The Gero-Punk Project

Last night as I was winding down for sleep by reading in bed I found myself musing about what I might be doing in the future exactly one year to the night.

My daughter Isobel was in the front room nested on the couch and listening to music (folk, then rap, then indie) while she finished homework and Happy was outside in the dark backyard performing ferocity (I have no idea whatsoever what he was barking at). The only thing I can say with any sense of certitude (of course baring any major unforeseeable events) about next year at this time is that Isobel will be far away at college, probably listing to folk, rap, and who knows what else, while she does homework with new friends or maybe alone in her dorm room. Or possibly because she’s living in a different time zone she’ll already be asleep. Or maybe she’ll be working at her work study job. Or — yes, I can imagine it! — she will have blown off homework or work study in order to go into the big city to see a band perform.

Whatever she’ll be up to, she’ll be up to it in a very different location. She will be my far-away daughter.

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But what will I be doing a year from now?

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Happy was sick two weeks ago. Last week, Isobel was sick (very sick, and she had final exams to take!). I worked from home as much as I could so I could take care of them. 

The days of staying home to nurse a sick kid will soon be coming to an end.  And as Happy now quite dramatically surpasses me in chrono-age and has begun to acquire “old dog” ailments, I suspect that I will be taking care of him increasingly until the sad day when I no longer have the honor of doing so.

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I’ve been reflecting a lot over the past two weeks about the difference between how I feel now when I am engaged in the fine act of balancing work and family compared to how I felt ten or fifteen years ago. 

When Isobel was barely out of babyhood I was a soon-to-be divorced single mom and newly hired part-time university instructor. I felt jangly, disoriented, and in a state of shock pretty much all of the time. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing nor how it was that I found myself doing what I was doing. 

As little humans on a new planet often are, Izzy was sick quite a bit with this or that bug and I’d find myself trying to figure out how I’d take care of her and do my job.  I rarely could afford to buy extra childcare for her and neither her father (who lived in a different city and was also an academic) nor I – nor my mom, who was also working full-time — could easily drop our work responsibilities in order to stay home with sick Izzy. 

Sometimes I brought Izzy to work with me, making a nest for her on my office floor and wheeling in a TV monitor and VCR so she could watch age-appropriate videos while I tended to what seemed to be very crucial stuff.  Sometimes I cancelled meetings (or absented myself from meetings) in order to stay home with her, but I agonized the entire time I was home wondering if I was missing something important, if I would be forgotten, or if I’d lose my already insecure position when I didn’t show up to work for a few days. Sometimes her father and I would do a crazy mid-day exchange – I’d take care of her for the first part of the day, then he’d drive to Portland to be with her while I went to campus to teach, or vice versa.   Of course, after taking care of sick Izzy, we’d often become sick ourselves, and then we’d have a whole new challenge to face.

In the past few years, and it has grown more acute recently, I have discovered that I actually enjoy deeply the experience of being home with Isobel and Happy,  balancing taking care of them with tending to my work.   I am grateful for the recent blessing of getting to take care of my creatures when they were sick as it also offered me the opportunity to reflect on ways that I have changed over the past decade.

I’m still sussing what’s shifted, but I think one explanation is that my efforts that started in 2006 to de-compartmentalize and re-prioritize my life have borne fruit. I can do what I need and want to do as a worker any where, pretty much, but the only way I can take care of my child and my dog (and my mom and my partner and any of my other people) is if I’m actually with them, taking care of them. Also, perhaps as a result of traveling through my life course a fair piece longer, and minding my mind a fair bit more, I no longer worry (as much) that if I’m not in my workplace all the time that I’ll be forgotten and get replaced and my life will fall to pieces.

I realize now that — hypothetically speaking, of course — even if I lose my job, even if I am replaced and forgotten, my life won’t fall to pieces, because my life’s coherence and value no longer depend quite so much on such things as it did in the past. 

What does my life’s coherence depend on now, you ask? Well, that’s the topic of at least one future essay, so stay tuned.

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I have to admit that during the first decade or more of being on my own with Isobel and trying to make our lives work I felt crazed and anxious pretty much all of the time. I felt like I was trying to pull off some miracle or mysterious feat without any proper instruction or required wisdom. But somehow Isobel and I (with the support of her father, and her grandma, and everyone else who has loved us) did  pull it off and make our lives work. 

Next month, on Valentine’s Day, Isobel will be celebrating her 18^th birthday.

And next year at this time she’ll be my far-away daughter having fantastic adventures.  

She’s more than well. And so am I.

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As Happy-the-dog and I were walking in the park early this morning I had a dream that I was delivering a spoken-word version of the Gero-Punk Manifesto while accompanying myself on electric bass.

An essay by guest Gero-Punk

Patsy Jacobs

When it was just me and my mother at home she would play records.  She had a million records, or so it seemed.  I didn’t know the names of some of the singers that sang from the old red and white phonograph.  When she listened to Al Jolson or Enrico Caruso she would crank up “Victor Victrola.”  I think I was 4 years old when my brother told me that “Victor” was not the phonograph’s first name.  He looked like a Victor to me with his funny birthday hat.   Sometimes the men that sang had deep voices and actually made me stop playing with my teddy bear with the checkered  pants and missing right eye.  When Victor was playing he sounded faraway and scratchy.  Victor sang “Mammy” or “Nearer My God to Thee.”

My mother could blend her voice with that of the record and it was lovely.  I wondered once why her voice was not on one of those records.    She stood in the kitchen ironing and when it was lively music she would dance.  When it was a sad song she would slow her movements and the ties on her apron seemed to sway slowly in rhythmic movements of the air.  Sometimes my dad would come home for lunch and I would peek around the corner as my parents danced slowly to “Always.”  I delighted in watching their loving embrace and kiss at the end of that song.   Sometimes my father would pick me up and the three of us would dance around and around.  Sometimes my teddy bear would join us.

I was never really inquisitive with her about who these singers were, but my mother would say “This is Gordon MacRae.”  Or: “That was Dick Haymes, isn’t he just a beautiful singer?”   Sometimes it was a woman singer and my mother could sing the harmony.  Sometimes I thought my mother sang much better than some of those female singers.   Once when I had been bitten by too many chiggers, she rocked me in the rocker and sang “My Curly Headed Baby.”

I got a call from my mother’s neighbor that she had fallen and that I needed to come over as soon as I could.  The bus ride over was strange.  It seemed to have wings of haste.  I had on one of my brother’s old USC shirts and one of his funniest original songs floating around in my head.    I walked the block from where the bus let me off and when I put the key in the keyhole, I heard her soft voice greeting me as always: “Is that you?”

“Yes, mom.”  I said.

I made the decision to call 911 because she was talking strange.  She was sitting on the toilet drinking a protein drink and smoking a cigarette.   She was asking me all sorts of strange questions about her neighbor.  She was wondering if that woman had come and taken all of her clothes out of her closet.  I told her that the woman next door had never been in her house and all of her personal clothes were indeed hanging in her closet.  She even asked me why I had brought my own “blue washer and dryer” over and replaced hers.  I took her blood sugar and it was 81 so she was sort of low, but not enough to make her say these strange things.  I assured her that it was her Maytag washer and her General Electric dryer in the laundry room.  She looked at me as if she really didn’t believe me.

Mom was in the emergency room telling the nurse and the doctor that her neighbor and sixteen other people were in her house singing and making such a racket that she was about to yell at them.  She told the doctor that the people wouldn’t let her have her glasses because she wouldn’t need them anymore.  They were singing “Old Man River” and then she said they changed the lyrics to “Mamye was going to jail”.  This was the first time I had ever heard my mother say such strange things.

The doctor ordered a CT scan of her head because my mother said that she bumped it when she fell.  She actually had the nurse convinced that she was at some sort of church meeting where people were condemning her for “all the bad things she had done in her life,” as she said.  I made sure to tell the nurse and the doctor out in the hall that mom lives alone, she did not have an evangelical church group in her house condemning her for past wickedness.  She hadn’t any past wickedness.  And the neighbor did not take my mother’s clothes out of the closet.  I had talked with her two nights before and she had told me about my brother calling to let her know that my sister-in-law was having cataract surgery.  She talked to her grandson and everything was okay in the Robinson house as far as I knew.  I mentioned that we were a very normal family.  I stayed with her most of the night until they took her up to the purgatorial room where I could not be with her.

I walked to her house and waited for their call so they could tell me what room she was in.

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Bio for Patsy Jacobs: My parents never faltered in telling me that I can do anything that was in my heart, with a heart. I was born in Arkansas and moved with my family to California when I was almost eight.  When my father got a job here in Oregon, I was reluctant to leave and actually told them that I would stay long enough to get them settled.  I have lived in Oregon a little over 33 years.  I am currently a student at Marylhurst University finishing my bachelor’s degree with a desire to continue in the MAIS program with a concentration in gerontology. I started my working life as a certified nursing assistant and eventually became activity director per an insistent residential vote and the constant badgering of the administrator for weeks until he agreed to interview me for the position.  Retirement just gave me the time to pursue a dream to complete a degree and go on from there. I am a storyteller amongst other things.   As I pursue writing, I have come to realize that it is the stories that my elders gave me that inspire me to write.  Those closest to me gave me my wings in some respect.  If my “roots” are what inspire me then I must be in the right place.  Who am I? This question gives me gateway for exploration and a realization that I want my voice heard.  Writing is one thing, but the pleasure of readers is another, and those that listen give me the greatest joy. I currently live in Salem, Oregon with my husband.   Robbie and I have been married 23 years.  I live with 7 cats, all homeless at one time in the lives.

A week ago today I met someone new and I think we could become friends. I liked her instantly and I think she may have liked me, too.

This potential new friend has the coolest name ever! (Alas, her name must stay a secret for now as we are yet official friends and thus I’m not authorized to share her name in my writing.) She also has awesome hair! And I love her glasses!

Let me describe her with a bit more detail so you get the picture.

Her hair is bobbed (side-parted) and shimmering.  She’s about my size, give or take a few inches and pounds. Her glasses – oh, her glasses! – are heavy black frames, more triangular and cat-like than mine are (and actually exactly the kind of glasses frames I yearn for but can’t wear.). She carries a really keen handbag.

The moment I saw her, I wanted to know her.

(Yikes! I’m sounding pretty shallow here, describing my attraction to her surface. Perhaps I should tell you about how we met.)

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She with the oh-so-fantastic name was a participant at an informal presentation I gave.  The topic of the presentation was: What are your aspirations for this new year?  What new thoughts do you want to think? What new things do you want to learn? What new adventures do you hope to have? (This is a story for another time, but some of the participants at my presentation rebelled at the “open-ended” nature of my questions.)

She lingered after the presentation ended. She was the last to leave.  I was still seated at a table, jotting notes down in my journal with a fountain pen.  She noticed I was writing with a fountain pen and became very excited. She asked me if what she thought she noticed – that I was writing with a fountain pen – was in fact true, because if it were true it would be the most wonderful thing ever. I confirmed that it was indeed true, I was writing with a fountain pen.  So we began discussing fountain pens and calligraphy. She informed me that most young people these days don’t know what a fountain pen is, unless they see one in a movie.

She asked me how I knew about fountain pens. I told her the story of my long-term, intense relationship with fountain pens, a relationship that began in my girlhood. Of course, I had a preamble to the story, which was that I have the worst handwriting ever (Do I hear an “Amen, sister!” from my students?), which is ironic, given my desperate love for fonts and writing implements and beautiful paper. Any way.

I described to her how for at least one childhood Christmas I requested – and received– a real fountain pen set, the kind with the quill and different sized nibs, and little pots of India ink.  Oh, joy! I commenced to teach myself calligraphy. And in the process of learning about calligraphy, I also discovered a wholly unknown world to me: the history of fonts and type-setting and illuminated manuscripts. As it happened, after my family moved from California to a little farm in Oregon, one of our neighbors had an obsession with calligraphy of such a magnitude that as a result he had accumulated calligraphy magazines which he stacked in neat piles in the basement. Upon discovering our shared interest, he chose a few old copies from the piles which he gave to me. I poured over them, selecting esoteric fonts to serve as my practicing templates.

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I hadn’t remembered any of this for a long time. In actual fact, I don’t think I had ever remembered any of this until the day when I met this potential new friend with the coolest name ever and she admired my disposable blue fountain pen. I felt good meeting a potential new friend and I felt good remembering that I was once a girl with an obsession for fountain pens and calligraphy.

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After I finished reminiscing about calligraphy, she asked me where I had found the fountain pen and if it was expensive.  I told her that I had found it at the university bookstore and also online through Amazon and that it wasn’t that costly and that the only downside is that you have to throw it away once the ink runs out but that they made great stocking stuffers (my daughter loves them!).  She seemed so truly enamored with my fountain pen that I couldn’t resist offering it to her. She refused the offering. She said she didn’t have her wallet with her so couldn’t pay me for the pen.  I said that it was fine she didn’t have her wallet because I refused payment for gifts, that I wished her to have the pen as my gift.  And yet, she resisted.

Then I took a gamble based on a hunch and pulled out my pen case. I showed her that I had in my possession three disposable fountain pens – blue, red and purple.  Once she realized that I wouldn’t be going around without a fountain pen if she accepted my gift, she acquiesced.  Ha! My stratagem worked!

I asked her which color she fancied. She said she always fancies blue.

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The rest of the day I thought about her and about our unexpected encounter. I was so excited that I just had to tell someone so I told Simeon that I might have found a new friend. He asked me to describe her, so I told him that she has the coolest name ever and then I told him her name. He agreed: Coolest. Name. Ever.

Then he asked how old she is. I might be a gerontologist, but I’m terrible at the age-guessing-game, so I said: Not yet twice my age. Then I said: Maybe her age is between 70 and 90? I’m really not sure. What the hell do I know about what age people are?

I hope I see her again soon.