A Book Report

Just finished reading “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter, an absolutely wonderful book, so many interesting fully realized characters, revealed by their behaviors in nuanced and touching scenes; a complex plot with interesting philosophical questions about the nature of time, memory, how our lives are affected by random events, how interconnected we all are. Also, hilarious at times. Sweet, sad, and disgusting at others. All this in gorgeous prose, with an occasional sentence that is PERFECT.

One of the characters is dying of cancer. From pages 314 - 315:

And the truth is, most of the time, she IS at peace, HAS led a great life, IS happy her son has returned. ... But other times, honestly, the whole idea of being at peace just pisses her off. At peace? Who but the insane would ever be at peace? What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough? Who could live even a day and not feel the sweet ache of regret?

I loved that sentence -- What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough? And that’s why I love a good book like this. For a while I get to live another life, a different life, several lives.

Page 325:

There would seem to be nothing more obvious,

more tangible and palpable than the present moment.

And yet it eludes us completely.

All the sadness of life lies in that fact.                          --Milan Kundera

Page 335:

And it’s a life with no shortage of moments to recommend it, a life that picks up speed like a boulder rolling down a hill, easy and natural and comfortable, and yet beyond control somehow; it all happens so fast, you wake a young man and at lunch are middle aged and by dinner you can imagine your death.

Thanks to my good friend Tere for lending me this book.

Emotional Extremes

This has been an emotionally extreme year, with great joys (a university graduation, two weddings, a new grandson) and deep sorrows (loss of sister's partner and having to put a beloved dog "to sleep"). When I was young and extreme emotions were common, I had thought that in old age there would be wisdom, serenity, and emotional calm. Not so! 

An obvious idea occurred to me today that the extreme emotions of youth and age are simply different. When one is young, there are the highs of falling in love/lust and the lows of breaking up, plus the anxiety and pride of education and work achievements with some failures. As a senior, I find the main emotions are a deep love of family members, with great joy over the new ones, and pride and happiness with their accomplishments. The increasingly common emotional lows are grief and sadness at the loss of friends and family. 

I couldn't think of a way to convey this "insight" in a painting, so I tried a haiku, which doesn't quite capture what I am thinking and feeling either.

Youth's extreme emotions
Are lust, achievement, defeat.
Age has love, loss, joy.

Memorable Moments

We have recently been involved in putting on two weddings. After the months of planning, it seemed that the weddings went by in a flash, and without photographs, I would have forgotten a lot that happened. However, certain moments stand out clearly in my memory and at the time they felt both emotional and meaningful. And they were often the totally spontaneous and unexpected moments. I thought it would be nice to blog about a few of them.

My daughter Emily got married in a beautiful, rustic outdoor setting. As her father was walking her down the aisle, her veil got caught in a tree branch and was yanked from her head. I jumped up from my seat and jammed it back on her head. As I straightened the veil, I was overcome with love for her and on impulse I took her face in my hands and kissed her. Then she continued down the aisle, calling out, "Thanks, Mom!" This sweet moment was well documented:

Another favorite memory was the young couple's first dance. Emily's fiance Nick was NOT known for dancing. As a surprise they secretly had their first dance choreographed by the award winning choreographer Kelly Todd. Several days of practice were involved. At the wedding, as the first dance began and Nick smoothly led Emily around the dance floor, I could hear the crowd gasping and saying "No" and "Wow" and "What?" When they went into their choreographed movements, the crowd burst into cheers and hoots. I was busy videotaping it, but a few photos show the fun:

And of course, it was wonderful to see how beautiful and happy Emily and Nick looked just after they were married:

Our son Matt married Christina a couple of months later. Several unplanned moments made wonderful memories for me:

At the rehearsal dinner on a boat, I tried to get the baby to
smile while two photographers captured parents and baby.

During formal family portraits, Ryan spontaneously
joined the Chavez family!

I finally managed to get a photograph of
all the Kee men!

Matt and Christina had a lovely first dance, but a later dance with them and their baby was incredibly cute and sweet:

And of course, it was wonderful to see the newly married couple so happy and beautiful:

This got me thinking about my other daughter's wedding in 2004. Again, only certain moments stand out in memory. One again involved a veil. During formal photographs of the bride, taken on an outside, upper deck overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the wind suddenly picked up and Kelly almost lost her veil. She was laughing her head off while she tried to get it back under control.

Of course, Kelly and John, competitive swing dancers, put on a fabulous first dance:

And they too looked happy and fabulous after marrying:

Reviewing one's happy memories is good for one's mental health!

Conversations

Some people complain that Twitter and texting are making the country inarticulate. Here is a verbal exchange between two neighbors that I overheard this morning:

      "Morning."
       
       "Weather."

       "Nice!"

After Reading Heilbrun

I just finished reading “The Last Gift of Time: Life beyond Sixty” by Carolyn G. Heilbrun. Here are quotes from that work:

I was shocked, almost from the moment I left Columbia, by how little I missed it, how relieved I was not to have to plunge, ever again, into that poisonous atmosphere.

I entered into a period of freedom, and only past sixty learned in what freedom consists: to live without a constant, unnoticed stream of anger and resentment, without the daily contemplation of power always in the hands of the least worthy, the least imaginative, the least generous.

[To find meaning in later life,] ...the undertaking ... requires strong effort and the evidence of growing proficiency.

The only cure for sadness, [T. H.] White said, was to learn something.

...one sometimes feels compelled ... to complain ... but does not do so because all the people one sees are sick of it and will visit even less often if complaints or criticisms are forced upon them....

[May Sarton wrote] “We have to make myths of our lives,” she wrote. “It is the only way to live without despair. ...It is only past the meridian of fifty that one can believe that the universal sentence of death applies to oneself.”

Whatever the satisfying and as yet culturally endorsed adventure after sixty may be, its necessary element is the sense of something essential and vital having been achieved or discovered or learned. [Heilbrun argues that romance and sex are the only culturally sanctioned adventures for women, and that’s awkward after 60.]

The secret, however, of successful--and therefore continuing--association with the young lies in knowing that they are more valuable as suppliers of intelligence than receivers of it.

...leave the future to those who will inhabit it.

Here are some thoughts I had after reading her book:

By 60 or 70 we have developed a personal wisdom -- the sum of our experiences, knowledge, and unique view of the world -- and the frustrating issue is that we cannot use it to help our adult children, who want to learn their own lessons and develop their own wisdom. Our value to them is to be present, to observe, to approve, to support, to listen, to appreciate, to love. (Oh, and maybe most important, to finance.)

I like to think another contribution we older folks can make to the lives of the young is to provide a possible model for how to deal with life, since we obviously cannot give them advice on how to do it. If we can make ourselves happy and if we can handle what life deals us, then maybe that can give the young some ideas of how to do that for themselves, when their time comes.

As Heilbrun noted, many old people ask “What’s the point?” and become despairing. Humans are meaning-making creatures, which explains the power of narrative, and our job is to create the point. Make something up!

The adventure I have found for myself after sixty is painting. It meets Heilbrun’s requirements for effort and evidence of increased proficiency. It banishes sadness, because I am always learning something. I can express my personal wisdom with it. It is fun! And it is culturally acceptable, though Heilbrun seemed to think there were no culturally sanctioned adventures for old women. I consider the freedom Heilbrun discussed, the freedom of not caring any more about what people think of me or about what is socially acceptable, to be another adventure for old women. Seize the day!

Don and Eva

We live in a community property state, and in the middle of the night I was wondering whether my married children understand how the community property laws work. It seems simple: If they inherit something from me, they can consider it theirs and leave it to others as they see fit ONLY if they keep it in a separate account and never mingle any of it with their spouse’s money. Otherwise it becomes community property. And then I remembered a story from my childhood.

Don and Eva were long time friends of my parents, and I believe that my father and Don were boyhood friends before either of them married. I think they were in the army together during World War II. They owned a gas station together before the war, and they had a couple of businesses together afterwards, too.

My little sister and I thought Don and Eva were a funny couple. Don was skinny and quiet, while Eva was plump and lively. Don did not smoke cigarettes, and Eva was a chain smoker. She had that deep, raspy voice of heavy smokers that some people used to think was sexy, and when she laughed she usually ended up coughing a lot. When we were dragged along as children to see Don and Eva, I knew I was going to have a hard time breathing, and I tried to avoid her big hugs that always included clouds of smoke. We went to see her when she was in the hospital with emphysema, and I remember her lying in her hospital bed wheezing and hacking and smoking away. It is hard to recall, in the present day, how pervasive and socially acceptable smoking once was.

Don and Eva never had any children, and they were fond of my sister and me. They always said that they intended to leave everything to us, but they had only one will -- Don’s. It was fairly standard in that it left everything to Eva, and if she predeceased Don, everything went to us. Since Eva was dying of emphysema, they saw no need for any other type of will. They weren’t very old and Don was healthy, so it seemed a safe bet that Eva would predecease Don. 

However, as she lay dying with Don by her side, he suddenly had a heart attack and died. A couple of hours later, Eva died, too. We reacted to this news with a complex set of emotions -- shock, sadness, and a secret thought that it was somewhat romantic that they couldn’t live without each other. Only much later did it become clear that this unexpected order of death had economic consequences. Since Don died first by a couple of hours, Eva inherited everything. Since she had no will, everything went through probate to her closest relatives, her brothers and sisters. We got nothing.

At the time, we were young and thoughtless, and the fact that we inherited nothing did not bother us. Besides, Don was only middle aged, and if he had lived on, he may well have remarried or spent all his money. Only later, as an adult, I began to think that it was rather sad that their expressed wishes had come to naught. Eva did not even like her brothers and sisters, all of whom lived out of state and did not visit her while she was alive. They were quite rude to us, locked us out of Don and Eva’s house, and did not let us take even a little thing to remember them by. They disinvited us to the joint funeral, but that’s another story. At any rate, this sadness for how Don and Eva did not get what they wanted in the end motivated me to learn about estate planning.

What Is Love?

I love my grandchildren.

I love them with full heart.

I adore them.

I think of them frequently.

I could look at their faces all day

And often do.

If one of them needed a kidney,

I would say “Take mine”

Without hesitation

Without even thinking is there an alternative

With gratitude that I could help.

Is this the one true pure love?

Uncomplicated by the cares of parenthood

Uncomplicated by sexual attraction

Uncomplicated by doubt.

They love me too

Just as I am

With gray hair and wrinkles

Even without presents.