Star Stuff

We've been streaming documentaries about how the universe works and physics beyond Einstein and I've been listening to Richard Feynman on Audiobooks lately.  It's fascinating stuff.  Frankly, I don't understand it at all, but it gives me lots of grist for random philosophical thoughts.

For example: I love the idea that we are made up of star matter and that the cells in our bodies are constantly renewing themselves.  I forget how fast this happens, but all the cells in our bodies are completely different from the cells we had just recently.  The man who said that mentioned how amazing it is that we stay the same even though we have no single cell in common with those we were made of a few days ago.

I've also been sorting, scanning and publishing all the slides my dad left behind.  They go back more than 60 years and there are a lot of them. I can tell you personally that MY cells have not been replicating themselves exactly for the last 60 years.  There is a big difference!  It might be a gradual evolution, but I'm definitely not the same person I was.  Looking at the photo of me beside the fossil "zebra" I found in 1965, you can easily believe that young girl shares no cell with me.

I'm clearly not the same collection of cells as this high school graduate in 1969 either.  Oddly, we have almost the same hairstyle...

You can see more of my family photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/j4zberg if you are interested.

This idea that I move through the universe as a random, loosely connected, bunch of atoms with a bit of consciousness intrigues me.  This bunch of atoms will someday loose their cohesiveness and that flicker of consciousness will shuffle off this mortal coil and um do something else.  (Or not.)

This bunch of atoms I call me landed here and has been traveling through the illusion of time for a bit, but it is closer to the end of this interlude than the beginning.  I'm thinking a lot about that since my 60th birthday.

My parents both were very active into their 80's and I hope to follow in their footsteps.  My mom is still running things, but you can't deny she's slowing down.  So I think it is safe to say I probably have a few decades left in me.  But I'm about 75% done.

Or maybe I'm just 75% ready for the next big thing.

Doing The Math

60 next week.  Ak.  Actually, my knees are 60, the rest of me is still 45.  (Thank you Edgar of BoRics on Ashland near Diversey.)

Charley's cancer really solidified our resolve to figure out what we REALLY want to do in this life.  The goal is for him to retire next summer and for us both to begin doing something that brings us satisfaction and a moderate income.  It's a lot riskier doing something like this at our age with The Sam Factor than it was when we were young and unencumbered.  On the other hand, it may be our last chance to risk everything for a dream. I remember sociologist Tony Campolo once cited a survey of 80 year olds who said their greatest regret was about some opportunity or risk not taken.  So we are getting serious about this.  We're probably going to be 80 in 20 years.  Or 35 years.

The thought that has been repeatedly coming to me is that I am not a beginner.  I have done and learned a lot of things over the decades.  No really.  A LOT.  I'm not starting from scratch.  So all my experience must add up to something, I just have to do the math.

Sadly, math is not my strongest subject!

To get a handle on what/who I am, I've been going over my journals.  This in itself is weird.  I write journals feverishly at times and then not at all for years.  I keep them mostly because we have a house and there's room.  I never actually planned to look at them again.  All I really planned to do with them was destroy them before I die.  But turns out they are very interesting.  (What a narcissist!)  There are several themes that run as far back as the journals.

I love:
Creativity - making lace, jewelry, knitting, general craft stuff.  Music - singing, string instruments, penny whistle, odd percussion instruments from all over the world (http://www.propane.pro/tanks/the-propane-tank-recycled-for-the-drum-circle-0211/).  The wisdom of people with cognitive disabilities.  Children. Learning something (anything) new.

I have a very love/hate relationship with my interpersonal skills; but I am a good leader and a good listener and perhaps a good teacher.  Listening makes me insightful because I can synthesize what I hear from different people, or the same person at different times, into a single thought.  I'd probably be good at negotiation, except I wouldn't like to spend a lot of time in the same room with angry people.

Listening also helps me notice when two people are arguing about two totally different subjects.  Sometimes I can notice this even when one of the people arguing is me! It's a very odd experience and one I really don't know what to do about in the moment it occurs.  It is usually best to first agree with the other person - since their point really has nothing to do with mine - and then cautiously restate my point.  It's funny how often arguments are not about what the participants think they are about.

My journals also point out that I have a lot of fear which is mostly nutty and keeps me from making my dream into a goal.

And I like to write about the philosophy of me.

I don't know what this adds up to, but at least I've defined the value of X.

Experiments For Further Reflection on the eve of my 60th birthday:

1: Charley is going to buy me a ukelele  (I think I'll get a tenor, it has more tuning options)
2: I'm going to go to the beach with my grandchildren and try to blow giant bubbles like this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i-zYdOPG2k
3: With my friend Lawrence from Esperanza (http://www.esperanzacommunity.org) I'm going to paint a picture of "Helen's Bird" as part of the project "Dynamic Duos: Works in Collaboration" which will be displayed in October as part of Chicago Artists Month.

Walt Whitman

Darest thou now O soul,

Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?

No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not O soul,
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
All waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible land.

Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.

Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.

Found this poem by Walt Whitman on the back of vinyl record - Ralph Vaughn Williams put it to music.  When Charley read it to me, I thought he was sayingn "Old Soul" which makes a very poignant kind of sense.  I am reminded again that the path to enlightenment and the path to acceptance of death are very, very similar.  Both can be very good.  Or not.

This Modern World (by an old woman)

What does it mean when your son says, "I love you mom, you are important to me.  You should follow me on Twitter."?  On the one hand, by reading his blog, subscribing to his videos and pictures on YouTube and Flickr and following his Tweets, I am privy to his passions and thoughts.  I, along with the rest of the world, can know him more intimately than I know practically anyone.  But he still won't return my calls or answer my e-mails.  It's a one sided intimacy unless I also tweet and blog - and he takes the time to read them.  Even THEN it's not what I would call a relationship.  It's more of a narcissist's version of relationship.  "I imagine that the whole world is more interested in me than I am in them".  I can think of lots of psychobabble reasons why this is good.  Self disclosure, "I" statements.  But there isn't a real two-way conversation, just two separate streams of consciousness.


While I appreciate that my talented, overstressed son has little time in his day to day life to chat with me, I still miss our long, rambling conversations about nothing at all.  Who am I kidding?  I don't have time for those either.  


It was a rare and precious luxury to have him here the past few days.  We talked about the relative merits of the Tennant vs Brannaugh Hamlets, of Pyrimus and Dido and Cicero.  We talked about the movie "The Tree of Life" (which he saw and I didn't because Sam was too loud in his appreciation of the dinosaurs.)  We translated French songs, discussed European linguistics and demise of critical thinking.  We played music, badly and he and his Dad (and Sam) tried to teach me syncopation.  I showed him my garden and he showed me his new android tablet.   These are discussions that take hours without children.  Neither of us often have that.  It was wonderful.  We didn't spend much time talking about our problems.  We didn't really need to.  I feel closer to him than I have in years and it's like a piece of my heart has come home.  He's gone back to Portland now, and I've got to get back to my real life.  So I signed up for Twitter and I am following Ben, and, at his suggestion, George Takai, Wil Wheaton, Stephen Fry, and the Daily Show.  


Blogs and Tweets are better than nothing.  But rambling, pointless conversations are better than anything.

Am I Too Old to Say OMG?!!!

I'm reading a novel which features a pair of "Elderly Oxford Dons".  I was startled to realize that they are the same age as Charley!  Which means, parenthetically, (or should I say Grandparenthetically) they are a year YOUNGER than myself!  The novel I read before this one was "Gaudy Night" by Dorothy Sayers and I'm realizing for the first time that the Dean of Shrewsbury College could be about 30 years younger than I am!  Well, she has been in her thirties since before I was born, so the first time I read "Gaudy Night" she was much older than me.  Does that make me feel better or worse?

I'm ELDERLY for crying out loud!

I told a friend of mine that I will turn 60 in August and she was shocked.  She said, "I had no idea you were so old.  I thought you were in your 40's!"  

"So did I!"  I responded.  I am totally surprised to suddenly find myself in this situation.  If "50 is the new 30", then I am about to turn 40 a second time and perhaps that's not so bad...

I'm fortunate to have a group of close friends who make "Elderly" look fabulous.  One of them hikes around Australia and muses about moving closer to her children at some distant future point when she gets old.  All of them live full and interesting lives.  Then there's my mother, who moved into a retirement community 6 years ago but hasn't allowed that to slow her down.  Well, maybe just a little.  I remember when my great Aunt Ruth was her age.  My mom would call me and say, "I'm so worried about Aunt Ruth.  She's slowing down."  And then tell a story about Aunt Ruth getting a speeding ticket.  When Aunt Ruth moved into a retirement community she was 90 and she wrote me a letter about the attractive men there!  So I imagine I have quite a few active elderly years ahead of me.

On the other hand, here's a limit to how far you can travel with the old saw about "You are only as old as you feel."  I mean there are things which, no matter how young I FEEL, it would be ludicrous for me to do.  Surfing comes to mind.  And coloring my hair platinum blond.  At my age, platinum blond would look more like Grandma Moses than Marilyn Monroe.  I notice my skin is getting drier and my hands are more wrinkly, but beyond that and some "creakiness" about my joints, I'm not deteriorating physically too much.  I still need to lose weight and exercise more, but that's the story of my life and has nothing to do with being elderly.  


So what's the big deal about "elderly"?  I think it is the fact that I'm much closer to the end of my story than the beginning.  It's been a really good story, all in all, and it's probably got some great chapters ahead of it, but I can see that the bookmark is moving much closer to the back cover and I don't want it to end just yet.  


I like to read my favorite books over and over again.  But I only get to go through MY story once.  This is probably the reason people write memoirs - or blogs.  

Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live and act and serve the future hour;
And if, as towards the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower
We feel that we are greater than we know.
- William Wordsworth The River Duddon, 1820

History

Prostate Cancer update:  Charley's back at school and doing okay.  It turns out that the biopsy of his prostate showed a tiny bit of much more aggressive cancer than the original biopsy showed.  It was very localized and the blood test at one month showed he had no cancer in his body.  So that means he was probably right to have his entire prostate removed.

On the other hand, recovery is a lot worse than we had been told by the doctor and his nurse.  It's a lot worse than most of our well-wishers predicted.  "Oh my uncle, brother, neighbor had that done and it was no problem at all."  I think that uncles, brothers and neighbors don't like to complain to people outside their immediate family.  That is understandable.  But what I don't understand is why the hospital educational system was so misleading.  For example, they told us many times that it would be 3 to 6 weeks before he was back at work.  He was in no condition to go back to work at 3 weeks.  He's a teacher, not a brick layer or something.  He does have to stand all day, but he doesn't have to pick up heavy things.  Even so there was no way he could go back at 3 weeks.  

Even at 4 weeks, it was difficult, but he went back.  This was partly because he was worried about work and partly because he was spurred on by the "3-6 weeks" prediction.  He figured that he was still at the young end of people who have prostate cancer, so he "should" be on the short end of the recovery spectrum.  When he went back to the hospital on Wednesday of week 4, the nurse asked him when he thought he'd be ready to return to work.  She was surprised to learn that he was already back.  None of the other guys who had the surgery the week he did had returned to work yet.  So he IS at the short end of the recovery spectrum, but why in the world did they say 3 - 6 weeks if it's really 4-8 or even 6-10?  That's just one example of their overly optimistic predictions.  The entire process of recovery has been much more difficult and painful than predicted.  Post-surgical catheter care is a whole other story and not a pretty one!

It was actually quite nice to have him home.  I wonder how much of this was due to having 3 weeks away from school and how much of it was the shock of facing his own mortality.  Whatever the reason, we had a chance to notice that we still really like each other!  We spend so much time getting through life that it's hard to take time to notice why we are doing it and with whom we are traveling.

I've known Charley since I was 15 and we've been a couple pretty much since we met.  I'm going to be 60 in August, so that's 45 years!  He really is my "Life Partner."  It was lovely to have the time to talk about that and talk about plans for the future without him jumping up to go to work or to work downstairs on lesson plans and IEPs.  

Life is really hard and unpredictable.  It's that way for everyone of us.  It's easier if you go through it with a friend.

Happy New Year

Happy 2011.  This is the year that I turn 60 and I have three grandchildren.  I think that endows me with certain inalienable rights among which are the right to rebel against certain absurdities.  Why we do things is sometimes more important than what we do.

For example, there was this young priest who took over his first parish in northern Minnesota - or maybe it was Saskatchewan.  After he celebrated his first Christmas Eve Midnight Vigil, he noticed a certain growing resentment on the part of his rural parishioners.  So he went to his deacon and asked him what the trouble was.  

"Well frankly, Father, many of us are having trouble getting used to your new ways.  We aren't used to these shorter rites."  The priest asked him to explain further and the deacon explained, "Well, many of us missed the way the old priest used to bless the church at midnight during the Christmas Eve Vigil." 

Bless the church?  The young priest had never heard of this, so he went to to see the old priest in the retirement community which was now his home.  After an hour or so of discussing various parishioners, their children and cattle, the old priest asked, "And how are you settling in, young man?"  This was the opening he had been waiting for and the young priest asked for an explanation of the rite of blessing the church during the Christmas Eve Vigil.

After staring at him blankly a few moments, a smile dawned on the wrinkled old face.  "That old church is so cold and drafty!" He explained.  "Even in mid-summer I got cold.  But Christmas Vigil was the worst!  So before I began to celebrate Eucharist, I used to go over to the radiator and warm my hands!"

Or there were three generations of women who passed on family traditions faithfully.  As each one got older, her daughter would take over the task of preparing the Christmas Dinner for the extended family.  Each mother carefully taught her daughter all the family secret recipes.  As the youngest daughter was being inducted into the mysteries, she was told, among other things, that it was important to cut off the end of the Christmas Ham before putting it in the oven.  "Why?" she asked, bringing the proceedings to a screeching halt.

"Because you'll ruin it if you don't." Said her mother.  "Isn't that right, mom?"  


"I don't know," replied the grandmother, "That's just the way it's done."


"But why?" asked the rebellious daughter.  "Let's go ask Great-grandmother."  So they went out into the living room where Great-grandmother sat in state, knitting, of course, and asked her why it was so important to cut off the end of the Christmas ham.

"Because" she told them, "my old wood burning stove was so small the whole ham didn't fit in."

So back to being almost 60.  I'm old enough to start asking why and stop worrying about the "Right way."  Well, maybe I've always been a little that way, but I'm going to be a lot MORE that way from now on.  

Beginning with knitting.  Why do we pull from the center?  It's a neat little magic trick that goes wrong about as often as it goes right.  But why do we do it? I just spent 40 minutes trying to find an end that didn't come out of the center smoothly.  I'm done.  The only reasonable reason I can think of for pulling from the center is if I'm knitting with a double strand and only have one ball.  Otherwise, I'm knitting from the outside from now on.  


If I want magic, I'll buy a Fushigi.