Side by Side

We’ve become a couple, my husband and I. Just like that old song from the Depression era --

"Through all kinds of weather...
What if the sky should fall?
As long as we're together,
It doesn't matter at all.

Well we ain't got a barrel of money...
We may look ragged and funny...
But we're travelin' on...
Singing our song...
Side by side.

After several decades together we finish each others sentences and often come up with the exact thoughts, words or expressions simultaneously. I can’t think of a word, he can’t think of a word, but we both absolutely know what word it is we both can’t think of.

Growing up, I would laugh at Mom. She’d be peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink and all of a sudden say, “Ralph. His name was Ralph.”

Sometimes I would know what she was talking about, other times, not a clue, but each time she had an epiphany like this, it was because she had been searching, sometimes for days, for some word or name or image that her brain just could not find in its half-century store house of information. Now I am at that half-century mark and getting more like Mom every day. I’m told it is normal.

When we blurt out something totally out of context, we nod and understand. The old brain finally rummaged around in the right dusty old corner of memory to come up with the answer for which we’d spent days searching.

My husband and I cope as our eye sight fades and our hearing dims. We laugh when our conversations are punctuated with “Huh?” “What did you say?” “I didn’t hear you?”

Of course, we can get away with these types of dysfunctional conversations because it is only us and our cats that hear us. But our son and his wife will be visiting and I can just see his reaction.

He spent a lot of time with my Mom and Dad – his grandparents – and he was their go between. They got to be quite a threesome and it helped my son’s vocabulary in some ways I’d rather it hadn’t, but he got quite good at filling in the blanks for his grandparents.

So when he comes to visit and sees his Mom and Dad behaving like Grandma and Grandpa, we’ll never hear the end of it.

Although, it does have its funny moments. When we mishear, usually it involves my husband mishearing a television commercial. The other night he scrunched up his face and listened then turned to me with this quizzical look on his face, “Did she just say, ‘he has a scaly butt?’”

Aging is so much easier to handle with humor.

Aging can be beautiful

I can't remember if I've introduced you to my mother. I know she slips into just about everything I write. She's the number one influence in my life -- even more than editors, teachers, and preachers. As my mother goes, so go I.

She taught me the important lessons from ironing hankies and pillow slips, to canning tomato juice. She also taught me the truly important lessons of courtesy, thoughtfulness, service, caring and love. She's much better at all of these than I am. Probably the biggest failure in my education (my fault, not hers) were pie baking and keeping my mouth shut.

I know it isn't courteous to tell a woman's age, but Mom won't mind. She turned 95 in March. Born a month before the Titanic sank, she's seen alot of history and survived it all. Now she lives not far from the community in which she spent the first 90 years of her life surrounded by people who are offsprings of her peers and neighbors.

I never thought I would say good things about nursing homes -- the last place any of us want to be confined. Yet, the love and care and effort made to keep Mom well and help her have a delightful day, each and every day, earns my respect and affection. Those of you at Richland Manor -- you are the greatest. Thanks Pam, Terry, Frances, Ericka, and all of the others who spend their working hours making Mom's life happy and comfortable. And my brother and his wife have dedicated themselves to overseeing Mom's care. They are awesome.

Don't get the wrong idea. Mom isn't ready to be propped up in the corner yet. She just went on a cruise last week and is busy contributing to the common good -- through word and deed, with a witty rapport and with her greatest gift, perhaps, her loving heart which is connected directly to her smile.

Although I live hundreds of miles away, Mom is by my side, even closer than that. I look at my hands and see hers. I'm even turning gray and getting wrinkles -- just like hers. If I have to age, I hope it is as gracefully and beautifully as Mom....

Beatles now selling diapers

One of the exciting, thrilling things about getting old is you've seen a lot of history. And being a student when Beatlemania first hit the world ranks right up there with Neil Armstrong's moon walk.

Today I get an email from my son saying, "News that might just ruin my day: The Beatles have sold licensing rights to use their song, All you Need is Love, to Luvs for a commercial. Doesn't that just make your day?"

Like his father, music is of prime importance to him. And also like his father, they are stalwart Beatles fans. Their tastes diverge from that point, but on that they agree. Beatles rock.

I remember the Beatles funky haircuts, their British appeal, their innocence and their smiles. I remember the Fab Four on the Ed Sullivan show -- I saw the show when it originally aired.

Lately I've been missing John and George and lamenting Paul's too public divorce while wondering what Ringo was up to. Almost like distant relatives, I think of them now and then. They played a major role in my formative years and changed the music landscape forever.

Now their music is used to pimp diapers. "All you need is Luvs...."

How the mighty have fallen!

My husband's response, "At least it isn't Michael Jackson who sold the song and will get the money."

One blogger commented that many of us thought the first Beatles song to be used to sell diapers would be When I'm 64 and the diapers would be Depends. Somehow I like the humor of that.

But "All you need is Luvs" just ruins, just overrides the thrill of a song that yes, I could actually remember the lyrics to, but more importantly it became a rallying cry for my generation who were sick of corporate greed, war, government, and wanted to get back to basics.

Now there will be a generation of kids who will associate that rallying cry to nappies, diapers, and baby poop.

Wikipedia describes the Beatles hit All You Need is Love this way:

"All You Need Is Love" is a song written by John Lennon with
contributions from Paul McCartney[1] and credited to Lennon/McCartney. It
was first performed by The Beatles on Our World, the first ever live global television link. Broadcast to 26 countries and watched by 350 million people, the programme was broadcast via satellite on June 25, 1967. The BBC had commissioned the Beatles to write a song for the UK's contribution and this was the result. It is among the most famous and significant songs performed by the group.

Now after the 60s has become a memory of druggies and flower children instead of a generation of activists, our music is reduced to sound tracks for commercials, who wins?

Corporate greed.

And that's the pits about getting old, you live long enough to see your life turned into a commercial.

Growing Old or Getting History

I have reached the age of graying hair, wrinkles (just a few around the eyes) and polite young people calling me ‘ma’am.’ I never thought I would hate polite. I do. For the longest time I would look over my shoulder, expecting to see my mother-in-law when someone respectfully called me Mrs. Goldsmith. Who me? No, really, I’m just Dawn. It had nothing to do with informality and everything to do with age. I was not ready to accept the matron title and the persona that went with it.

A couple years ago, I reluctantly admitted, there is now a bigger percentage of people younger than me, than older than me. It becomes more difficult to carry on conversations with nubile little check out clerks when I realize that my driver’s license is older than they are! School teachers look like students, I met the new Domestic Court Judge — I remember when he was born. I remember when he attended high school and played football with my sons and when he told his father, the farmer, that he wanted to go to law school. The kid in front of me in line at the grocery — he’s the new Methodist minister. That little girl is his wife!

These young faces surround me. At work I see a new face across from my desk and I realize it is a new coworker. He quickly supplies personal information. Age, 21. College graduate, all of three months. He’s getting married in six months. And I observe he probably doesn’t shave more than once a week. And he looks at me observing that, “you’re old enough to be my mother!” I really don’t like this kid.

Yet, I admire them for their fortitude. I wouldn’t want to be 21 again. I, for all my griping, like being where I am in life. The gray hair and wrinkles not withstanding, I like the wisdom that comes with age. I like knowing how it feels to be this age and I like knowing that I watched the moon landing on live TV and listened to Kennedy’s inaugural address and even saw the geyser, Old Faithful, in Yosemite while it was still so faithfully erupting. I saw this country before freeways. I know what it means to heat water on the stove and take Saturday night baths. I watched Gun Smoke before it was reruns in syndication. I saw M.A.S.H. the first time around. I was there for Vietnam. I protested and I sent my fiancé off to war. I sang the songs of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez when they meant something. I wore the original mini skirts and bell bottoms and platform shoes and wove flowers in my hair and mourned the kids that died at Kent State and watched the horrors of the war on nightly news. I was there when Kennedy was assassinated, when LBJ was sworn in, when Bobby and Martin died. When Teddy had his Chappiquiddick and Strom Thermon wasn’t all that old. I was there when women congressmen were different than the men. When they stood for something righteous and not for something lobbied for or lucrative. I was there when women first got maternity leave and when we burned bras and and and when we started becoming single mothers.

Getting old means I have a history – and I like that. I like that more than the wrinkles and title of ma’am.