Young at Heart

Believe it or not, most of the time I don’t feel old. I can read a calendar. I know that I will soon turn 67. But in my heart I don’t feel terribly different about myself and the world than I did when I was 40. If I want to be totally honest about this I would admit that there are many times when my reactions to the world are virtually identical to what they were when I was 17. I still react to violent thunderstorms with the same mixture of wonder and fear. Pretty women—especially my wife—still turn my head. I still have to fight the impulse to punch rude people in the face. None of this is to say that I never feel old. On the contrary, anyone out there around my age will understand the most common triggers.

- When you see a picture of a really old man on Facebook, then realize that you graduated high school with him.

- That very first time you discover that you can no longer eat spicy food after 8 o’clock.

- When you see one of your favorite baseball players who has been out of the public eye for a long time and you wonder what the hell happened to him because he looks awful—only to discover that he’s younger than you.

- Those melancholy moments when you’d like to ask your Mom a question, but you realize that she has been dead for 13 years.

- That first moment after a 4 hour drive when you attempt to exit your vehicle only to discover that your bones, muscles and joints now belong to an alien from outer space

However, these moments of confronting the reality of growing old pale in comparison to the single most, “God, I’m old” moment of all time…watching the Super Bowl halftime show.

My wife and my sister texted each other about this last night, where my wife confessed to the fact that this was the very first such halftime extravaganza where she had never heard of the artist, Mr. Kendrick Lamar. Neither had I. My sister shared that she had never felt older in her entire life. I watched without comment or reaction, realizing that I was not the target audience, so my opinion was unnecessary.

But, despite last night’s brutal reminder that I’m not getting any younger, I still intend to live the rest of my life looking forward and not backward. I will strive to nurture as much youthful optimism as I possibly can. I will search for the positives and avoid the temptation to pine for what is passed. The kids who are following us will need all the help we can give them.

I am reminded of the lyrics of an old song which seems appropriate…

Fairytales can come true, it can happen to you

If you’re young at heart

For it’s hard, you will find, to be narrow of mind

If you’re young at heart

And if you should survive to a hundred and five

Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive

And here is the best part, you have a head start

If you are among the very young at heart

Stop Looking Through the Rear View Mirror

I read somewhere recently that there was a survey sent to teachers in 100 different schools all over the country over 70 years ago asking them to list the biggest obstacles they faced in the classroom. Then much more recently someone got the idea to send the exact same survey out to the same 100 schools, asking them the same questions. Of course not all 100 of the schools were still in existence, but the results of the two surveys listed side by side was one of the most depressing things I had seen in a very long time.

The results from the 1950’s survey were as follows:

-Students chewing gum in class.

-Students talking in class.

-Students being too loud and running in the halls.

-Students not doing their homework in a timely manner.

-Students keeping a disorganized and messy desk.

The results from the 2015 survey were:

-Fighting at school

-Drug use at school

-Drug dealing at school

-Gang related violence

-Student assaults on teachers

-Sexual violence

Obviously, much has changed over the past 70 years. But then the author of the piece made an extrapolation from the data suggesting that civilization was on an irreversibly downward spiral, that drug use and violence would continue to become more prevalent by degrees and would ultimately destroy the world.

Ok. Slow down.

I don’t deny the validity of these survey results. Nobody would deny that we live in a much more violent world than we did in the 1950’s. But this notion that civilization is experiencing unprecedented degradation does not square with the facts of history. Has anyone ever heard of…Genghis Khan? Would you rather be alive in 2025 or the Middle Ages? You think health care sucks now, how would you like to have been in your prime in 1776 when the number one cause of death was simple diarrhea? For the vast majority of human history schooling was for only around 10% of the population. And as recently as the 1950’s referenced above the quality of education was massively inferior for African American students. Even today the pathologies described by teachers answering the 2015 survey are vastly different from one school to the next. 

I guess what bothers me about these type of stories is the assumption that we are experiencing uniquely challenging hurdles in a rapidly approaching dystopia that we are powerless to reverse. This is nonsense on stilts. Would I rather have been a teacher in a suburban school in 1955 or a teacher in an inner city school with a 40% truancy rate today? No contest. But I’ve got news for all you doomsayers out there…utopia has never existed. Don’t fall for the tired old saw that everything good in life is in the rear view mirror. Opportunities exist today that were never dreamed of 70 years ago. Yes, much of society seems to have lost its way, but there is nothing new under the sun. There are no obstacles in our way that have not been common to man going back centuries—greed, envy, hatred, lust, pride. We can and we will do better. I look at my two children and I must admit that they are smarter than I was at their age, certainly more empathetic, not nearly as obsessed with making money as I was in my 30’s. From this fact I take comfort.

Greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.

No Country For Old Men

I never wrote this down on any retirement to-do list because it just stood to reason that I would get around to reading books that I somehow missed when they came out. When you run a business, pleasure reading isn’t always at the top of your priority list. Such was the case in 2005 when Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men came out. When the highly acclaimed movie came out a few years later I passed on it because I didn’t want to watch the movie without reading the novel. So, a couple days ago I downloaded the Kindle version. Mercy…

My previous experience with Cormac McCarthy was with All the Pretty Horses, and Blood Meridian. But nothing could have prepared me for this monster of a tale. There’s no point in detailing the plot because the plot isn’t nearly as important as his relentless commitment to illustrating the hopelessness and inevitability of death and violence and how the pervasiveness of pitiless violence will eventually destroy us all. Along the way he drops breadcrumbs of hope by sharing the wisdom of old men and the occasional act of kindness. Every now and then there will be a sentence that speaks to you as if through a megaphone: …It’s a life’s work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong….It’s takes very little to govern good people. Bad people can’t be governed at all. Or if they could, I never heard of it.

Writers like McCarthy are hard to read for several reasons. First, The dude uses very little punctuation, and sometimes it’s hard to follow his dialogue because of his allergy to quotation marks. (How ironic that he won a Pulitzer!!) There is a sparse quality to his work, which I love, but it can be challenging. The hardest part of his work is his brutal honesty about the human condition. While there’s a part of you that nods in agreement at the disappointing conclusions he comes to in his work, there’s also a part of your heart that desperately wants none of it to be true. You want to believe that humanity is better than this, despite the overwhelming evidence that McCarthy might be right. 

As a writer, McCarthy isn’t my style. I am much more optimistic about the future, much more convinced of the possibility for redemption, the miracles that forgiveness and grace can bring into being. But as a writer, when I read this guy part of me wants to never write another word. What’s the point? I will never be that good. Ever.

Mission Accomplished

Last night around 8 o’clock I received a text from my wife where she gave me my assignment for today…

This recipe was from the famed Chelsea’s Messy Apron website, the place where every recipe is amazing and never ever fails. So, no pressure at all. As the name suggests, this was a crockpot meal, which meant that I had to put everything together in the morning, before my doctor’s appointment at 10:30. As I read through the narrative online I began to worry that perhaps Pam had bitten off a bit more than I had the capacity to chew. The prose on these cooking websites is full of befuddling jargon that non cooks like me find difficult to comprehend. But even after I felt I understood enough to get started, the ingredient layout was a bit overwhelming…

As you can see, this was a meat-heavy dish. There was bacon, ground beef, ground chuck, and Italian sausage. Then there were the seven spices that needed to be introduced at various strategic moments in the process. I was warned—rather ominously—against going overboard on the chili pepper and to consider removing the inside “membranes” and seeds from the jalapeño. I was also given the completely worthless suggestion to “take care to not overdo the sugar” without tasting it first. While the recipe made the claim that the preparation time for this dish was 30 minutes, by the time I had everything stirred in to the crockpot, a manic hour had passed and the kitchen looked like there had been an explosion and I had been the only survivor.

Now it was just a matter of waiting eight hours for all the ingredients to get to know one another, to meld their unique flavors and textures into one cohesive edible dish that would not send us rushing to Urgent Care.

To my great relief, my mission was accomplished. The chili was sensational.

Dogs vs. Cats

I have noticed recently that most of my friends and I have something in common—more than just bad judgement in choosing friends—we are dog-owners. This is not to say that I have no cat-owning friends, just that the vast majority of my friends and acquaintances have dogs. As I write this, I think of my sister and one of my nieces who own cats and I’m sure they will take exception to what I am about to write. Indeed, one of the hot button topics that probably should be avoided at family gatherings in addition to politics and religion is the whole dog vs. cat thing. People are pretty dialed in with regards to their opinions where this topic is concerned, so there’s no way to write about it without running afoul of someone’s tender feelings. But that sort of thing has never stopped me before.

I had lunch with one of my rare cat-owner friends the other day. We got to talking about this topic and he shared that one of his objections to dogs is the fact that their owners are expected to follow them around picking up their feces and placing it in small, paper-thin plastic bags—a ritual that he found disgusting beyond measure. I looked at him with the incredulous face of someone encountering the worst argument ever made against dogs and for cats. I looked at him for a second and then replied, “Ok, so you prefer cats—who defecate and urinate—in your house??  Thus began a spirited back and forth:

Friend: Yes, but they are trained to do so in the litter box which is stowed away in the utility room!

Me: Who in the name of all that is holy came up with the term LITTER BOX?? A cat owner, that’s who. It’s not litter that gets thrown in there. Your cat doesn’t throw soda cans and gum wrappers in there. He poops and pees in there, in a box full of God knows what kind of carcinogenic particles that make your entire house smell like cat poop and pee tinged vaguely with lilac.

Friend: Maybe. But at least I don’t have to pick up after him.

Me: Are you kidding? Who cleans out the litter box?

Friend: That’s what wives are for dude!

I almost resorted to my dog vs. cat ending argument, but decided that he had suffered enough, especially after he described the feline in question. It’s basically his wife’s cat. He tolerates it. He described the animal to me in the sort of way one describes a particularly wayward child. “He means well…” he began. “He was quite cute as a kitten. But then his eyes opened and all hell broke loose. He loves my wife. I say this due to the fact that he has never tried to gouge her eyes out, and he only hisses menacingly at her if she is late with breakfast or dinner.” So after that, I let it go. No need to rub salt in the wound.

But here’s the thing. I have never understood the basic value proposition that a cat brings to the table. With dogs it is self evident. To your dog, you are the greatest person in the entire universe. You hang the moon and the stars. When you leave in the morning they count the minutes until your return where they greet you like a conquering hero. Cats are emotional, spiritual and physical free agents. Your value to them is utilitarian. If you feed them promptly, they allow you to live. If you annoy them in even the slightest way they will hold a grudge for weeks. A dog doesn’t even know what a grudge is.

And then there’s the undeniable fact that cats will not be allowed in heaven.

I can hear the plaintiff cries from all of you cat lovers out there in the Blogosphere as you rend your garments at my words. Let me explain.

From the time you bring your adorable puppy home from the breeder/pound/rescue shelter, that little fur ball comes to believe that you are God. You are the source of all good and great blessings in his world. In much the same way as we worship God, dogs worship us. Cats, on the other hand, very early on in their tenure as the new owners of your house, come to the realization that they are God. And as we all know, the sin of pride is number one on any list of things that God cannot abide. Since no blasphemy can enter heaven, the cats will be left to their own devices.

I’m not trying to make the case that all cats are maniacal creatures and all dogs are benevolent angels. But do the math, people. How many people have been saved from burning houses by…cats? How many burglars have been foiled by the bone chilling sound of a…hissing cat? How many drowning children have been pulled out of raging rivers by heroic…cats? How many times have people been pulled out of collapsed buildings by the tenacious and fearless ethic of life saving…cats? When is the last time you saw a bomb-sniffing cat at the airport? On the other hand, what percentage of allergy-related deaths are caused by cat dander? 

I rest my case.

Now it’s time for me to sit perfectly still and quiet so Lucy will feel safe enough to eat her dinner. That is—if the ghosts flying around the living room ceiling fan will stop distracting the poor thing.

Retirement Status Update

My first full month of retirement is now in the books. Almost everyone I know when they see me they ask, “How’s retirement?” My answer is always some version of “Great!”. Of course, it’s only been one month, so no definitive answer is available at this point. I should also point out that retiring in the middle of winter isn’t optimal. If I had a do-over I might have retired the end of March or something when I could have celebrated by playing golf or going to an opening day baseball game. But, that ship has sailed. Still, January has been, despite the cold and snowy nonsense, quite fun. Here are a few of the highlights.

I got to attend my daughter’s 20 week sonogram. I found out his name, which is at this point still very much top secret. I have managed to remove three carloads of junk from our attic, which represents approximately 7% of the junk in our attic. This means that in a mere eleven more months I will be done! I have had six shifts at Hope Cafe plus at least that many paying customer visits which I spent mostly writing and engaging in harmless mischief. I might have made a couple videos to cheer up a sick friend, which featured me disparaging the already suspect reputation of my friend, Tom Allen. Speaking of writing, I wrote my first post-retirement work of fiction, a short story called Clara and Vincent. I distributed a dozen hamburgers to the volunteers at Hope Thrift and some Krispi Kreme doughnuts to the teachers at River’s Edge Elementary. Pam and I went to an awesome baptism at my church on a random Tuesday night. I gave Lucy a bath. We picked out and purchased all new exterior lights for our house and I hired real honest-to-God electricians to install them. I shared a fair number of top quality Dad Jokes to my many breathless fans. I met all of my siblings for lunch at Cracker Barrel in Fredericksburg. I fielded numerous phone calls and answered many texts from the new owners of my business who needed clarification on this thing or that. Most of these calls and texts began with the phrase, “Doug, I mean…what the hell?” I logged 48 miles on the stationary bike and another 10 miles walking the neighborhood when it wasn’t too danged cold. I also managed to do 705 pushups, curls and lateral raises (Yes, I keep records of such things). All of these healthy activities has resulted in me losing 2.8 pounds. I read two books. I have not shaved the beard yet but probably will the end of February. I have prepared only one dinner. 

There are several things I have not done since I’ve been retired. I have not checked on the travails of the stock market 100 times a day. I have not felt the weight of responsibility for the financial health of 300 people. My total “screen time” has decreased 42%…or so I am told by my cell phone’s analytics. 

All in all, a wonderful month.

Clara and Vincent… Part III

“How long were you and your husband together?” Vincent asked without looking up from his plate.

“I met him in Middle School.” Clara answered. “We started dating in high school and then got married right after graduation. We were married for 58 years.”

Vincent took off his hat and looked at her for a second before asking, “Any kids?”

“We never had children, no.” Clara turned away from his unwavering gaze, turning her attention to the neatly trimmed flower beds along the back fence for a while. “It was the greatest disappointment of our lives—not having children. But it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Vincent took the last fork full of potato salad then wiped his mouth with the linen napkin beside his plate.

“How in the world is it possible to be married for 58 years?” Vincent smiled and shook his head from side to side in genuine amazement.

Clara smiled back and asked a question of her own. “Are you married Vincent?”

It was his turn to avert his gaze to the freshly tended back yard. It would be best if he just made up a lie. It would have saved him the embarrassment of having to admit to such a colossal failure. Clara would have no frame of reference for what it was like today. She wouldn’t possibly have been able to understand. Her generation stayed together forever. He didn’t want to face the judgement that was sure to come his way if he told the truth, no matter how kind her eyes felt when she looked at him. It would be a repeat of the night that he told his parents that his second marriage was over less than 18 months before it started. They had cut him off, ashamed of his moral failings and tired of being disappointed. 

But when he opened his mouth to answer, the words had surprised him, “Not anymore, Ms. Clara.”

“So you’re divorced?”

Vincent glanced down at his hands folded neatly in his lap. “Twice.”

Her response was direct but flowed freely from her without a hint of judgement or disapproval, “Goodness. How is it possible to have been divorced twice before age 30?”

“If you answer my question, I’ll try to answer yours.”

“I’m sorry, my dear, what was your question?” 

“I asked you how it was possible to be married for 58 years.”

“Oh yes, now I remember.” Clara stopped for a moment to think before offering an answer to such a question. It was not something she had spent a lot of time pondering. She had been too busy with living life which had left little time for deep thoughts about the whys and hows.

“I’m not sure I know the answer to your question Vincent. I suppose the best I can offer is that we worked hard at it. There were wonderful times through our many years together…but we had our share of heartache and disappointments. In the end, we loved each other warts and all.”

Vincent believed her. But her words had wounded him. The truth was that he had never loved anyone more than he loved his own desire, his own way. He had discovered too late that his brand of selfishness wasn’t comparable with marriage. He decided to tell the truth.

“Well, the way you manage to have two divorces before you’re 30 is to get caught cheating on both of your wives. Yeah. So it was my fault. Both of them. Not proud of myself. But that’s the truth.”

Clara looked deeply into his eyes. The clouds of trouble hanging over him had darkened. He took a final drink of his tea. Clara reached across the table and grasped his hand in hers. “How about we have some ice cream?”

Before he could answer she had made her way inside the house leaving Vincent to make sense of what was happening to him. What was he doing here at this old woman’s broken down house confessing his sins to a complete stranger? Why had it felt good to admit to this kind old widow what an absolute bastard he was? He had another job to get to, an actual paying job, he didn’t have time to eat strawberry ice cream with an octogenarian…but here he was listening to another question—“Do you have children?”

“Yes. Two girls. Both with my first wife.”

“Oh my…” Clara, for the first time, looked disappointed. “How often do you get to see them?”

“Just one weekend a month. They live with their mother up in Cambridge, a little over an hour away.”

“I’m sorry, Vincent. I imagine that its quite difficult for you.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me, Ms. Clara.” Vincent answered honestly. “I was a cheater, remember? I brought it all on myself.”

“Yes. You did.” Clara’s face changed expression. Her eyes had taken on a pensive distance, along with the beginnings of tears. “I cheated on Harold once.”

Vincent couldn’t help himself. “What??”

A brief playful smile played across Clara’s face for an instant. “I am an old woman, Vincent. I will excuse you for not thinking me capable of infidelity.”

Then the distance returned and she began to tell her story.

“We had only been married for a couple of years when Harold enlisted in the Army. I begged him not to but my Harold was a patriot through and through. All I was thinking about was the war. But there was no changing his mind so off he went to Fort Dix for basic training. It was the first time in my life that I was alone. Before long he was shipped to Vietnam where he stayed for over two years. He got shot twice but the fool kept re-upping. I was angry and inconsolable for most of those two years.” 

As she was talking it occurred to Clara that she had never before this strange moment shared her story with another human being. As she spoke, the memories that her words released swept over her.

“One night I found myself in a bar that Harold and I used to go to after we were married and who should I run into but Burt Wilks, Harold’s best friend and the best man at our wedding. Burt was a year behind us in school but the two of them had been inseparable growing up. I hadn’t seen him for quite a while at that point so we sat together and caught up…and drank quite a few beers, not that that’s some kind of excuse. Anyway, I just remember feeling dangerous and angry. Before I knew it there we were back in my tiny little apartment waking up the next morning and going at it again. It went on for a week or more until we both had had enough. After that we went our separate ways, and I was never again unfaithful to Harold.”

Vincent had been mesmerized by the tale and by Clara’s willingness to share it but it felt unfinished. “What did Harold do when he found out?”

“He never found out because I never told him.” Clara’s voice was unwavering and unapologetic. “It was a week of weakness and selfishness on my part and nothing more. I didn’t tell him because it would have served no purpose other than breaking his heart.”

“But what about Burt? They were best friends. How did that work out?”

“It didn’t.” The very first tears of the telling appeared. “Burt followed Harold to Vietnam where he was killed five months into his tour. For the longest time I felt a measure of guilt for his death—like maybe he was too reckless a soldier because he had betrayed his best friend…with me.”

They both fell silent gazing at the reinvigorated back yard. Vincent felt a knot rising in his throat. Then he heard his unrecognizable voice—“why did you tell me that story?”

Once again Clara leaned forward to hold Vincent’s hand across the table. “I told you that story because you need to understand that you can’t let your very worst moments define you for the rest of your life. We all have it within us to do better, to be better. We just need a little encouragement, that’s all.”

Vincent looked at her with tenderness and gratitude. He hoped that it was true. He hoped that she was right, that better was possible.

He helped Clara clear off the table. They carried the dishes into the kitchen. He watched her stack them on a rubber mat next to the sink, noticing that she had no dishwasher.

“So, you live in this big old house all by yourself? Who looks after you?”

Clara placed a plug in the drain and began filling the sink with warm water. “Just me. Most of the time I do alright, but every once in a while I find that I must rely on the kindness of strangers.”

Vincent picked up the dish towel that was hanging on the stove handle and began drying the hot plates in the dish drain. “In this city, relying on the kindness of strangers is probably very hit or miss, I would imagine.”

Clara smiled as she scrubbed the ice cream bowls. “Well, just a week ago you were a stranger. So, I guess some days are better than others.”

Clara walked Vincent down the front sidewalk to his truck, thanked him for her beautiful yard then gave him a tender hug. Vincent reached in his pocket and placed a business card in her hand. It had the logo of Bianchi’s Landscaping across the front. On the back Vincent had written out his cell phone number. “Listen Clara, I want you to promise me that if you ever need something you will call me on this number. I don’t live far from you and it wouldn’t be any trouble at all. Ok?”

Vincent drove away, glancing back at her through the rear view mirror, with tears in his eyes.