some of her art carrying her husband's poems, which he would write in Chinese calligraphy."

I was moved by this brief story of their enduring relationship immersed, as I imagined, in love, respect, curiosity, history, and wonder. The photos from the memorial, which included one of an exquisitely attractive wedding couple and another of a joyful elder couple at the North Pole just last year, evoked celebration in spite of the loss experienced by family and friends. The story sparked images to form in my mind of being alive and lively in my ninth decade--a spry, gray-haired crone with a twinkle in her eye. I saw the ever unfolding richness of life that I, poised now at the end of my liminal 50s, have before me, perhaps decades yet of vivid living, a lifetime. Oh, gratitude, I still have a chance to do it right, now that I am getting the gist of it, of being alive. And, I thought, did their story have a "tragic end?" Such a full and long life ending not in illness and discomfort, but in wonder and adventure. And together.

Together. Death and Life are mirror mysteries of each other. They complement in a yin/yang, feminine/masculine, moon/sun, winter/summer dance -- mirroring, teaching, becoming each other. I remember that when my husband and I were feeling the deepening of our early love for each other some 15 years ago I had a romantic fantasy of dying in each others' arms in the lava flow of Mt. Vesuvius, an eternal love to be protected and then uncovered, literally, centuries later by yet other lovers. An alchemical image. And, it was as if our love, after years of the dance, made a whole that could heal the world.

I feel blessed by this smallest glimpse into the elder couples' story. My heart has opened that much more. That is what we can hope for as we grow older, wiser: a heart open to Receptivity, Compassion, Mirroring. The Dance. I like to think that on a future day my story will bless someone else's day, and their opening heart.

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