Not Loving Getting Old

When did we get old?

Wasn’t it only a few years ago that we all gathered around my parents’ kitchen table to talk about Dad’s heart attack?  And certainly it hasn’t been twenty years since I got that phone call at work from Mom—“I fell and I can’t get up!”  When did the ills that caused us to worry so about our parents, not so long ago, become OUR infirmities?

I have three brothers-in-law in their late sixties.  Honesty, I can hardly get my arms around the concept of my siblings being that age.  One BIL has already had a stroke and a heart attack.  The second has high blood pressure, diabetes, failing kidneys and two shot knees—one of which has already been replaced and is still shot.  BIL number 3 has peripheral arterial disease, can’t walk a block without the muscles in his legs relentlessly cramping due to lack of blood—which incidentally prevents him from being a candidate for a knee replacement, even though he cannot bend his left knee more than about 25%.  And he is about to go under the knife to have his carotids—70% to 90% blocked—roto-rootered.

When did we become our parents…and our children became us?

But our children are NOT us, are they? 

There are some days I wonder if my childlessness is going to be a liability.  Who will be there to watch after me, like we attended our parents as they aged?  Who will advocate for me through a health “care” system which was crumbling when my parents needed it, is a shambles now and only promises to get worse? 

But, then again, witnessing my sisters’ relationships with THEIR children, I’m pretty sure that dynamic doesn’t exist for them, either.  Our generation did not seem to comprehend that “parenting” was supposed to include preparing one’s progeny to take on the mantle of family responsibility when the older generation needed to hand it down.  Instead, our children are more likely to run far and fast into their own lives as soon as it looks like the old man and old lady might be a diminishing resource.  Witnessing this, I tend to adopt the opinion that perhaps I dodged a bullet when I chose to remain childless.  I don’t have anyone upon whom to project unrealistic expectations.  Best to know that as early as possible, I guess.

This moment of bewildered reality check was brought to me by a card we received on our anniversary last week.  It came from my late oldest sister’s husband—one of those above mentioned BIL’s.   It’s almost twenty years since my sister died, since BIL#2 faded out of the lives of the family of his wife. But not completely.  He never forgets a birthday or anniversary. For almost two decades, his missives have arrived like clockwork.  He’ll send pictures, newspaper articles about the latest wild animals to take up residence on his family’s farm in Michigan where he retired, ever-optimistic Green Bay Packer fan trivia…only, lately, his letters read more like medical reports. 

His last card:  “My health is not good…hole in right foot…swelling in calf and foot…doc says my kidneys are poor…managed to put a shoe on my right foot for the first time in ten months...blood sugar climbed to 350-390…  Haven’t seen the girls [my nieces] for over a year.  Boy, life can go to pot in a hurry…”

About ripped my heart right out of my chest.

This is not where we’re supposed to be!  We were supposed to stay young and vital for many more years.  Or, at the very least, step lightly into an active and comfortable old age.  There were supposed to be picnics, and camping trips, and train rides and ball games, and visits to the farm and Alaska and the Grand Canyon.  We were not supposed to be thinking about hospital beds and canes and blood thinners and insulin shots, heart attacks and clogged arteries…and children we never see.

Fortunately, there is one thing I know I will always have. 

I will always have my sisters.

Fifteen years ago, after Dad died, we went through such a rough patch that I could not have confidently made that statement.  It looked like we would never again be more than polite strangers who shared a childhood history.  But somehow—and it was hard…and it took time—we managed to reach out again and pull each other close, and tangle ourselves together inside this bubble of not-always-harmonious energy without which none of us would survive very long, I’m sure of it. 

I only wish the bubble was big enough to surround all the distant strays we love and long for.              

 

I'm Not The Only One Who Thinks That CFL Light Bulbs SUCK

Once again, I glean rant-fodder from my Facebook news feed...

A friend posted a link to a blog post that I have been longing to write.  SHOULD have written a year ago, in fact.

Dear CFL Manufacturers:  You Suck

OMG I am SO on board with this.

CFL's are a HUGE racket. They cost a mint and DO NOT last any longer than regular bulbs.  The light they provide is hideous--how much do I love looking like a corpse when I look in my bathroom mirror in the morning?  And this crap about how they take forever to actually GO ON when you flip the switch--what is UP with that?

I finally went around my entire house, took out all the crappy CFL's and replaced them with good ole fashioned light bulbs.  But, of course, I can't just throw the f**kers away...I have to take them to the dump to be disposed of as hazardous waste.

So now, incandescent bulbs are being "phased out."  By law.  How does that happen?  I can guarantee you, it had little or nothing to do with saving the environment.  Someone who had a lot of money sunk into the development and sale of CFL's made sure that, at some point, the purchase of their product would be if not required by law, at the very least strongly promoted by it.

American consumers are at the mercy of speculators who bombard the public with imperfect technology, LIE about it ("You will NEVER have to change these bulbs! You will save hundreds of $$$ on electric bills!") and then throw a bunch of money into legislation to guarantee that their gamble pays (them) off.

I don't know about anyone else, but I am sick of this bullshit...    

Selfies...Love 'em or Hate 'em

 

Of all the social ills befalling our society—and they are legion—I’d say the “selfie epidemic” is mostly a non-problem.          

Digital photography is a miracle.

Like the internet, which has allowed me to indulge my writing compulsion, digital photography has given me the opportunity to cater to my photography bug to an extent I never would have if the medium still consisted of 35mm SLRs, fragile film, fade-prone paper images and brittle negatives. 

I’ve always loved to take pictures—bought my first SLR with my first tax refund in 1974.  But I could never afford to acquire all the paraphernalia and classes it would have taken to properly indulge my fascination with photography…in the world in which I was raised, one did not “waste” thousands of dollars on a hobby, and I knew I was not smitten enough with the medium to develop it into a career.  So I invested in a string of bottom-of-the-line SLRs with inexpensive filters and equipment, purchased countless rolls of film, and amassed boxes of thirty years worth of prints and slides.  Some of them not too bad, given the bargain-basement gear with which I was working.

In 2003, I bought my first digital camera—a primitive thing, by today’s standards.  Can’t offhand recall how many megapixels it was…if there was indeed an entire megapixel to be had in those first heavily pixilated images.  So, through a subsequent string of ever-improving digital cameras, I’ve amassed a couple thousand digital images.  Again…some of them almost creditable. 

Yet in all those boxes, and among all those megabytes, I might personally own less than a dozen pictures of myself.  When you’re typically the one behind the camera, if you want to acquire a shot of yourself at family functions, weddings and vacations, you are obligated to walk up to some other person, hand them your camera and say, “Here…take a picture with ME in it, wouldya?”  And on the occasions when you actually screw up the courage to DO that, the resulting image generally makes you wish you hadn’t.  And you can hardly hand the camera back to your draftee photographer and insist they keep shooting until they come up with one you like.

The only recourse is the “selfie,” and I’ve been taking them for years.  Ever since I discovered that my cameras came equipped with self-timers that gave me the opportunity to be on both sides of the lens, so to speak.  Set the camera down (it’s a real luxury if you own a tripod), activate the little timer, click the shutter and run.  If you’re lucky, you’ll have enough time to collect yourself, pose and smile.  Not enough time, and you are reduced to a blur on the edge of the group…like a bit of accidentally captured ectoplasm.  Too much time, and your pose begins to decay…you lose concentration, turn your head, close your eyes, swat at a bee…  Creating the perfect selfie is a skill in its own right. 

 

Which is why “delete” is my favorite button on the camera, slightly edging out the self-timer.  I can take dozens of atrocious pictures—and believe me, I do—and with the touch of a couple buttons, *poof* they are gone forever.  Love, love LOVE!!!

My creativity knows no bounds when it comes to contriving to get myself into a picture...  

 

Self-styled  internet social analysts are declaring that the current “selfie” trend is an indicator of our society’s increasing narcissism and self-absorption.  I beg to differ.  I think that in most cases, selfies are the work of us eternally frustrated camera geeks who are finally able to create images which prove that WE were at the Washington Monument, or the Paul McCartney Concert, or Mount Rushmore, or Grandma’s house at Christmas.  We are totally in love with the fact that we can now be part of our own historical record.  

 

 So what harm does it do to lighten up and let folks smile, instead of cringe, at pictures of themselves?  There are way more important things to complain about…     

     

       

Eleven

 

11 (eleven ⁱ/ɨˈlɛvɨn/ or /iˈlɛvɛn/) is the natural number following 10 and preceding 12.
In English, it is the smallest positive integer requiring three syllables and the largest prime number with a single-morpheme name. Its etymology originates from a Germanic compound ainlif meaning "one left").

If a number is divisible by 11, reversing its digits will result in another multiple of 11.

11 is the atomic number of the element sodium.

Apollo 11 was the first manned spacecraft to land on the Moon.

In Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Konqueror for KDE, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer for Windows, the function key F11 key toggles full screen viewing mode.

The approximate periodicity of a sunspot cycle is 11 years.

After Judas Iscariot was disgraced, the remaining apostles of Jesus were sometimes described as "the Eleven"

"Eleven pipers piping" is the gift on the 11th day of Christmas in the carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas"

There are 11 members on a team in soccer, field hockey and American football.

The War to End All Wars (World War I) ended with an Armistice on November 11, 1918, which went into effect at 11:00 am—the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year.

The stylized maple leaf on the Flag of Canada has 11 points.

Being only one hour before 12:00, the eleventh hour means the last possible moment to take care of something, and often implies a situation of urgent danger or emergency.

Three films -- Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) -- have each won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture of their respective years.

But, most important of all…

Eleven is the number of years I have maintained this blog.

As of September 25, 2014, Coming to Terms is eleven years old.

Wow.

(I’ll confess, I googled “eleven,” intending to educate myself on today’s magic number, but one of the things that came up was a wonderful Wikipedia page that did precisely that, and from which I have borrowed the choicest bits.)