At the End of the Limb

 While this illustration might more often relate to starting an adventure without thinking about where it takes you, or how it ends -- something akin to painting yourself into a corner -- it also relates to aging.  Getting old, being old.  For who thinks of arthrities when we are nine years old and eating cotton candy at the church fair? Lately I'm glimpsing the place where the cartoon character Lio finds himself: near the end with someone else holding the end of the pen, with that invisible hand writing where I'll go from here.

I have felt for some time like I just can't get my sea legs in my life and I'm missing that feeling of being on top of things, in control of the fates -- although the way everything is hyper-analyzed to death these days, the argument could be made that I never have been in control of anything that happened.  But I felt in control.  Or maybe that's the older me looking back at the younger me.  Surely couldn't have been the nights I was up with a child who had an earache and I desperately wanted sleep but couldn't lay them down, even after dosing them up with pain meds.  Or it couldn't have been when I was in the Divorce Tilt-A-Whirl, as I let go of the center and careened around the track in nauseating spirals.  The rational, older me knows that the feeling like I was in control was an illusion, but the side of me that wants to feel better about things just knows at some point I was master of my ship.

I mentioned to my 87-year-old mother that I was old and almost before I finished the statement, she retorted that "You're not old!" But the problem is, if I'm not old, what am I?  I don't feel 40.  Or 17.  Or even 55. And the government would give me money if I asked them for it, proving that I must be old enough.   Her genial insistence that I wasn't old left me frustrated with nowhere to be, unable to find my place, to figure out my tasks and why aches are a part of my day, and forgetting a part of the mental landscape. I can't figure it out, can't seem to get a rhythm going.

My father is ninety and when I think about feeling this disoriented for another three decades, I feel worse than ever.  Some time ago the fiction I tell myself was that I was sailing on through life, feeling pretty good about things, then it was cancer, then surgeries, the body failing me in too many ways, but nothing so serious that would warrant sympathies on Facebook or a headline in the news.  Just garden-variety, life-and-energy-sapping, getting old sorts of ways.  The fact that I am surrounded by friends and loved ones enduring sad news, deaths, cancer, divorce, infidelity and illness doesn't help much.

For now I see the endings sometimes almost before the beginnings, and internalize the struggles before the fight has even been defined.  At my age, every step onto that sawed off trunk now carries with it the ink pen of the ending.  It could be the beginning of another delightful experience, or an abstruse journey of near falls, scrapes and injury along with a requisite sprinkling of good cheer.

Or...not.

Intrinsic Value

from *here*

Not too long ago I was confronted with a new challenge, a good challenge, one that would make me grow and stretch and punch out in new directions--that kind of goal.  But I didn't want it. It was time-consuming.  No, time-destroying.  Many of the easy habits of our empty-nest life would be overrun by this challenge, such as losing the time we've carved out for our early-morning walks.

Someone might look at my life and say, "Well.  You do have the time."  But this is where I confront the slippery core of my dilemma: how do I value my time?  As an adjunct professor, I receive very low pay.  In fact, most of my students make more than I do when I factor in the time spent in grading and prepping. I also receive no money for things I do in the rest of my life either--no income streams anywhere.  So how then, does a person value their life?  Value their time?  Decide how to "spend" time, that one thing that no one can get more of than another?  Do some tasks carry more "weight" than others, for example, preparing a meal versus cleaning it up? Cleaning out the garage, vs. cutting out a new quilt?  Maintaining friendships vs. time on the internet?

Enough of these stupid questions, as I always advise students that a good declarative sentence is worth a paragraph of queries.  But I have no easy declarative sentence to end with.  Maybe I think a task might be valued by what intrinsic value it carries.  And this "assigning a value" is something I have spent a lifetime trying to understand, especially when there is no outside determinant of what it is worth (i.e., a monetary valuation).  

When I was four years old, my clock was as big as the sky, reaching in all directions, limited only by naps and my bedtime.  When I was a teenager, the timepiece was a bit smaller, perhaps room-sized, filled with time to do things like figure out how to cut my hair like the models in Seventeen magazine. Motherhood shrunk that clock again, as did grad school.  Too little time for too many outside tasks.

But now I feel like my timepiece is one of those Dali clocks, limpid and wobbly, not keeping time the way it should.  Sometimes my clock size is appropriate, crisp and ticking, lots getting done.  But other days it languidly drapes itself over the sofa, a bag of chips in one hand while balancing the computer on its lap and says something to the effect of "good luck in getting anything done at all."  And when I shake it, trying to get some minutes out of its uncooperative self, I realize my clock is too small to get my hands on, shrunk not only from outside time demands but also from the shrinking horizon of my older life, my ability to power through.

So I am careful with those requests.  Too many phone calls?  Ignore the ring.  Too many IMs?  Leave the mobile in the purse downstairs where I can't hear it.  No, I won't conduct a cooking class for teens at the local youth conference.  No, I won't be cleaning out the garage, either.  I am choosing what I do in a place in my life where soon I'll be carrying around my ever-shrinking clock in a pill bottle, retrieving it with tweezers to see how minutes are left.

Happy New Year 2015

 

We typically celebrate New Year's Eve at East Coast Time, that is, when it is 9:00 p.m. here in California.  This year, a little after 8:00 p.m., I suggested we celebrate it "Halifax" time, four hours earlier.  If this keeps up, by the time we hit that old nursing home, we may toast each other with our glasses of Metimucil at noon, muttering that somewhere in the world (Australia maybe?) it's time to celebrate the advent of the new year.

Celebrating in the future in a rest home, er--Assisted Living Center, is a definite possibility, given what I feel like as I approach a birthday that brings me, as everyone knows, one year closer to death...and the inevitable Assisted Living Center (ALC).  If I were forty years old this idea would seem morbidly uncomfortable, but this year I'm thinking that I'd just better get used to the idea because there are some upsides (I'll find them yet, as I'm a Pollyana if there ever was one) to this sort of arrangement of having your social life at the big table in the dining room with many other infirmed, but not necessarily feeble-minded, and may well prove as attractive the idea of not having to cook the three squares every day.  

My husband's parents wondered why they waited so long to move to their ALC, and after she died (another inevitable component of this stage of life) he found his second wife there.  I'm not saying that I'm going to kick off after I turn my birthday and leave my husband hunting down a suitable widow to move in with, but all I'm saying is that the view (and the array of choices) from this decade is substantially different than the view from 30, or 40.  Surprisingly different.

Perhaps that's why this cartoon caught my eye.  Certainly Dan Piraro (above), a man of my vintage, doesn't look like he has one foot in the grave.  If you looked around my studio with various creative projects scattered every which way, you know I plan to be around for a while.  I'm guess I'm just trying to be practical about how the ensuing decades might unfold, like I have some say in the matter.  At my age, it's the calamaties, the unforseen health problems, the fall, the traveling blood clot that will derail the best laid plans for the future.  So it's a happy sappy birthday to me, as I'm working to adjust my expectations to more closely match my long-range realities, whatever they are.  And trying not to rush Halifax-New-Year's style into what lies beyond.

Phone Calls

Recently, with the aging process going full steam in my life, I feel like I'm getting in on some of the good "old" jokes that I never understood before.  Like the phone call cartoon, my quirks and peculiarities seem to be increasing, and if I can just keep my sense of humor about it all, I may just make it through.  But perhaps I should apologize in advance to my children?

Doctor's Visit

 Annual Tune-Ups today at the doctors' offices.  As I get older, I'm always weighing the need to be truthful about all my body's quirks with the need to put up with the hassle of seeing specialists, confessing bad habits (eating too many Mother's Day chocolates), and venting about the aches and pains that are a daily fact of life.  I already see a dermatologist and an oncologist (told today it would be for a total of TEN years, not the five I was thinking it would be), and am hoping not to enlarge that circle.  So I was happy that the Primary Care Physician gave me a clean bill of health.

Then, as she was leaving, she said, "But I'm glad I'm not in charge of your skin."

Feeling the *Old* Divide, again

The other day I was shopping for a lamp.

I wanted a floor lamp that my husband and I could read by, and in the old language, I needed at least 100 watts of light.

This is where I get all Republican-y and decry the government's intrusion into my life.  They are replacing all the lightbulbs because someone has deemed them awful and wasteful and they need to go.  I do have a pack of 100-watters sitting out in my garage, no, make that two packs, because you can't buy those anymore--they're gone gone gone from the shelves.   But, I digress.

I talked to the young woman (maybe 20 years old?) at IKEA.  She had no clue.  I asked her if they had lamps that could take the equivalent of 100-watt lightbulbs.  She nodded and jumped on the computer in front of her, typing, pulling faces, typing.  I stood there like a doofus while her fingers clattered away.

"No," she finally said.  "We don't have any 100-watt lightbulbs."
"I know that, " I said in an even tone, but firm, voice.  "I want a lamp that will have the equivalent of 100-watts of light."
"Well, you don't have to yell at me."
 I convinced her to walk away from her keyboard and come help me.  But she wasn't any help at all, only lifting up tags to read them.  She knew less than I did.

(marginally helpful chart that I discovered much later)

Now I'm at Target.  Two very nice twenty-somethings.  Confusion.  The young man insisted that I couldn't swap out the lower bulb--13 watt CFL with a 60-watt equivalency-- for the 26 watt CFL (100 watt equivalency), otherwise you'd blow a fuse.  A breaker, even, when the surging electricity would short out the light.

He was most insistent on his theory.  I started to try outthink him, or at least out-talk him.  A breaker?  There's no surge of electricity.  It's all the same current flowing through the light.  I think it has to do more with heat, I said.  The higher wattage light will generate more heat and possibly melt connections.  Then I did something I thought I could postpone for a few more years.

"In the old days," I began, then stopped, horrified at what had just come out of my mouth.

But it was the old days, when the sockets that held the lightbulbs were metal and if you wanted a brighter light, you just went and got a brighter light and screwed it in.  And I remember even in older days there was ceramic sockets, and it didn't matter what wattage went in there.  Now we have plastic everything made in China and everyone in the world is twenty years old and their eyes don't need a lot of light.

Upshot: After a stop at another Target closer to home, I was able to buy a floor lamp that was adjustable (to go by the chair I'd just bought at IKEA), and had not one -- but three! -- lightbulb sockets, all the equivalent of 100 watts.

This aging business, as my mother says, is not for sissies.

Bad Batteries

At the Kmart checkout, I can't scrawl my version of  signature because they are asking me to respond to five questions, something on the order of "Would I recommend shopping at this store to my friends?"  What?  Of course not.

I think the last time I was in here was about two years ago and it's the closest "department-type" store to my house.  The linoleum has bubbles, the bins are filled with junky toys, the clientele is the kind that sneaks into a box of Snickers, takes one out, carefully puts the box back on the shelves, and then eats the candy bar, tucking the wrapper behind their stack of yellow Best Value towels.  Not that I saw anything like this, of course.

I'm there to buy a new battery charger as my camera tells me in flashing lights and pictographs, that as soon as I put these fully charged batteries in, I need to change them.  Is it a bad camera, bad batteries, bad battery charger, bad wall socket?  There's so many variables in this equation that I don't quite know where to start.  But I decide a battery charger is the place because the old one is making interesting noises like someone flicking their finger against a bed spring, a rattly metallic sound.

Home, I nearly slice open my hand trying to get the battery out of its hermetic plastic shell, but the scissors and I prevail.  I find an open plug (somewhat difficult: older house) and slug in my batteries, the old ones.  A red light starts blinking. 

Probably not a good thing.  I go and find the booklet.  The flashing red light is bad.  It means you were as dumb as rocks and put an alkaline battery in.  But mine aren't alkaline, so now maybe I'm leaning away from the bad charger theory to the bad battery theory.  I take out the batteries and replace them one by one, getting the happy solid red light.  I then put all four of them back in.  Red flashing light.  I take them out again and put them in the hallway to be taken down to the hazardous waste recycle can.

So, now I'm really leaning toward bad batteries, and maybe that old recharger that I just threw in the trash should be resurrected and tried again.  Then I have visions of our workbench, a repository for things that Almost Work Okay, like the power drill that now, at my age, is too heavy to lift with one hand.  And those batteries are bad too.  As is the charger. 

My brother Andy says the next New Big Thing will be an app that helps all of us remember all those useless internet account passwords, as we won't be able to keep straight which one we use for the iTunes account versus which one directs the bank to recognize us.  We have six pages of passwords and usernames and accounts and I tried to reorganize it one day. Is this the correct code for our computer, or is it the one on the other page that had the star symbol beside it? Do we still have this bank account? Do we ever shop at Zappos anymore, and didn't they lose all the account numbers in a bad hack and reset the account anyway?

And in the end, it all comes down to the quality of my brain cells playing a tedious chore of mental hide and seek, trying to make sense of those things that at one time made perfect sense. Like a store flashing up a questionnaire screen when I know it is supposed to be the screen where I scribble my name and hit Enter.  This confusion will be played out with increasing frequency, I'm sure, until I won't know which variable to work with when the time comes to try and figure it all out.  I'm just hoping it will be something easy. Like a case of bad batteries.

Twenty Minutes

I ordered a A Year with C.S. Lewis from Amazon (thanks, Matthew!) and have been reading every night, right after I jot down my day in the Charley Harper Engagement Calendar. Above is a picture of Harper's Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, Costa Rica 1999,  which is on the cover of the engagement calendar, and I love studying it after I write.  It's full of details, surprised, layers, color--all the things I love in a visual piece. (Can you see the chimp?)

Back to the Lewis: I read all the days up to today in January's readings in order to catch up and be on track for the rest of the year, then couldn't resist and read a couple more.  Here's January 26th's thought, from Lewis' The Great Divorce, Preface:

"We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the center: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a pool but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good."

What else, this January month?  I upgraded our computer OS software; we now have Lion installed so it will work with our iCal and our Mail and our iPhones and the iCloud (and our iBrains).  I will have been to the doctor seven times before the month is out, eight, if you count the 3 1/2 hours in Urgent Care on the 31st of December.  Two other people I care about were also hospitalized and they are both home.  I started teaching again in the new semester; a friend who has had her battles with cancer says that initially she had much less patience for the complaints of the students, a side-effect of the experience.  I know what she means.  I miss feeling like I could conquer the world, but that may be just having a birthday.

Oh, a birthday!  And this is how my mind works right now: like a trying to take a walk in the night with no moon and a dim flashlight, feeling my way through all things, recognizing some only after shining the light on it twice.  I find "lost" things in strange places and am surprised by where they are, as I don't recall putting them away there.  I intensely miss people.  People exhaust me.  I tear up too easily.  I tire by mid-afternoon and stand in the laundry room looking at cans of Barq's root beer, trying to decide if I should drink some caffeine or go take a nap.  I can do either, at my stage of life.  Usually the nap wins.

And now like to say I had cancer for twenty minutes, but that someone has imbedded a hatchet in my upper thigh.  That's about how it's going around here these days--with new dressing change routines, the asthma kicking in (esp. today with its high winds) and the gratifying realization that I don't have to do chemo or radiation like my other friends with cancer.  Hence, the 20-minute cancer.  Just need to get rid of that hatchet now, and although changed, life will go on in its branching ways.

Convalescing, and That's All for Now

After a visit with my doctor, this time to check that the brochitis has come to an end, but now the asthma has flared up (more drugs), I stopped by the Customer Relations office today to speak with Marylon (correct spelling) about something that has bothered me since that lovely day I found out about the cancer.

That particular morning, I was sitting in my dermatologist's examining room, my "vitals" having been taken by a young man.  He had a copy of my lab report in his hand, and leaned forward and asked "Are you going to cry when you find out your diagnosis?"  A creeping flush began at the back of my neck, confirming what Dave and I had talked about this morning--that whatever the news was, it was bad--but I'd be hanged if I was going to give this young man any indication of my emotions.
"Depends on what my diagnosis is," I answered calmly.
He did not leave well enough alone, but instead went back to reading my lab report.
"I guess I'll let the doctor tell you the news," he said.
"That would probably be wise," I answered, wishing that a hole would open up in the floor and swallow him.  Couple this experience with an incident later that hour when the botox-ed blonde young woman (office assistant) counseled me to "Ask more nicely," when I requested a copy of the pathology report.  At that point, I was struggling to stay on top of the inner storm surge, so could not even answer.  I simply stared and wished that same hole would get her too.  I did get the report, got out of the office before I broke down while talking to Dave, sitting in the parking lot outside the office.  That whole day was strange, but these two comments left me wondering if I should say something to someone.  And who?  I didn't want them fired, but I certainly didn't want to let their unprofessionalism go unchecked.

So I guess this means I'm getting better.  Better, as in the surgery is now two weeks in the past.  Better, as in now I don't have bronchitis and a double ear infection, but instead, asthma.  Better, as I don't randomly tear up every twenty minutes, but instead every afternoon or so.  Better, as in I didn't climb once on the bed today, but am on track to wait until after dinner to do that, where I will curl up with my laptop and stream Downton Abbey, Season Two, Episode One.

Better, as in now I am now technically someone who once had cancer, but now does not.

Convalescing, Part Two

We parked across the street from the courthouse, and slowly Dave walked me across the street.  This was the earliest I'd been out of the house in a week, and I remarked to him how interesting it was to be out this early in the downtown, watching the different people moving around in their very normal day.  I felt completely unnerved and was not happy to feel tears well up--for what?  For leaving the house early?  I blinked them back.

We went through security; the guard had to repeat twice that I should take my cell phone OUT of my purse and put it in their basket. I must have looked strange: flat hair, sallow skin, no make-up, creeping along in my sweats and T-shirt, clutching the left side of my pants as I held the fabric away from the prong-like sutures projecting out nearly a half an inch from my leg.  Upstairs in the jury reporting room, I was directed to the woman in the office who did postponements.  I had brought my doctor's note, the hospital admitting records.  I said quietly, "I need a postponement.  I had emergency surgery for melanoma.  I'm sorry."  She looked at me.  "No problem."  We agreed on a date and she was so kind and I was so relieved that again I started to cry.

Dave walked me to the elevators, back through the guarded doorway, across the plaza and helped me into the car.  "How can I teach a church lesson on Sunday?" I asked, "if I cry when I have to ask for a jury duty postponement?  How can I start teaching in two weeks?"  I swallowed hard.  "How do I get my life back?" He was quiet for a minute.  Then we talked about how the surgery had interrupted what things were planned and how getting the bronchitis on top of that was like a double whammy.  As he drove he told me he'd found a bargain trip to Iceland in winter because "Haven't you always wanted to see the Northern Lights?"

Back home I filled the sink with soapy water, pulled the knobs off the stove and tossed them in with the dirty dishes to be done.  Then I got out the cleaner and cleaned underneath the knobs, the front of the stove, working my way down to my knees to remove the spaghetti sauce that had splattered across the front.  Don't too much, cautioned Dave, saying that he knew it was hard for someone like me to remain idle.  "But maybe that's why I was crying," I said.  "Because I'm not me right now."

So this is convalescing, part II: not feeling like myself, not really knowing who I am, unable to do the regular things that bring rhythm and a pacing to my life.  The idea of cancer and melanoma are an abstract--unreal, not me, not my life.  Given the surgeon's comments post-op, I am confident that the pathology report this Friday will give me good news: no cancer, clear margins around the original site.  So where does that leave me now?  Knowing more than I want to know about carcinomas and melanoma, yet less about how to absorb and apply this information.  The sutures and the lymph node wound sites are reminders of what has happened on a physical level.  Perhaps the tears, the wobbly gait are reminders for the rest of me?

A late lunch date that allowed me to change out of the clothes I'd worn all week, curl my hair, and stroke on eyeliner and mascara.  We ordered our food, talking about blessedly mundane things, the wait staff, the too-warm January day, details from his morning's work.  How the lady at the table who waved to us is from a neighboring church congregation.  How Romney won the caucuses by eight votes.  How a small trip like this to a local restaurant can act as a beacon to my new normal, the light shimmering as it casts its beam across that revenant life.

Things to Do While Convalescing

• Read an essay by Susan Straight on California Patios, titled Sun Boss--Inventing the Patio.  This is from her series for KCET, found *here*
• Read the series of papers given to me by the hospital, a collection of helpful and inane pages (including one on how to prevent the spread of disease, which includes the timely tip to "wash hands for at least 20 seconds")
• Talk on the phone to friends, my parents and my brothers and sisters.
• Sleep.
• Write back answers to sweet, touching, kind and caring emails.
• Moan.
• Read poems from the website Poetry Daily (a sample)
• Grimace when I forget and roll onto my left side, where they performed a "wide excision" and took out a hunk of my leg (or at least it feels like they did).
• Be grateful that I didn't have cancer in my lymph node.
• Sleep.
• Talk to the nurse on the phone as she calls to check up on her surgery outpatient.
• Finally enjoy my first real meal: a pot of homemade chicken soup, cooked up by my husband.
• Lay in bed.
• Realize that I can't think clearly, and that my mouth feels like cotton.
• Read the news online, as I can't concentrate on anything other than short blurbs.
• Stare at the bumps in the ceiling.
• Look outside at the beautiful day and wished I felt well enough to sit outside.
• Try not to sit (it hurts).
• Admire the way the clutter on the nightstand can be stacked to include glasses of ginger ale & water, pretzel bread brought back from Ohio, cell phone, regular phone, books, clock and eyeglasses.
• Count my many, many blessings.
• Sleep.
• And remember that--

"The mind wants this: a door in the wall,
         an open field, a narrow path
         through the woods, an open field" 

Helen Wickes

Palm Reading

 When I was a girl I was fascinated by the idea that a person could tell their future by looking at the lines in their hands.  The theory goes that these lines will show your future.  I spent a long time pouring over the tiny palm-reading book from the grocery store, trying to figure out if I would marry, and how many children I would have.  I was always a bit concerned, though, because on my left hand (the non-dominant hand) the life line, which wrapped around the base of my thumb, showed a distinct interruption, even a cessation.  Whatever was promised on the left hand, was ameliorated by the smallest of lines connecting this supposed break on the right hand--which indicated that I would make it through.  At the ripe old age of eleven, the fact that something may happen to me mid-life seemed to be a thrilling horror and I wondered what it was.

When the dermatologist's office called me after I returned home from a two-day jaunt to my daughter's and said I had to come in today (there were three messages on my answering machine), and I subsequently was told that the small biopsy from my revealed malignant melanoma, my world began to reel and rock.  I barely made it out of their office, with its chaos, strange office helpers, and a myriad of instructions before the deluge of tears came.  I sat in the car talking to Dave, the tears flowing as we discussed what had now interrupted the forward flow of my life: Cancer.  The big C. 

An appointment had been made for me with surgeon the next day, so I dutifully went to do my lab work in preparation for the surgery that would surely follow this diagnosis.  I felt like I was in some sort of a bubble as I had my chest X-ray, my blood drawn.  Instead of going home, I went to the grocery store to buy the food for our own Christmas Eve meal, which we had decided to hold that evening (we had plans to spend Christmas Day with our children in a faraway state). I zombied around the store, trying to keep my wobbly self intact, trying to answer this pressing, inane question: what kind of food do you prepare when you've just been diagnosed with cancer? 

Answer: sauteed mushrooms, London broil steak, potatoes.  Apple cake with a rich lemony butter sauce.  Food that grounds you.  Food that makes you shop because you have none of this in your house so it forces you to do regular little things like interact with the meat guy, smile at the checker, to stuff an extra dollar or two in the Salvation Army's red kettle on the way out of the store.  To drive home.  To not talk to anyone while you put away the groceries, to start the laundry for the trip you hope you'll take.  To try not think.  To try not to cry.

At dinner, I tell Dave about my two hands, one with a complete break of the life line, the other with a tenuous connection between the two halves of my life.  I realize it's a silly thing (bunk science, he agrees) but when all the things that make your world itself, those the multiple layers of normalcy that keep you upright and sane and going forward suddenly crumble, you are left pondering the truths that an eleven-year old once believed in, yet find them wanting.

In one of the multiple phone calls and emails that followed in the next few hours, I was reminded of other dark days when the layers of normalcy were suddenly seared away.  I got through them with a more mature faith, through the knowledge that there was a power much greater than an illustrated booklet.  I got through them one prayer at a time, both by me and by others in my behalf.  For after all is said and done, none of us control much of our mortality. 

In the end, all we can do is place our trust in hands not our own, but in those of our Heavenly Father.

Blueprint

Recently I visited my dermatologist for various and sundry issues, and had taken Molly Peacock's latest book with me to read, while I waited (there's always a wait). The book tells the story of Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700-1788).  Delany is known for her "paper cuts" of flowers, pieces of ephemera that she began making at the age of seventy-two and that she called flower mosaick. According to Peacock, "in the next for ten years she completed nearly a thousand cut-paper botanicals so accurate that botanists still refer to them" (4).

Peacock says that Mrs. Delany offered her up "a blueprint for late-life flexibility," as he own mother had died much younger, and Peacock felt like she needed a mentor for how to do the next stage of life.  I met Molly Peacock when she came to UCR for Writers Week one year, and she encourage me to send in a couple of my poems to literary magazines.  I never did, but I did remember her.  So when this book came out, I was in the middle of my own search for a blueprint as well.  I have a fine one: my mother is vibrant and interesting and we have wonderful discussions about all sorts of things; she is a good friend as well.  But I was also interested in how others of my own generation are meeting the challenge of middle age.  Perhaps it was triggered by a reaction to some cholesterol medication I had been taking which I felt aged me 100 years in a very short time; I still have some difficulties. Yet I still feel I have much to contribute; even in my rickety physical state (which has improved some).  My mind still feels relatively sharp and I have the luxury of time to take stock and choose direction.

Surrounding me in the doctor's office were lots of botox ads like this one:

The contrast between Peacock's homage and the incessant calling out of wrinkle lines between the forehead--eliminate them now!--was not only stark, but amusing.  When the young nurse assistant took me in to the examination room, I gestured to the ad, observing that the 111-woman looks angry and she was trying to make her own lines.  She breezily commented that she used botox.  I asked her old she was: 30.  "But you're so young!" I exclaimed, surprised at this.  "Oh we all use botox in this office," she said.  "We love it."

The New York Times noted a recent study where "[w]omen with botox were significantly less accurate at decoding both positive and negative facial expression," in other words, the use of botox to freeze those 1 or 11 or 111 lines made them less able to mimic the emotions of others in their own faces.  This mimicry "generates a signal from the person’s face to his or her brain. Finally, the signal enables the listener to understand the other person’s meaning or intention."

I'm not, in principle, opposed to the use of plastic surgery to make an aging face--as Jane Fonda put it--look "less tired" as when she had her eyes done recently.  But the blueprint I'm leaning towards puts more focus on a life's work--a body of work--rather than work done on the body.