My chest is tight. I have that oh-oh feeling when I wake up
each morning. I say mean things to my fine husband. Like, “Will you please put
your day-old socks in the dirty clothes basket for once? They are having a
two-day orgy on the foot of the bed. Very distracting and I’m trying to make a list
of things to worry about.”
Don shrugs, smiles. “Perhaps
one item on the list should be to investigate why my black socks resting
quietly on my side of the bed make you think of orgies.”
Not orgies, really, more like riots. Like what’s going on in my head. I explain, “It’s almost Christmas. I had the
nightmare again last night. The one where I’m about to give a speech and I
can’t remember why I am standing dumbstruck at a podium.”
“Oh, oh,” he answers and he picks up his socks.
I am the matriarch of my small family. Actually, my mother
is but she’s 101 and ten years ago she handed over the scepter to her elder
daughter. A pencil, actually. And a piece of paper.
I rewrite my list four times, shop my catalogs, and review
the menu, always cheese fondue for twelve folks, young and old. But last year
something happened to the cheese and eating it involved trying to spear and
move to one’s mouth long strings of rubber.
I don’t like working all day on a meal and ending up having people laugh
at it. This year it will be vegetarian
lasagna, I decide. Safe.
The phone rings. My cheerful
son surprises me by volunteering his talented teenage daughters as cooks for our
Christmas Eve dinner. “To give you a break,” he says.
“Sure,” I manage to answer. “I’ll set the table.” I am
deposed as matriarch. I hang up, overcome with negative thoughts. Even
they don’t want the fondue again. They think I am too old to manage. They hate singing carols. The Bible story we
always read bores them. Maybe they’d rather stay home.
Depressed, I ask my mother how she felt when I took over the
role from her. “Happy.” She gives me her
sweet smile. “Why?” Nowadays Mom smiles a lot.
I do understand that change is the only constant. However, when
you have eighty years of changing, usually for the best, it is difficult to
accept what is changing right now: the control of body functions, neck, memory,
ability to get up from the sofa without groaning, children whose hair will soon
be as gray as mine, the loss of the responsibility of stirring a pot of cheese
into rubber.
“Everything changes,” my husband says as we walk to the bookstore.
He takes my hand, perhaps because I’m inclined to shuffle over cracks, perhaps
because he needs me as much as I need him.
“Old age ain’t no
place for sissies,” Bette Davis and my mother whisper.
I‘m going to stop
whining. I squeeze his fingers. “I’m not a sissie,” I tell him.
“Nope, and I’m not either. Ice cream store coming up. Kefir
again?”
Fun post. You were upset because of day-old socks being left out? I have a confession to make about MY socks but I'd risk losing your affection. Take care.
ReplyDeleteYes, everything changes and it's making me so sad this year. My love of everything Christmas just isn't there.
ReplyDelete