Winter of my discontent

Sometimes it's hard even for me to remember, but I'm "old".

I'm over 60. I've left "late middle age" and entered the early stages of "elderly".

Mind you, I don't "feel old". I can see the age spots. I can see how my muscles have dwindled from the fullness of adulthood to that lean stringiness that seems to characterize age. I have all sort of aches, ohhellyes, and as of last week I'm bionic in both hips. Ugh. I'd forgotten how irking recovering from that surgery was.

But I don't feel like I've suddenly jumped two decades ahead from the sun-in-splendor of my forties. I don't feel ready to go down to the grave quite yet.

And yet, there it is. If I have twenty more good years I will be phenomenally lucky. I'm not dead yet, but my death - like a dragon on the roadside, to use Bill James' wonderful image - is increasingly visible. I won't make it into midcentury, and the bulk of my life is now part of history, and not future.

Not only am I now "old", I'm a very particular kind of old.

Born in 1957 I'm part of what I believe is called the "late Baby Boom" population cohort in U.S. society. I came of age - grew from late adolescence to early adulthood - between 1967 and 1977, so the way I look at the world around me is very much shaped by those years. Which were, as much as any period in American history, suffused with promise. The technologic and engineering promise that is perhaps best symbolized by the lunar landings of 1969. But also the social and political promise of the Civil Rights era, and the events of Vietnam and Watergate that led to what appeared at the time to be a great rejection of the ideas of an imperial America and a royal presidency.

It's fashionable now to mock the pretensions and naivete' of the Sixties and early Seventies counterculture. And, yes; that ideal and many of the people who embraced it were silly and naive and full of much of the poison that eventually killed the whole notion.

But for a time, and for me much of the time that I grew to a man's understanding of the world around me, my country seemed ready to live up to some of its noblest ideals. Freedom from want. Freedom of speech. Equal justice under law.

Yes. I know now those were largely illusion. I know now that even then they were flawed, and that many Americans hated them and fought them. But those were the times that made me. And that, perhaps as much or more than anything else, is what makes this time so bitter.

Because since 1980 I've watched my country reject those high ideals. In part simply because many of my "fellow citizens" would prefer immiseration to sharing prosperity and peace with "those people"; the dark, the queer, the poor. In part because many other of my fellow citizens would rather accept that the nation should fail "those people" rather than force a fight with the racists and oligarchs and theocrats. I've watched as malefactors of great wealth, people like like Rupert Murdoch, have worked diligently to turn my countrymen into aggrieved, angry, intolerant assholes. Worse; aggrieved, angry, intolerant assholes who insist that either the nation sway to their intolerance or that there be no nation at all.

Sure. I know that my country was founded by rich white guys and designed to be run by rich white guys for rich white guys. But it had seemed to me that this could and would be changed. That We the People would come to fully embrace the ideals of the documents we were taught to recite in school, y'know, "life, liberty...establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility..?" That stuff?

But that, instead, through my adult life, I've watched as the "conservative" people of my nation become meaner, smaller, more vicious, more angry and more vindictive and despite this obvious decline and fall take over more and more of the nation.

Despite being less than half of the country I've watched them steal two presidential elections and dominate the congress and the statehouses. Instead of arguing whether we should divest more of our empire sooner rather than later we now have a solid minority that insists on eternal war against phantasms like "radical Islamic terror" and "immigration". Instead of finding ways to reduce inequity and bring more Americans into comfortable prosperity we're fighting a rearguard action against legislation that shoves wealth upwards and further punishes the poor and disenfranchised. Instead of trying to decide which level of environmental health is healthy enough we watch as safeguards on poisons and pollutants are derided as "overregulation" and reduced or removed, as the people whose profits depend on the disregard of the public's health and welfare are placed in charge of "protecting" that health and welfare.

Instead of the promise of my youth, I find myself increasingly trying to defend the barest of minimums against the return of the predatory feudalism of the Gilded Age.If you wonder why I write so little here, it's because I have lost so much hope that anything I can say will do any good.

I don't intend to stop fighting these people. In the American Experiment to lose is to die, and though I'm old I'm not yet dead.

But it's brutally sickening to have to be fighting what I thought were battles won in my youth.

I never thought I'd see myself in twilight struggling over that same dark and bloody ground tens of years after the bright promise of my dawn seemed to sweep over it.

And yet, here I am, and here you are, too.

Descending branch

The hotel I'm staying in covering this grading job has a breakfast buffet every morning. It's...well, it's belly-timber and it's free. So I was sitting at the high table in the center of the sterile room, eating my not-awful eggs and sausage and orange juice when a man's voice behind my right side started;

"Good mor...oh, um, hi. Sorry. For a moment you looked just like my dad."

I turned to the speaker. He was a tall, athletic man in what I think of as "High Middle Age"; mid-thirties to mid-forties. His wife was a similarly pleasant, well-kempt middle-aged middle class woman and he seemed genuinely pleased to see someone, even a stranger, who reminded him of his father.

I just looked at him for a moment, because my only thought was "Wait...you're middle-aged, so am I...how the hell can I look like your dad?"

I must have looked strange, because he began to lean back in the slightly embarrassed manner people adopt when they mistake a stranger for someone they know. I couldn't stand that troubled look in his eyes, or the concern on his wife's face so I smiled and returned some sort of happy triviality and we parted to our own troubles.

I looked for an answer in my congealing eggs and found none, except that the man was correct; if I had a son when I was 18 he would be the same age as his today.

And that I am no longer middle-aged. I am, instead, some middle-aged man's dad.

Shining like copper

I posted a little item to MilPub this morning about the Petraeus Scandal.

I don't want to recount it here; the issue isn't one that I'm much wrapped around personally. But one of the things I mentioned as part of my lack of understanding over the whole business was how we the People don't seem to bother wondering whether the sex lives of strangers are our business especially since we haven't the faintest idea of what those sex lives might be.

The crux of the Petraeus biscuit is the presumption that David and Holly Petraeus are a white-bread monogamous couple and that what Petraeus did with his lover was censurable because of the betrayal, since we most of us have long since moved on past the notion of adultery as criminal act in itself.

But we honestly have no idea. For all we know Dave and Holly are paired in some sort of insanely lusty marriage-of-convenience to enable them to meet other hot swingers.

Bizarre? Not as bizarre as assuming without any proof whatsoever that there was a betrayal or adultery on anyone's part.

Anyway, that's not my point here.

Sadly, what this one is about is my own reaction to seeing what Holly Petraeus looks like.

That's her, on the left. When I looked at the picture my first thought was "Gee, how nice that Dave had his mom hold the book for him..."

But this is not Mrs. Petraeus Sr.; it is the man's wife of 37 years.

And my next - thoroughly uncharitable - thought was "Hmmm...well, I can kinda see why he was out roaming..."

That's where I caught myself and was ashamed.

Because I was acting like an idiot, and a young American man, but I repeat myself.

I like to think that I am no longer young, and both a little more intelligent and a little more cultured than the average "Maxim" reader. But here I was, judging Holly Petraeus' physical appeal by what seemed to me to be her grandmotherly appearance. And that is as shallow and as foolish as the least sophisticated porn-peeper who ever skipped a 10th Grade study hall.

I should know - I DO know, when I'm taking the time to think and not acting like a shallow jerk - that sleek limbs and taut skin haven't the slightest real connection with beauty, desirability, or attraction either emotional or sexual. A man or woman may be as slender and uncreased as a blank sheet of foolscap and about as interesting. That true desire and delight come from those most inventive of erogenous zones, the mind and heart.

And that having lived long enough to fill that mind and deepen the well of loveingkindness in that heart is a crucial part of being a woman instead of a girl, of being a true heart's desire rather than a casual lover.

In fact, I would say now that time has given me the tainted gift of creases and scars of my own that one would be a great fool to trade those and the experience they signify for the flawless ruddy vigor of youth.

But that's how we roll here in the USA, circa 2012.

"Because a funny thing happens to women as they age: how we should be looked at stops being an issue at all. If you don't look young, you don't look sexually attractive, so you're not worth looking at. It's ridiculous. It's reductive. It's shallow. It's stupid. But it's something women live with and dread."

It's ridiculous.

And the really irritating thing is that we men KNOW it's ridiculous.

Would we trade our maturity - with it's decline in rude vigor and strength - for the callow inexperienced fumblings of youth again? Who among us would want to be that terrified, uncertain, unformed young man or woman again, desperately trying to look and seem more confident and more experienced than we were, fearfully clueless of what would make us genuinely happier, kinder, more whole, more human?

Who would want to exchange the languid caresses of a grown woman who knows her own mind and takes her pleasures with deliberation, grace, and humor for a girl whose primary asset is her unripe smoothness?

And yet...we, many of us, snort and pant after women much younger than we simply because they are young, and in that youth they draw us back from the cold grave where no lovers can embrace.

But do they? We are born owing God or Nature our death, and that day will come in its own season, no matter how many young bodies we fondle or how many young lips we kiss...

I don't think so, and neither do many other men I know.

The secret, I think, is finding the grace that a wise and tender woman carries with her, to see the rich bounty in the curve of a fuller hip, and the weight of a satin breast that no longer rides as high as it once did. To kiss a throat that is still warm and scented even as the that skin covers it is no longer taut.

If we are fortunate, love, and are loved in return the shir of soft hair we bury our face in is now shot with silver and enfolds a head that carries within it a lifetime of learning the hard lessons that only joy and grief, love and loss and teach.

So I am ashamed, and should be ashamed, of my reaction to Holly Petraeus' looks. She is a grown woman as I am a grown man, no longer young, but with - one hopes - the gains of a life well lived to balance the fleeing years.

So let me lie down with you, my dear, in our gray and aging bodies, and let us remind ourselves that while youth and glory are fleeting that tenderness is lasting and evergreen, that wisdom is hard-won and the scars of that winning are dearer under the press of lips that open in love's knowing kiss.

Come lie upon my heart, cruel and insensible soul,
Adored tiger, monster of indolent airs;
I wish to plunge my trembling fingers a long while
Into the thickness of your heavy mane;

To bury my aching head
In your skirts, replete with your perfume,
And breathe in, like a faded flower,
The sweet mustiness of my defunct love.

I want to sleep! to sleep rather than live!
In a sleep as sweet as death,
I will spread my kisses without remorse
On your beautiful body, shining like copper.

To swallow up my becalmed sobbing,
Nothing can equal, for me, the abyss of your bed;
Powerful forgetfulness resides upon your lips,
And Lethe flows in your kisses.

I will obey my destiny, henceforth my delight,
As one predestined to it;
Docile martyr, innocent convict,
Whose fervor stirs his own torment,

I will suck, in order to drown my rancor,
Nepenthes and kind hemlock
From the charming tips of that narrow chest
Which has never imprisoned any heart.

~ Baudelaire "Lethe" Fleurs du mal

Cold Iron

I spent the better part of the daylight hours of the past Thursday and Friday doing soil exploration using hand tools; hand auger drills of various sizes as well as a pipe and slide hammer contraption known as a "drive probe".

Both of these gadgets required human muscle to work, and since as it happened the soils that the human muscle - my muscle - were required to work on were either composed of fucking great lumps of rock, or end-of-summer-dry silt soil that had the fixed opinion that it was just like rock said muscles were sternly reminded that it was nearly fifty-five years ago that they formed from their primordial protoplasm.

In plain terms, I am no longer young, and for the past two days required my body to do something that was too demanding for its remaining strength and endurance.

I am tired, and sore. The big muscles in my shoulders, arms, and thighs ache and cramp, and the now-familiar deep burn of pain in my right hip has flickered up like a fire fed fresh coals. I have taken several painkillers to tamp down this fire, but the result has been to deny me sleep, an oddly common side-effect of this particular medication. So when the second big lag-cramp twisted me up from our bed I limped out here to sit and stretch and think and write a little, since I am outside the room of sleep, my nose pressed against the warm night-glass but my eyes still wide open, my mind still spinning, unable to open that casement and enter into the silent room to lie down and sleep.

Surely I cannot be the only one who, aging, begins to feel the body's fraying, the steady, sullen failing of the parts that once worked so well, the weakness of once-strong muscles and the grinding of once-smooth joints that remind me that I am a long way down the road towards my body's inevitable failure?

And I am surely luckier than many. My body was stronger, for a longer time, at a higher level than many of the sorts of people I see daily; young people whose obesity makes them look and move like old men or old women. People who seem to sit rather than walk, walk rather than run. People who decades younger than I whose bodies, or minds, bear the obvious marks of serious illness, or violent injury.

And I am lucky in having been gifted with the endurance of pain. Pain and I are old...well, not friends but, perhaps, two old enemies who have crafted a sort of familiarity with one another. He is not a stranger to me, this daily thief who robs me of the back that was strong and straight, the stride that was long - as long as the stride of a man with legs less than three feet from sole to crotch could be - and fierce.

Every morning we rise within moments of each other, my companion and I; often he pokes me in the shoulder or in the hip before I have straightened up from my night's rest to remind me that he has never left me, that I will never be alone so long as my joints continue to deteriorate and my bones continue their hobby of collecting stray bits of calcite like gingerbread on the eaves of an old house.

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So I sit in the quiet room, the only light the phosphors of the white screen before me, trying to let my body settle into a quiet hum that will give me time to think, and write.

From the rental house at the corner to the west comes the noise of the University students enjoying a Friday night's socializing. I am suddenly seized by the strong desire to dress and walk down the dark street to show them my herky step like a marionette with a tangled string, and tell them to dance, and run, to leap and skylark, to arch and bend and enjoy the young strength and suppleness of their bodies now, whilst they may, while they enjoy the fullness of youth, and power, and grace so that they may have those memories to pull about them when the ache and stiffness of age and hard use lays its cold iron on their limbs and bends their backs like the brittle stalks of the autumn grass.

When I Am Five

We've had a week of birthdays.Last weekend was Missy's Terrible Two, of course. And this weekend was the "official" Big Five for Mister Pea. Mind you, he was very clear on the actual timing of the Event: before he blew out his candles he was still four. After the Cake, he was five...kind of like thoroughbreds all getting a year older at the stroke of New Year's.

For Big Boy Peeper, his birthday got a real jump start at my fave breakfast spot, the Beaterville Cafe, when the lovely waitstaff, hearing that it was his big day, came up with a treat to tempt any preschooler: strawberries and whipped cream!The Peep barely waited to blow out his candles before digging in, his pancake forgotten...While we were heading back out to Bob the Subaru who should we encounter but our co-adoptive-parent Kelli (with a charmin' Aussie bloke - Kelli, you minx!). We talked of this and that but mostly about new mommy H, whose little man I mentioned just the other day - we are all very excited for her! But also frustrated at the slow pace of referrals and other body blows such as the closing of Vietnam's US-IA program. So nice to see Kelli - I know that it can't be possible, but it seems like she never has an unhappy day. Every time we see her her smile lights up her face like a good deed in a tawdry world. You're gonna be such a great mommy, Kelli...

There was more Peeperness after that - Mojo stayed home to try and nap Missy while Peep and I went to little Columbia Park Annex to play on the slide. After the crush got too much - there was a softball game in progress nearby with attendant kids on the playset - we went across Lombard to Columbia Park where we played until we couldn't play any more. Then it was Arby's for lunch and Peep's favorite curly fries and then home to play some more. By three everyone was napped (OK, Missy was, anyway...) and ready for birthday fun.We tried to keep things relatively sane. No clowns, no games, no bouncy houses (the kids across the back alley had one for what must have been someone's birthday last week and I swear, it looked like someone was cooking JiffyKidPop in a giant purple plastic pan. Every five seconds a kid would fly up in the air...). We had stuff to eat and drink, lots of trucks and other toys to play with, a yard to run in and a sandbox to dig in.

[Shite. As I type this I recall that I didn't check to see if we put the covers back on the sandbox. Dammit. OH well, the sandbox may have become the catbox. Wretched cats.]

The big moment arrived; Peep blew out the twelve (?) candles and is officially five.And, of course, there were presents.

When the last sugar-activated little guest pogoed down the front steps we slumped amid the wreckage secure that most everyone had had a good time.Of course, the evening ended with a hyper Missy spilling her water all over her crib, crying herself to sleep and a gooned-out Peeper having a huge meltdown and fight with his mom over a video. But, hey, it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the ol' childrearing game, right?

So - that was that - a very Happy Birthday, indeed. If you want to stop at the happy children stories you should stop here.

Because there is one more thing I need to talk about. Although the very thought and mention of it is cruelly hard for me.

My parents were here to enjoy their grandchildren's birthdays (and to meet their little granddaughter for the first time). They seemed to enjoy Missy's happy laughter and the Peeper's liveliness, although I have to say that he was pretty grumpy and unpromising about interacting with Pop-pop and Gramma. But that's five - at least he didn't tell me, as I once told MY father, that he didn't want to kiss his grandma because she made him think of Death...!

(In my defense, my paternal Grandma WAS a fairly dessicated old bombazine vulture at that point. Still, I was a wretched child...)

So I think they enjoyed their trip. But for me it was...I'm not sure what it was. Painful? Saddening? Enraging? It was not all that enjoyable and in many ways disturbing.

The thing is...I think we all have in our heads an image of our parents as they were when we first recognized them as people and not just food-dispensers and bottom-washers. I would guess for most of us - for me, at least - it comes somewhere between first speech and puberty. So I suspect that most of us mentally see our parents as the young adults they were when we were little. Strong. Big. The living embodiment of why growing up was something to be desired. Powerful.

But here was my mother, hunched in the glider, a weak, hesitant, infirm old lady. There's more that I don't want to speak of - age is indignity enough without public exposure, and her story is not mine to tell. But in the two years since we last saw her she seems to have dwindled a decade's worth of age. She is visibly uncomfortable at best, in pain at worst, and in the cold ashes of her disability I watched my memory of the tall, buxom redhead with the loud confidence char down to clinker. That woman is gone, gone as if she had never been. I feel like someone crept into my head and stole my mother, my memory of the straight young woman who almost sparked with energy, who comforted me when I was scared and hugged me when I was sad and gave me her strength and love so I could love and be strong.

At least her mind is still clear. Thank God.

But for the first time I looked at my parents and can picture myself standing before their graves. And not far in the future. Perhaps not tomorrow, or next week. But soon, soon enough.

I know that it is the way of the world for sons to bury their parents. I know that we are born into the world owing life a death. But right now I feel like I'm grieving twice: once for the loss of the mother I knew, and once for the sorrow to come.