Simply 60

Milestone or millstone? Which will it be?

November 12, 2009

The goal of this enterprise is to make turning 60, which I did in my sleep this morning, a most rewarding milestone. Why would anyone care? Because if I can do it, so can you.

I am of the Dylan Thomas school of thought, promising since first verbalization not to go gently into that good night. So I could be in a millstone frame of mind today. But I am not — in part because I am in New York City overdosing on four-days of camaraderie and theatre — Stomp, Memphis, God of Carnage, Hamlet and whatever I can get into with some white-haired supplication at the box office on Saturday — with a contingent of my nearest and dearest, 18 of us in all. 

Further, this blog idea charges my batteries. Every day for one year, beginning now, I will send out my inner sow to root around for the truffle of the day - what some might call the WOW factor. Imagine! Finding something wonder-filled about every single day of my 60th year as well as 60 reasons to be glad I turned 6-OH (see sidebar category) well, let's just call it a diversionary mission. 

With the Big Stop Sign looming ever closer down my personal highway, I will use this blog to think not about the WD40 I wish someone would invent for achy joints or the body I'd like to turn in for a new model — how 'bout Cash for Carcass Clunkers? Instead, at least here and with luck once a day (but no promises), I will share my truffles as well as the odd rumination and occasionally some slop. Which may well have to do with WD 40.

If you know someone approaching the Big 6-OH! or someone already there who might like some company, pass this on...

P.S. Thanks to Jocelyn Urban for taking such a nifty photo of our kids

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

How much 'completion' can a body take? This afternoon the epilogue to Bedlam wrote itself, in a fury of flying words that lasted four hours. I just got out my ruler — this manuscript, forever in the making, measures 2.5 inches thick and is 445 pages long. Good lord. Which means that today I will write THE END literally and figuratively twice. On two enormous projects. It's enough to drive a girl into a post-partum swoon. 

I've never been one to burn bridges. I infinitely prefer to ford the river upstream and get my pants wet rather than gaze out over a pile of cinders that leaves me high and dry with no recourse. So, while simply60 will be no more (except in book form), I am, simply or otherwise, reinventing myself next week as a homebuilder. You can find me then, from time to time at the following site, blogging my little heart out:

Habitat for Insanity 

So, by variation, the beat will go on.

In the meantime, allow me this riff on my year just gone by. What a grand experiment, this blog. For 365 consecutive posts, in spite of surgery, injury, travel, late nights, house guests, exhaustion, depression, elation, no connection, poor connection or whatever else ordinary living dishes out, I have required of myself, my inner sow at least, a rumination on each day's Truffle. Tempest fugits, and this exercise slowed things down, made me look at each day, consider it duly, thoughtfully. When we are young tomorrows seem infinite. The older we get, the faster the days fly by, one indistinguishable from the last. Or the next. Caught up, as we are, in all sorts of — well — trifles. While I can, and do, pledge here, not to you but to me, to continue to reflect on each day's delicacy, realistically I know it probably won't happen. Not with the same deliberation nor with the same stop-frame photo quality writing this blog has afforded me. Still, do yourself a favor, look — I mean look — for the truffle in your day. There's always one, and the harder it is to root out, the tastier the morsel.

Although I embarked on simply60 for its challenge factor, I cherish it for its tentacles, slithering out across the continental United States and beyond, to computers across the world. As Buzz Lightyear would say, "To infinity and beyond!" My deepest thanks to Vicki, the silent smarts behind it all, who designed the page, taught me how to be here for you, picked up my technological pieces when they collapsed around me and, more than anything, encouraged me to blog in the first place. My friend Blanche Lyon, a private, reclusive sort, thanks her also, for getting me out in the world.

BTW, I'm two-thirds of the way toward my three-digit goal of hits for the day, and it's still early. No word from Antarctica yet. Oh well. Maybe penguins don't have computer skills after all. Or there's cloud cover. 

In the meantime, it's been grand. So very grand  —

 ... that I should say goodnight till it be morrow.

Truffle: You, Dear Reader. You.

Quote of the day: "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." (Henry David Thoreau)

 

Antarctica

Tonight marks consecutive blog #364. Over the course of the last year, I've heard from every continent except Antarctica, believe it or not. Frankly, I have a hard time believing it myself. But I have this handy-dandy 'spying' device called Site Meter that lets me know the whereabouts of everyone who logs onto my blog. Only by location, but still, fascinating — and not a little amazing.

When I wrote once about the Galapagos, I heard from the Galapagos. When I signed up for the trans-Canadian rail trip, with a stopover in Alberta, I saw that Alberta had logged on. So keywords trigger silent or comment-driven responses. Last February, when Pete and I got to Shellman Bluff in Georgia, Lin Rogers said she knew all about us, because 'Shellman Bluff' lights up her computer every time it's mentioned on the internet. And I had mentioned it a lot.

And I thought Caller Spy-D on our telephones was surreptitious!

Over the course of this year, Site Meter has shown hits all over North America — from regular readers in Mountainview, CA all the way to Sparta, NJ. There has been the predictable cluster over northeastern Massachusetts, the Cape and the islands. Regular readers in Orem, Utah and Claremont, NH; incidental ones from Quebec to the Caribbean. OK, so many of these are loyal friends, occasionally reflecting their own travels. But not all.

Overseas has been even more remarkable and interesting — readers in Europe, Australia, South America, Central America, Africa and Asia. For about a week this blog was a hot ticket item in central China. Why? All I can figure is some teacher said find an innocuous Western blog, follow it and write a paper about your command of the English language. My one stalker was based in Hongkong. The people who logged on in Scandanavia, the Ukraine, Spain, Germany, France, England and Greece were not plants. 

Nor were those from Melbourne, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Mexico. Every time a new state or province or country lit up on my Site Meter map, so did I. Better than chocolate, finding a new light on my little world map.

So, tonight, before it is too late, I am trolling for Antarctica, the only continent not yet heard from. Surely someone on the bottom of the earth has a computer and too much time on his/her hands. It's frigid down there. Warm the cockles of my heart and your own — give me a hit, will ya? Tomorrow is my last chance to add this final continent.

No harm in hoping. I'll let you know what happens tomorrow, blog #365.

Truffle: The immeasurable satisfaction of setting a goal and accomplishing it.

Quote of the day: "Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit." (Unknown)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fired up and well fed

We had our first fire of the season this evening. It lit up one end of the river room while candles lit up the other. With the evenings so black, the quality of orchestrated flame is truly warming.

Because the rain continued off and on all day and the leaves are mostly gone, except off the copper beach (whose leave mysteriously turn green this time of year before falling off, as if to one up the coming of winter) and the lindens, which hold on to theirs till the last possible gust of wind. Anyway, because of this and because the change of season invites a change of menu, we (mostly Pete) indulged in a cooking frenzy that began last night with a leg of lamb.

Two people. Leg of lamb. Decadence. An embarrassment of edible riches. Move over Henry VIII. Fact is, though, that although a leg of lamb for two seems excessive, it turns out to be highly economical. Today Pete made lamb curry out of the remaining meat — curry enough for three meals over the winter. And I made soup from the bone.

Pete's daughter Betsy once asked me what one food item I would want if I were abandoned on a desert island. From the heart — or maybe  from the palette — certainly right off my unrehearsed tongue — popped the greatest delicacy and comfort food I know: lamb. I like it anyway it comes — from just this side of baah-ing to cooked into shoe leather; chops, ribs, legs; roasted, broiled, grilled, curried. Probably, if I ever were stuck on an island I would make a more practical choice — chicken maybe or coconut (which I love in all incarnations and might be simply more likely to be present on an island — all islands are in the tropics, right? — than lamb). Besides I would have real problems with the slaughtering part. Like chicken, my lamb comes in slabs at the supermarket. Another small tactical problem with the desert island/lamb scenario. No supermarkets.

For those lamb lovers out there in Blogland, I offer this recipe. The fastest, easiest, tastiest soup ever ... if you like lamb:

Marjorie's Unbeatable Lamb Bone Soup

1 meaty lamb bone (enjoyed the night before as a leg'o)

1 onion — roughly chopped

A couple of celery stalks (even better, the leaves from a whole bunch of them)

2 bay leaves

2 lg. cans tomato juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Put lamb bone in pot, preferably with lots of meat left on it and some garlicky outer bits. Cover with tomato juice. Add celery, onion and bay leaves. Simmer for 2 hours. Pour through colander. Pluck off and shred back into soup any tasty bits of meat that have survived this far. Add S&P to taste. Dish into bowl. Fall face forward into its deliciousness. Even better if the flavors meld for a day. Freezes well. 

Pete also made a scrumptious beef stew today, a third of which was consumed for dinner. I tell you, the kitchen was a madhouse of activity. The house still smells wonderful. That's one thing that summer tomatoes and corn on the cob can't do for you — fill the house with the aroma of long-steeped love.

Truffle: House arrest. Not from crippled-dom. But from House M.D. I have been turned into an unapologetic House junkie, like House himself. Thanks to having been loaned the first season for my confinement.

Quote of the day: "Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years." (Simone Signoret)

 

 

 

Back to Bedlam

What better way to spend a rainy raw night than in a room darkened by a paucity of lamplight and swelled to bursting with the sinister? When I was a kid I used to do this on Sunday mornings, watching re-runs from the night before of old dracula and werewolf black-and-white horror movies. Bela Lugosi, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney. Drawing the drapes in the TV room to simulate night, crawling under a blanket on the couch and letting the mood chill my spine. 

Tonight we curled up on the couch in a darkened parlor to watch The Girl Who Played With Fire, number two in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. I'd seen it before but Pete hadn't and, since number three, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is in theaters now, there was a certain urgency to see this. Maybe this weekend — um, perhaps a birthday treat? — we can go see it on the big screen....

What a fabulous invention is Lizbeth Salander. An anti-hero to beat all others. I would love to know the genesis of this  black-lipped, tatooed, cyber-savvy whisp of a man hater who, for all that, commands both empathy and the eye. And inspires in the reader/viewer the loyalty of Mikail Blomquist. Who was she to Larsson? Not pure invention, that's for sure. In part because his creation of her is so sure, so infinite in its variety, too precise for a work of sheer imaginings. Who was his model? Or perhaps models? 

Add to the craftsmanship, the artistry of the character one brilliant actress. Noomi Rapace. She was, or would seem to be, to the role born. She inhabits it. Wears it like a leotard, revealing the lithe contours of her mind as well as of her body. Her imperfect skin, permanently pursed lips and bottomless brown eyes only make her all the more believable as Lizbeth, all the more riveting.

I can't wait to see Hornet's Nest. Yes, for the chill of it, of course. From the sinister opening music to the final triumph over the last of Lizbeth's three great male persecutors. But what will keep me glued in my seat, the butter congealing on my popcorn, is pen envy. Oh to create one indelible character of Lizbeth's complexity and originality, the likes of which first tasers the imagination into submission then puts a gun to the brain and demands, Remember me! As if anyone could forget her.

Truffle: Getting back to Bedlam. I know, I know. I said I'd finished the draft. But I also said I wanted to add a prologue and an epilogue. The prologue wrote itself this afternoon.

Quote of the day: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." (Dorothy Parker)

 

Dark days

I long for Daylight Savings Time and it hasn't been gone for 24 hours yet.True, it used to be the time change was in October. So I should be grateful. But whether the clocks fall back last month or this, it amounts to the same thing. Dark days. 

I've been told that the reason for this peculiar manipulation of time (besides the power trip) has to do with children falling into manholes on their way to school on mornings left dark by Mother Nature. Mother Nature? That's a joke. Everyone knows you can't fool Mother Nature. Or beat her. So if children on their way to school no longer fall into manholes (why, a thoughtful person might ask, were the covers off those manholes, anyway?) then they most certainly will fall off curbs on their way home in the pitch black.

We do have a couple of weeks (but only that) until 4p is on the threshold of night. Back when I was in graduate school in England, I remember this time of year well: I'd be in the library studying before the crack of dawn and it would be dark when I emerged in mid-afternoon. I might as well have stayed in the womb. At least there it was warm as well as dark.

So now that the clocks have changed we, any of us, can hardly be accused of wasting our days. There isn't enough left of the day to waste. On the other hand, the night owls of the world have a broader palette on which to work. Those allergic to sun have only nine or so hours to suffer.

By 4:08 today I was forced to try to explain to Cajun why her dinner was not only eight minutes late but would be another 52 minutes in coming. At six p.m. when we sat down to an unusually early dinner, it looked (and felt) closer to eight p.m. At two p.m. when I took Cajun out for her afternoon exercise, the sky looked ominously gray, both from lack of light and the hint, just a hint but a cloying one, of snow in the air.

I try to be faithful to November, it being my birth month. I work to make it my favorite, out of perverse and unrewarded loyalty. But it is not anybody's favorite month. Least of all mine. It's a long long slog to longer, warmer days. With a whole lot of nonsense in between.

No wonder bears hibernate. 

Truffle: A simple Sunday with all things in place — NYTimes crossword, french toast, football, popcorn, even a little time outside (sitting down) with the dog.

Quote of the day: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." (Groucho Marx)

 

Title bout

I would not want to have named children. Too much responsibility. You can make or break a little life by what you name things fresh from the womb. Consider the Texas twins Ima and Ura Hogg. Or Trent Lott's wife — and this is not a joke — Iona. That would be Iona Lott. Or my all time favorite (what was his mother thinking?) — Dick Butkus. 

Don't we all have names we associate with people, positively and negatively, that affect what we think of newcomers in our lives brandishing the same nomenclature? Sandra was ruined for me in grade school because there were too many of them. Kathy's too. They really spoiled things for me. I'd be introduced as Katy and immediately be stuffed with an unwanted 'h', just to make it easy for them, I suppose. But in their ease, making me a member of a club when what I felt entitled to was my individuality. What we all are entitled to is the sense of self made possible in a fitting name.

Which reminds me of my sister-in-law's experience on the occasion of her first born. There she was in her semi-private room post-partum, savoring the mystery and wonder of being a mother. Then the woman next to her, also a new mother of a daughter, asked what she, my sister-in-law, had named her baby. "Heather,"she reported. To which her roommate chirped, "Oh, I like that name! I'm going to name my baby Heather, too." And so a rash of Heathers was loosed upon the world in the late 1970s.

Names and naming things came home to me today when an 'emergency' meeting of my Social Science Club 125th anniversary book project committee convened here this afternoon. Our mission: come up with a title. There was urgency about this because a title is required this coming week for press purposes. Had we been naming the next pope or future president of the United States we could not have approached our assignment with more solemnity. Or more total brain freeze.

It is worth noting that in part why the name of this book is so important is because the early members of our club had none. The official record books have the ladies referring to each other solely as Mrs. Henry Somebody or Mrs. Franklin Somebodyelse. No first names. Their identities denied to them then, by their own, unknown to us now because of it.

Ironically, we stumbled on the title we would choose within minutes of convening. But that was too easy. Not just history but our legacy as a venerable women's study group rests on getting it 'right'. So we ignored that one and stewed and fretted and debated and juggled words and phrases for another full hour. Then we came back to it and settled on it like a mother bird on her fragile egg.

Look for it on Amazon in the spring — From Hearth to Horizons: 125 Years of the Social Science Club of Newton. 

So. What do you think? And what do you think the 'from hearth to horizons' phrase suggests?

Truffle: The recently published (albeit in Finland) Fucktionary. The latest  — and most taboo — reference work to hit, well, if not bookshelves then plain paper wrappers. It is just what you might expect, and lots you can't possibly have imagined, from the name. A classic. And co-written by a friend. Mostly in Finish but enough English to make you laugh. And blush. And laugh again.

Quote of the day: "One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody." (Mother Teresa)

 

What price a kingdom?

When it comes to the world of doctors, the prevailing wisdom is: be your own best advocate. But that premise presupposes some basic knowledge. We could begin with a diagnosis. If you don't have one, or it keeps changing like shards in a kaleidoscope, you lack Basic Knowledge 101. It's damned hard to ask the right questions or even google the right ones if you don't know where to begin.

I had high hopes for my first session of physical therapy for my leg. Those hopes were based on enough experience in PT to pass for a test doll. It's my contention that therapists know certainly far more about recovery than any doctor and possibly more about the workings of the human body. But they too need more than just my 1-10 pain standings.

It started out as a broken leg — although the radiologist who read the x-ray in Nantucket at first was unsure about that; he changed his mind when the physician's assistant who examined me was so sure it was a break. Hmmm. Who should have been listening to whom here? Then the orthopedist in Concord said she thought it was not broken but might be a torn ligament. Then the MRI report (the one lost for a week) indicated, the orthopod informed me, a muscle tear. All this hemming and hawing, saying with authority the injury is this, then with equal authority saying it is that, well, it just does not inspire confidence.

My therapist, a young woman whose first language is not English (a flaw when explanations get complicated), said words I've come to fear in medical exams of all sorts: "You are very interesting." That always means they haven't a clue what to do with me and my woe-of-the-moment. Maybe at my next appointment, she offered, she will be able to tell me more, after, that is, she consults with her boss. 

The good news is I'm to hobble around the house without the boot, work to loosen up my ankle that has been immobilized for three weeks and do some calf stretches. I can even try some swimming (if I can figure out how to get to the pool without my feet flying out from under me on the wet surfaces). 

On Monday I'm to bring my x-ray, my MRI and a second shoe (oh, happy day! two shoes at one time!). Maybe in another week's time, after her boss has a chance to review those test images, I'll know those critical basics — what is actually wrong with my leg, how long will it take to recover, when can I start to ramp up my activity level? On the other hand, maybe not.

My kingdom, tiny realm that it is, for an answer, and from that answer, a plan.

Truffle: Secretariat. Not the movie so much — I knew how it was going to come out, after all — as the thrill of the race, the pounding of hooves, those big beautiful bodies flying across the track.

Quote of the day: "Be your own palace, or the world is your jail." (John Donne)

 

 

 

Trying hard

Trying too hard. 

I have a long and radical history of trying too hard. Especially when it comes to doing too much too soon. Why, on the other hand, wait around? How boring is that?

So I stumped into Harvard for my two classes, feeling a modest similarity with Cleopatra — minus the barge and the beauty and the history of sleeping with Caesars. She and I, indeed, only have one thing in common — impatience. Why wait around? For a battle to be lost? A lover to cast one aside? Life to pass one by?

Did you know Cleo was a linguist? So says Plutarch. Did you know Plutarch was a Greek? Did you know Antony, from the moment of falling in lust, could not do anything right? Including killing himself? Maybe he didn't really want to. Maybe it was only a 'gesture' — one that had the distinct disadvantage of internal bleeding.

It is impossible not to love Shakespeare. Even when he's being obtuse. Though is it possible to try too hard in undertaking to 'know' him? How is it that this country boy from Stratford, on the simple stream called Avon, knew about Mediterranean sea battles? The royal Egyptian court? OK, he cribbed from Plutarch for the story line but that still does not explain the detail he achieves in painting the picture of Ceasar's Rome. Or Pompey's Sicily. Or Cleo's Nile. Are answers necessary? Or immaterial? 

So, if I were Cleopatra, minus the purple sails that so perfumed the winds they were lovesick (it doesn't work from my pen but it most surely does from Will's), I would not be waiting around for man nor beast nor dark of night. I'd lasso them all, and reel them in under my own personal spell. Like the fish Cleo has her people affix to Antony's hook.

Oh well. It's a worthy fantasy. But then I am stuck on being stuck. The more I twirl my metaphorical wheels the more I dig myself in. Oh, but it is lovely to be cast back to ancient Rome and Alexandria for  a couple of hours! Of course I try too hard to immerse myself, when immersion comes so readily if only one would let go.

Truffle: Beverly. An unexpected S.O.S., thanks to inclement weather, asking if she could stay with us rather than hole up at an airport hotel to wait out the weather for the trip back to ACK. As I got home, there she was, being delivered on our doorstep by her step-daughter.

Quote of the day: "She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind." (Toni Morrison)

 

Magic wand

I remember when I was nine and my sister took me to her sorority house at the University of Louisville. Later that day I was savoring the memories but I thought, "That was cool. But I will never be that old." She was nineteen.

Today my niece turns 40. Of her generation in our family there is only one person younger, her sister. I recall turning 40. It was a Big Deal. While there had been ominous birthdays before — 25 (a quarter of a century), 30, this one was the first in which I felt the shadow of the scythe. Looking back, half again as many years later, 40 seems positively larval.

I am sure she, my niece, does not feel that way herself. One doesn't on the day one turns 40. Anymore than one turns 50 and says, "Oh, but by today's longevity standards, 50 is the new 40. I am a mere youth." What you think (although this may be a bit extreme) is "I am 18,250 days old. That is, 1,095,000 hours spent on terra firma, a third of them asleep." How could a reckoning like that not make one feel positively ancient?

Still it is sobering for me, as my 60th year winds down, to consider myself a member now in good standing of the venerable club of elders in my family. Made more so by having rocked the cradle of someone now entering her fifth decade on Planet Earth. To say nothing of all those sallow grands trying to stack enough candles on their cake to earn a driver's license. What of them? The babes?

Which brings me to What I Want to Be When I Grow Old. ("I grow old . . . I grow old . . . /I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.")

Once a friend told me I was going to grow up to be one of Nantucket's eccentrics. Along the lines of Madaket Millie. Part of me took offense; part of me, inevitably, was flattered. Better to be known as something than forgotten as nothing. But what kind of eccentric to be? Nothing so dull as a wearer of purple, though purple suits me now. No. The kind of eccentric I wish to be has yet to be invented. I'm making it up as I go along. I want to break a picture window with a rock. I want to ride bareback, naked down Main Street. Any Main Street.

For years I had a collection of little old ladies. They were all inspirations — Edith Neuman, Leona Caroline, Dorothy Holland, Auntie Bee — though hardly eccentric. They taught me that 'old' is a prejudice we all tuck under our arms and carry with us through life. Who, exactly, is old? My sister at 19? Dr. Neuman taking 50 of her friends to Mohonk for a weekend celebration of her 90th? Planning her 100th at Tavern on the Green? 

There are days when I feel positively decrepit — days, such as these now, lugging around a robot's foot. But most of the time, I am eighteen. Perennially, eighteen. It's the impartial secret I carry under the other arm. Like a magic wand.

Truffle: Snuggling under the covers with my love.

Quote of the day: "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?" (Satchel Paige)

 

Eddie

In childhood, he was always Eddie; as a man he insisted on being called Edward. That seemed grand for a life that always seemed stunted by crushing inner self doubt and a kind of thickness. As if the injured soul within was muted by double-paned glass. You could look in and see that there was something there but that something never really found its way out.

Sometime over  the last few days Eddie died. He was found this afternoon by a neighbor. Newspapers and mail piling up. Those classic indicators that usually are reserved for movies and reality TV shows. He was 63. All his life except for childhood and a brief unsuccessful attempt at marriage, he lived alone. He worked at a state mental hospital; he retired. He did a little fishing. He read potboilers. His car and his condo were littered with fast food refuse, cans, junk. Uncertain of himself and of his place in the world, his reclusive tendencies grew as his energy to pretend ebbed.

Eddie grew up loved. He just never believed it. Raised by an aunt and uncle alongside their two natural children from the time he was six (he was orphaned at eight), he was always treated like a sibling not a cousin. But his Eeyore factor was stronger than all the reassurances that family could offer him. Eddie believed he was a loser so he evolved into one. A self-fulfilling prophesy of the most tragic kind.

It's been years since I've seen Eddie. But every time I see his sister, my oldest bestest friend, I ask about him. She called tonight with the news. There aren't many people in the world to call. But I'm one of them. One of the few who would care. She observed to me that she thought Eddie was ready. I believe he was too. Ready for a respite from bitter self-loathing and from a stint on this earth that never seemed fair. Not to him.

Edward Casey, R.I.P.  

Truffle: A viewing of Nowhere Boy, the film of John Lennon's formative years. An intriguing flick that opens up a window on the man John became. But best of all was the stalwart company of two pals who helped make it possible for Gimpie Stout to go to the movies. Thank you Jamie and Stephanie!

Quote of the day: "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." (Plato)