The 70-Something Blog

We Should Do That More Often...

We don’t take advantage of the riches around us.  Although I’ve lived in the Boston area for more than fifty years, I get so embroiled in my daily routine that I forget that people come from all over the world to see what is at my doorstep.

I remember buying Peter a book about Boston’s neighborhoods for his birthday one March.  We decided we would spend the spring visiting one neighborhood each weekend until we had seen them all.   But our busy lives got in the way.  The book remains on the shelf, the neighborhoods unvisited.

So when we ended up in a beautiful old brownstone on Beacon Street in Boston’s Back Bay for a play reading Saturday afternoon, I suggested that instead of taking the subway at the nearest stop, we walk through the Public Garden and the Boston Common to a stop closer to home. 

It was a gray, damp day, but Beacon Hill’s Federal-style row houses with their purple-tinted bay windows were as beautiful as ever, huddled together on the side of the hill.  And the ice skaters in their finery on the Frog Pond on the Common below were a live Currier and Ives painting.

We should do that more often.

Closure

Sometimes you are lucky enough to have a friend like no other.  Fourteen years my senior and a work colleague, I never had a better friend than Muriel.  Our friendship, nurtured at work, lasted long after we left our jobs. Even after her retirement to Cape Cod, she would take the bus to Boston and stay with us overnight for a non-stop gab session. 

She was beautiful, full of personality and talented as well as a wonderful advisor.  Even when I couldn’t find her for the last few years, I often asked myself, "What would Muriel say?"  And that helped me to do the right thing.

Because we lost touch, I didn’t hear that her husband of more than fifty years had died until months after he was gone, when her daughter Wendy called to let me know.  She said that Muriel wasn’t doing all that well.

But then I lost touch with Wendy too.  So for the last couple of years, I watched the obituaries, thinking Muriel might have passed away and I could have missed it.

Wendy called last Monday.  She and her husband had moved across the country, but she was back because her mother died on Saturday. Although I had been missing Muriel and “mourning” her for a few years, it was hard to hear that she was really gone.  She had been such a force in my life, the big sister I never had.

I talked with Wendy for a long time.  I caught up on all the siblings and grandkids.  Wendy gave me her new email address, and we promised to stay in touch.

We hung up and then I cried.

In the Blink of an Eye

We try to visit our grandchildren every two months.  Last Saturday we got up at 5:00 a.m. to make a 7:15 plane that got us to them by 11:00 a.m.

That first sighting was, as it always is, surprising. Both boys had changed since we saw them at Thanksgiving. For the first time, we had an inkling of what eight-year-old Leo will look like as a teenager.  And five-year-old Grady, destined to be an architect, was always building, whether traditional blocks or Legos or whatever he got his hands on.  The highlight of the day came when we were alone with the kids while their parents went shopping and Leo asked us if we would come take care of them sometime when their parents went away overnight.  Did he sense that we were less likely to limit “screen” time or was it because he knew how much we would love having them to ourselves?

In the evening, we watched a sweet movie about a dolphin that lost its tail. Sunday morning we had Dunkin Donuts for the breakfast celebration for the newly-eight-year-old.  His brother looked away, not wanting to watch Leo open all his presents.

A birthday party for about twenty at a community center—football for the boys and crafts for the three girls, organized to the tiniest detail by our talented daughter-in-law, filled the afternoon.

Then the Super Bowl in the evening, Leo inconsolable as the Patriots lost a close one. 

Monday morning, kids off to school, grandparents off to the airport. 

Over in the blink of an eye.

Boy-Toy

On our usual Sunday walk last week, we ran into a couple we know vaguely. She appears to be considerably older than he, although they seem quite devoted to one another.  We exchanged pleasantries and after we went our separate ways, I said to Peter, “If you pre-decease me, I am going to have to give her a call to find out how she got her boy-toy.”

Peter replied by saying that he planned to pre-decease me or at least co-decease me.

Just another Sunday walk, but not just another conversation.

TOEFL

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is a standardized test given to foreign students who want to study in the United States. But even those who meet a school’s cutoff score sometimes suffer from inadequate English skills.  I remember hearing about the international student who when asked “Do you prefer yellow or blue?” replied “Yes.”

I thought about that story yesterday when I said to Peter, “How are we going to decide which movie to see?”  His answer, “OK.”

Peter was born in Germany.  I wonder how he did on the TOEFL.

Jealous No More

I was always a year younger than any of my classmates. I hadn’t skipped a grade, but I had started school at age four in Buffalo, New York because that school system had a grade between kindergarten and first grade.   A month after school began, my family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and my mother asked the school department to let me join the kindergarten class at the local elementary school.  She pleaded with them, saying that since I had started school in Buffalo four weeks earlier, I should be able to go to school in Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati Board of Education said I could be tested to see if I was kindergarten-ready, and I passed.  I’d like to say that I passed with flying colors, but the only thing I remember is the picture of two baby shoes and the question was “What’s missing from one of them?”  Answer “a shoelace.”  I got that and probably some others right and became the youngest person in my class.

 I had no problem academically, but when I turned fifteen and all my friends started to drive, I was pretty miserable.  What seemed like eons later, when I turned sixteen, I passed my driver’s test in three weeks—probably the most motivated studying I’ve ever done. 

Age-wise, all went well until all my friends turned twenty-one.  Pretty obvious why that was a problem for me.

My attitude toward being too young has changed of late. In February, one of my friends whom I have known since I was four is turning seventy-five. 

I can wait for that, thank you very much.

It Used To Be Easier

At almost eighty-two, Peter is still (by all objective measures) a handsome man.  And he is a little mellower than he used to be, which is a good thing because I am not.  So, he keeps me centered.

But although he’s doing amazingly well more than three years since his Parkinson’s disease was diagnosed, some things have become more difficult.  For example, the other night as we were getting ready to go out for a dinner at friends, I noticed for the first time that he was having some trouble buttoning the cuff of his shirt. 

I was about to offer to help him when he succeeded.  Still, I could feel his frustration.  He told me that his difficulty is typical of people with Parkinson’s and that at his recent appointment with the neurologist, she had asked about it.

I hated watching him struggle, but he prevailed.  And that’s Peter.

Sock Drawer

Peter’s socks fit into one tiny drawer.  With the exception of the black pair that goes with his tuxedo, they are all a very neutral dark charcoal gray.  That makes life easy when it comes to sorting laundry or deciding what to wear.

My “sock” drawer, on the other hand, is twice as big and overflowing. 

It contains sheer stockings and knee-highs in multiple shades, tights in black, brown, cream, and burgundy, and a mixed salad of trouser socks.  It has pink socks with red circles (bought in Spain) and black socks with huge colored flowers (bought on the Internet).  It has low-cut white socks from bicycling and high cut white socks from the olden days.  Similar items are sorted in freezer bags.

In my next life, I want to be a man.

Business Trip

I have lost count of how many times I have flown to Washington, DC for work. It’s an easy trip.

Yet I still have a tinge of pre-travel anxiety.  What have I forgotten?  Nothing I couldn’t buy.  Will Peter be OK without me?  I’m afraid so.  All will be fine as long as to quote him, “the blondes are out of the house before you come home.”

Once I am in a cab on my way to the airport, it’s like being in a whole new zone.  My thoughts are exclusively on my destination. 

Sleeping in my hotel room after a full day of meetings earlier this week, I woke in the middle of the night. I was sure I heard Peter’s even breathing beside me and started to reach out for him, forgetting momentarily that he was a plane ride away.

I know he misses me, despite his warning about the blondes.  After all these years, I still can’t wait until the cab pulls up to our house and I see that all is well.

No sign of blondes.

Self-Improvement

OK, this one gets filed in the “I can’t believe I’ve revealed this” department of the 70-Something blog.

As a young teenager my best friends and I were very concerned about our development, as in breasts.  Someone shared an exercise that we all took to heart, so-to-speak.  You clasp your hands with your elbows shoulder-high and push your palms together and apart, while repeating rhythmically, “I must, I must, I must develop my bust.”  To the best of my knowledge (and I would love to poll my high school friends on this one), this exercise had no effect whatsoever. 

This came to mind as I forced myself to do push- ups the other morning, something that also probably has no effects, at least not on my breasts.

Years after the breast development challenge, I saw a new book touting exercises to prevent facial droop.  My older friend and colleague Muriel and I set about trying to defer or prevent the ravages of aging by making faces.  It was a complete failure, and I have the wrinkles to prove it.  (By the way, if you search “facial exercises” on Amazon’s book site, you get 719 results, which means that some folks are still willing to try.)

The lesson, accept who we are. Warts and all, we still have plenty to work with.