No Apologies: Signs of Growing Old

 

Age really is a state of mind.

Getting old stinks. This I’ve known since I was quite young, when I noticed my father beginning to hold reading material at arm’s length. Was he holding my report card at a distance because of disappointment in my grades or was it due to his sight going bad? I would poke fun and ask if I could help by holding it up across the room. I am now of the age that I fully understand how upset he got at my attempt at humor. My younger brother asked me that same question the other day while I was reading a note at arm’s length. I wanted to punch him. My father was only twenty-one years older than me. But when I was young, he was at least eighty years older. Of that I was certain.

Nothing helps you realize that getting old stinks until it happens to you. When I was young, I had no idea that this lesson is learned sooner in life than I expected. I’m now in my fifties. I hear that number and shudder. ‘That can’t be me. I’m still in my thirties, aren’t I? There are things people do in their thirties that I haven’t done yet. I can’t be in my fifties. Doing thirties things in the fifties is just weird.’ My father passed away four years ago, so he’s not around to see me reading things held at arm’s length, just like he used to do. I can hear his ghost haranguing me, “Want me to hold this across the room for you, Son?” He was such a smarty pants.

I knew who was really old: my grandparents. On the maternal side, I’m the oldest grandchild. My grandmother, who I named Itsy, was twenty when she had Mom. And like her mother, Mom was twenty for only two days before giving birth to me. This means that when I was born, Itsy was only forty year old. Then I turned forty. Five months later this fact entered my consciousness. I about had a coronary. “You mean, based on family history I could be a grandfather now?” I asked myself incredulously.

Poppy, Baby Penguin, Mom and Itsy c.1969

“Yep,” I said to myself. I was just beginning to speak to myself then, but now that I’m pushing ancient, I enjoy full-blown solitary conversations. I used to hide this fact. Now, I engage in these solo conversations without concern for who is listening, or to what they think about me talking to myself. I’m in my fifties. I have earned the right to talk to myself. After all, Itsy had two favorite sayings: The first was ‘waste not want not,’ and fostered the thrifty side of me. The second was ‘it’s alright to talk to yourself as long as you don’t answer yourself.’ I hope she’s wrong about that...I have some really good answers to my own questions.

 

As old as I felt my grandparents were on Mom’s side of the family, my paternal grandparents seemed twice as old. My father was the youngest child and I was the fourth grandchild in that family. The age difference was greater with Dad’s parents. Memaw’s hair was white and pushing blue for as long as I could remember. My grandfather, Paw, always had wrinkled yet soft skin on his hands. I used to love holding them, as required to do when crossing the street on jaunts to the neighborhood grocery store. Later in life I realized that this couple had always looked old. I can see it in photos of me as an infant. Dad’s parents looked eighty then. In photos of me in high school, they looked virtually the same.

 Memaw and Paw’s life in the Texas Hill Country was more rugged than the life Itsy had led as a city girl in Philadelphia. That rugged life in primitive rural Texas must have added 20 years. And while Itsy’s husband, Poppy, was raised in Missouri and Arkansas, as far as I know he never worked the land. He did work hard as general superintendent of the Phillip’s Pipeline in the small Texas Panhandle town of Borger. But twenty years junior to Memaw and Paw gave Itsy and Poppy an easier life and youthful look.

 

Memaw and Paw were the most antiquated people I knew. To visit them was to go back in time. Memaw raked the rug in the den to give it a fresh look. I’d never heard of raking a rug. Their ancientness is the reason my father would ask me to ‘run the sweeper,’ in our Dallas condo, when what he actually wanted was for me to vacuum the carpet. That’s the difference between youth and elderly. Poor Dad. The look on his face when I grabbed a broom and ran across the living room shouting, “I’m running the sweeper.” I know where I got my smarty pants.

Memaw and Paw’s home was full of things from a bygone era, including everyday terms. Besides running the sweeper, far away things were ‘out yonder.’ To inspect something meant to take a gander at it. And things that happened a long time ago took place in, well, a bygone era. The door knobs in their ancient house were antique glass- or diamonds to a six-year old boy with an active imagination. All meals were made from scratch on a vintage 1950s General Electric stove. Furniture, now considered antiques, had been purchased brand new. If Itsy’s saying was waste not want not, Memaw and Paw’s was ‘we choose to reuse.’ They recycled and reused almost everything, including sandwich bags. And I fell asleep at night in a room just off of theirs to the tunes of oldies from the ‘20s and ‘30s on the old radio, ‘sat next to their bed,’ as they would have said. “Dang they are old.”, said I, as I placed a mix tape of Stevie Nicks, Prince and The Police into my Walkman headphones to fall asleep by. How old this must seem to the youth of today.

Memaw and Paw lived in Corpus and one of the thrills of summer vacation was going there for a few weeks every summer. I never could figure out which of my grandfathers made better pancakes. They were both the world’s best, but I think Paw’s iron skillet gave them a slight edge over Poppy’s, made on an old griddle. Maybe in part because of the simple fact that Paw called them hot cakes. I loved that term. Hot cakes. It seemed as old a term as he was. I also loved that in Corpus, honey was just as acceptable a topping for hot cakes as maple syrup. So was molasses, but after trying molasses, I was certain one had to be over one-hundred to appreciate hot cakes smothered in that robust and bitter mess. And it looked like used motor oil.

My father’s parents had numerous clues that they were anciently old. Memaw had a clothes dryer in perfectly-good working order, but insisted that hanging clothes to dry was the preferred method. I never liked how stiff this made my clothes, nor the smell of ozone the sun gave to them. When I got home I proclaimed to Mom that my clothes needed to be washed, even though Memaw sent me home with a suitcase full of clean yet crispy, ozone-y clothes. Of course, the same thing would happen returning from Itsy’s house, but the issue in this case was that Mom’s parent’s smoked cigarettes. A lot of cigarettes. All of my clothes from my visits to Borger, clean as they were, smelled like they were stored in an ashtray.

Watching television in Corpus was like watching every show twice. “Now, what did he just say?” Paw would ask. “What was that she said?” Memaw inquired. “Huh?,” in unison. I listened to every show twice having to repeat everything to them. I’m not sure how they ever understood what was going on without me being there to parrot the shows on their old television, the size of small car.

Other signs of Dad’s parents old-ness made me laugh. Paw would get up from his chair with the necessary aid of grunts and groans, as most old men do. He’d leave the room with a few toots. Poppy called them barking spiders, but they always seemed to be a bit more planned on his part. Paw didn’t have a term for passing wind and he paid them no mind at all when he did so. No apologies. I often wondered if he was even aware that his spiders were barking. This is something I also appreciate more, now that I’m in my fifties. That’s right. I’m propelled to the kitchen with a little after burner action, just like my Paw. No apologies.

 Paw not only mastered hot cakes. He was an excellent cook of all the foods that are southern. With Memaw’s help, great feasts would emerge from the kitchen: fried chicken, iron skillet corn bread, drop-biscuits from scratch, and then collard greens, fried okra, green beans and home-fried French-cut fries...all fresh from their garden behind the garage. Yes, the potatoes, too. And to top it off, Memaw’s Texas chocolate sheet cake made with buttermilk, Texas pecans, and more love than a large pan of decadent chocolate cake could possibly contain. There was nothing like going to Corpus for these southern food orgies. People rarely cook like that any longer.

Memaw and Paw c.1986

These memories have recently come to my ever-forgetful mind. Not that I have the skills to mimic the southern culinary talents Memaw and Paw honed in their kitchen, but for the pills and supplements I now take to ease the pains of growing old. For those of you still in your twenties and thirties (and why you’re reading this, I have no idea, but thank you—and be sure to Google “Walkman”) taking these various supplements aid such things as digestion, joint pain, sleeplessness, vision and perhaps to some degree, have a psychological benefit, for taking enough pills and supplements to substitute for lunch must be good for me. Surely, these are making the aging process easier to stomach, pun intended. The grunts and groans, it turns out, really do assist in getting my aging frame out of my chair and on my feet. And with my digestion, joint pain, sleep and, yes, vision issues, I need those supplements to help ease me into being antiquated.

Memaw and Paw kept their assorted bottles of vitamins and supplements on a lazy-Susan on the kitchen table, right next to the pickled peppers and the butter dish. It made sense to them, since they were to be taken with food. For a second, I thought I should follow suit and do the same thing. But keeping bottles of supplements in plain sight, right on the kitchen table? Just like my ancient grandparents? A butter dish is one thing. I’ve been using one for a few years. It doesn't make me feel old because it has distinguished functionality. I dislike how cold butter destroys toast, so having it room temperature is so much nicer. But what would friends think of seeing bottles of supplements sitting out on the table as if they were part of the meal? “He’s so ancient!” That’s what.

But even kept on the kitchen counter, I was forgetting to take them. While I was slightly comfortable leaving them on the kitchen counter, I drew the line at keeping them on the kitchen table. I remembered that lazy-Susan. We all seem to have a fear of turning into our parents. Was I alright turning into my grandparents? I guess not. Besides, I could never fill those shoes. My iron skillet cornbread isn’t as good as Paw’s. I have no idea how to cook collard greens. And my fried okra comes out of a bag and not the garden out yonder. I do, however, make a mean Texas chocolate sheet cake, which, like Memaw’s, I infuse with love.

I now realize how much I love my grandparents for all the wonderful memories of my youthful summers at each of their homes at opposite ends of Texas, making it feel like they lived in different countries...damn, it’s a big state. I am also feeling more connected to some of their old-fashioned ways. I’m not afraid of turning into my grandparents, after all. Yet a lazy-Susan full of plastic bottles just doesn’t feel right. I needed to find a compromise. I needed to remember to take supplements with meals, but not appear to be grandfatherly.

A few years ago my aunt-in-law (she married my father’s brother) gave me some things my uncle had of Memaw and Paw’s after he passed on. One item was a small cut-glass dish with a dome. Very small. Neither of us could figure out what it was used for. A friend informed me that it was a cheese dish. They must have had smaller cheese in the bygone era. It was more pretty than useful, so for as long as it’s been in my possession, it sat on a shelf collecting dust.

I had found the perfect compromise for my supplements. I took Memaw’s beautiful cut-glass domed dish off the shelf and dusted it. Each morning, I now make a ritual of placing that day’s pills and supplements in the dish, covered with the dome. This fancy thing lives on my kitchen table. I can now enjoy my age-defying, if not psychologically advantageous aids, with a sophistication Memaw and Paw failed to achieve. Plus, I can see if I’ve forgotten to take any simply by looking at what is still there at the end of the day. What was that supplement I’m supposed to take for memory? I’ve forgotten. 

 

The antique domed pill dish next to my butter dish.

I know that from the beyond, Memaw and Paw are proud of me for aging with such dignity and grace. In using the antique cheese dish, I was honoring their memory by giving it an everyday function: helping ease my transition into senility by holding my supplements without apologies. And they’re so conveniently located for mealtime. Next, I should write an article on how you young’uns drive too fast and listen to...well...it’s not music, to be sure.

So much for dignity and grace. No apologies. Now get off my lawn.

 

*If you know that I am mistaken that this is a cheese dish, please comment below. 

If you can relate to or enjoyed this story, feel free to leave a comment. Thank you.

Only Time Will Tell

Photo and story by Penguin Scott

It’s not so much that my past is haunting me as I have gone searching for it lately. It’s an easy task in that access to information on the Internet has made it so. But it’s a heavy task, as the past and how it changes, or my tendency to age, weighs down on the man I have become.

In 1994, I was living in Houston, TX, working a job I enjoyed in a downtown office building. Although I’d not really given much thought to the longevity of this particular job, I felt confident enough in buying a house.

The neighborhood in which I lived was only three miles from downtown. It was right off the Buffalo Bayou, along which I enjoyed taking walks. While not quite part of the area known as the Heights, it was an older neighborhood, fairly well kept up, and I loved living there. Some of the homes had been torn down and in their places were built sturdy, modern town homes, so the area definitely had a lot of life left in it.

What I loved about the house I found a few blocks from my apartment was that it was on a street that shared my last name, Scott. I thought, surely there’s not another Scott living here on Scott St., which gave it extra appeal.

What’s even better was how much I loved the house. My realtor let me in and I fell in love. The home had been updated, including a modern arched wall separating the kitchen and dining room. The detached garage had been converted into a studio with a bathroom and laundry area. The attic was now a loft, for either storage or even an office, except that access to it was up a wooden ladder and not stairs. The yards were lush; full of gardens, shrubs, trees and grass. And at $70,000, it was in my price range.

I wound up moving to Maryland to open a family business and never bought that house on Scott St. But I’ve thought about it often; what would my life have been like had I bought that house and never moved to Maryland? Or at least held on to it and rented it out after leaving Texas.

Last week I got on Google Maps, which has a feature where one can see a street view of almost any address. I’ve used it to see what the houses I grew up in now look like. I found the house I’d lived in as a small boy. The house in which I lived, on Steel St., was second from the corner. On the other side were another four or so houses before the next street. Those four houses were now gone! Currently in their place is an antique mall. But my house, and one on the corner, where Yvette lived, were still there; big, full trees in the yard, which, were I to find old photos, I’m sure were only as big as me when I was in residence.

It was in the bushes between my house and Yvette’s, where she and I would play. And by play, I mean do things little kids are not supposed to do, like lighting matches and figuring out that her physiology and mine were quite different. We were only six. It’s also from these bushes that I first started to watch airplanes flying overhead, noticing the orange bellies of the Southwest 737s approaching Hobby Airport to our south. Quite a few really fond memories still reside there for me.

Steel St. wasn’t too far from Scott St., so after a quiet celebration that my old abode was still standing, I moved the map in search of the house that was almost mine on Scott.

Gone! My house was gone and in its place was one of those monstrosities; a huge modern duplex with garages on the ground floor and living areas on the top two. What’s worse is knowing that they probably sold the house for three times what I would have bought it for. And had I bought it, that could be my profit, not someone else’s.

After letting this settle in for a bit, I thought about the Houstonian Hotel a few miles away. I once worked there with the Secret Service. It was the early ‘90s and George H. W. Bush was president. As such, he didn’t have a home, and used the Houstonian as his official residence. So when he wanted to escape to Texas, this is where he’d come. And in my role as a security officer, I briefed the White House staff and Secret Service special detail agents about the Houstonian grounds. Having all the keys, I was also the one to grant agents and the Bush’s access to closed areas of the grounds after hours, such as the huge fitness center. This is the manner in which I was able to meet George and Barbara, and their framed autographs are now some of my more favorite personal effects.

I was astonished to find the changes made to the hotel and grounds. First thing that I noticed were the old homes along the entrance. They had been leveled in favor of a small office building. And much of the land the property once sat on was given up for homes, now only a stones throw from the hotel. When I worked there, you’d have thought it located in the middle of no where. Trees were all you could see in any direction, save the towering condo building near the entrance to the property. Now there’s a new pool, no wait, two! The old Phoenix Spa was redone and renamed and the hotel lobby is new and rich, for only the most sophisticated of tastes. I guess when they gave up on the grounds they had to enhance the interior.

Another thing the Internet is good for is searching for old friends. There are still a few who I’d love to find, like my best friend in third grade, Robert Pearson. He’s impossible to find, as there seem to be 18 million Robert Pearsons, and I have no idea where he’s settled down.

Thinking that maybe he’d search for me, I created a Facebook account. It started off great, as soon, many old friends from my days in Houston and from high school in Dallas were finding me. I even got friended by an ex girlfriend, who at one time seemed to have me in her sights for matrimony. I took a pass and she landed on some other guy and now has a kid, to boot!

But soon, my current friends started finding me and before I knew it I had nearly 200 friends on Facebook. And it wasn’t just a collection of people, but each and every one was someone that I knew. And some were blood family! And all, it seemed, felt it necessary to comment and to invite me to causes and events. I’d log on and there would be page after page of things to read or to catch up on. Paul is waiting for his flight at the airport. Clara is missing her boyfriend, who’s out of town. Matt just had Chinese food. Emily sent me a flower and wants me to send one back. Joe sent me an invite to the Yuma alien wars game.

So I abandoned Facebook as I simply could not handle knowing all the minutia of things going on with all the people I was connected with on the site. I still keep my profile up, as I do still hear from old friends. And from time to time I still search on it for people I want to reconnect with.

So it is, with my recent quest to relive the past that I got on again and started to search. Besides Robert, there’s an old friend from New Jersey who I’ve wondered about. We used to be like brothers, as good of friends as they ever made. We were well aligned philosophically, both loved the Star Wars movies, had the same family business and became old friends the moment we met while vacationing in the Bahamas.

In 2000, when I changed jobs and moved to California, his communications with me ceased; what I called the great silence. After a few years, the great silence ended and we started talking again, picking up like nothing happened. But then the silence returned, and before you know it, it’s been 6 years since I’ve heard from him.

I typed his name on the Facebook search, and there he was, smiling back at me with his wife and child. Should I be so bold as to send him a note? Should he send me a friend request back? Shall we pick up where we left off? Can I handle more reminders of the years that pass and my slow crawl on the messy floor of aging as my once single friend is now a family?

The note was sent and his friendship request was received, making Vince Facebook friend number 202. As for the rest, only time will tell. And as things around me continue to change in an attempt to constantly remind me that I am getting older, I will continue refusing to act my age!