When I'm 64....

Well, I'm not 64 quite yet, but there aren't any appropriate songs that address my state right now--unless you paraphrase..."Achy Breaky Heart (knees, hips, etc.)" for one example...In any case, I'm not getting any younger, stronger, more flexible, athletic, or any of those other good things. BUT..I must say, I am getting better in some ways. I don't worry so much anymore.

Last weekend, JC (suffering soul that he is) and I attended a CYO reunion in Baltimore. (Those non-Catholics among you, simply insert "high school church youth group" instead of "CYO") The Catholic Youth Organization was a parish-wide organization for teenagers, that linked to an archdiocesan organization, that was, in turn, part of a national CYO. For all, I know, it may have extended internationally, but who cares? Anyway, some of our old group decided that it might be fun to track down the old crowd (i.e. those members from the 1962-1966 timeframe) and catch up. With the advent of email and Facebook, the task even looked manageable. After all, high school and college reunions happen. People keep in touch with people, and if you could start a chain of people looking for former friends and classmates, finding our old social group might be possible. Anyway, that was the beginning, and we were lucky enough to have some dogged members who were willing to call and email and do all the hard work of finding people. Not everyone, but a fairly representative group.

Saturday night, we all got together for drinks and dinner and dancing to the music of our youth. Some people might obsess about seeing people last encountered 45 years ago, about how they've changed, about how they look, about not having anything in common except 4 years worth of high school dances in the church hall (because that's pretty much what we did.)  I wasn't worried about any of that, because, if the truth were told, I'm much happier than I was back then. After 45 years, I'm not pretty. Or thin as I was. I still have two left feet. I still can't throw or catch a softball. Or ride a bike or roller-skate. I never mastered the art of flirting, but I AM happy with my life, largely thanks to a husband who supports me in so many ways--even to attending a gathering where he knows virtually no one.

After 45 years, I also know what's important and what's not. I can talk to anyone about anything. (Some people might say I can talk to a post--not true.) I'm a pretty good cook. I know a lot about getting along with people, and I'm not afraid to speak up or step up when something needs to be done. I can follow, but I can also lead when I have to. People who were there that night have talents too--perhaps ones that the rest of the world doesn't see at first glance, but they are there.

I don't judge as much as I used to. The more you live, the more you realize that people don't have as much control of their choices as we all wish we did. Sometimes, things just happen and you play with the cards you're dealt. Looking around that room Saturday night, I have no doubt that there were people who have experienced almost every sort of joy or tragedy. We've had children and lost them, coped with fractious teenagers and aging parents, dealt with jobs (or the loss thereof) that were more (or less) than we thought we could handle. We've bought houses and cars; we've traveled and stayed at home. We've moved away, and sometimes, come back to the same places. We've made new friends, but kept the old as well.

Reunions bring out a strange phenomenon, I've found. No matter what or who you were years ago, at a reunion, the old class structure slips away. You might have been part of the popular crowd, or you might have been a hopeless nerd, or a clueless jock. You might have been part of the fad and fashion scene, or been on top of the top 40. But somehow, when you get together, you're back on a level playing field. People who wouldn't have given you a glance-- much less a kind word--back then, seek you out and ask about what you're doing, and it is amazing how much they remember about you. It's a revelation to find that you weren't as invisible as you felt then. And even more importantly, nobody cares about the old pecking order, perhaps because it was so artificial to begin with.

We have all learned through the years that the things that count are not all those externals, but the stuff inside: the shared values, the shared experiences, the bedrock of who we were all those years ago. Reunions help us reclaim the ground that we thought was lost when we left that particular arena of our lives.

It's still there, along with the people we can again call friends.

Rubber Bands on the Doorknob, and All That..

The omnipresent and little-heeded "they" advocate a place for everything and everything in its place. They have obviously never visited my house. In my world there is an infinite variety of things and an infinite assortment of places where they might be. All of which makes growing older less pleasant, as my once-infallible instant recall has become not only much slower, but also far more fallible. When someone (who shall remain nameless) used to complain that we were out of pickle relish, I could snap out "Top shelf, far right, on the turntable next to the sour cream" with barely a moment to think. Now the response is, "Oh." And the next time I'm at the store and remember the conversation, I pick up a jar--which joins the one in the refrigerator that was there all along--and the two in the pantry that I forgot I'd purchased.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I've been giving the problem some serious thought…and have been making some observations. I find that I seldom put anything away directly. A jacket will spend a day on the back of a chair before progressing to the tree in the dining room, where it will stay until a critical mass of coats forces removal to a closet upstairs. Magazines and mail percolate on the kitchen counter until someone pays the bills, reads the article they were saving the magazine for, or decides unilaterally to throw the stack away. Even dishes from the dishwasher find temporary homes on counter or table or shelf. No wonder I can no longer find anything. Everything is en route.

It isn't as if it requires a lot of effort to put things immediately in their proper places. I've just lost that habit. It's easier to stack newspapers on a chair than to walk them out to the recycling bin. It's easier to put dirty dishtowels at the foot of the stairs, rather than walk them up to the laundry basket on the second floor. It is easier to leave something where I have been using it than to make the effort to put it away when I'm done. I am, in a word, lazy. This way lies the sad spectacles that we see in "Hoarders"…

So, starting today, I am picking up that rubber band on the kitchen floor, and, instead of tossing it on the counter, am putting it on the doorknob where I keep stray rubber bands. I am kicking the Kik-Step into the kitchen and putting away the plastic containers on that shelf that I can't quite reach. I am organizing my spice cabinet so I no longer have to remove everything to find the cinnamon. I am taking all the coats upstairs and hanging them in their proper closets. The chargers for the phone and the iPad and the camera are all again confined to their box o'electronics. The silver that I used for brunch two weeks ago, that I washed and dried and put on the sideboard in the dining room is being restored to the silver chest--and the china I used with it has been returned to its cabinet after enjoying two weeks of fresh air, stacked on the buffet. Things are migrating slowly back to where they belong, and I am firmly resolved to put things back, all the way back, where they belong, instead of leaving them in interim locations.  By reducing the number of possible places of residence, I hope I will be able to have room in my aging brain for a discrete number of hiding places to search when something goes missing. So…Cell phone! Glasses! Purse! Pen! Checkbook! Address book! Keys! You are officially on notice. The days of hide-and-go-seek are numbered. 

Olly, olly, oxen free.

Million Miles

Yesterday JC brought home an official-looking package he had received in the mail at the office. Navy blue with vertical navy stripes in matte and glossy alternations. A horizontal silver stripe across the middle, labeled "Million Miler". The box came from United Airlines.

I immediately thought of George Clooney's movie "Up in the Air" and his pursuit of the holy grail of the business traveler. This wasn't it. This was a Premium Gold card and matching luggage tag and a letter of congratulation.

A million miles is pretty significant, particularly when you measure it against a life. I realize that jets go pretty fast, but if each of those miles consumed a minute, that would add up to nearly two years. And if you consider the to and fro, the reservations and boarding passes, the packing, the trips to the airport, the security lines, the check-ins, the waiting at the gate, the inevitable delays, the taxi rides, the hotel hassles, the rental car shuttles and all the attendant nonsense of traveling, I'd bet that that would not be an outrageous approximation of what those million miles mean. And this was only one of the many airlines he has traveled. There's Delta and USAir and American and Southwest and airlines that are no more who have not weighed in on total miles, not to mention the trains and automobiles in that holy trinity of travel.

Two years plus.

I wrote a poem once for our anniversary that catalogued all the time we've spent apart. It's not just travel that has separated us--it's the workday world, the jobs, the meetings, the activities, the kids' lessons, our own classes and responsibilities and chores, the trips to the cleaners, the grocery-shopping, the time spent driving from here to there and back again.  And yet, and yet..for all the time we've been apart, we have been together for 38 years. If you subtract all that apart time, I guess it's no wonder that it seems like only yesterday we met.