My challenge this morning -- and I choose to accept it but don't guarantee results -- is to map what it is I think I'm doing. In spite of my notorious list mode being relentlessly linear, though my thinking is normally zigzag and spiral, it'll probably be easier to print, sleeve and archive.
1. I AM the elderly. I'm 80 and have been preparing for the end for some time now, partly because friends have been doing the same. We're all trying to give each other books and old letters. I'm wearing the same gym pants and big shirts that I have for twenty years (I don't mean the same style-- I mean the same ones) but I'm shrinking. I need a day long session at the sewing machine replacing elastic, shortening legs, and tightening buttonholes.
2. I have an assortment of tools for opening containers. I stab the cat treats jar with scissors, put glass containers with metal lids on the stove burner for a few seconds to expand the the lids, use clever wrap-arounds to unscrew bottles. There are some thing that simply defeat me and I never buy them again.
3. I had to post a list on the inside of my outside door to remind me to check that I have my hat on (because I cut my own hair, but am going bald anyway in that stress-provoked male pattern way), that I remembered to shave my "lady beard," and that I'm wearing pants. I tend to forget to change from slippers to shoes when I go to the post office but they say that happens to others all the time. We're an elderly town.
4. I do town things at off-hours because I'm thinking about contagion and can't remember anyone's name when I run into them. Mail goes into a 24-hour box, so I can go there anytime. The only grocery store in town is majorly improved by a much younger manager who understands food in a modern way, like smaller portions for singletons instead of a ranch cook's menu. My eating habits come from the city, as well as other mal-adaptive habits, or rather lack of habits from living in an apartment.
5. It's not just me who is aging: my buildings and pickup are almost past the point of maintenance, but it costs money to tear them down or replace them.
6. I think of my ex-husband and previous-generation relatives to try to figure out what to expect. Most of them did not die well. Strokes, heart attacks, dementia, inertia, and denial stalked and confined them. (My mother stayed sane. All my aunts did not.) It's the denial that offends me. Almost all my cousins have gone for prosperity instead of education, been careful not to rock the boat or realize how bad it can get. To me this attitude was like coils of barbed wire, a trap, a confinement, a failure to participate. So I just blanked them out. I kept one or two friends on my email list as connections to reality, but dumped everyone else. I was late deleting a paranoid hysteric who was a relative and I regretted it. She echoes in my head.
7. Perhaps the most painful has been a former student who brought an "expert on Indian lit" to meet me as a broken-down old remnant of his past who would give the man some amusing material. I took an immediate dislike to this fellow and horrified FS by hitting the dolt over the head with my degrees and achievements, which FS didn't know about. The insulting phrase was "lightweight." This guy was more than that: he was an opportunist white guy profiting from middle-aged indigenous female authors.
But it was a slap in the face to be called "also lightweight" and "arrogant." I hadn't realized how emotional the subject is. I've worked very hard to be the opposite, made major sacrifices and done painful things.
8. My parents were the generation that moved from the farm to the city. Their mental maps didn't fit, but they made what adjustments they could. Still, they were dominated by the idea that they should NOT change, NOT move, NEVER take risks. Be modest, virtuous, and faithful. Now that they had come to the city as young adults, as they aged they found everyone around them going up the social and monetary stairs but didn't do the same. They didn't get so much angry as they were just baffled. My father bought more and more magazines and books, but either didn't read them or didn't understand them. My mother found a home in the elementary school where she taught, but her church betrayed her. The queens of the congregation didn't find her prosperous enough.
9. My own church claimed to be progressive and open, following a charismatic minister. This was fantasy. Once I became a member of the clergy and aware of both the politics and the corruption, I had no fall-back position except to leave. I had no backup network of colleagues. But the rigor and methods of the U of Chicago Div School and the generosity of that ur-urban writer, Richard Stern, have not let me down. Like my drawer of can-openers and lid unscrewers, I have resources. They are invisible to my relatives, my old students, the townsfolk, and so on. They exist in print. I was horrified to hear my former student proudly announce that he never read anything and neither did his friends. They are part of the anti-intellectual movement in spite of being in Portland, not even on the rez. No wonder they weren't aware of what I consider my achievements.
10. Then there are these cats stampeding around the house. This is the scroungiest, over-energetic, gummy-eyed bunch of kittens so far since when I had proper cat pets. Their heritage as inbred ferals is obvious, though there is at least one tomcat determined to break in through the cat flap and improve the genetics. They are a wonderful excuse -- "sorry -- I can't because of the cats." No one wants to visit a cat house. I do not manage the cats -- I just tolerate them. Sometimes I put a cute cat vignette on my blog and people fall for that. Everyone wants me to fit a stereotype -- a lightweight one. Except the cats themselves, who so value my ability to open containers. I even bought one of those levers to open cat food cans -- the kind with a loop on top that deforms your fingernails.
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