In the opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the poet says that he found himself in the middle of his life, lost in a dark forest (una selva oscura) with no clear pathway through it. It’s usually accepted that he was describing what we in our modern, label-applying world would call a mid-life crisis.
We all know about the mid-life crisis—that nasty little time in our forties where we look at our lives and say “My God! Is this all I am ever going to be?” People do radical and imprudent things while in its clutches. This is when stockbrokers become piano players and marriages break up. Stressful? Of course. Predictable? Probably. But the thing about the midlife crisis is that it is self-made. That makes it controllable—sooner or later. It’s as if the mid-lifer is suffering from buyer’s remorse. He or she wants to revisit choices made in the throes of youth and maybe go back for a refund.
As angst-ridden as the mid-life crisis may be, however, it is nowhere as shattering as the crisis that awaits at 65. If I could, I would tell Dante that if he thought the midlife forest was dark and confusing, it’s nothing to the one waiting for him twenty years in the future. The senior forest makes the younger one look like a thicket.
The senior crisis is more complex and darker because it is a combination of many factors. There is physical reality: even the most fit bodies need tune-ups. There is emotional reality: families are grown, children have families of their own, friends move away or die. There is economic and professional reality: careers end and professional relationships are lost. There is external reality as well: people often start treating seniors as if becoming older also means becoming incompetent. Speaking for myself, I can more or less deal with the first realities. It’s the external one that I find the most difficult. It brings out the worst in me.
I want to snarl when I come across assumptions about and condescension to elders. If you look for them, they are as ubiquitous as the senior discount. I saw it the other day in a doctor’s office. “We don’t give out instructions about what to expect after surgery,” we were told by the surgeon. “Patients might read the possible side effects, convince themselves they have the symptoms, and the phones would be tied up.” Substitute senior for patient and a picture emerges of seniors (the practice serves senior clients) as garrulous hypochondriacs, chronic phone huggers to be treated as children with cheerful firmness, and worriers not to be bothered with details they probably wouldn’t understand anyway. The words patronizing bastard rose to my lips but I didn’t say them. It wasn’t my appointment. God help him if he ever gets me as a patient.
I turn 65 this year and I’m pissed off about it. Maybe that’s my 65 crisis. I don’t want to find my way through the forest. I want to burn it down. I am not comforted by being told that I should be joyous that I have written two books—after all, I’m told smugly, I should be proud that I’ve accomplished them. The words at your age cling like smoke to the mock admiration. Hell, if they’re so great, why aren’t they best sellers? Sure I have a Ph.D. in English and I earned it. But if that’s so wonderful, why couldn’t I get a job when I applied at Barnes and Noble?
I have no idea at this point what to do with myself. I hoped that writing would give me dignity and a role in life. But I am not a retiring Emily Dickinson. I write to be read. And I don’t write the lurid chainsaw murder stories that seem to sell these days. I once tried writing a Harlequin Romance. I couldn’t write to the genre. I kept trying to turn the flimsy structure into some intense exploration of life. I respect the authors who can do it. I can’t.
So here I am, thrashing about in that dark selva oscura looking either for a pathway or a match. But even as I do that, I realize that pathway may not exist. We may all have to take a machete and cut our own ways. I suspect that as we do so, the world will have little advice to help us and many will try to take advantage of our plight. Bette Davis was right: old age is not for sissies. I suppose finding purpose will be the great challenge of turning 65 and dealing with what follows.
All I can say in the meantime is noli nothis permittere te terere—don’t let the bastards wear you down.
Please feel free to comment either below or e-mail at dianamdeluca@aol.com. My website is www.dmdeluca.com
Friday, May 23, 2008
Saturday, May 10, 2008
If Only We Knew Then
Our friends Nancy and Peter in Colorado Springs recently had a problem. The manufacturer of their refrigerator had thoughtfully saved himself a few dollars by using a plastic tube to connect their ice maker to the water tap. Over time the plastic did what plastic does. It got brittle and leaked. For most of us (including Sid and me), the leak from these plastic tubes produces a drip in the basement and the weary realization that the plastic must be replaced with the copper it should have always had.
For Nancy and Peter, however, the result was not only catastrophic but life-threatening. The leak from their ice maker was a flood rather than a drip. It soaked the floor in their kitchen and living room, ruined the carpet, and inched up their cabinets and walls. The worst though was when the inspectors came to see what needed to be done. They made that most dire of discoveries. The house contained asbestos. All of a sudden, a repair became a job for the hazardous material squad who sealed off the house. Nancy and Peter had no access to their house for weeks and have spent their time living in their RV on their driveway.
Asbestos was a common building material when the house was built. It was great to put in floors to contain a fire in the basement from reaching upper levels or catching the roof on fire. The trouble was its effect on human lungs, which no one knew at the time. It was like the other things whose dangers came to light long after an entire generation had been exposed. My mother, for example, had an ironing board cover that I think had asbestos in it. We were probably safe since she never had any reason to cut the fabric to fit anything. But we had no idea there might have been a problem.
Then there was DDT, the miracle pesticide that was used freely to kill insects. Unfortunately, as we learned from Rachel Carson, it killed off nearly everything else as well. I shudder when I remember the spray cans with the plunger attached to one end. And the dry cleaning fluids that are now banned. And the insecticide bombs that we used in Hawaii to try to control the roaches. And the harmful effects of using lead in paint. And the formaldehyde that we now learn is used in the production of RVs—our new RV has block letters saying that it is not designed for full time living. We thought it meant that the appliances would wear out. Now I guess it means that fumes might make us ill. Our RV has now become a toy that we are supposed to use sparingly with all the windows open.
Of course, all these now-seen ills were meant to provide some good. I have particular memories of the old shoe-fitting fluoroscopes. Anyone who was alive in the forties and fifties will remember them. They looked like a box with viewing portals. You inserted your feet into the opening at the lower part of the box and could look down onto the skeleton of the foot and the outline of the shoe. It was meant to show a parent whether a child’s shoe fit properly. We kids loved them. I liked to look at my feet and wiggle my toes. What I didn’t know and probably wouldn’t have cared about was that I was standing on an x-ray tube. No one seems to have contracted bone cancer in the foot from them, but since it turned out that they were leaking radiation, the salesclerks apparently had far more exposure than was healthy. They were banned in the US in the 1950s but continued to be used in Europe. I guess Europeans were less worried or have tougher feet.
I suppose there will always be a perfect hind-sight when it comes to harmful things. Thirty years ago, cigarette smoking was more acceptable and less understood. We are now starting to understand the effect of additives, antibiotics, and steroids in our food—heaven only knows what lurks in our bodies courtesy of unseen things in our food supply. Most recently, we have learned that those pretty plastic bottles may be leaching carcinogens into whatever is put in them. Given this, it seems to me that the challenge is how to deal quickly with what we learn. The unfortunate part is that our manufacturers usually hire lobbyists and lawyers to dispute the findings rather than adjust their processes in the interests of public health.
Somebody owes Nancy and Peter and their insurance agency a huge apology. It has cost $63,000 so far (still counting) to restore them to their home. Undoubtedly their insurance rates will rise and maybe they will even have to find another carrier (such being the way of the world). All so the manufacturer could save a few dollars’ worth of copper tube.
It’s enough to make those of us with radiated feet cry out for mercy.
For Nancy and Peter, however, the result was not only catastrophic but life-threatening. The leak from their ice maker was a flood rather than a drip. It soaked the floor in their kitchen and living room, ruined the carpet, and inched up their cabinets and walls. The worst though was when the inspectors came to see what needed to be done. They made that most dire of discoveries. The house contained asbestos. All of a sudden, a repair became a job for the hazardous material squad who sealed off the house. Nancy and Peter had no access to their house for weeks and have spent their time living in their RV on their driveway.
Asbestos was a common building material when the house was built. It was great to put in floors to contain a fire in the basement from reaching upper levels or catching the roof on fire. The trouble was its effect on human lungs, which no one knew at the time. It was like the other things whose dangers came to light long after an entire generation had been exposed. My mother, for example, had an ironing board cover that I think had asbestos in it. We were probably safe since she never had any reason to cut the fabric to fit anything. But we had no idea there might have been a problem.
Then there was DDT, the miracle pesticide that was used freely to kill insects. Unfortunately, as we learned from Rachel Carson, it killed off nearly everything else as well. I shudder when I remember the spray cans with the plunger attached to one end. And the dry cleaning fluids that are now banned. And the insecticide bombs that we used in Hawaii to try to control the roaches. And the harmful effects of using lead in paint. And the formaldehyde that we now learn is used in the production of RVs—our new RV has block letters saying that it is not designed for full time living. We thought it meant that the appliances would wear out. Now I guess it means that fumes might make us ill. Our RV has now become a toy that we are supposed to use sparingly with all the windows open.
Of course, all these now-seen ills were meant to provide some good. I have particular memories of the old shoe-fitting fluoroscopes. Anyone who was alive in the forties and fifties will remember them. They looked like a box with viewing portals. You inserted your feet into the opening at the lower part of the box and could look down onto the skeleton of the foot and the outline of the shoe. It was meant to show a parent whether a child’s shoe fit properly. We kids loved them. I liked to look at my feet and wiggle my toes. What I didn’t know and probably wouldn’t have cared about was that I was standing on an x-ray tube. No one seems to have contracted bone cancer in the foot from them, but since it turned out that they were leaking radiation, the salesclerks apparently had far more exposure than was healthy. They were banned in the US in the 1950s but continued to be used in Europe. I guess Europeans were less worried or have tougher feet.
I suppose there will always be a perfect hind-sight when it comes to harmful things. Thirty years ago, cigarette smoking was more acceptable and less understood. We are now starting to understand the effect of additives, antibiotics, and steroids in our food—heaven only knows what lurks in our bodies courtesy of unseen things in our food supply. Most recently, we have learned that those pretty plastic bottles may be leaching carcinogens into whatever is put in them. Given this, it seems to me that the challenge is how to deal quickly with what we learn. The unfortunate part is that our manufacturers usually hire lobbyists and lawyers to dispute the findings rather than adjust their processes in the interests of public health.
Somebody owes Nancy and Peter and their insurance agency a huge apology. It has cost $63,000 so far (still counting) to restore them to their home. Undoubtedly their insurance rates will rise and maybe they will even have to find another carrier (such being the way of the world). All so the manufacturer could save a few dollars’ worth of copper tube.
It’s enough to make those of us with radiated feet cry out for mercy.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Bare Ruin'd Guarantees
My very close friend, Kimi, once told me that we are not born with any guarantees. I’ve decided that when it comes to good things happening in our lives, that is just so. But since those margarita days of college, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are guarantees after all.
Some things we already know will happen as we grow older—or at least we think we do. We know that older people lose some degree of hearing. This is nothing new. Back in 1588, people used wooden hearing aids made in the shape of animal ears (mule deer perhaps?); a hundred years later, people were using ear trumpets. With the noise and chatter of our world, even more of us are probably in trouble. One UK study suggested that 50% of us will require some kind of hearing aid. We also know that a good percentage of older folk lose some of their sense of smell, and with it the loss of taste (pass the pepper, please). Time takes its toll on eyesight: by forty most people need some form of refraction to see up close (I have little sympathy as I’ve worn glasses since I was 16) and extra lubrication for contact lenses. It also has a role in losing bone, which requires ever more elaborate schemes to save our teeth and keep our hips together.
These things we know, these things we can hope to avoid to some extent by taking the pharmacy of pills and procedures advertised on television, these things we can smugly put off worrying about until approaching the witching hour of 60, and these things we can joke about while in the midst of dealing with them. The devil is in the details, though, meaning that many things we don’t even know about are lurking out there with the almost certain assurance that we will meet with them at some point in our lives.
Take a colonoscopy, for example. This delightful procedure begins for most people at 50. In my case it started in my forties because I am high risk through family history and now repeats every few years. With each passing colonosocopy, the chances of finding something are climbing skyward. It’s the law of averages. Cataracts are another example. While people in their forties and fifties can get them, it’s after 60 that—as one study delicately puts it—cataracts start robbing vision. What the studies don’t say is that just as the intrusion on vision goes up, the possibility of side effects for older people goes up as well. They don’t tell you that. Then there are the things we all take pills for—the indigestion as stomach acid slips back past loosening muscles, the cholesterol levels that hint at the possibilities of stroke, and the thyroid replacement for the inevitable decline of the thyroid gland.
Some other, exciting things are sex-specific. As women age, they must deal with the decline of hormones. For a while, it seemed that hormone replacement was the fountain of youth but it turned out to cause more problems than it solved. Once through menopause, all sorts of fun little things happen including the run on the bathroom after a sneeze. Men have their own challenges with enlarging prostates that are guaranteed to happen after a certain age and with abdominal aortic aneurisms that are predictable between the ages of 60 and 80.
It’s not a comforting picture to understand that the beauty and health we all had as young people slips away in predictable stages. It makes the argument for us to enjoy every day in every way before we become, as Shakespeare puts it, “Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” It also makes the case for the ability to laugh and a strong sense of the ridiculous.
Yes, Kimi, we are born with guarantees. Just not what we would like to have.
Some things we already know will happen as we grow older—or at least we think we do. We know that older people lose some degree of hearing. This is nothing new. Back in 1588, people used wooden hearing aids made in the shape of animal ears (mule deer perhaps?); a hundred years later, people were using ear trumpets. With the noise and chatter of our world, even more of us are probably in trouble. One UK study suggested that 50% of us will require some kind of hearing aid. We also know that a good percentage of older folk lose some of their sense of smell, and with it the loss of taste (pass the pepper, please). Time takes its toll on eyesight: by forty most people need some form of refraction to see up close (I have little sympathy as I’ve worn glasses since I was 16) and extra lubrication for contact lenses. It also has a role in losing bone, which requires ever more elaborate schemes to save our teeth and keep our hips together.
These things we know, these things we can hope to avoid to some extent by taking the pharmacy of pills and procedures advertised on television, these things we can smugly put off worrying about until approaching the witching hour of 60, and these things we can joke about while in the midst of dealing with them. The devil is in the details, though, meaning that many things we don’t even know about are lurking out there with the almost certain assurance that we will meet with them at some point in our lives.
Take a colonoscopy, for example. This delightful procedure begins for most people at 50. In my case it started in my forties because I am high risk through family history and now repeats every few years. With each passing colonosocopy, the chances of finding something are climbing skyward. It’s the law of averages. Cataracts are another example. While people in their forties and fifties can get them, it’s after 60 that—as one study delicately puts it—cataracts start robbing vision. What the studies don’t say is that just as the intrusion on vision goes up, the possibility of side effects for older people goes up as well. They don’t tell you that. Then there are the things we all take pills for—the indigestion as stomach acid slips back past loosening muscles, the cholesterol levels that hint at the possibilities of stroke, and the thyroid replacement for the inevitable decline of the thyroid gland.
Some other, exciting things are sex-specific. As women age, they must deal with the decline of hormones. For a while, it seemed that hormone replacement was the fountain of youth but it turned out to cause more problems than it solved. Once through menopause, all sorts of fun little things happen including the run on the bathroom after a sneeze. Men have their own challenges with enlarging prostates that are guaranteed to happen after a certain age and with abdominal aortic aneurisms that are predictable between the ages of 60 and 80.
It’s not a comforting picture to understand that the beauty and health we all had as young people slips away in predictable stages. It makes the argument for us to enjoy every day in every way before we become, as Shakespeare puts it, “Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” It also makes the case for the ability to laugh and a strong sense of the ridiculous.
Yes, Kimi, we are born with guarantees. Just not what we would like to have.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Choice and the Ice Cream Tub
The economic news hasn’t been so good lately. It seems the American consumer is finally not responding to the urgent cries to spend, spend, spend. Chuck used to say that it’s impossible to spend oneself rich. He was referring specifically to me when I’d come home with my “bargains” from the sales. But he was right. Only the government benefits when we spend. They get the taxes, we get the bill. Yet only by spending do we keep the multiple and overlapping businesses that support our supposed need for “choice.”
I was reminded of this the other day when I went to the supermarket to buy ice cream. I found myself confronted by a freezer case of choice that stretched from the front of the store to the rear. It’s not a small store, so you get the idea.
Walking down the freezer cases was like watching a procession of precedence. First came the big boys. The Ben and Jerry’s and the company with the nonsensical name of Haagen Daas. These gourmet ice creams justify their cost by butter fat, fancy names for the flavors, and a hovering air of exclusivity. They are competing not only with each other but with the 38 flavors of Baskin Robbins.
Then came the middle brands, things like Meadowgold and Breyers. Their marketing strategy is basically the same. They have the same basic flavors (bland) and try to differentiate themselves in one of the two ways. They either try to underprice one another or second guess America’s current dietary preoccupations be they for light, fat-free, or even for sorbet or frozen yogurt. In the case of the latter, it's to the point that I can't predict whether something will be there the next time I go in. Sid says that one way to know if something's working is that the next time you look for it, it's been changed. It's also the mark of something that's not working. Innovation rules.
The result of all this "choice" and innovation is a conglomeration of brands with little to choose between them except for the huge difference between the full cream brands and the ones that imply we can enjoy the product without paying for it in calories. This is a case where the idea of choice has gone mad--at least I think so.
I know I could be writing about almost any other product and I know that the principle of competition is supposed to hold prices down. But how many brands of anything do we need? Especially when some of those brands are made in some central place out of state and come laden with preservatives so they don't harden, dry out, thicken, or go stale before they reach our supermarket shelves? Someone once told me that they use the same preservatives for food as they do to embalm bodies. To be very British, that proper put the wind up me.
I suppose that I’m remembering Forte’s Café on the Hove Seafront. We had the choice of vanilla, vanilla with fruit, and strawberry. The ice cream was great. I’m not at all sure that having ice cream in the flavors of mango fruitie-tootie, latte frappaccino, and walnut parfait, has made my life richer. The older I get, in fact, the less I am entraced with choice.
I imagine that all these ice cream producers may become victims of America’s slow down in spending. Ice cream is, after all, somewhat expendable. If that’s the case, I look forward to not going in to the supermarket and feeling like a predator looking at a school of fish when I go down the ice cream section.
I was reminded of this the other day when I went to the supermarket to buy ice cream. I found myself confronted by a freezer case of choice that stretched from the front of the store to the rear. It’s not a small store, so you get the idea.
Walking down the freezer cases was like watching a procession of precedence. First came the big boys. The Ben and Jerry’s and the company with the nonsensical name of Haagen Daas. These gourmet ice creams justify their cost by butter fat, fancy names for the flavors, and a hovering air of exclusivity. They are competing not only with each other but with the 38 flavors of Baskin Robbins.
Then came the middle brands, things like Meadowgold and Breyers. Their marketing strategy is basically the same. They have the same basic flavors (bland) and try to differentiate themselves in one of the two ways. They either try to underprice one another or second guess America’s current dietary preoccupations be they for light, fat-free, or even for sorbet or frozen yogurt. In the case of the latter, it's to the point that I can't predict whether something will be there the next time I go in. Sid says that one way to know if something's working is that the next time you look for it, it's been changed. It's also the mark of something that's not working. Innovation rules.
The result of all this "choice" and innovation is a conglomeration of brands with little to choose between them except for the huge difference between the full cream brands and the ones that imply we can enjoy the product without paying for it in calories. This is a case where the idea of choice has gone mad--at least I think so.
I know I could be writing about almost any other product and I know that the principle of competition is supposed to hold prices down. But how many brands of anything do we need? Especially when some of those brands are made in some central place out of state and come laden with preservatives so they don't harden, dry out, thicken, or go stale before they reach our supermarket shelves? Someone once told me that they use the same preservatives for food as they do to embalm bodies. To be very British, that proper put the wind up me.
I suppose that I’m remembering Forte’s Café on the Hove Seafront. We had the choice of vanilla, vanilla with fruit, and strawberry. The ice cream was great. I’m not at all sure that having ice cream in the flavors of mango fruitie-tootie, latte frappaccino, and walnut parfait, has made my life richer. The older I get, in fact, the less I am entraced with choice.
I imagine that all these ice cream producers may become victims of America’s slow down in spending. Ice cream is, after all, somewhat expendable. If that’s the case, I look forward to not going in to the supermarket and feeling like a predator looking at a school of fish when I go down the ice cream section.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Every Purpose Under Heaven
As most of you already know, I’m doing the final edit for my second novel, Every Purpose Under Heaven. It deals with a dying man who is afraid to move on. Now it is done, I can say it’s been a long personal journey for me. It’s made me confront myself and what I do or don’t believe about life and death.
The dying man, whom I call Bill del Vecchio, is based in part on what happened when my husband, Chuck, died. We were giving Chuck morphine on an as-needed basis so he was in and out of consciousness. When he was out, he seemed to be talking to people we could not see. We asked him about it once when he woke. He told us that he was in the Civil War trying to get supplies out to troops dug in along a road. He remembered moving his arms protectively because he was running from tree to tree to dodge bullets. He described the scene so vividly it made me think of the battlefield at Manassas. When he went back to sleep, his arm movements started again, so we assumed he had gone back to that dangerous place.
I was reminded about Chuck’s experience by the media reports surrounding Pope John Paul’s death in 2005. The officials around him reported that the pontiff said, “You have come for me. I thank you,” shortly before he died. No explanation was offered about whom he was talking to. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say he was talking to the saints and his predecessors, the people he would have expected and wanted to see. Since he was in a coma, as I understand it, he was never asked.
If I was right, and the dying pontiff saw whom he wished to, I have to ask myself why Chuck wanted to be on a Civil War battlefield during the height of a battle. Why ever would he have wanted or expected to go to such a place? Not having any answer made me curious about what happens at the time of death.
I had no time to answer my own questions at first. After his death. I went out on another quest to find my father. He had been killed in a Halifax bomber during 1944. It took me time and travel to three continents to find his family and the survivor of his crew. The result was my first book, Extraordinary Things, based loosely on my own experience and heavily on that of the WWII aircrew veterans I met along the way. Once that book was done. I turned back to trying to understand what might have happened to Chuck.
Since the closest we ever get to the experience of death comes from those people with near-death experiences, most of the literature and research deals with them. Their reports are fairly consistent. They report a tunnel and light and seeing dead loved ones. That was a comforting thought, but it still didn’t explain what Chuck saw. Then I started reading books about things like soul purpose and incarnations. Most of them argued that we are all part of a spiritual universe that seeks perfection. Well, no one I knew was likely to be perfect anytime soon, but I began to see what the books were getting at. I asked some further questions. What if Chuck were being shown something to help him learn what he was meant to? If so, it couldn’t just be him. What if all of us go through this process to learn something from having lived our lives? I found that idea intriguing. But do we all have to go through this? Some of us may be self-aware enough to see our lives as leading to some purpose. On the other hand, what if someone were not self-aware, or even more, was deliberately un-self-aware. What then? I began to see the kernel of an idea for a story. What if a modern man started "remembering" something from the past? Could what he discovers say something about life and death that would be hopeful and ultimately even joyful.
Immediately, I ran into a problem. I needed to find a historical time similar to ours yet separated enough to provide a perspective on ours. After some false starts, I settled on the Italian Renaisssance, a time when fundamentalism clashed with reason. I thought of a scholar named Aonio Paleario. No one much has heard of him now, but in his time he was as famous as Erasmus or Bruno. He was brilliant, scholarly, stubborn, and arrogant, and very modern in his independence and demand for freedom. He deliberately martyred himself to oppose the Catholic Church and when they predictably executed him, he left behind a trail of broken family members who were punished along with him. If such a man were to “come back” in modern times, would he have learned something? Would he try to do things differently? What if some of the same people “came back” with him--would he try to make amends to them? Or they to him? That’s what Every Purpose Under Heaven tries to explore.
I have to admit I’m attracted to the ideas of symmetry and accountability, so I like the idea that our untidy lives are not the end. I particularly like the idea of purpose and that maybe surviving and amassing material goods is not the ultimate reason for existence. That leaves open, of course, what the purpose is. Some years ago, I remember reading reports about a Neolithic cave burial. The skeleton was of a deformed man who had grown into adulthood. The remains of shriveled flower garlands were found, suggesting that he had been mourned. That was an epiphany for me. With all the bad press our supposedly “brutish” ancestors had been given through our media, here was evidence that they cared for one another, had compassion, and regardless of what the anthropologists care to tell us, were human beings. Surely our purpose all these thousands of years later cannot be much different—to love and have compassion for those around us—those, if you choose to believe—who have agreed to come back with us and link their lives with ours.
I do not know if any of this is true. But, after writing the book, I hope so.
The dying man, whom I call Bill del Vecchio, is based in part on what happened when my husband, Chuck, died. We were giving Chuck morphine on an as-needed basis so he was in and out of consciousness. When he was out, he seemed to be talking to people we could not see. We asked him about it once when he woke. He told us that he was in the Civil War trying to get supplies out to troops dug in along a road. He remembered moving his arms protectively because he was running from tree to tree to dodge bullets. He described the scene so vividly it made me think of the battlefield at Manassas. When he went back to sleep, his arm movements started again, so we assumed he had gone back to that dangerous place.
I was reminded about Chuck’s experience by the media reports surrounding Pope John Paul’s death in 2005. The officials around him reported that the pontiff said, “You have come for me. I thank you,” shortly before he died. No explanation was offered about whom he was talking to. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say he was talking to the saints and his predecessors, the people he would have expected and wanted to see. Since he was in a coma, as I understand it, he was never asked.
If I was right, and the dying pontiff saw whom he wished to, I have to ask myself why Chuck wanted to be on a Civil War battlefield during the height of a battle. Why ever would he have wanted or expected to go to such a place? Not having any answer made me curious about what happens at the time of death.
I had no time to answer my own questions at first. After his death. I went out on another quest to find my father. He had been killed in a Halifax bomber during 1944. It took me time and travel to three continents to find his family and the survivor of his crew. The result was my first book, Extraordinary Things, based loosely on my own experience and heavily on that of the WWII aircrew veterans I met along the way. Once that book was done. I turned back to trying to understand what might have happened to Chuck.
Since the closest we ever get to the experience of death comes from those people with near-death experiences, most of the literature and research deals with them. Their reports are fairly consistent. They report a tunnel and light and seeing dead loved ones. That was a comforting thought, but it still didn’t explain what Chuck saw. Then I started reading books about things like soul purpose and incarnations. Most of them argued that we are all part of a spiritual universe that seeks perfection. Well, no one I knew was likely to be perfect anytime soon, but I began to see what the books were getting at. I asked some further questions. What if Chuck were being shown something to help him learn what he was meant to? If so, it couldn’t just be him. What if all of us go through this process to learn something from having lived our lives? I found that idea intriguing. But do we all have to go through this? Some of us may be self-aware enough to see our lives as leading to some purpose. On the other hand, what if someone were not self-aware, or even more, was deliberately un-self-aware. What then? I began to see the kernel of an idea for a story. What if a modern man started "remembering" something from the past? Could what he discovers say something about life and death that would be hopeful and ultimately even joyful.
Immediately, I ran into a problem. I needed to find a historical time similar to ours yet separated enough to provide a perspective on ours. After some false starts, I settled on the Italian Renaisssance, a time when fundamentalism clashed with reason. I thought of a scholar named Aonio Paleario. No one much has heard of him now, but in his time he was as famous as Erasmus or Bruno. He was brilliant, scholarly, stubborn, and arrogant, and very modern in his independence and demand for freedom. He deliberately martyred himself to oppose the Catholic Church and when they predictably executed him, he left behind a trail of broken family members who were punished along with him. If such a man were to “come back” in modern times, would he have learned something? Would he try to do things differently? What if some of the same people “came back” with him--would he try to make amends to them? Or they to him? That’s what Every Purpose Under Heaven tries to explore.
I have to admit I’m attracted to the ideas of symmetry and accountability, so I like the idea that our untidy lives are not the end. I particularly like the idea of purpose and that maybe surviving and amassing material goods is not the ultimate reason for existence. That leaves open, of course, what the purpose is. Some years ago, I remember reading reports about a Neolithic cave burial. The skeleton was of a deformed man who had grown into adulthood. The remains of shriveled flower garlands were found, suggesting that he had been mourned. That was an epiphany for me. With all the bad press our supposedly “brutish” ancestors had been given through our media, here was evidence that they cared for one another, had compassion, and regardless of what the anthropologists care to tell us, were human beings. Surely our purpose all these thousands of years later cannot be much different—to love and have compassion for those around us—those, if you choose to believe—who have agreed to come back with us and link their lives with ours.
I do not know if any of this is true. But, after writing the book, I hope so.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Guest blog: Vertical and horizontal revisited
Here's another take on the difference between the male and female perspective--this time from the younger set. Deb can be found at dweeb@stetser.net
I'd be hard pressed to find anyone over the age of 40 who doesn't know who Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison are. The Odd Couple was a 60's Broadway play about two divorced men living as roommates, complete opposites in most ways, most notably their lifestyles. Tony Randall and Jack Klugman did a superb job of bringing life to these two characters in the 70s sitcom of the same name. I was going to entitle this "Men Are From Mars" but I think Felix and Oscar can do more justice to the story.
This morning while getting ready to show our condo to another potential buyer, I reached under the sink to pull out the "good" towels. We aren't allowed to use them; they serve ONE purpose only, to make our bathrooms look like everything in them actually coordinates. As I extricated the towels from the crowded cabinet, I knocked over my husband Dan's bottle of Listerine. The cap had not been screwed on and the contents gushed onto the carpet, soaking right in. I let out a string of expletives, sighed and grabbed a towel to blot up the mess. No time to pull out the carpet cleaner to suck up the liquid, so I tossed a small hand towel which could also pass as a throw rug over the spot and hoped no one would step on it.
As I finished tidying up, one of my favorites shows, The Odd Couple came to mind and I realized how very similar Dan and I are to those two guys. I recalled our 13 years together and my struggle to reach some sort of a compromise on upkeeping our home. Once long ago when I proclaimed Dan a huge slob, he accused me of being compulsive about germs because I worked in an operating room. Admittedly, he's come a long way from the days when I caught him dropping food on the kitchen floor and leaving it and the time I saw him toss a handful of potato peels over his shoulder (without looking), aiming in the general direction of the trash can behind him. NOW I understood why the side of the refrigerator was always dotted with specks of food - Dan used it to bank scraps into the trash.
Listerine aside, his transgressions are now less severe. Either that, or I'm so immune to 'em I barely notice. I still find his habit of leaving the kitchen cupboards open annoying, or the way he leaves lights on after he's left the room, but he has stepped up in helping maintain the illusion that our home always looks like it does when we have a showing. Just this morning, he cleaned the majority of the mess up before he left for work and there wasn't much left for me to do...except deal with the catbox. And mouthwash.
My girlfriend Annette and I lament over the way WE view "clean and neat" and our husbands do. We've both noticed the maddening habit of Scott and Dan's kitchen clean up routines. Wash all the dishes and leave grease on the stove, food and crumbs on the counter then act bewildered when we point out the kitchen is not clean.Annette recounted a funny exchange she had with Scott over chores. She complained "you don't do anything". He countered "I do things" and she countered with "Well, you don't do ENOUGH!"
Are Dan, Scott, Annette and I typical in our experiences? Are men just a different breed? I remember my grandfather being in charge of the housework. Every weekend he would vacuum, dust, polish and clean while my grandmother did whatever it was she did. He also was responsible for cooking most of their meals. My Dad liked to cook also, but that happened after he retired. He never was interested in housecleaning, but he was pretty neat in his own right.Dan's brother (a former slob) has some issues with neatness and the like. I was horrified when we visited his new home one day to find he had bought his wife a carpet rake, which she gleefully demonstrated while proclaiming how much she loved raking the carpet. ??? !!! Yikes, can you say Stepford Wife?
If I could, would I change Dan into a neatnik? Would I want him buying me gifts like a rug rake? HELL NO! One might find it hard to believe there is an up side to living with someone who has more on his agenda than a spotless house. If I don't feel like cleaning, straightening or otherwise attending to the house, it's not a big deal to Dan. He's never once complained about my messes (and believe me, I can make messes with the best of 'em). If I don't want to clean, wash dishes, or do laundry, Dan couldn't care less.There's something to be said for living with Oscar. You'll have to ask Dan what it's like to have Felix for a roommate.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
A Shrink Wrapped Mutiny
When I was a child, we used to shop for groceries daily. Bradshaw’s grocery was just up on George Street, the old village market street, perhaps five minutes from the house. In bombed out Britain, many people were living crammed into rooms and fridges were a luxury. We’d buy two ounces of butter (a treat), a quarter of tea, and a couple of eggs (always fun to see them candled) that Mum would put on the window sill overnight. My favorite peppermint humbugs were sold in two ounce bags and nothing was prepackaged. All would be deposited into a wicker basket. Wrapping was reserved for soft goods and was generally brown paper wrap and string, except for fish and chips which came in waxed paper wrapped in newsprint.
Nothing was wasted because there was so little. My mother had a rather large ball of string and the brown paper was regularly reused for posting things. Anything larger was collected by a man with a cart who came through the street yelling, “Any old rags, any old bones.”
Today I can hardly come home from the market without a garbage can full of discarded wrapping materials. It is so overdone that I have conceived an absolute hatred of opening packages.
My animus toward packing materials begins with milk cartons. Supposedly easy to open and “hygienic” because fingers wouldn’t touch the spout, these cartons are the Edsels of the milk world. You have to push open the top, which never goes back far enough to clear the adhesive, then pull it forward to form the spout, except that it invariably tears, leaving a jagged edge through which the milk escapes on the sides when you try to pour it out.
My ire continues with anything pressure sealed. Potato chips (never mind that I shouldn’t be eating them), small ketchup packages, “freshness” pouches inside cereal boxes—anything that says “tear here.” Invariably it doesn’t and when I resort to my teeth the package disgorges its contents all at once and usually on me.
My particular fury, however, is saved for shrink wrap and for the thick plastic fortresses that electronics—even the cheapest stuff—come encased in. I bought a headset for my cell phone the other day. I brought it home and began the assault. I tried my kitchen shears which can cut through chicken bones. Didn’t make a dent. Then I tried to pry the edges apart with a kitchen knife. No way. I took a screwdriver and tried to punch a hole. The screwdriver glanced off the package and sent the headset onto the floor where it nearly hit the cat. I finally decided the only way to get into it was to put it in a vise and use an electric drill to start and then enlarge a hole. Even then it pulled apart reluctantly and left jagged and very sharp edges.
Opening this headset has confirmed my mutiny. I have resolved that if I buy any further things encased in this type of package that I am not going to leave the store before they open it. If they don’t want to open it, they can do without the sale. I haven’t yet put my policy into place, but I am now looking forward to the opportunity. Best Buy, watch out.
As another part of my mutiny, I’ve also resolved to do without as much wrapping as I can, not for the sake of the environment (although I feel virtuous) but for the sake of sending a very strong message to manufacturers that if they want sales from us older folks—or anyone else for that matter—that their convenience does not trump ours. I had a vise and I know how to use an electric drill. Others don’t. Manufacturers can choose to package that way and I can choose not to buy. I now take my own bags to the grocery store. I’ve found that I can reuse even the clear bags that vegetables and fruit come in. I’ve cut my plastic trash to an absolute minimum. My green reusable grocery bags are the modern equivalent of Mum’s wicker basket. They may not be as quaint but they work just as well.
I feel good about my mutiny. Perhaps if others take a similar stand we can make some sort of difference. Now if only I could do something about the masses of foam peanuts used to fill the standard boxes that the post office has begun forcing us to use.
Nothing was wasted because there was so little. My mother had a rather large ball of string and the brown paper was regularly reused for posting things. Anything larger was collected by a man with a cart who came through the street yelling, “Any old rags, any old bones.”
Today I can hardly come home from the market without a garbage can full of discarded wrapping materials. It is so overdone that I have conceived an absolute hatred of opening packages.
My animus toward packing materials begins with milk cartons. Supposedly easy to open and “hygienic” because fingers wouldn’t touch the spout, these cartons are the Edsels of the milk world. You have to push open the top, which never goes back far enough to clear the adhesive, then pull it forward to form the spout, except that it invariably tears, leaving a jagged edge through which the milk escapes on the sides when you try to pour it out.
My ire continues with anything pressure sealed. Potato chips (never mind that I shouldn’t be eating them), small ketchup packages, “freshness” pouches inside cereal boxes—anything that says “tear here.” Invariably it doesn’t and when I resort to my teeth the package disgorges its contents all at once and usually on me.
My particular fury, however, is saved for shrink wrap and for the thick plastic fortresses that electronics—even the cheapest stuff—come encased in. I bought a headset for my cell phone the other day. I brought it home and began the assault. I tried my kitchen shears which can cut through chicken bones. Didn’t make a dent. Then I tried to pry the edges apart with a kitchen knife. No way. I took a screwdriver and tried to punch a hole. The screwdriver glanced off the package and sent the headset onto the floor where it nearly hit the cat. I finally decided the only way to get into it was to put it in a vise and use an electric drill to start and then enlarge a hole. Even then it pulled apart reluctantly and left jagged and very sharp edges.
Opening this headset has confirmed my mutiny. I have resolved that if I buy any further things encased in this type of package that I am not going to leave the store before they open it. If they don’t want to open it, they can do without the sale. I haven’t yet put my policy into place, but I am now looking forward to the opportunity. Best Buy, watch out.
As another part of my mutiny, I’ve also resolved to do without as much wrapping as I can, not for the sake of the environment (although I feel virtuous) but for the sake of sending a very strong message to manufacturers that if they want sales from us older folks—or anyone else for that matter—that their convenience does not trump ours. I had a vise and I know how to use an electric drill. Others don’t. Manufacturers can choose to package that way and I can choose not to buy. I now take my own bags to the grocery store. I’ve found that I can reuse even the clear bags that vegetables and fruit come in. I’ve cut my plastic trash to an absolute minimum. My green reusable grocery bags are the modern equivalent of Mum’s wicker basket. They may not be as quaint but they work just as well.
I feel good about my mutiny. Perhaps if others take a similar stand we can make some sort of difference. Now if only I could do something about the masses of foam peanuts used to fill the standard boxes that the post office has begun forcing us to use.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
