On Friday, I will be 49 years old. While I appreciate the birthday wishes I have received in person, via e-mail and on Facebook, the present state that I am in is one of utter dismay of standing at the edge of that cliff known as "middle aged forties" looking down on the gulley known as "old age fifties". Yes, I know, it is only 49 chronologically but Japanese age, I hit the big 5-0 tomorrow. I feel like a pathetic Wily Coyote waiting for the Roadrunner to kick me in the hairy okole and send me crashing down hard into a river of Tokuhon Chill.
Contrary to the opinion recently deposed Empress Oprah, for a commoner like me anyway, 50 is not the new 30. For me, 50 feels like the old 70.
The way I tended to deal with the onset of baachan-ville in the past has been to embrace denial and relocate somewhere. At 19, it was plan to go to law school on the Mainland. At 29, it was take a state job on Maui. At 39, it was drag the toddler twins to Mariposa at Neiman Marcus for lunch everyday (well, that's kind of like the retail version of Nirvana, right). But now at almost 49, the prospect of picking up and moving somewhere seems totally non-viable on several levels. I mean, I wake up in the middle of the night having to go shishi but my body must first have a discussion with my brain over whether I can "chance 'em" and wait for the morning because I'm too tired to drag my big butt down the hall.
I am trying to figure out why I am in such a bummer state over being 50. It is not death that depresses me because I know I will inevitably come back in my next life as something even more horrifying and obnoxious than my current self as punishment for all of the bitchy things I have done and all of the snarky things I have said. I am pretty sure that what is really bothering me is being officially old - even though the twins remind me everyday that I am already there and have been there pretty much since they have known me. The reality that someday very soon I will be wearing rubber otafuku slippers, asking the Diva to home perm my hair into an afro that Angela Davis would be jealous of, and shopping for tennis balls to put at the bottom of my walker is chilling to the bones (oh wait, that's the arthritis in my hands).. The thought of the highlight of my week being a trip to Don Quixote to buy daikon on Senior Day and the highlight of my day being scoring a free cup of coffee at Zippy's with my Kupuna Card is not conducive to doing a happy happy dance on Friday.
Actually, what really scares me is the thought of having to depend on my three monsters as "caregivers" someday. I envision myself helplessly trapped under a 10 foot landslide of empty Capri Sun juice bags, white Nike socks (one side only), old math quizzes and laundry folded a decade ago still waiting to be put away (for a visual, come to my house and go into the Diva or the Professor's room), long forgotten by any of my so-called children. They probably won't even be able to smell my carcass because the odor will be overwhelmed by the stench of the aforementioned socks and the baggies of leftover home lunch that have fossilized in their old backpacks. They'll just find this old dried up raisin in a GamaGo shirt, assume it's something the dog dug up in the yard and will toss it in the trash - uh, more accurately, kick it under the bed.
The only thing that seems to pull me temporarily out of the black hole known as "dang I'm old" self-pity is spending time with people who are much much older than myself which is why even though I no longer work at my job, I make it a practice to go to Wine Gang on Thursdays. Spending time with "da boys" who are in their 80s, 90s and Japanese 100, all of whom have survived unimaginable challenges in life pre-during-and post WWII, has made me realize that the late Aaliyah was indeed right, age ain't nothing but a number (particularly if you are R. Kelly's child bride). Having lived through so much, they have reached the point where there is no longer worry about the insignificant, trivial things that that most of us tend to obsess about and not once have I heard anyone say, "Oh, I wish I had done this..." or "I should have said that...". Perhaps it is true that once a soldier, always a soldier because they embrace the whole "be all that you can be spirit" even if it means being a jiichan. With all of the laughter, x-rated tales and verbal battles that would bring Eminem to tears, it is easy to forget that you are in the company of folks who have been collecting social security as long as you have been on earth.
So guess where I will be today along my pot of Okinawan Shoyu Pork (easy to eat without teeth) and my bottle of chocolate wine? Giving myself the best early birthday present of all.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Here on Gilligan's Isle
For the past month or so, I have been without a laptop. Now, you would think this would be a minor inconvenience because we have four other laptops, three smartphones and a Nook in the house and a vague idea of what the phrase "share with Mom" means. However, as years of private school education apparently did not include an understanding of the word "share", one of the laptops has a screen that's half black while another has no ability to connect to intenet, the glass on my smartphone has been cracked for three months, and nobody in the house has been able to do more on the Nook than play sudoku, I was cut off from the surreal world in which (according to the kids anyway) I spend the bulk of my waking hours.
It was major Facebook withdrawal, much more lethal than trying to detox off of black tar heroin (or so I have been told).
Being a senior citizen (according to the cashier at Foodland anyway), I have spent about 80% of my life communicating in ways not involving something with a screen, keyboard and membership fee. I mean, it took being stuck in car with baby twins at the intersection of Ward and Ala Moana Blvd to finally convince Oscar the Grouch that yes, indeed, I did need a cell phone. I did not embrace the invasion of the digital universe in my life and I was one of those uninformed few who chose to remain in the dark cave of ignofance as long as possible. I didn't need to surf the net because I did not have a porn addiction to feed nor was I interested in hooking up with any long lost high school boyfriend. However, having failed at a 2nd IVF and contemplating adoption, I was lured onto the net when another patient at the office told me that a lot of the adoption agencies posted photos and bios of the kids looking for homes. So, the promise of shopping in my own home for prospective sons and daughters was the big draw. And thus, began my journey into madness.
The thing is that the majority of people of whom I regularly communicate with via text, e-mail and FB are people I see in person or are on my favorites list on my telephone. Yet, something about trying to reach out and touch them (figuratively) without using any electronic device just seemed to foreign and archaic. It was as though that part of my brain which enabled me to speak in semi-coherent sentences or to write a totally illegible letter had disappeared, it's position usurped by the need to hear the click clack of keys and a reliance on spell check. My friend's mother passed away about a month agoand the day I learned about it, I bought a sympathy card to send to the funeral. It's still sitting in front of me as I just cannot seem to get my fingers to write how I feel about her passing or cut the koden check. I don't know if the block is due to a psychological inability to accept that she is really gone or my mental inabilty to really write something. I did set a goal of sending the card before the 49th day of her passing (it's a Buddhist thing) but that date is coming up soon and I still am like a penmanship zombie.
As a reformed lawyer, you'd think that verbal communication would be my go-to talking vehicle of choice. It's like riding a bike, right? As an attorney, perpetual diarrhea of the mouth is a given, an instinctive thing. But even this came to a halt when my laptop committed harakiri. I would call people and it would take me a while to get my thoughts together, for the synapses to connect thought to action. I would hang up and realize that I forgot to tell the person what I had intended to tell the person. Again, this may have less to do with my reliance on typing and more to do with the aforementioned onslaught of senior citizen-itis.
Sadly, I had to throw Oscar under the bus and encourage him to revive his addiction to trying to fix things when he has no idea what he is doing. This addiction seems to be prevalent in most men, particularly when it comes to items that require them to stand in line at 4 am. He has been in a state of repair jonesing for the past two weeks with various semi-successful results. Rather than deal with the cost and hassles of divorce (and our total inability to find anyone to dump the kids on permanently post-split) which is an inevitable result of my penchant to just buy a new one to replace the broken item and his misplaced belief that it is fiscally sound $1000 to repair an outdated bust-upped item instead of $200 to replace it with a current version, I decided to live what I have - which is a laptop that can ONLY go on the internet after 15 minutes of warming up when I manage to click on the right sign in button which appears in the first two seconds of turning the computer on.
The end result anyway is "I'M BACK BI*CHES!!!!"
It was major Facebook withdrawal, much more lethal than trying to detox off of black tar heroin (or so I have been told).
Being a senior citizen (according to the cashier at Foodland anyway), I have spent about 80% of my life communicating in ways not involving something with a screen, keyboard and membership fee. I mean, it took being stuck in car with baby twins at the intersection of Ward and Ala Moana Blvd to finally convince Oscar the Grouch that yes, indeed, I did need a cell phone. I did not embrace the invasion of the digital universe in my life and I was one of those uninformed few who chose to remain in the dark cave of ignofance as long as possible. I didn't need to surf the net because I did not have a porn addiction to feed nor was I interested in hooking up with any long lost high school boyfriend. However, having failed at a 2nd IVF and contemplating adoption, I was lured onto the net when another patient at the office told me that a lot of the adoption agencies posted photos and bios of the kids looking for homes. So, the promise of shopping in my own home for prospective sons and daughters was the big draw. And thus, began my journey into madness.
The thing is that the majority of people of whom I regularly communicate with via text, e-mail and FB are people I see in person or are on my favorites list on my telephone. Yet, something about trying to reach out and touch them (figuratively) without using any electronic device just seemed to foreign and archaic. It was as though that part of my brain which enabled me to speak in semi-coherent sentences or to write a totally illegible letter had disappeared, it's position usurped by the need to hear the click clack of keys and a reliance on spell check. My friend's mother passed away about a month agoand the day I learned about it, I bought a sympathy card to send to the funeral. It's still sitting in front of me as I just cannot seem to get my fingers to write how I feel about her passing or cut the koden check. I don't know if the block is due to a psychological inability to accept that she is really gone or my mental inabilty to really write something. I did set a goal of sending the card before the 49th day of her passing (it's a Buddhist thing) but that date is coming up soon and I still am like a penmanship zombie.
As a reformed lawyer, you'd think that verbal communication would be my go-to talking vehicle of choice. It's like riding a bike, right? As an attorney, perpetual diarrhea of the mouth is a given, an instinctive thing. But even this came to a halt when my laptop committed harakiri. I would call people and it would take me a while to get my thoughts together, for the synapses to connect thought to action. I would hang up and realize that I forgot to tell the person what I had intended to tell the person. Again, this may have less to do with my reliance on typing and more to do with the aforementioned onslaught of senior citizen-itis.
Sadly, I had to throw Oscar under the bus and encourage him to revive his addiction to trying to fix things when he has no idea what he is doing. This addiction seems to be prevalent in most men, particularly when it comes to items that require them to stand in line at 4 am. He has been in a state of repair jonesing for the past two weeks with various semi-successful results. Rather than deal with the cost and hassles of divorce (and our total inability to find anyone to dump the kids on permanently post-split) which is an inevitable result of my penchant to just buy a new one to replace the broken item and his misplaced belief that it is fiscally sound $1000 to repair an outdated bust-upped item instead of $200 to replace it with a current version, I decided to live what I have - which is a laptop that can ONLY go on the internet after 15 minutes of warming up when I manage to click on the right sign in button which appears in the first two seconds of turning the computer on.
The end result anyway is "I'M BACK BI*CHES!!!!"
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