The Bonus Years

Bonus years? What does this mean?  Just read an advertisement for a lecture here in the Sarasota area.   What is a bonus?  A reward for good performance?  Something quite unexpected?  My sisters who are ninety two and ninety are hinting that their excellent health and energy is a kind of downer.  The older of the two is dynamite; she walks out every day with her cane or whatever four blocks to have coffee with her daughter.  The younger goes on a scooter down to her pond and gets into the water for a swim.  But the fact of that matter is that they are both rather sick and tired of doing the repetitions.  Life has absolutely no surprises.  I used to love working in my garden, but that has become too tiring, the struggle with the rapacious weeds, the constant oversight of the pruning and deadheading process, well, I am just tired of the whole thing.  I've had gardens since I was a boy in Iowa, gardens everywhere, in home after home, and some of them quite large, the last one at the seashore a considerable fraction of an acre.  I used to kneel down to trim and then came the epic struggle to right myself.  Plastic flowers is the way to go.  It was interesting to notice that in central Rome you just don't see old people my age, not on the street not in the restaurants.  Also interesting is that the city itself has without meaning it, I am sure, established a million traps for the elderly.  I have never seen so many stepped up segments of pavement, meant to be a graceful stair I guess?, but  of course just a perfect invitation to tripping over.  And in a city so breathtakingly beautiful they are not going to mar such disruptions with yellow warning lines--the idea is grotesque.  Better a dead old soul than ruining whatever is otherwise the "bella figura" of the city.  So I guess the Roman bonus years are spent away in a closet or some other impediment to movement. And remember the incredible heat wave in France a few years back when thousands of old people perished in Paris apartments lacking air conditioning while their children and grandchildren disported themselves on the beaches during the August annual vacation period.  I calculate that I haven't the strength to do the walking, the gardening, the hours of attending theatrical productions, walking through museums peering intelligently at paintings, so I am not sure in what sense these years are bonus?  Maybe in the same sense that the somewhat worn out clothes you pass on to your servants are a kind of bonus, perhaps even a tip, although make-do items tend to  remain cast off.  So we old folks here in Sarasota can go to this lecture to hear about these so-called bonus years?  It will take me a while to figure out what the expression mean.  Sounds like an invention of AARP

My New York Trip

On Day Two I left the small bag I carry with my money, passport, and telephone in the cab which was bringing me and my handler back to the hotel after three intense hours in the Met.  The taxi driver found his way blocked at the entrance to 87th street, so had to let us out in the street, in the traffic, which caused me to lose my orientation and my caution and the bag got left behind.  Consternation, on the one hand, a kind of end of life acceptance and calm on the other.  The hotel desk clerk let me monopolize one of the lobby phones as I set about setting things to rights; life grows complicated without a cellphone.  Lo and behold by three o'clock the taxi driver had called to say he had the bag.  This was the miracle of that story: he had looked at telephone numbers on my cellphone and called my doctor's office in Sarasota and they put him on to me, and after calling me with reassurances, next morning when he set out on his job, he stopped by the hotel and returned it.  I did not look into it as he did so feeling that was bad form, and I gave him one hundred dollars for his goodness and effort.  Later on checking the contents I found everything intact except the several hundred dollars packed in an inner pocket.  The disappearance of cash is usually a traditional aspect of lost or mislaid or stolen items, so I took it in good part, although half those I have told this tale to are indignant.  Thereafter the visit proceeded without incident except that it was all I could do to hobble up the distance of a city block for my morning coffee.  One more  day with my excellent escort, thereafter leaning on the arm of my cousin who was visiting Manhattan at the same time.  Dinner dates with lots of friends, some very intimate hours with an old dear friend and former student who was having her drama when as it turned out the gas main had broken under her entry way. She is English and not attuned to when smelling gas represents a threat so it was lucky I was at hand at got her to call 911 and usher her out the door.  The repairs took twenty four hours during part of which time she and I had a marvelous long lunch filled with witty remeniscence (never can spell that word!), in her ice cold house--gas furnace off--and I shivering with the vulnerability of a Floridian.  Most of my days I sat in my hotel room and read the electronic book I had with me.  Kindle is gross and invaluable at the same time.  The room sparsely furnished and lit by glaring overhead light was perhaps not the sweetest reading experience in the world, but, Reader, you must understand:  I just can't walk anymore!  Ghastly.  On Sunday--change of subject--hobbled two blocks to the sung mass in an Anglican Episcopal Church, where I discovered that I still knew the service of Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer by heart since last I was an altar boy every Sunday of 1941--42.  Although I am a firm non-believer I still get a glow of happiness from hearing the language of salvation and redemption that are contained therein.  Clouds of incense and gorgeous robes also appealed mightily to my inner gay self.

Back From The Big Apple

It's all I can do to sit at my computer I am so tired.  The New York expedition was pretty much a disaster from start to finish.  The wheelchair attendants associated with the Delta flights going up and coming back were as usual magnificent, always energetic, thoughtful, sensitive, I cannot say enough nice things about them.  Many were immigrants proving yet again how hard working, kind, and intelligent immigrants can be.  (On our return from Rome a few weeks ago, the Alitalia flight was met with one, yes, just one, wheel chair attendant born in Guyana, he alone had to deal with at least six passengers which by a miracle of organization he shepherded through US Customs--what a guy!)  Curiously enough Delta does an email quiz follow up on their wheelchair service ("Would you recommend Delta for its wheelchair service?" Not really, in this monopolized industry, you take what airline you can get going where you want to go.)  I stayed in a charming little Upper West side hotel, the Belnord, nothing fancy but with newly built handicapped bathroom, so it was perfect for me.  I discovered, however, that even with my cane I was at risk of falling constantly.  I just don't have command of my balance anymore.  Luckily I had friends visiting every day and I went out on expeditions with their support.  Once I hired a former student from the Sarasota theater program and we spent two three hour sessions walking through the Met, hand in hand, hand on arm; he was a big strong fellow, a former athlete and I felt totally safe.  I can imagine that there might be lots of young men available for this service, it's sort of like hustlers in days of yore, and I am not sure how to advertise for what I want.  In any case, I more or less said "goodbye" to the New York years.  Just too hard.  My cousin was in town and I hobbled along with her to see Anna Deveare Smith, whom I thoroughly enjoy always.  We also went to the Guggenheim to see the Agnes Martin show, and I found the climb up the ramp too much and fell by the wayside before we made it to the top.  The grid concept of Martin's work does not to my mind lend itself to a ramp, and I was glad to have seen the show last year at Tate Modern.  Maybe tomorrow I will write of the crazy experience of losing my bag with passport, telephone and several hundred dollars and its recovery--it was that kind of week, everything saying over and over "Stay Our Of New York"--.  At least I did not fall down.  But what if I go on living for a long time? 

A Perilous Expedition

I am off for a week in New York City this afternoon. Going alone.  With my cane.  Staying in a hotel because our studio is sold.  Resisted calling upon friends, because the last time when I stayed with a friend, we went everywhere together, and that was partly because I was terrified of being alone on the city streets and she did not like to see me doing so.  I have a compromise this time.  I have made a great number of "play dates" so that I will have an arm of someone to lean on, and what is more I have hired a young guy, an actor, to accompany me for a couple of mornings to museums.  At the moment, 6:50 AM, I don't want to go, completely nervous.  So this is how it ends up?  My doom and gloom personality has taken over in full force, but maybe, just maybe, a week from now upon my return, I will be bubbling with the recollections of all the great art I saw, friends I was with, and not the stumbling, the near falls, the missed connections, you know, all the things I am envisioning right now.  It doesn't help that Thursday morning, tomorrow, is predicted to be very rainy.  The young man whom I have engaged to join me for a couple of mornings has an entirely even tempered generous personality, and he already is bubbling with the "adventure" of it all.  The dear friends with whom I will spend time are all persons I have known for fifty years of more, so we have a lot to say to one another that will be a slight defense from the barrage of the politics of the presidential campaign.  I am so negative a person that I am already envisioning revolution in the streets from those who are convinced they have been cheated of their rightful election.  When I want to whine and say "I didn't want it all to end this way," meaning my life, I have to say sternly "get a grip! Think of all the dispossessed of the world, pushed and pulled and chased from pillar to post. I don't think someone sweating about flying up to New York and staying in a small residential hotel on the Upper West Side even gets speaking rights in today's dramas."  It doesn't stop me, however.  There will be no blog writing for a week, and if I fall down on the sidewalk and maybe go into a coma--it happened to a friend of mine in Los Angeles--then there may be longer delay or permanent blackout.  Friends of my friend in LA who fell on the street had only one question, such a Los Angeles moment: "Well, why was he walking?"

Cleaning Day

I woke up late this morning.  The cleaning lady is coming soon, extra early in fact, as my husband informed me last night.  I am in the process of packing for a trip to Manhattan which has me altogether panicked.  I will be alone with my roller suitcase from the carousel at Laguardia into a taxi.  Again from out of the taxi on the upper west side until safely in my room in a small residential hotel.  And what will I find there?  Walk in shower?  Grab bars in the shower?  I asked for this when I reserved the room but never heard back.  I can always take pseudo baths with a wash cloth and the sink.  Done that before many a time traveling in Southern Europe.  Oh, the delights of students days all over again at 86!  Can't think of these things now.  Must clear off the counter in the bathroom.  Why does everything I own stay messy littered across every surface?  I know, I know, that if a rhetorical question.  Well, no more time.

Monday Blues

I try to separate the personal from the public, get the blog focused on the inanities of the mundanities of my private life, the big one now being why do sugar ants continue to haunt our kitchen, despite the waves of poison dishes my husband set out for them.  To me they are harmless, I do not sense that they are now greater in number nor less.  Richard sees these things as though he were Napoleon; I have more the take of a simple peasant ground under the heel of the landed gentry.  These are the way things are: there have always been ants, there will continue to be ants.  What has sunk me into almost irretrievable gloom is the morning's headlines repeating Donald Trump's assertion that the election is fixed.  One can only think of the banana republics to the south of us which have such shaky and fraudulent governments that these claims are routine and more often than not are followed by political uprising.  One thinks of the early days of Hitler and his claims against the established government.  Surely the majesty of the United States of America is being tested in dangerous ways, and I do not understand why the target of these outrageous charges, the government and its elected officials, do not stand up against them.  But perhaps I understand nothing, do not see the potential for real civic unrest, in doing so.  I am a catastrophist, have vivid memories of the wars and upheavals of the last eighty or so years, and now, old, weak, and impotent, I fear for my children, my grandchildren.  Our charming well spoken young plumber came back to finish the work he began on Friday at which time we had a strange minuet of a conversation in which we delicately hinted at our political allegiances so as to establish our ground but not damage our working relationship.  It reminded me so, dirty old man that I am, of tentative, exploratory remarks with working men from days of yore, before AIDS, before gay consciousness, when libidos were less inhibited, desires were not so freighted with "meaning," and fun, unexpected things could happen.  Well, that got me back to the personal and away from the public pretty damn fast.

Saturday Morning at the Market

We are lucky to live near a number of farmers markets, although I am never convinced that all the vegetables what are set out in open crates have actually just been plucked from the ground.  No matter, there is a freshness and liveliness to the several blocks of tents and booths which make up for a lot.  Beside we adore the family who do indeed make and sell every variety of pasta. so real, so Italian, although the younger generation had to pass through Argentina on their way to our shores.  There is a lady making quacamole that is do die for, a great couple turning out exquisite pastries after his career as a business executive, now no longer operational.  You get the picture.  Fifty years ago my first wife and I used to go on Saturday mornings to Boston's North End for the same thing, only most of the stuff was left over sale bargains from jobbers working the supermarkets.  Cheap, though, perfect for graduate students.  We were learning to cook, so shopping together was part of our adventure.  My husband and I both cook, he looks forward to turning out his favorite recipes, I, after ten years in the kitchen of cooking for my children, and twenty years cooking Richard's dinner,  would truthfully be happy to never go near a stove again.  And, indeed, I don't often do so.  The problem is that Richard goes through the market buying items that strike his fancy "oh, eggplant, we haven't had that in a long time" without any developed expectation of the day ahead when this item will be featured in the dinner.  Thus too much produce lingers in our refrigerator and rots, especially vegetables. It is a scandal, but no matter how devoted we are to one another we don't seem to be in sync when it comes to planning menus ahead of time and sticking to them.  Richard is a superb cook of fish; he started working in his father's cousin's fish restaurant in his early teens and he knows the product, and at the market we get really fresh fish.  So that and the pasta are stellar; I need to muscle in and assure a good vegetable side at every dinner, but Richard who is commendable for the way he has taken over as my strength and skills fade is also when in command in command and does not brook my entrance into the kitchen which I must admit will scarcely hold two people, and then I lose interest and go sit with my drink in the living room, and a vegetable side does not get cooked.  And so the vegetables sit in the refrigerator growing older and older.  But occasionally he makes a run on a box store and buys, say, three long English cucumbers bound up tightly in cellophane.  No way they will not rot.  I must stop before all my positive projections end in the evocation of grim realities.  We have friends who receive from some company boxes of ingredients for pre planned meals each week.  Maybe that is the way to go.