Can't help laughing...and this blog is about age

Picture, Unknown Victorians laughing

And this blog is about age.

When someone would ask Neil’s mother how old she was she would answer, “I’ll forgive you for asking that personal question.”

I even resent a doctor asking my age. That means he has immediately categorized me.

We do want to be perceived as young—that baby-butt smooth skin, how gorgeous is that? No wonder we want it, but who wants to be judged as slow, awkward, ugly, conservative, stupid, or forgetful—or worse yet, “What age did your parents die?” Horrors.   Even being victims of our DNA  can be changed, so I’ve heard, as genes are constantly turning on or off. Bottom line, we fight to look young, while we ought to be fighting to think young—meaning, of course, forward thinking, innovative, inventive, open to new ideas, and new people. Be a person worth keeping around.

“Look for your mold.”

Scientist Dr. Jonathan Sackner- Bernstein persuades us to “Look for our mold.” He tells the story of one scientist, who daily sorted through his petri- dishes checking specimens—you know where this is going, but the story bears repeating. Dr. Alexander Fleming was 47 when he discovered penicillin. Every day he would check his numerous petri-dishes. If he found that one had turned moldy he chucked it into the trash.  One day, a moldy dish looked a little different from the many others he had thrown away, so he put it aside. Later he noticed that the bacteria around the mold had died--thus Fleming discovered one of the first antibiotics. He called it mold juice—I guess Penicillin sounds more scientific.

Bernstein’s  point was that this scientist, Dr. Alexander Fleming, at age 47, had the years of experience to discern,  the wisdom to trust his intuition, and the training to identify. Unfortunately he was not good at communicating and thus the community didn’t listen to him, even in WWI when he said, accurately, that the antiseptics they were using did more harm than good. He brought in a couple more scientists and eventually the word on penicillin got out.

Too often people use the excuse that they won’t make a difference because they lost their chance, they are too old.

Remember what Richard Back (book Illusions) said, “If you wonder whether your mission on earth is over, if you’re alive, it isn’t.”

Berstein pointed out that even such things as learning to play a musical instrument involves different components than years and years of practice. It involves how you are supported, your attitude, and your innate talent.

 “Go boldly in the direction of your dreams.”

If you’re alive having your dreams come true is still an option.

I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did.”

—Alexander Fleming

Angels Beware, a New Kid on the Block

It was over four-score years ago that she sat across the aisle from me in Spanish class. She smiled, I smiled. She invited me for lunch at the Barn at UC Riverside, and thus began a friendship that endured for those forty- some years.

We were both married students, older than some, both of us had a gap in our schooling. We graduated, lived in the same town, then apart, together, apart.

I remember a Christmas Eve in Oregon, when Sylvia and her husband Greg flew in from California, and found themselves unable to maneuver their car on our snow laden hill. I saw them from my kitchen window, trudging up the road dragging their suitcases, laughing and slipping. They joined us for Christmas, and we ate turkey and drank Champagne—one of Sylvia’s favorite things—Champagne and Christmas.

Over the years we have sometimes lived close by, oftentimes far apart, but visited often. The Fourth of July at Coronado Island and eating sea food from Point Loma Seafood, and watching fireworks will always be our favorite fourth of July—she mentioned it every year and wished we were there. 

We endured separations, togetherness, confidences, marital disputes, pregnancies, childbirth, child rearing. She had a little girl when I met her, and 13 years later she gave birth to a little boy. My kids and her little boy took baths together, ran around the Zoo, Disneyland, and Bazaar Del Mundo in San Diego where Sylvia and I drank margaritas, and the kids perused the court yard, and visited the toy store, and were safe and confined while we wiled away the hours.

We wondered about the afterlife together, and when hippies came along we contemplated what that meant, and about the gay movement, and women’s rights.

She liked shocking pink fingernails and toe nails, and flip flops with huge flowers on her toes, and all things bling, but her favorite were jewels of the real variety. Going to an auction stirred her creative juices, as did Interior Decorating.

I still remember those pink fingernails clutching basalt bluffs as Sylvia and I slogged in sandals through the water of Oneonta Canyon in the Columbia River Gorge, then we sat all wet and prickly, but laughing about it, until we changed at Nordstroms before the drive home.

Within this past year she said, “When I lose weight and get in shape I’m getting a pair of skinny jeans with rhinestones on the pockets.”

When you see a short lady with long blond hair, with rhinestones on her butt wandering around heaven—that will be Sylvia

She died December 7, the day after her 83^rd birthday.