The 70-Something Blog

False Alarm

Everything turned out fine. But on Friday night I had a reminder that things can change in seconds. At 9:00 p.m., just as I was contemplating whether or not a bag of microwave popcorn might be pretty tasty, Peter said he was bleeding in his mouth. There was quite a bit of blood, and when it didn't slow down, he called our health plan emergency number, and they told him to go to the hospital.

Peter didn't feel dizzy or weak, so I wasn't frantic. Also, he takes a blood thinner, so when he bleeds, he BLEEDS.

It was only minutes until we were at the hospital and he was evaluated (kudos to the emergency room at our local hospital). A very nice nurse said that Peter had bitten his tongue, and that the tongue can bleed heavily because it has a lot of blood vessels. Of course, the initial evaluation was followed by a long wait before seeing a physician. When we finally left the hospital two hours later, Peter had four stitches in his tongue. He was a bit uncomfortable Saturday morning, and his speech was slurred as if he was slightly inebriated. But he was fine.

Going forward, we have to be more careful about biting into the dark chocolate we eat every evening–for our health!

For now, however, we have dodged another bullet.

Guest Commentary: The 70-something Blogger’s Spouse on Turning Eighty

Today is my eightieth birthday and I'm beginning to feel old.

I didn't feel old when I turned seventy. I had a full-time job, I was biking long distances on summer vacations, and I only took one pill in the morning. Now, ten years later, I'm retired, I take about ten pills a day, and seldom bike more than two miles

Don't get me wrong. I'm still happy to be on this side of the grass. I'm happy to wake up next to Judy in the morning. I'm happy to learn something new almost every day. I'm happy when I hear Mozart or come up with a new idea. And I still like managing the things I run.

So far so good. But I wonder how I'll feel when I turn ninety…if I turn ninety.

I'd like to turn ninety, and keep going, because there are still lots of things I'd like to do. I want to see what happens to my children and grandchildren. I have things I'd like to teach, some research problems I'd like to solve and a martini or two I'd like to drink..

Although ordinarily I don't like being interrupted while I'm in the middle of doing something, that's how I'd like to go – while I'm in the middle of doing something. But, as Saint Augustine said after he asked his God for chastity, not yet.

Roll Call

Yesterday we went to the Bar Mitzvah of a colleague's son. Benjamin did an awesome job (and I don't use that word often). I loved watching the pride of his parents, and I know him well enough to have been proud too. When there is so much bad news in the world, it's wonderful to have something to celebrate.

But there was a surprise in store for Peter and me. One of the other guests turned out to be none other than the incomparable JW, the fifth and sixth grade home room and math teacher of both of our kids. It turns out that he was the summer camp counselor of Benjamin's father, and they are still in touch.

All those elementary school back-to-school nights, all those Green Sheets (the elementary school newsletter that, I am sure, is an email now), all those yellow, hand-written reports about the kids' strengths and weaknesses—it seems like only yesterday.

But unlike my own fifth and sixth grade teachers who disappeared from my life when I was in high school, JW keeps up with the kids. He is their Facebook friend. He knows about Jeremy's web business, Jasmere.com, and that Seth is living in Brazil. But he wanted to know more, and we had a wonderful talk.

JW looks pretty much the same, although some thirty years have passed. He's retired now, and I am sure up to some good stuff although we didn't get to his life or ours. It was all about the kids.

And before we parted, he recited, from memory, the entire roll call of both of the kids' home room classes alphabetically.

It was a hoot.

 

Wii and They

We flew to Maryland to see our grandchildren last weekend. They couldn't wait to show us Wii, their latest favorite thing. Although I have heard of Wii, I had never seen one in action.

Our grandchildren use the sports version. For those who haven't had the experience, you can use WII to play golf, baseball, tennis and bowling, and it feels like you are really doing whichever sport it is. If it's bowling, it feels like you are in a bowling alley, complete with lots of players and spectators.

The kids had already made Grammy and Gramps avatars, so we had our own characters, and they actually looked sort-a like us. Anyone could become addicted to Wii, as long as they don't mind losing to their grandchildren. The good thing is that it is not like a computer game—you actually get a little exercise while playing.

Wii represents the modern world of kids' entertainment. But we also went to the Children's Museum. That seemed more familiar—Curious George, old fashioned trains, a grocery store with checkout lines and much more. But, when our daughter-in-law asked our six-year-old grandson to identify one particular item, he was clueless. We were reminded that a lot of things from our generation are completely strange to this one. What was it? A plain black rotary telephone!

There's a big difference between Wii and they.

 

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

When I was a child, I had long thick pigtails for many years.  Then one summer, when we were visiting my cousins in Buffalo, my mother and aunt decided I had outgrown them.  Still braided, they cut them off.  Just like that.  My mother kept them in a manila envelope in the dining room buffet for years, I guess trying to keep a piece of her little girl.

Mother had her own beautiful prematurely gray hair cut by Phil, the owner of Phil’s Beauty Salon in Pittsburgh where I grew up.  She took me there for haircuts too.  Phil had to use thinning shears on my very thick dark hair, and I recall heaps of my hair being swept away by his assistant.

Years later, on vacation with Peter, and having just learned that I was pregnant, I was astonished and alarmed by the amount of hair I left in the sink when I combed it  in our bathroom in the Hotel Miyako in San Francisco.  Hormonal change in pregnancy can cause hair loss, explained my obstetrician.  But although my hair never reached its previous volume after Seth was born, I still had more than enough.

Until recently.

Now, when I blow my hair dry, it seems to take less time.  When I asked Kelly, who has been cutting my hair for twenty years, if she noticed any change, she said my hair is becoming finer i.e., thinner.

Another trauma at 70-something!

How Many More Times?

Peter has a big birthday next month. He is going to be eighty. Although we celebrated with our trip to the Galapagos Islands in January, we will celebrate again by going out to dinner with a few close friends on the Saturday following his mid-week birthday.

When I asked him if he would like to go to a particularly special restaurant we've been meaning to try—just the two of us—on his actual birthday, he wasn't particularly interested. So, I said, "OK, we'll save that for our wedding anniversary."

That started me thinking. We've been married almost forty-two years. He's going to be eighty. How many more anniversaries can we expect? If our luck holds, maybe we'll get to fifty years together. But fifty-five seems like it would be a bit of a stretch. I decided then and there that he and I should have anniversary dinners more than once year, say once a month.

Isn't that a cool idea?

If Last Week Were a Fish…

If last week were a fish, I'd have thrown it back. I had too much work to do and too little time to do it. My new boss started, and although I was fine with that, there was a lot of "change" in the air, and some folks seemed worried. . Taking Peter to hospital for eye surgery, picking him up later in the middle of a busy work day, and having to take him to the doctor's the next morning further complicated my routine. Not to mention that I had my 72^nd birthday in the middle of all that.

But there was one very special thing. On Thursday, a lot of people at work asked me how Peter's operation went. Some of these were people I don't even know by name. I wondered how they knew about his surgery.

Here's what happened.

A long-postponed farewell reception for my former boss, Joe, was held the evening of Peter's surgery. Joe's former boss was distressed that I couldn't attend, and persuaded me to videotape some remarks for the reception. Although I can handle speaking in front of people, a videotaped appearance was something new for me. You have to understand that there are two huge screens on which I would appear, each more than life-size. None of the 150 people in the room could miss my words. So I was a bit anxious about the whole thing.

It turns out that the introduction to my appearance on-screen included the following: "Judy couldn't be here tonight because her husband had surgery today."

So that's how people knew. Several individuals, after asking about Peter's health, added that my presentation was the most moving moment of the evening.

On balance, I guess it's OK that last week was not a fish.

Birthday

I had my 72^nd birthday yesterday. That means that I am one-fifth of the way to having to change the name of this blog to 80-something.com. And if the other eight years go as fast as the past two…

Birthdays make me think of other birthdays—like the one I had in college when my friends gave me a scavenger hunt with a gift certificate for a pint of ice cream from my favorite ice cream parlor at each site. I was in seventh heaven. Or the time we were out to dinner for my birthday with our good friends Gordon and Christa. I was reading the menu when the waiter appeared to take our order. I looked up and it was our son Seth who had driven home for the weekend to surprise me. When we arrived at the restaurant, I had asked the maitre d' to take away the fifth chair because there were only four of us.

But yesterday's was a birthday I could easily forget. It started extra early when I drove Peter to the hospital to get a cataract removed. I dropped him there and rushed to work. I had an hour-long conference call I couldn't miss with people from Nigeria, Pakistan, and San Francisco—that's a lot of time zones to coordinate. I rushed back to the hospital to pick up Peter, took him home, and went back to work. Then I cooked my own birthday dinner.

Not the perfect birthday, but lots of cards and calls, and having Peter here with me—that all made it fine.

I am a lucky 72-year-old.

Valentine’s Day

On Thursday, I took a break from work to run to the card store.  I bought, addressed and mailed Valentines to our young grandchildren and was back at my desk in moments. When my assistant, Margaret, asked me what I got for Peter, I just shrugged my shoulders. Did I buy a card for the man I've loved for 45 years?  Nope. It didn't even occur to me.  Margaret is 27 and in a committed relationship.  Looking back, I'm sure Peter and I celebrated Valentine's Day when I was 27.  But somehow we got out of the habit. 

Of course, we are still each other's Valentines.  I confirmed that this morning.  And we do say "I love you" pretty much every day.  But no romantic candle-lit dinners for Valentine's Day. And that's OK with me. 

Margaret and I had another conversation about important issues last week.  I told her Peter was about to celebrate a milestone birthday. She knows that I am working way beyond the time when most of my peers go somewhere warm for the winter, and she asked if I was thinking of retiring.  I told her that I had no plans to do so.  She added, "But don't you want to spend more time with Peter?" (Implied but not said "…since he's so old.")

She seemed shocked by my reply.

"NO!"

Down to One Job

Since June 30th, I have been doing the job of my former boss Joe along with my own because he took early retirement, and the search for his successor was long. During this time, I have worked harder than an almost-72-year old should. A few things (mostly in my regular job) haven't gotten the attention they deserved, but in general, things have been going well.

Next week, my new boss arrives.

So how do I feel about this? It's the end of something; it's the start of something. I liked the somewhat loftier title I've had these past seven and a half months, even though it has an "Acting" in front of it. I didn't want to be a candidate for his job, but I have to admit I have enjoyed doing it. I have liked being the decider. When I first took over I would often think, "What would Joe do?" But that didn't last long as I grew increasingly confident that I had the right answers.

I have had a more important "seat" at the "table" these months, participating in some high-level meetings that I have enjoyed, and I may miss that. On the other hand, my new boss has a lot to learn, and I see my role as one of helping him to succeed.

I just need to get over the fact that he's young enough to be my son.