Elder Value

Growing old is not for sissies as Bette Davis said. She said a lot more too, see above.

I was at an event attended by elders last night. One of my hobbies is observing elders in great big bunches, not that they'd notice, I'm pretty good at it. I can be looking at you and listening to something behind me.

The event was a BBQ and we had live music. All the old songs from our teen years, early rock, some country, some Irish, some Newfoundland music.

The conversation at my table (6 around it) focussed on the good old days and how great the parties were then, how perfect the music, how wonderfully we danced, things just weren't the same and the young don't know what they're missing glued to their screens 24/7

I restrain myself. I always do. I want to yell "horseshit" or "bollocks" for I know The Ladies would circulate a petition and have me tossed out of the building.

I was startled a little to see tears in a friend's eyes and I asked her what was wrong and she said the music always brought her back to her dancing days and how sad she was they were gone.

I mentioned that Grandgirl and I share our music every time we meet and that we had played one of her newest finds (Pink's album - fabulous)



and one of mine (Radical Face - equally fabulous)



And of course when our time together is over we have the music to resavour these more recent moments together and also have the opportunity to discuss why we like this music. For instance "Always Gold", a track from Radical Face, reminds me of Missing Daughter and how I long for her return.

The Ladies looked very confused and eyed me as if I had broken out in a foreign language. No response, apart from puzzlement.

My point in this post is that do us elders have values apart from our distant memories? Are we meant to walk around as if we are mere sarcophaguses of our past? Do we not have a capacity to initiate and create present moments?

I have no desire to "fit in" to some proscribed elder formula, sizing up others to see if they are fitting the geezer mould or alternatively breaking out into puzzling and gossip-worthy behaviours which are perceived as strange and alarming.

I'm aware I'm in a minority here.

But I wouldn't change it for anything.

In Sync

Where I live

There's an enormous comfort to being in sync with others, isn't there?

To throw out thoughts and ideas, maybe argue a few points or laugh, or stick in an old jibe (ball-hopping we would call it in my family back in the day)or hang out a favourite old petard to test the temperature.

I looked around the fire last night and there the three of us were, curled up around our individual books, sharing the odd thought or passage with each other, the only sound that of the dog dreaming in little yips at our feet and the crackle of the logs in the fire, sated with a full candlelit meal in our bellies.

I loved cooking breakfast for the three of us this morning. Times are more precious when one realizes they are rare now, with Grandgirl in the middle of 3rd year university, heading off for India in May, still on the Dean's Honours List (her term results came in yesterday, yay!) and Living the Life.

I love how she debates economics and has such a good grasp of the volatile oil prices and their economic effects on all.

Life is good.

Blog Jam

I was up the earliest in the house this morning. I had to go to my office up the road. I took this shot of the bay with its ice fog while still dancing around in my peejays. The warm air and the cold air duking it out. The bay, in all its manifestations, never ceases to enthrall me.

I cruised blogs, sprinkled comments here and there. Most of my favourites never cease to engage me, they get my mind rolling in different directions.

I can't link to all of my reads of today. I'll link to my thoughts instead. I had a cautionary story from one not to rant so much as my elder years pile up on top of me. As I started a bit of a rant in my office today I was reminded of that, I watched the glaze build-up in the eyes of my listeners who were, well, trapped. Captive. I'm their boss. I deserve respect, blah-blah-blah. I remembered the post, put on my brakes and talked resurfacing local roads instead. Phew. Yes, the ranting days are over. Time to do. Time to listen. Hang up the blowing off steam shoes.

Another had a post about motherhood. Surely, there is no monolithic motherhood format, is there? It is what it is in all its complexities. The title of mother does not encompass a one size fits all, surely? I would never think I was very good at it. I did my best. Still do. Like my mother did. And some would say a fulfilled mother, intellectually, emotionally, creatively, is the best kind of mother and a power of example to her daughters and sons. And yes, some of us are thrust into the role before our time. Access to birth-control was non-existent in my girlhood. The whole slut/virgin thing reigned supreme courtesy of a blinkered government with religion as the puppet master. You were supposed to keep your legs crossed until rescued from this appalling spinster state by the White Knight. And many mothers have no choice in working and putting food and clothes on the wee ones' backs, untraceable dad having scarpered four years ago with the babysitter.

A few of my blogmates have broken hearts this season. I grieve for them but know that it is only through my pain I learned the most. About me. And so will they.

I try not to write from privilege. I try and understand and learn and listen. And recognise my own failings and sometimes follow the wisdom of others. I don't always succeed.

I am grateful Daughter and Grandgirl are here with me. Sharing the joys of each others' company, having a good old belly-laugh with each other. Planning a slow-moving holiday season, savouring each precious moment.

I feel very, very fortunate.

But I know that far too many in the world can't say that.

A Stranger's Eyes

I was sharing the following with Grandgirl today. She's here for far too short a spell, she arrived late yesterday and leaves on Tuesday. We did some serious hiking today, capitalizing on the glorious weather. As we were climbing the woodland trail at the back of the property, we both turned to look at the panorama of ocean and forest and distant headlands. I was reminded of a visit from a technician the day before.

We greeted each other like old friends. Us CFAs tend to do that. He nailed my accent as very southern Irish. I nailed his, first time, as Liverpool. I was a friend of a friend of the Beatles. Yes, those ones. Another story for another time. So we shared some backchat. As one does. He was ex-airforce and on the side had his own diving company. He asked me could he walk about outside, it being another Denim Day on the Bay and I agreed. This fine weather has been trailing me since I left here for my trip to Ireland in mid-August and got back here early September. Maybe talking about it now is going to jinx it.

Anyway, as I was saying. Yer man walks about the meadow, then out front to the water then back again up to the barn and then to the Tigeen, shaking his head.

He finally came back in again and said:

"You know you live in Paradise, don't you?"

Well, I do know that. Of course. But lately, that paradise feeling had been overlaid a bit with my stay in West Cork and then the excitement of Grandgirl being here for some days taking precious time away from her second year university courses.

So I told her what the tech had said. And we both stopped to drink in the grandeur and majesty of the my forest trail and the sea off in the distance.

"Sometimes," she said, "We need to revisit our world through a stranger's eyes."

My, How She's Grown!

Daughter is in South America at the moment and Grandgirl is on her VERY OWN (At 17+ OMG!) in their house in Toronto.

I've been talking to her every night. Not checking up on her or anything as I've assured her, but availing myself of the opportunity to have these nightly chats. I restrained myself from laughing out loud the other night when she said:

"Oh boy, Grandma it is so HARD to live by yourself!"

"How so, hon?"

"Well there is so much to do, you just never catch up with it all. I'm exhausted!"

"So tell me?"

"Well there's laundry for starters. Then I had to take the garbage out after sorting it. Then I had to change the kitty litter. And oh yeah, walk the dog and give her her meds. Then I had to decide about dinner and what to nuke up. And yeah pack my lunch for school. AND load the dishwasher and unload it. It never ends!"

"Welcome to the real world, darling."

"But you're forgetting something really important here, Grandma."

"And what's that?"

"On top of all of that I have, like, hours and hours of homework!"

Well I hope Daughter reads this when she gets back.

You think maybe she'll feel more appreciated?

Generation Gap

~~~~~~~~Grandgirl and Ansa playing on the beach.~~~~~~~~

The grandgirl has landed for her two weeks with me. I cherish these times more as the years go by, for the end of her high school years is fast approaching and I think summer jobs and everything that goes with that scenario will end these annual precious days together.

But she surprises me. She always has. She asked me about summer jobs here for next year when she will be sixteen. Maybe at the local golf club. If I were younger I would turn handstands at the idea of her spending the WHOLE SUMMER here. As it is, I look at her soberly, trying to suppress my delight, and tell her, yes I'll check out the contacts I have at the golf course and see what the possibilities are between the proshop, the restaurant and the caddying.

We talk of many things. The books we both enjoy, her new interest in cooking, her recent writing stint - she has written some very interesting stories that she shares with me. And poetry.

We share fresh I-pod additions and she listens with delight to a song my mother sang as a teenager: Little Sir Echo and by the time the last verse rolls around she has it off by heart.

In turn I listen to her rap collection and the new R&B - more like hip-hop to my uneducated ears - and we plan our next day of adventure. This time to Brigus, a marvellous old village, then to a merino farm where I can buy exquisite hand wrought wool and she can play with the animals, and a drop in on Cupids and their 400 year anniversary.

And the generation 'gap' is in our heights, she has now surpassed me by a good two inches. And I was considered tall in my time.

Bastable

There’s something about this picture that’s very important.

It’s about continuity.
It’s about tradition.
It’s about laughter.

It’s about engaging all the senses:
See (me do this)
Touch (the ingredients)
Feel (the light dough between your fingers)
Listen (to the timer on the stove)
Smell (fresh baking).
Taste (fresh from the oven)

It’s about love.

Last night I showed my granddaughter (who's fourteen) what my grandmother showed me:

How to make a Bastable (sometimes spelled Bastible) Cake.

So my grandmother made it in a black lidded pot and hung it on the hook over the open fire.

So I made it in a fancy square pan and baked it in a state of the art modern oven.

But the aroma was the same. The taste was the same.

And the love? What do you think?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


And here's the recipe as I can find no reference on the web, not a Wiki nor a dictionary entry. The name of the cake is taken from the bastable oven, a cast iron covered pot, used in Co. Cork where I was born and raised.

Bastable Cake
2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 ounces butter
½ cup sugar (generous measure)
1 egg, beaten
¼ to ½ cup milk raw or sour.
2 – 3 cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped
Raisins and nuts and/or dried fruit
1 teaspoon cinnamon or cloves(optional)
1 egg beaten with a pinch of salt, to glaze

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl. Rub in the butter with your hands. Add about 1/3 cup of the sugar, the egg and enough milk to form a soft dough. Divide the dough into two pieces. Put one piece onto a greased ovenproof plate or pan (or use greased 8 inch cake tin), and pat out with floured fingers to cover the plate or pan.

Arrange the chopped sweetmeats and cinnamon on top of the dough and sprinkle with the rest of the sugar. Add more sugar if the apples are very tart. Roll out the remaining dough and cover the top. (This is easier said than done, as the dough is like a scone dough and is very soft). Press the sides together, cut a slit through the lid, and brush with the egg wash. Bake for about 40 minutes until golden brown.

Remove from the oven. If using a cake tin, carefully slip the cake out. Cool on a wire rack for 5 – 10 minutes. Dredge with more sugar and serve with soft brown sugar and good heavy cream.

Transition.

It’s a word I’m quite fond of. It seems to envelope me lately, being back in the big city of Toronto ‘n all from my little village in Newfoundland.

I am sorta wearing my grandgirl lately, she packed her bags and landed up here


with me on Wednesday and I dropped her off home today but am picking herself and a pal up tomorrow. We have missed each other most dreadfully. She and pal are going to help me sort out my lockers (my stuff, my stuff, as George Carlin would have it) and then spend overnight up here in this fancy schmancy house I am house-sitting for four months.

I’m in the lap of non-owned luxury here down to the whirlpool tub and monster flat screen TV (my prior opinion confirmed, 400 channels and nothing to watch). Lots of security to protect their stuff. Remote controls everywhere, for light dimming and fireplace tuning and built in speakers everywhere music selection.

I’ve landed smack dab in the midst of someone else’s life. A very respectable life.

Family photos everywhere and well thought out pictures of places visited, hills climbed, mountains skied, seas swum. Being the under-the-rock-peeper that I am, I keep speculating on what secrets they must carry, mother, father and their now adult and living away from home children. One of each naturally. Male child older, naturally. It is so darn perfect this house. A kitchen that belongs to Martha Stewart, bathrooms designed for creative purposes involving candles and expensive lotions. Clean and organized but not neat enough to make you barf. Tilley people I call this couple and their like. You know, lots of khaki clothes and those hats that float and ne’er a cross word passing their lips. Ever.

I think if I had to live this life all the time I would quietly prop myself in a corner and open a vein and bleed out slowly.

Which confirms yet again why I was never marriageable material. I should have taken the alternative plunge at an early age in Ireland and become mistress to a series of wealthy old men who wouldn’t bother me much, being of pre-Viagra vintage, and been indulged in all my mad passions for writing and art and music and travel and eccentric conversation. But in the era I emerged in Ireland, I would have been ex-communicated both by my family and the Church. And that would have bothered me then, being pre-feminist and unenlightened as to the misogynistic ways of the Baby Jaybuzz 'n all and no clue as to the acquiring of the means to provide the afore mentioned lifestyle to, by and all for my little ol'self.


I spent today with a dear friend out in the 'burbs, admiring her new paintings, winding up late in a Scrabble Game in front of the fire with grapes and cheese and polish sausage and really good pale Christmas cake and chai. I am blessed.

And more on R when I process what happened on Tuesday night over dinner.

On the road again...

This time on my way back to the city, much against my desire or wishes but yielding to the plea of my beloved granddaughter for our annual road-trip. I think I will head back in a matter of a month or so to the fair land I've left behind.

Some random observations:

(1) I have a book offer from a publisher, very, very thrilling. A collection of my short stories. However, I am currently suspended in a form of writer's amber. Paralyzed. Numb. Frightened. The realization of a dream is the running up against myself. Now what? My babies toddling off by themselves into the real world with real critics. Lash of noodle on self. Get to it girl, stop the dithering. Stop the distraction of the day-job now. Screw the money. Let go of the fear. Stay in your bliss, in your life-long dream!

(2) A RANT: Why, in this twenty-first century of ours, hasn't some genius perfected the design of the toilet roll holder? With what dread do I enter every single stall of every ferry, every restaurant, every hotel room, to be greeted by kicked in huge plastic containers that hurt someone's fingers one time too many as they scrabbled for a hold on a skinny sheet underneath its deadly saw-edges. Yes, they finally cracked up, whimpered, and took off the stilletto shoe and beat the thing to death, leaving its huge rolls floating on the wet floor. And for variety, the gaping jaws of long empty containers greet me after I have urgently done my business so I am left perched and waiting for a kind soul to enter and pass me something, anything, an old Kleenex from their purse, under the door. The crammed single sheet metal box dispenser that doesn't, is another challenge. The tightly jammed paper will not yield to any type of pressure and is often a victim of a nervous breakdown, beaten to a pulp by an irate user, its contents thrown into an over-flowing toilet. We've come up with the automatic toilet flusher, ditto soap and water dispensers and hand dryers, even automatic paper towel dispensers and we cannot come to grips with a design for a functioning fool-proof dispensing toilet roll??? Come on!!!!

(3) MUSIC: We have a long ride, 3000 klicks, the grandgirl and I. We take turns with the music selections. Some, I'm pleased to report, we agree on (Abba, Beatles, John Denver (John Denver!!!!)Joni Mitchell, Elvis (Long live the King!!)) but I'm up against my own creeping decrepitude on some of her choices. Isn't this the way of the world, though. But yay Nora Jones and Motor Five, not bad, not bad at all.....

(4) SIDEBAR: My beloved niece tells me she has found me a lovely man who is very keen to meet me. This will have to wait as he is a Newfoundlander but has all the criteria that appeals to an ideal me in an ideal world.

More from the road later.

A Surreal Conversation

The one with the ex-husband. That’s the thing when you share children though, there is never too much ex about it. They are always there, this former co-parent. The evidence of our one-time passion being now a grandchild we both adore.

He’s picking up stuff out of my garage for our adult daughter. I’ve just finishing taking a call from my best friend in Dublin, the one who was bridesmaid at our wedding. The one who is my friend for nearly sixty years. The one who was with me on the night he fell in love with me.

‘Helen says hi,’ I say.

‘Next time you talk to her say I said hi back’.

‘How are you,’ I say.

I don’t see him too often, just around our daughter's and granddaughter’s events and his wife is invariably with him. Like now. She is always friendly but a little wary of me. He has obviously shared the blow by blows of the latter acrimonious half of our marriage with her. Many years ago now. The water so far under the bridge it is unmuddied again.

He launches into his latest doctor/hospital/drugs/potential operations saga. I plaster on some polite attention to my face flickering a side-glance of gratitude to his wife. I had forgotten his family legacy of obsessive hypochondria. He will never finish, he will want a cup of tea and tell me more.

We are down to this, I speculate. Every time I see him. I know enough not to wind him up when I ask him how he is, but I forget. Now I have ignited his compulsive need to tell me his medical troubles and never ask one question of me. Never speak of our other estranged daughter in Ireland who has detached like a free-floating balloon from us. Who loved him more than she loved me. How his heart must be breaking more than mine. This child that carried a tool belt just like his and followed him around like a shadow. That took him to her kindergarten for ‘show and tell’ and announced proudly, ‘this is my daddy’.

He talks on and on of maybe they will have to break his breastbone to get this peculiar growth off his thyroid and my mind drifts off to our brave emigration on one of the last liners out of Ireland. How he never tired of my guitar playing or my singing. How I never tired of his story telling to put me to sleep when I was lonely for my family. How he never tired of holding me or stroking my back. How he dried my hair like a mother just about every morning of our marriage. How I went to every single one of his rugby games when he was a huge strapping footballer. How he went to every single stage show I was in, no matter how small the part.

How we wept together over the first pregnancy that ended in a horrible miscarriage. How we stared for hours, through our tears, at a picture of an unborn foetus and named our unborn child.

How sometimes, after a night out, we didn’t want to go home and deal with baby sitters and domestic matters and would pull over to the side of the road and make love like teenagers.

And I finally say, gently: ‘I hate to cut this short, but I have work to do.’

And I smile at him and tell him good luck with his surgery and I thank his wife. And mean it.

And I carefully roll my memories up the wood steps and back into my office.