The Third Act of Life Before the Final Curtain

I'd like to be picked up in this...
in case anyone cares

The curling script read "Forest Lawn" on the side of the pale silver hearse.  I was peeking out between the blinds of my bathroom window for my usual morning weather check when I saw it. As gaped through the slats, two people dressed in sombre black got out of the vehicle and mounted the steps of the house across the street. They knocked and were immediately let inside. Show over, I went downstairs to get my morning coffee with the new knowledge that someone on the street had just died. Those people don't show up for false alarms. The unofficial town cryer of my block soon apprised me of what had happened. A 62 year old man had died of cancer.  I didn't know the man, I've only lived on the block for 18 months and he wasn't here most of the time, but still....62.  Sobering.

Ian Brown's "Sixty"

For the last month or so I feel that I have been surrounded by the prospect of aging and the end of life. My doctor had recommended I read a book entitled "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by  Atul Gawande. The author is an American doctor, a son of two doctors. It's a thoughtful, informative (too informative, perhaps) and honest description of our aging process and how modern medicine aids or hurts us in the end. That was my light Christmas holiday reading. At the same time I also read a book recommended by my sister, "Sixty" by Ian Brown. Brown is a Canadian journalist who decided to keep a diary from his 60th birthday to his 61st and record his thoughts on his own aging and what he saw around him. It's comic, tragic and unflinching. I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Male or female, we share much the same problems and issues with our human bodies and minds. Aging is a great leveler.  In both books the authors watched their active, interesting, very elderly fathers die. One son recorded it in great medical detail, the other as more of an emotional event. I was touched by both accounts and could identify with each of their losses.

My friends and I are all watching their parents get older and die. Many of my conversations now revolve around what is happening with our parents. Those who have already lost their parents to the great beyond can easily empathize with what is going on with those still left.  My father is gone and my mom, though healthy, is in her late eighties and is moving at the end of this month with her 90 year old partner into a retirement center. They are on my mind a great deal as I help them with their packing and concerns. This will be my mother's seventh move in the seven years since my dad died. That fact alone leaves me with a feeling that my older years may not be ones of peace and contentment but rather a searching for something I have lost. If I even make it to her age.

"Gentle Into This Good Night"
original art by Megan Podwin

I have believed for a while now that my arrogant Baby Boom generation is not going to live as long as we think we will. Our parents are from a generation in which so many have benefited from modern medicine and are living into their eighties and nineties. Do we think we will do the same? Will medicine save us from ourselves? As humans our lifespan seems to have stalled out, the oldest age reached is not getting any older. It is still very rare to see someone live past 105, let alone 115, despite medical intervention.  Our bodies do give out.  My generation has abused itself with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and stress. Unless the aliens come to help out with their space age technology we will be, and already are, dying off. With assisted suicide becoming a reality in Canada I'm not sure that every Boomer will even choose to live out their years as those before us might have done.

Even though I am attempting to be 'ageless' those around me seem to be moving into their sixties and talking of retirement, of a loss of excitement with life, a feeling of closing doors, regrets.  No more big firsts ahead, so much of life is behind, not in front.  Ian Brown points out in his book that if we can expect to live to 85 then the span from 60 to 85 is as great as the span from 30 to 55. Who can't look back on that space of time and not feel that a great deal went on?  I believe we can still experience many "firsts", we just need to redefine them. There will never again be a first love, a first job, a first home purchased or a first baby born to me. That doesn't dismay me. I envy my children their beautiful youth but am well aware I had mine and that I enjoyed it. There are no 'do overs', that is not what I'm after. I may not be quite as energetic or as physically strong as I was but I am smarter, wiser and less foolhardy than when I was younger and I'm still curious, still interested and still hoping for more.
A friend of mine has a mantra, "this is as good as it gets" to help with her acceptance of where she is in life.  I dislike that phrase because I think there is the possibility of many things out there that I cannot even imagine yet that may prove to make life better next year than it is right now, at least for the next two decades. Life after eighty appears to be more problematic according to the reading I just did.  January has been a month of reflection and learning about aging and I am internalizing that and moving forward with positivity.  As an antidote,  I'm currently reading Blogging for Dummies and the latest novel from Alan Bradley, starring  his eleven year old fictional sleuth Flavia deLuce. Flavia puts me in touch with my eleven year old self who fell in love with stories of plucky children in England. They were a favourite escape of mine as a young girl and they still are, I guess.
 My grandmother, as she was nearing the end of her 93 years here, told my mom , "we just have to live it out until it's done". None of us knows when that will be so here's to living it out every day and finding our new set of "firsts" for the decades to come.

"Whereabouts Unknown"
original art by Megan Podwin

No Resolution To Be Had

I don't make New Years resolutions, never have. This is the time of year when I am at my physical, mental and emotional low. Not a good time to decide to give up something that's bad for me or take up something physically strenuous or mentally demanding. Those things are all pretty much guaranteed to fail. The middle of winter is a time of retreat, hibernation, conserving what is left of my energies to get me through to spring time. My cravings for carbs, caffeine, sugar and alcohol are at an all time high, slaked somewhat by the overindulgence of the Christmas season but certainly not ready to be denied. I cannot imagine getting through the month of February without my crutches.

Caffeine and carbs, baby!

Now, don't imagine me sitting at home slurping B52 coffees for breakfast with my hand in the cookie jar. I have some control.  For better or for worse I don't do anything to excess. I hate hangovers, gaining weight and pimples so while I give in to my cravings I do so within moderation.  When it's summer and I'm feeling my best I can say no to the after dinner piece of chocolate, the second or third glass of wine, the cookie with my tea. It's summer!  The sun is shining, the days are long, dinner is on the BBQ. It's all good.  But winter....
A friend just told me she was giving up alcohol for the month of January. I applaud that decision and support her totally in it.  Good for her, I hope she does what she has resolved to do. It would be an excellent choice for me as well but it ain't going to happen. The best I will do is to maintain what I already have going on. Go to yoga, walk in between rain and snow storms, have a couple of drinks when I want, eat a cookie with my afternoon tea, order good pasta when out in a restaurant and try not to buy too many chocolate bars.

Winter survival food

 I am actually very tough with myself given the size of my cravings and the tiny rewards I indulge in. If I gave in willy-nilly to what I wanted I would be twenty to thirty pounds heavier for a start and probably not be seen out of bed before noon.  I have never eaten a whole box of cookies or an entire pint of ice cream in a sitting. Just not in my nature. But I did once pull a half-eaten chocolate Easter rabbit out of the garbage where I had thrown it in a fit of self disgust and polish it off. Yeah, I know, right? We all have our dirty little secrets.
So because I can maintain a modicum of self control, even over the holidays, I don't feel the urge to punish myself with New Years resolutions. I get annoyed with the newbies that pack my yoga classes with their desire for a "new them" but I know they will soon be gone. That's the problem with these resolutions, it's just the wrong time of the year to try and start this kind of stuff. And people try to correct so many bad behaviours at once, quitting smoking AND going on a diet...madness. Or they set the bar so high for fitness goals. Workouts five days a weeks, train for a marathon. In the middle of winter? Seriously? Doomed to failure.
September is another time when many people start a new regime of some kind. The "back to school" effect. Summer holidays are over, time now to buckle down. It all seems well and good and achievable in September but as the days get shorter, the temperatures cooler and the rains set in it gets tougher to change our behaviour. I'm not saying give up on change, not at all, but pick your times, people! I think the Spring equinox is an excellent time for resolutions. It is the time for the rebirth of the earth, why not time our rebirth to that as well? The days are getting longer and warmer, everything feels more hopeful and enjoyable. That is the time to cut back the calories or the cigarettes, start that running programme, take a night school class.  It might actually be achievable! I started this blog in May, a coincidence?  I don't think so. By March I was coming out of my winter stupor, shaking off the sluggishness of the season and looking for something to change my ways.
I am not a winter person, I hate the cold, I don't ski, so snow doesn't thrill me and I suffer from mild depression due to lack of sunlight, so obviously January 1st is not going to be the time that I reach any epiphanies about changing my behaviour. It just has to wait until spring.  That gives me almost three months to roll some options over in my mind, give them a good perusal, consider if they are even remotely achievable or desirable and then work up a plan. By mid-March I am ready to commit to a change and when I do finally commit I have pretty good follow up. There is a good chance I will achieve my goal. So by all means start that big change in your behaviour in January, I will sit on the sidelines, glass of wine in hand, chocolate at the ready and cheer you on but when March 20th rolls around let's have a sit down and discuss how well you met your goals and then we can make an Equinox resolution together. I'll be ready then.

Thanks and See You In 2017

When Boxing Day rolls around this month I will have been posting to this blog for six months. Amazing! That's one post every week for six months, although to be honest I think I missed one week. Some posts have hit a chord with people and been read by many, others seem to fall on their faces and get kicked to the curb. I'm still trying to figure out what makes one post appealing and the other not and will be doing some homework over the holiday season on that topic. To everyone who reads a post of mine, thank you and to everyone who reposts or forwards a post or shares in any other way, a BIG thank you and a sloppy kiss to be collected on at a later date.
A very small group of people have managed to make comments on my blog site and I really appreciate that. Some have commented on Facebook when I repost my blog there. I love to get comments and hope that going forward I might receive more.  If there is a topic that you would like to see me write about please share that with me. I'm always looking for inspiration.  Anyone that knows me well knows that I like to talk and I have an opinion about everything, well, almost everything. Politics are not my strong point but I will still try to give it my best effort.  It can be difficult when sitting down at the computer to come up with an idea that I feel someone might want to hear about so shout it out if you have a suggestion.  You can send an email to me at whatfayesaid@gmail.com.

Special Delivery
by Jill Charuk

I write for my own enjoyment and as practise, leading to what, I'm not sure yet but the more readers I get the happier I am so please read and share as much as you want. Signing up on the blog site with your email is the easiest way to get my posts delivered to your inbox every Thursday evening.

Light Touch by Jill Charuk

Right now is a busy time for everyone so I am taking advantage of that and this will be my last post until the New Year. Now you have one less thing on your "to do" list, cross off  'read Faye's blog this week', and I can go get drunk! Happy Holidays to you and talk at you in 2017.

Christmas Magic Memories

There we are, two quintessential little girls of the Sixties. Drooping knee socks, scuffed Mary Janes, hair curled just for the occasion, sitting on Santa's lap. Oh, my. My  younger sister and I are maybe six and eight in this picture and we look pretty pleased with ourselves.  That was a big day, let me tell you. I have blurred memories of going to downtown Vancouver from our suburban home and standing in line at the Woodward's department store.  I think it may have involved a pancake breakfast, I'm not sure. A very big event for our family.  I remember the anticipation I felt in that line up, sucking on a candy cane to help the time go by. It was nerve wracking. Think of it...Santa! The jolly man himself.  I still believed in Santa at that time, I'm sure, so he was the real deal to me.   Some kids in line were crying, refusing to go near Santa. I think someone threw up. I was nervous but old enough to be over the fear of the red-suited gent. The expressions on the face of my sister and myself are ones of posed smiles without a shadow of panic. We were there to fulfill a purpose, getting our requests for Christmas presents across to Santa. It's all pretty bizarre when you think of it but when as a child you still believe it is so wonderful.  I think that's what makes us lie to our own children about the existence of Santa. We know there will be a hard fall when the truth comes out but we hate to deny them the wonder of that Christmas magic we remember.

Max and a buddy,
five years old.

I speak for myself here as I know not everyone shared the same Christmas magic that I did. Growing up, our family didn't have a lot of money for gifts but I have only good memories of Christmas, and I worked hard to pass along that experience to my own kids. We spoilt our children at Christmas because we could. Huge trees, lots of decorations, fat Christmas stockings and gifts. We had a big family meal on Christmas Day, with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents in attendance, often hosted at our home. The whole thing was a great deal of work but I loved the result. The magic of Christmas came back to me through the kids. I have a few pictures of my children on Santa's lap but I think that our youngest was never too happy about it so it wasn't forced. That event was probably my least favourite to orchestrate, the visit to Santa, so I was happy to drop it. I'd much rather be icing gingerbread men at home with my boys than waiting in line for an overpriced picture.

Now I am in between generations with Christmas. My children are grown but haven't any kids of their own. No little ones to lie to and spoil with presents, and there may not be. That's not my call.  I've scaled back the decorating and baking, doing just enough to make me feel it's Christmas. The tree is smaller, the stockings are gone, the gifts less. One year I gave up on gifts all together and just gave money to the kids, and told my husband not to buy anything for me but somehow that wasn't right, I had scaled it back too far. I'm trying to find the balance now in the new style of adult only Christmas that we celebrate. It certainly has its upside. No more shopping at Toy R Us (HUGE upside!), no late night gift wrapping sessions after everyone is in bed and I am exhausted. No more worrying if there are enough presents or the right presents or an equal amount between the kids.  No trying to put together complicated toy items while searching for the right batteries.  No dealing with at least one child who came down with a horrible cold or flu right before Christmas.

The motley Christmas crew, 1994

My sons, one of whom comes with a lovely girlfriend, and my nieces and nephews have grown into smart, funny and entertaining adults. I miss having Christmas with the parts of my family that I've lost through divorce and death but these young adults make up for it.  The families of my siblings are  growing through the addition of new partners, spouses and babies, and so my siblings and I can no longer all get together for one Christmas meal. Logistics won't allow.  This year as I decorate my tree and bake my gingerbread people I will think of them all. And I think also of the little girl I was in the red coat on Santa's knee, the bored teenager I became trying to get drunk at Christmas, the young wife trying hard to impress, the mother of two overdoing the whole business and the person I am this year at Christmas. I am so very grateful for the wonderful memories of Christmas that I have, the ones I have helped make and the ones yet to come, whatever they may be.

Gird Your Loins!

Stanley Tucci,
The Devil Wears Prada

A friend sent me a text the other day saying that she was about to gird her loins for a stressful upcoming event. I was delighted to see her use that particular phrase as it one of my favourites, probably makes my top twenty list, but it's rarely heard these days.  Growing up it was used around my house, introduced to me by my parents, but I doubt whether my children have ever used it or even know what the term means despite my usage of it. It has sadly fallen out of favour.  The phrase dates back from the bible when men were urged to gird themselves to get ready to run, fight or do heavy labour. This was usually achieved by a man pulling the front of his robe or tunic through his legs to the back and then wrapping two ends  around the front and tying them together in front of the hips. This also protected the manly bits, the loins, a tad more than the loose garment would.  Man up, get ready for battle! Gird your loins! Nowadays we are urged to put on our big girl panties and get the job done. Same idea but so much less oomph. I'd much rather gird my loins than put on some panties when I'm about to do battle, literally or metaphorically. Obviously gird is the root for  girdle, an undergarment that WOULD  provide loin protection in battle when you finally managed to get squeezed into it as opposed to the aforementioned panties!

Now this is protection!

The first time I can recall hearing the bible read aloud was in my public elementary school. I'm old enough to remember the days of the teacher reading a passage from the bible after the class had recited the Lord's Prayer. Every morning. My family is not religious and we didn't attend church so the reading of the bible was very exotic to me. I became fascinated with the language, not the actual stories or the intent but the language itself. I came across a bible at home when I was about ten or eleven and would stand in front of a mirror in private and practise reading the text aloud, playing teacher in my mind. All that "hath, thou and shalt" stuff, it was a foreign language that I could read! Fascinating. I would feel the same way much later, in high school when reading Shakespeare. The bible stories were so stern, so many admonishments, so much drama. The names were long, full of syllables that rolled off the tongue. Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego are three that still spring to my lips whenever I want to summon them. I have no idea of their story, just the names remain.

My apologies to all that read and love the bible for its religious content, I mean no disrespect. But the language...it's so, well... biblical. An eye for an eye, the skin of my teeth, how the mighty have fallen,  they that take the sword shall perish by the sword, skin and bones. Awesome stuff.  At the same age I was reading the bible I was also reading novels voraciously, falling in love with the printed word and the worlds they created. My bible reading was short lived as I just couldn't get connected to the stories but my love of it's phrasing and vocabulary hasn't dimmed. And I know I'm not alone. One day years ago a friend was telling me about how angry she was with her husband over something. She was trying to find the right word to describe her emotion and she finally said that if she could have smote her husband on the spot she would have. Smote! Now there's a biblical word not used in everyday conversation anymore and I knew exactly what she meant. Her rage was so great she needed to reach back and find an Old Testament kind of feel to properly express herself.
The modern day evangelists are wonderful stage actors, in thrall to the dramatic language of the bible, it's rise and fall, it's thundering pronouncements, it's quiet beseeching. What actor wouldn't love these stories as their script?
So many phrases we use everyday have come from the bible, modernized to fit our speech patterns but the essential essence of them remains: forbidden fruit; go the extra mile; a drop in the bucket; a fly in the ointment; the blind leading the blind.  The list goes on. So though I am a heathen and my interest in the bible is strictly a selfish interest in its words and phrases I hope you won't judge me too harshly. If you do I shall have to gird my loins and prepare to defend myself.

Ageless

I have decided to become ageless from here on.  One of those big number birthdays is looming in the coming year for me and judging by the way friends and family have handled theirs I think it might be best to just skip this one.  What is it about the birthdays that end in a zero anyways?  We seem to make such a fuss about them. Are there birthday cards that say "Happy 59th!"?  No, but look for wishes for your 40th, 50th, or 60th and they abound. I had lunch with a long time friend the other day who has a sixtieth birthday coming up in a couple of weeks and when  I asked her about it she cringed and looked furtively around the restaurant. "Don't say that too loud" she whispered, concerned that someone who knew her might be within hearing. Hmm. It appears to be a thing to be dreaded so the best solution to the problem is to be ageless. If anyone asks me how old I am, and let's face it very few people do ask that question of me nowadays, I'll give them my year of birth and let them figure it out for themselves.
Many years ago I worked with a woman who belonged to the Kabalarians, the group that believes in numerology, mostly as it pertains to your name. Change your name, change your destiny is their philosophy. I asked her what her previous name had been and she told me she couldn't speak it. To say the name would be like putting a drop of black paint into a bucket of white, ruining the perfection of her life.  So that's the approach I am going to take, I cannot speak my age. It would be the drop of black in the beautiful white pool of my life.

Enigmatic....

My handsome husband is often taken for being ten years younger than he is so it is even more imperative for me to become ageless. I don't think I can peel ten years off my age but if I become ageless, it's simple, right?  I can hear it now..."Ted looks like he's fifty, how old do you think Faye is?" "Ageless." will be the response. I love it. It is said you are as old as you feel. Well, some days I wake up feeling thirty five, other days it's more like seventy or what I imagine seventy to feel like. So the concept of agelessness dovetails perfectly with that sentiment. My age will flow up and down with how I feel every day, never settling on any one number.  I'm going to have to work at a few things here, no dressing like my children's generation does, no dressing like my mother, just floating somewhere in between, careful not to chase the fads and trends. To be ageless I need to be able to be imagined in any era. I will listen to all kinds of music, get better at technology and read more classics, maybe try to rid myself of generational specific slang. Be enigmatic.
I feel better already about the coming year. When you are ageless you don't age.. obviously. I'm sure that's how it will work. I will just be perfectly myself everyday at whatever stage I am at. There will be some spoilsports, I know, people wanting to throw great globs of black paint into my bucketful of white but let them. We, the ageless are not bothered by such mean spirits. Birthdays can still be celebrated just without the counting of candles and the balloons with big numbers on them floating above my head. You are all welcome to join me in agelessness. As one of my yoga teachers often says, "experience what it's like to drop one of the labels that you carry around." I always think of the labels of mother, wife, daughter when he says that but dropping the label of age is even more liberating. Think of it. Ageless.

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli

The Wisdom of a Small Bear

"It was a blustery day in the Hundred Acre Woods". This is what  pops into my head as I lean into the wind, clutching at the collar of my coat to keep the cold air from forcing its way down inside. It pops into my head every time the wind starts to blow and hammer around the house like it did last night. It's from one of my favourite authors, A.A. Milne and his wonderful Winnie the Pooh books. I love Winnie the Pooh, not from the animated movies, as delightful as they are but from the books that I read as a child.  Those lovely, quiet books with their tales of friendship and adventure, and their simple pen and ink drawings by E.H. Shepard of the world of animal friends in the Hundred Acre Woods.

I was an avid reader early on in life and loved to get lost in worlds unlike my own, starting with Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat silliness, moving on to Winnie the Pooh and then to the Chronicles of Narnia. My trips to the library were some of my favourite times. My siblings and I were all readers, something my busy mother appreciated, so there were frequent trips to the library to stock up on the books that would keep us occupied and quiet.
The world of Pooh Bear was a perfect one, allowing Pooh to live in the present moment as we are always being told we should do. He had Piglet to worry for him, Eeyore to complain, Owl for wisdom, Rabbit keeping everyone in line,  Kanga to mother him and Tigger to be the wild child. All Pooh had to do was love everyone and be perfectly himself.  Christopher Robin, the little boy to whom Pooh belonged was the only real tie to the human world, a world viewed through the eyes of a child. He was the source of unconditional love for Pooh that I'm sure made Pooh the well-adjusted little bear he was despite being a bear of very little brain.

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it"
- A.A. Milne, Winnie-the Pooh

Now if that isn't a profound thought for a small bear, I don't know what is? How many times have you been carrying something inside that seemed so large and heavy but when you talked to someone about it it became quite a different thing, easier to manage, maybe really nothing at all. The world in the Hundred Acre Woods wasn't a childish and bratty world, it was one in which deep thoughts were expressed, the unknown was examined, answers sought and often there was no good resolution to a problem except to eat honey and drink tea until it passed. A good solid plan for most of our problems, I think.

"I am not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am might be lost."
-A.A. Milne, Winnie -the-Pooh

Many a yoga teacher or self help expert would be happy to have come up with that nugget of truth. Being lost doesn't bother Winnie the Pooh, he trusts in the world of the Hundred Acre Woods to help him find his way back. I need to remember that, it's not me, its just the situation I am in that has the problem.

Kanga and Roo

My lovely mother indulged me and made stuffed animals of some of the characters in the Winnie the Pooh stories. I received a bright yellow Pooh Bear in a small, red jacket, my younger sister got a shiny, pink Piglet, my older sister got the elegant Kanga and Roo, and Eeyore, well, he just hung out and bemoaned the situation. My brother was too old for stuffed animals at that point so Eeyore had to go it alone. But Eeyore understood, that had always been his lot in life.  Of all those stuffed toys only a moth-eaten and ratty Kanga and Roo has remained in my possession. I couldn't throw it away.

 Kanga sits on a shelf next to the animal friends of my sons, keeping up intellectual discussions with the ever thoughtful King Babar the Elephant.  Now there's a leader we could to look to for guidance right now!
And so, I am brought back to the problems of today, both in the world at large and in my own head. The wind continues to bluster, incomprehensible things continue to happen and answers don't seem right at hand but I think of  Pooh Bear and his friends and their simple wisdom and smile. Which on a miserable, wet and colourless day in November might just be the best thing I could do. That and have some tea with honey while I sit back and watch what unfolds.

"When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen."
- A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh.

My thoughts exactly.