Tag Archives: Aging

Taking Smaller Pictures

21 Saturday Aug 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Writing

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“I am a home movie, with endless shots of friends and relations.”
— Frederick Buechner, Alphabet of Grace

A summer frolic between young cousins changes to winter play without fanfare.  The young actors and stage are constants.  But key scenery changes unlock the passage of time — green grass fades to yellow, a young girl and boy trade lawn cotton costumes for blue winter coats.

In my youth, the stage for Sunday afternoons was always Granny’s front yard and porch.  Old fashioned games of hide and seek, Easter egg hunts were all held there.  I can recall many baseball games held there too that divided our large family in two.  Granddad always played and all the kids and their spouses.  Trees subbed as running bases while appropriately, home base rested near the steps of Granny’s front porch.

The preliminaries involved Southern scratch cooking at its best.  But we grand-kids never lingered over our plates.  Without guilt of leaving food behind, we’d rush out the side screen door to play.  I imagine that cold February day caught on film was no exception.  That day we were celebrating my young aunt’s birthday.  Seven years older than I, my aunt is closer in age to me and the other grandkids than to our parents, her brothers and sisters.  Was Jane turning eleven or twelve that day?  I can’t really say.  I’d guess the year as 1959, judging by my own appearance — with hair tied back in a pony tail, wearing that blue coat over a standard home-made dress, I look to be no more than four.

Much like the young girl I was, the camera buzzes around the action without ever landing.  In its greed to capture the big picture for posterity, the action blurs; most subjects are in and out of the frame before eyes can discern their presence.  It doesn’t help that images of vintage film grow faint, that they go gray and grow lines with age.  Was that cousin Mike?  Or Pat?  I can’t really tell.   It all goes too fast.

What I know for sure is that my Aunt Jane had just received a brand new bike for her birthday.  Her first bike, because times and finances were tough for Granny and Granddad.  And for some reason — I don’t know why — my young father was teaching Jane to ride her bike, while my mother captured the event on film.  Who bought the bike for Jane?  Was it my parents?  Was it a joint gift from the family?  I don’t really know — these details were not important to me then.

The rolling images of vintage home movies cannot tell a story alone.  Spliced together without conscious editing, scenes require narration from one who lived through the event.  Preferably the storyteller is one who can recall vivid details since it’s details that make stories come alive.

That’s why it helps to focus in on smaller pictures.  In our story telling, it helps to content ourselves with telling little slices of life in great detail.  Come in late.  Leave early.  Don’t over stay our welcome.

So here’s one smaller picture from that home movie where I hit the pause button:  My young father balancing me on the handlebars of my young aunt’s brand new bike.

The handle bars are cold and hard.  The grass makes for a bumpy ride.  But I don’t care.  I’m happy to take a spin with my father on my aunt’s new bike.   I always found Daddy handsome — it’s a shame he didn’t learn this until lying on his deathbed.   I hope he found the information “better late than never;’  I was just glad to remember to tell it.

But what I didn’t remember were times like this, when Daddy was nothing more that a big playmate.   Surely with a child’s wisdom, I knew this fifty years ago, before Father Time dinged up my memories.

This then, is how I wish to remember Dad: braving the February cold to play the hero, teaching us kids a few new tricks.

A Generation Thing

15 Sunday Aug 2010

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The oldest of the clan was recounting some tale of how her husband  once caught an octopus while fishing off the Pacific coast.  She was absorbed in her tale —  using arms to animate the action of eight legs fighting as her husband released it.

She’d hoped to entertain the young boy sitting across from her.  Before she’d launched into her tale, he had been wiggling about like an octopus on a pole, which was probably what triggered the story.  But the tale she told was too old for the five-year old — it flew over his head and across the restaurant dining room to me.

The child said nothing in response.  Perhaps the boy didn’t know what to make of the old story or the old woman telling it.  There was a formality between them that stamped her as ‘just visiting.’  In between the man and the storyteller sat a woman who bridged two generations — daughter to one and mother to the other.  She too, didn’t say a word.

The picture perfect family, four generations strong, was going through the ritual of keeping family.  Yet the three adults at the table were occupied by their salad greens,  leaving family stories to die untended on the old woman’s lips.  It was ten seconds before the man broke silence between bites of his salad.  “Is that right, Grandma.”

The lone response was too late to be anything more than polite.  It left me sad, as these days, I find myself adopting all sorts of scraps from my parent’s lives to help keep family stories alive.  Yesterday, I brought home four ice tea spoons.  I’ve no need for these early sixties relics.  I have sixteen already in the drawer.   And I don’t even sweeten my iced tea.  But I had to have them anyway.  Now they are odd men out, taking up space, keeping company with others that don’t resemble their pattern.

Handing stories on to the next generation can make one feel like odd man out.  The practice of storytelling requires thick skin; stories often go begging for a listening ear —  even when heard, children won’t always get the storyteller or their stories.

This need to preserve  stories is a generation thing.  Like that great-grandmother sitting across from me the other night; with seventy or eighty years of living bottled up inside, can you imagine how hard it was to keep stories from spilling over her lips.  Maybe she should consider spoon-feeding.

Passalong Thinnings

28 Monday Jun 2010

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

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Guests wander out to my cottage garden, even in the horrible heat of summer.

The garden is showy right now, even though it claims such little space.  Hollyhocks grow next to tomatoes.  Lambs Ear competes with Black-Eyed Susans, to see who can claim more space.  Both are prolific and haven’t learned to make do with what this gardener has granted them.

It’s human nature too, to want more space than we really need.  My sister’s newly renovated home is a perfect size — 1104 square feet to be precise — where mine is around 2600.  I’m of the mind these days to downsize my house and up-size my garden space.

Two of my three bedrooms are rarely used.  Bryan borrowed “his” for about a month after graduation and I expect, upon his return from southeast Asia, Kyle will once again use his.  But these borrowings will be nothing more than brief interludes.  Soon, Kyle will claim his own space and my husband and I will become true empty-nesters.

Today my husband turns 55 with me following suit in October.  When I look at my husband, I don’t really see a man growing old;  instead, I see my husband, no worse for the wear and tear of 55 years of living and the raising of four children.  I hope he can say the same about me.

But my children already see me different; yesterday, during Bryan and Amy’s move, I was protected from most heavy lifting.  I guess my children regard me as fragile.  Is it because I don’t hear as well as I once did?  I confess to knees that creak as I walk down the stairs, and getting stiff when I sit too long on my sister’s floor, painting walls near baseboards.

During one of those hard-to-rise episodes of painting low to the floor, my sister shared a story of a local Shawnee woman, aged 80, who still gets on her riding lawnmower to mow her own lawn.  God willing, I pray to be like this ‘old woman” too.  I don’t want to stop living as long as I have breath in my body.  I want to be active.  I want to contribute to others welfare, to make life better for those whose paths I cross, even if it means just leaving an extra nice tip when dining out.

Soon, I will thin out my garden.  I’ll divide perennials, remove greedy hogs like that Joe Pye Weed — whatever was I thinking, to add a plant in my postage stamp garden, that is brazen enough to calls itself “WEED?”– and dig up some of those naughty Cleome that have seeded themselves throughout the garden.  I’ll pass along my thinnings to someone else to the benefit of both of our gardens.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to do the same with myself.  Maybe I can continue to pass along the best parts of myself,  so that even as I grow old, I won’t be regarded as old and useless but more like a treasured antique — worth holding on to, worth spending time with.

The roses outside are in all stages of life — some newly bloomed, others in their red prime and still others growing pink and papery dry along their edges.  But all are beautiful to my eyes.

Lord knows we can’t control how others regard us.  But we can control how we regard ourselves.  And somehow, in a hard-to-explain way, these views are inextricably linked — one feeds off another.  The state of my physical health is in part what I see and feel about myself, but is it not also, how others view and see me?  God knows I would not have rushed off to Urgent Care about my Brown Recluse Spider bite had it not been for others telling me to go…

I need to live planted in the firm of both perspectives —  mine and others who care for me —  for somewhere in the middle, truth exists.  Somewhere in the middle of that love, God exists.  And there, grounded in truth and humility, I can continue to thrive to passalong thinnings of my best self.