Living The Dream

Perhaps thirty years ago, Estelle Getty, in her "Golden Girls" role as Sophia, stated, "I'm old; I can do what I want."

I was primed.

Recently, someone on a public forum asked if it was hard to be elderly, and I decided to answer:

I’m in my early sixties and retired last year without any money to speak of. My knees are shot and I’m working on other things that I think are reversible.

Even with what I seem to lack, I’m living the dream. I have a stable marriage and great kids from a previous marriage. As a retiree, I have time to work on myself when I care to. I am happy and free and because of that, I’m okay with my physical condition and mentally prepared to manage as best I can physically and financially.

I live in a neighborhood with a lot of poor people and while I did not consider myself a specimen of robustness, people look at me on the bus because many of them are in very poor health. Even on Social Security, I can afford better food and a dentist now and then and while I wish I had taken better care of my teeth, the differences seem notable to some.

In the looks department, I never had much in the way of looks to lose but find that as an elder, I can honestly consider myself a handsome woman. Strangers remark on my smile.

In spite of tobacco and alcohol use, less developed medical care, and more fatty diets, my parents were more hale at my age than I am although between mid-sixties and seventies, they started to run into problems. My late mother, a nurse, would have summed it up by saying that we now have the problems we have because, unlike past generations in our family, we are living long enough to have these particular problems.

With her advice in mind, no matter what physical or financial condition you are in as an elder, attitude goes a long way, and my parents were very good scouts, setting my expectation that I will prevail in some manner.

So, is it hard being elderly? In my case, no or at least, not yet. Instead, I’m living the dream. 

In Fairness to Our Heritage

Another two cents, perhaps my life savings.

I would like for those who equate Confederate statues with heritage to understand something:  this heritage did not exist in a pristine vacuum of only entitled people.  Due to circumstances beyond the control of women in subjection anywhere throughout world history, the statues became a symbol of my heritage, too. 

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. discovered that “A whopping 35 percent of all African-American men descend from a white male ancestor who fathered a mulatto child sometime in the slavery era, most probably from rape or coerced sexuality.” (blackdemographics.com)

You have a lot of cousins you do not acknowledge – one Facebook page alone has 2,000 members who, like me, track their existence back to one slave owner and one slave.  It isn’t likely that all of us have had DNA tests or Ph.D.s in biology and it is likely some cousins married in, so let’s decrease that number by half.  I’ll even decrease it by half again.

Is it really any better?

When men and especially women who glorify the men of the Confederacy without qualification or restraint are willing to cull their family histories and erect statues in public spaces celebrating men who raped their foremothers, I will gladly reach into my rag bin and stand next to them to polish these symbols because then and only then, it will be fair.

Weight and See

The hardest weight loss of my life occurred a few days ago.

I've never minded being heavy. I eat for enjoyment and my build is a byproduct. But a few months ago, my doctor delivered news that made it necessary for me to find another way to defy culture.

As you well know, women on a weight loss regimen have a long standing method of preparing for a weigh-in:

The night before weighing, drink a cup of Exlax and trim bangs.

Remove false eyelashes and fingernails.

Clip nails, floss, pop zits, remove dandruff.

As one approaches the scale, go through the checklist. Did you shave your pits, legs, and pubes? What about that moustache like Grandma's? Oops - pop out those contacts, put the wedding ring on the window sill. Did you remove the cubic zirconium studs from your earlobes or any other piercings?

So, one morning, I stepped on the scale in my bathrobe without shaving my corns or reading the paper in the bathroom. I was still sleepy and had no particular consciousness of it. Yawn. Whatever. The second time I got on the scale without any fuss, I was fully awake and astonished to realize that I had just shed the hardest weight of my life. It was not any first ten pounds, any last ten pounds, and certainly not the few pounds I've lost since my doctor took a tone.

It was that five hundred pound weight in my mind.

When They Come for Us

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I

didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because

I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't

speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because

I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to

speak up for me.”

 Most of us probably knew the gist of Martin Niemoller's

piece even if we could not recite it.

For many, placing it on our social media pages is to  preach to the choir. 
But for those who are still wrestling with acquaintances who do not see what is happening, perhaps this is the time to alert them that protesters now being fired upon and tear-gassed, and elderly people being knocked to the ground by police because, for example, black lives didn't matter, are white people protesting peacefully.

Bad blue has become toxic to everyone.

If left unfettered, then ultimately, they will come for

all of us.