The Old Gray Mare

I confess that I am horrified that I am sprouting a patch of white hair on my head.  I should have known it was coming because I am repeatedly asked if I have my senior citizens discount card when I buy groceries at Foodland and Don Quixote or go to Zippy's for breakfast.  I admit that it is tempting to accept the free coffee and the 10% discounts but that would mean accepting that I had officially put a toe in the waters of old people springs.

Now, I consider myself not to be a vain person.  I try to look into mirrors as little as possible and have actually been known to go out in public without makeup (after I have done a Google Earth search to make sure nobody I know is within a 10 mile radius of where I plan to go) but this recent discovery has just rocked my world.  It's not that I didn't see it coming but it still is freaking me out.

A few months ago as I was brushing my teeth, I saw something sparkling on the top of my head.  I thought it was  either toothpaste spittle that had flown up there from my mouth, a piece of embroidery floss left over from yet another long night of creature making or a crumb of rice that one of the dogs had decided to gift to me while I was sleeping.  I quickly tried to flick the sucker off but it wouldn't budge.  With mouth full of toothpaste, I went out of the bathroom and grabbed a pair of reading glasses so I could see what it was.  A closer look revealed it was a white hair, firmly attached to my terrified scalp.  I resisted the urge to scream because it was the morning and my attempt to curl up in a fetal position on the floor failed because it was covered with stinky wet towels that the kids had left on the ground the night earlier.  I thought of calling Oscar the Grouch but realized that he would have no sympathy over one white hair when he was sporting a cotton ball colored Jew Fro himself.

For a few minutes, I just stared at the thing as I began to decide what it's fate would be.  My first instinct was to pull the sucker out but I remembered my Mom saying that for every one white hair you pull out, ten more would grow.  My second instinct was to go into the living room, grab a sharpie and do a quick dye job.  As is the case, a scan of markers revealed dozens of purple and green pens but no black pen that wasn't dried out due to the failure of my incredibly well-educated children to master the apparently sophisticated art of putting a cap on.  So, I followed my third instinct which was to convince myself that it was really a black hair that just had the appearance of a white hair due to the bathroom lighting hitting that single strand and only that single strand in an unusual way.

Sailing down the river of denial worked for a few seconds but it seemed like the hair got even whiter with every moment that passed.  It seemed to follow me, like the eyes of those creepy Margaret Keane paintings that I like.  It was no longer a thin hair but had morphed into a gigantic white Abominable Snowman, taunting me with the message, "This is your official welcome to Baachan world.  Grab your cane because you're in for a slow and unsteady ride".   Being the psychologically unstable person that I am, I got really p.o.'d and told myself that there was no way I was going to let the hair get the best of me.  I pulled it out of my head and hurled it into the toilet, laughing to myself over my snowy enemy's defeat.  I flushed the toilet and felt as happy as I do when I watch a freshly smashed cockroach circle down the blue whirlpool into the depths below.   In my mind, I had halted the onslaught of the evil demon of old age and could live another day in what I believed was the seemingly unending realm of middle age-dom.

Well, turned out that Mommy was right because a few days ago, I found a whole bunch of white hair popping up all over my head.  Again, I tried to assure myself that it was just the bathroom lighting but these guys decided to make a point and not only differed in color from my normal hair but in consistency, length and waviness.  It was like they were saying, "Hey, Grandma, the tour of Delusional Land is closed forever.  Time to get onboard the Handivan to the nursing home."  I had no reaction.  It just didn't seem real.  I've heard stories from the veterans of how they were so caught up in the emotions of warfare that they didn't even realize they had been hit or injured, they just fought on until the battle ended, only to realize they were covered in blood.  Now not to say that my experience comes even close to that but I understood.  I was so caught up in the stress of trying to get ready to go to Mad Cow's art class (which sounds easy but requires among other things trying to catch Piglet from under the couch, filling up a bunch of Kongs for the dogs, removing anything valuable or made of paper within Boy Tiger's reach, digging through the coin can to gather enough change to buy a Pepsi Max and rummaging through my drawer to find an appropriate for Second Grade t-shirt), that I didn't have time to wage war that day.  I decided to just put it out of my mind and hoping that by doing so, nobody would notice and the Follicle Fairy would fly by and make the suckers disappear.

There is nothing like the brutal honesty of a bunch of eight year olds to viciously slap you back into reality.  While I hopelessly clung to the cliff of Middle Age, some heartless Roadrunners dressed in red, black and white P.E. uniforms stomped on my fingers and sent me plummeting down into the raging river of Old Age like a powerless idiotic Wile E. Coyote.  With all of the anti-bullying campaigns going on in school, you'd think they would realize that it's not only not nice to talk stink about your classmates but also extremely not nice to ask your classmate's Mom about things that remind her that yes, she is indeed 10-20 years older and 50-100 pounds heavier than your parents .

First hit to the head:  "My Mom is really old. She is 38.  That's SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO old.  How old are you, Mad Cow's Mom?"

Second hit to the head, rendered by my own son:  "Oh, my Mom is way older than that.  She is going to be 50 next year."

Third hit to the head:  "I think my Popo is 50 years old".

Fourth hit to the head:  "Mad Cow's mom, is that why you wear the same shirt every time you come to help at art class, because you are old and forget?"

Knockout punch, rendered by my own son:  "No, that's because she has menopause."

My mature response was to smile at the whole Art Linkletter "kids say the funniest things" (yes, I know, a reference that dates me) moment and tell them the pumpkins they were drawing were ugly, really ugly, so ugly they would be kicked out of school and have to go to a new school with kids whose parents are older than I am and even worse, sit in classrooms without central air conditioning or ergonomically designed seats.

When class was over, I contemplated driving straight over to Paul Brown's to see if Vince could squeeze me in for a color session.  I realized that my wallet full of coins would not even cover the tip and that there was no way that I would be able to explain to Oscar the Grouch that it was more of a priority to drop big bucks to color my few white hairs back to brown than to pay the mechanic to fix my car's fender so it no longer dragged on the ground, creating a fireworks show whenever I drove up and down our hilly street every day.
The car situation was not something that could be fixed by Oscar's "guaranteed" magical repair tool known as packing tape (yes, not even duct or making tape but clear packing tape) and that the first time, the sparks were kind of fun but now they were starting to melt the plastic.  So, I begrudgingly drove home, not even able to put my head down because I was certain that passersby would be able to spock my white hair as I drove by them.

When I got home, I sat on the porch with the dogs and thought about the stupidity of the whole situation.  In the past few weeks, I had gone through a lot of stuff emotionally as several of the veterans I am very close to had been hospitalized.  It had really been a difficult time, dealing with what I knew was the inevitable reality of  hanging out with a crew whose average age was 90 and whose health issues no longer consisted of mild colds or mango allergies but serious, life-threatening stuff.  I thought about the times I had visited them in the hospitals and how not a single time had any of them said to me, "Gee, I must look terrible."  We talked about what made them happy, how terrible the hospital food was and life lessons they wanted me to share with my kids "just in case I no come out".    I knew that they loved me not because  I sported a head of 100% black hair but because I was a good person who loved them 100% from the heart.  It made me realize that nobody really gave a rat's okole about the white hair except me (and maybe Mad Cow's classmates).

Besides, Vince had planned to bleach out my hair to white anyway so I could have a bright red faux-hawk and embarrass the heck out of the Diva and the Professor for Homecoming.  Wow, to think for once I actually saved Oscar money!

I AM YOUR CHILD

I confess that I don't know what to say or do when someone my age loses a child.

Yesterday, Oscar the Grouch came home from work and asked me if I had watched the news.  Since Mad Cow has been going through an anti-news phase (long story), whenever he is home, the TV cannot even click onto any sort of news program without him freaking out.  So, I have to sneak into my bedroom, turn the sound down and secretly watch my boyfriend Anderson Cooper on CNN while simultaneously listening to the sound of Mad Cow's footprints coming down the hallway so I can switch over to any non-news channel when he walks in.

Now, usually, if Oscar asks if I watched the news, it means that one of the veterans was on TV at some event that I didn't have to drive them to.  However, this time, it wasn't something to celebrate or enjoy.  It was clearly bad news because he told me that he would talk to me about it when the Mad Cow was not in the room.

It turned out that the person who had drowned jumping off the reservoir was the adult son of some friends of ours.  I knew of the incident but at that time, the identify of the person had not been determined.  Oscar said that he got a call from a mutual friend who confirmed that indeed it was our friends' son who had died and that was all the information he had.

We looked at each other and didn't say a word.  It just did not seem real.   "What should we do?", he asked me and I did not have an answer.  Normally, when there is a death and an impending funeral, the first thing I do is call my Mom or Dad to ask them how much I should put in the envelope.  This time, I had no clue on what to do and I surely was not thinking about the appropriate koden.  I just kept thinking of how much pain the parents must be in and how could anyone cope with the death of their child?

There are certain givens in life that we all deal with - like expecting that we will have to someday have to attend our grandparents' funerals and make the arrangements for our parents' funerals.   My Dad will be buried at the Veterans Cemetery in Kaneohe and laments that we will not come and visit him once he is inurned there because none of us like to drive over to the Windward side.   He periodically warns me that if I do not do my filial duty of hakamaeri, he will come out in spirit form to remind me that I need to go over there and see him (which kind of doesn't make sense to me since I would have already seen his obake at home).   He also says that he will be very upset if I forget and leave his urn on the dresser next to my cremated rabbits and dogs (another long story).

Each time he does this, I think it is kind of funny but a part of me doesn't want to even consider the reality that some day he will not be here and I'll be fatherless.  I've had a few close encounters with losing my Dad during the many heart surgeries he has had.  The closest I've been to having to cope with my Dad not being here was when Queens moved him from the ICU to a regular room without telling us or making the notation on his file.  I went to the ICU and he was not there and nobody seemed to know where he was.  All I was told was that "he was gone".  It was a horrible crushing feeling, like someone came in and tore my heart out and rolled over it with a gurney - that thought that he was no longer there.  I sobbed against a wall until a nurse came up to me and said very casually, "Oh, didn't anyone call to tell your family that he moved to another room?"  Uh, what do you think?  Fighting my desire to punch her in the face (I figure my fist full of tears wouldn't cause much damage), I pulled myself together and walked over to my Dad's new room where he was talking story and doing very very well in recovery - good enough to ask me, "So, why are you LATE again?"

I cannot even bear to imagine being in that situation but it's one of my kids in the hospital room instead of one of my parents.  It just is something that is so unfathomably cruel and sorrowful.  My stomach turns with anxiety if one of my kids (or even one of my dogs) comes hopping over to me with a bleeding toenail.  I deal with it if I am the only one in the house but my preference would be to have someone, anyone else take care of it.   While I can chalk this up to my fear of blood, I know it has more to do with being unable to take seeing my kids in pain or thinking about them suffering physically or mentally.    To kick this up to where they are in a life-or-death situation is just something that I know I could not handle. 

I know this family is very strong when it comes to faith and as a couple, they are very loving and powerful.  I know that they must be calling upon a higher power to get through every day and if anyone can survive, they can.  I know that there must be some reason for something so senseless to happen to a young man with his whole life ahead of him.    

I know it sounds so cliched but perhaps that reason is for me to remember how precious every day is with my children.  There are so many times I blow them off (like this morning) because I have things to do - crank out PTA e-mails, read articles for training, print out flyers - that at the time seem so much more important to me than just sitting next to them while they eat breakfast or listening to them lament about teenage life.  Did I really have to grumble at the Diva about not printing out her paper last night when she asked if she could use my computer this morning?  Should I have checked the Mad Cow's toe when he said it hurt instead of accusing him of wanting to stay home to play ITouch instead of going to school?  Couldn't I have walked to the door with the Professor and tell him to have a nice day instead of grumpily sorting through laundry?  Under the stress of the morning, these seemed like impossible tasks but now, in the quiet of the house all alone, I realize that I was not being the best Mom I could be.  That if Buddha forbid, I got a call telling me they would never return home again, these memories of me blowing them off would be the last ones I have of them.

Perhaps that is the only lesson to make of this senseless loss.  That the reality of life is fleeting and that there is no "given" that our kids will outlive us.  We need to love them and treat them as though each time we see them may be our last.  Because, for some of us, it just may.