Wedding at the Koi Pond

Twelve white plastic chairs were lined up in a single row along the border of the koi pond in the Japanese Garden next to the tea house built in honor of the sister city.  A concert cellist named Diego, son of Argentinian emigres who arrived in L.A. just in time before the disappeareds, played baroque accompaniment to the breeze and babbling waterfall.  The solos were at once serene and mournful.  This was a spare wedding, thinly populated.  The mother of the bride, tightly corseted, wore a long deep blue gown. A gem matching and uncertain quality hung prominently from a white gold chain on her ample breast.   On her arm was a man to whom she had been married twice, though not currently.  He called her his wife.  The bride called him her mother’s boyfriend.  He said they were separated.  It was not a consistent story, though he was a MENSA and very entertaining.  The groom’s mother wore a handwoven dress from Mexico adorned with Mexican amethyst and silver jewelry she had inherited from the mother-in-law she never met who had acquired same on New York’s Fifth Avenue.  A hand woven shawl from a highland village draped her shoulders.  The MENSA man exclaimed she was more Mexican than the mother of the bride whose family had migrated from Guerrero in the last generation.  Assimilation can be everything to some.  Accompanying the mother of the groom was her husband number two.  The father of the groom who had never remarried was also in attendance.   The best man flew in from the mile high city to be with his best friend from infancy.  Three young women in stiletto sandals adorned with sequins that exposed French manicured toes attended the bride who emerged from the Japanese tea house alone to the accompaniment of the mournful cello, her heels sinking into the grass as she tip-toed to the area where the officiant, the groom and the single bride’s maid awaited her.  Many who loved these two were missing from the scene.

There had been a long debate about who could or would be in attendance.  The bride, tall, lanky, and quixotic, went back and forth about who to include or not, and the groom to be was compliant.

Scrambled Eggs

There is a mystery to the aging process. Deterioration happens when you least expect it. It arrives suddenly like a boulder dislodged from the cliff, falling on the road and blocking traffic for miles. It takes hours and a large crew to handle the clean-up. Last night, while eating scrambled eggs, the most soft and delicate of all food substances, I suddenly feel something solid, rock-like in the midst of the warm mass in my mouth, and realize that a tooth had broken off. Why am I crying? There is a gaping hole in the front of my smile. I face a day or more in the dentist’s chair. But that is not it. I am continuing to deteriorate. The parts are wearing out and need replacement. They do not grow back but will be fashioned from artificial material. This is a reckoning. I am coming up to my 63rd birthday and I cry because I am mourning this loss — of my smile, my tooth, my beauty, my health, my life.

Mc vs. Mac — The New Social Technology Interface

The Apple Store phenom is a sensory experience of the highest order. Social Technology. Real life Facebook. The experience of sitting at the Genius Bar and just elbowing up to the bar tender, engaged in the repartee, tete-a-tete of Mac life. The Small Set is assembled around a low table playing computer games, challenge matches, sitting in front of huge screens, easily navigating and manipulating the cursors, punching out villains and magnifying heroes. They sit on little round rubber balls (like exercise balls) clad in a rainbow of Crocs, ecstatic. This is the way to build brand, I say to myself. Get them to be users before the age of 5. Brilliant. Just like when my children were young and they were only happy at the McDonald’s Playground. Here is the new generation playground, equally if not more so enticing, compelling, addictive. We are creating children who are totally technology facile, while next to me the 40 and 50-somethings are struggling to learn and keep up. I am navigating my way around Facebook, upgraded to my new MacBook with 3-D screen, and playing in the online communication leagues with people greater than half my age. It’s fun, challenging, and I can see that the Mc generation is creating the Mac generation.

The Meltdown

It finally hit him. The Big C, cancer, and when I reached over to touch him the other night, he barked and growled at me like an animal who had been wounded and was in excruciating pain. As if I was the one who had inflicted the blow. What do you want? he said, what do you want. I just want to touch you. C’mon, he said, everyone knows what they want, as if he was prodding me to challenge him to have sex just one more time. It was not a good night. He had done, during the last few days since the test results were revealed, what men are acculturated to do, to suppress the anger, think lightly of it, be cavalier, pretend it isn’t serious, hold it in and be strong. I even began to think, aw, it’s nothing. We talked about who takes out the garbage or unloads the dishwasher, what’s for dinner, how the day went. Life as usual. Then, blam. Crisis. This is REAL. I confess, I was hurt by his outburst of anger, accused him of pulling away from me and disconnecting, and went to the couch to sleep … or at least make an attempt at it. It was a long, not good night.

He’d gotten a phone call from a nurse who delivered the news rather matter-of-factly as she asked to schedule the biopsy appointment for mid-June. Wait a minute, he said to me the next morning, after pouring out tears of fear and sincere apology, I had this test done in March. He sobbed. His body shook. I held him. I listened, stroked his back and kissed his neck. Why was it they were calling me at the end of May when the test was done in March, he said. What happened? What’s going on here? We both know. We work for major medical centers. Patients fall through the cracks. And he wasn’t paying attention. My husband is scared, anxious, wondering how long he will live, what his quality of life will be, whether surgery will be necessary and if it is, knowing that he will be incontinent and lose sexual function. I think this scares him more than it scares me because while sex has always been important to both of us, this diagnosis is more than that. It is about mortality and how much time is really left, how many days, months, years. Is this slow growing or virulent? The anxiety of waiting until July to hear the biopsy result (sorry, we have a practice of not giving that information out over the phone) after we return from vacation. I say, call the doctor and tell him about the time lapse, ask to be seen sooner, take a stand. He does. The doctors says, no worries, take your vacation, your PSA is low and the test is 75% accurate. There’s time to see what’s going on. One has to be a believer in something to live in this world.

So, for both of us, this is really taking a step back and asking, what are the priorities? reflecting on our lives, what we want, how we want to be together as we go through this. I want to say, this isn’t happening to us, it’s some kind of dream. I always was a conflict avoider. But, now I am conscious, more conscious of this relationship, and how much it means to me.

Elder Sex in a Heartbeat

These days we are in the rhythm of being separated during the week and reunited on Fridays after work. Husband leaves the cottage in the country on Tuesday morning for the 50 minute commute to his office. Why bother coming home he says, when I leave the office at 7 p.m., don’t get home til closer to 8, then we’re in bed by 9:30. Hardly seems worth it. I can’t disagree. So, now we have three nights of independence for both of us! Why? He says the obvious answer is the price of gas. He says he is saving about $250 month by sleeping on the sofa. I know for certain he’s not fooling around. I kinda like this arrangement though I miss him. It gives me a chance to live the single life once again. No worries about checking in. I can arrange an impromptu after work let’s get together for a glass of wine meeting with a girlfriend. Work late if I want to. Stay up all night or go to sleep early. No one to cook for or disagree with. A peaceful interlude.

One reason, I think, that he wanted to do this is that he anticipates that our sex life will improve in a heartbeat the moment he steps back across the threshold. So far, I am dubious. We’ve been running this experiment for the last two months, and instead of an up-tick in our sex life we’re on hold. It appears that “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is not as compelling for us, the 60-somethings, as it might have been when our hormones were raging full strength. I’m not sure if I should be hopeful or discouraged. Right now, I’m feeling more discouraged. True, we have this great Friday night date reunion. We meet up for dinner, review the events of the week (even the ones we shared by telephone or email in the intervening days), hold hands across the table, smile lovingly, sip a glass of wine or two, and then make our way home, one following the other (usually him behind me), hug or touch each other tenderly and fall asleep.  I’ve discovered that sex with a 60-something husband is better in the morning.  But it usually takes a hit of Viagara to get us going, and that means planning, popping the pill an hour before the intended consequence, and spontaneous love goes out the window.  It’s a bummer.   So, lately I’m thinking that perhaps I’m complacently content to have my best friend next to me, we nestle like spoons, and it’s good enough.  I hate it that my body and brain are totally not connected on what I want to do and what I can’t do.  It takes too much lubricant and intention to make love making happen.

The Crotcheties

It’s Saturday morning and we’re sitting in bed waking up with a cup of coffee, drapes open looking into the expanse of field.

He: No, I’m not shoveling the mulch this morning, there are other things I want to do, this is your project. I think that what we really need to do is put a web camera right there on the window jam, record our bed conversation and make some money on the Internet.

She: I have an idea. We could move it down a little and instead of us being the talking heads, we could be the talking crotches.

He: Oh, that’s good, talking crotches. (Roaring laugh)

She: Yeah, we could call ourselves The Crotcheties. (Laughter)

He: That’s good, the crotchety Crotcheties. Yeah, the old fogies still do it, point the camera to our crotches, spread our legs. Plenty of people would pay for that.

She: Are you kidding?

He: No. We could open a PayPal account and sell it pay per view.

She: Okay, but it has to be anonymous. I know, we open our laptops, lean back against the headboard, knees up so when we open the screen, the only thing people can see is the back of the screen …

He: and our genitals.

She: yikes, I’m not sure about this. More coffee, dear?

He:  What do we call this?

She:  Sex and the 60’s.

He: You need to spell it out.

She:  Oh, I know.  Elderhostel sex.

He:  Is that when you get beat up with a wet noodle?  That’s pretty hostile.

She:  Get back to your Google.

He:  Have you ever Googled sex?  seen how many entries it pulls up.

She:  That’s it, more coffee. (Thinking, if we can’t web cam it, we can blog it)

Marriage Vows Remembered

This anniversary, our sixth, should not have been that remarkable. What are two 60-somethings doing trying to cavort like our children, with surprises, impassioned romance, champagne glasses raised in toast to the miracle of being together one more year as we get to the place where sex — oh, excuse me, love making — is as good as our imaginations can put together. We sat on the veranda of the swanky southern hotel at the edge of a very proper private university looking out onto an idyllic scene of pristinely manicured golf course bordered by 50 foot pines. This was not our usual habitat. I’d say, the celebration fete was definitely a success. I looked into his blueberry eyes (one of the reasons I married him) and we recalled the circumstances by which we came together eight and a half years ago. He, claiming he never wanted to remarry. Me, claiming satisfaction in just being together in a committed partnership after years of foiled attempts at connection. He, saying he remembered the day, that Fourth of July, when I was on the grill, the grill queen reigns, turning the chicken, so competent. (No woman in his life ever handled a grill with such aplomb.) He steps toward me, arms outstretched with a platter full of corn to add, and blurts, I think it’s time we got married. We are best friends.

What makes a marriage work at 60 when it doesn’t at 30 or 40? How many times do we make those vows, then participate in the disintegration of the fantasy before we get it right? This time, we are seasoned, expect less than perfection. Our ideals are focused on political and environmental issues not on the ideal spouse. We walk through life holding hands, smiling, content, the roller coaster of emotionally charged atmospheric electricity that kindles procreation is past. We sit on the green rockers looking out at the apple orchard growing taller each year, at the society of geese on our front lawns, imagining what it may have been like if we had met at 30 or 40, and knowing it would have been a failure then for us, too.

Now, we start our seventh year of marriage.  The stormy years between seven and 10, when marriages go asunder, partners stray or disengage, marital bliss turns to a nightmare.  We are smarter now, we think.  We know what to expect.  So, when we raise this toast to taking the vows of marriage, we are recommitting to the promise to listen and not try to fix it, love and not withdraw, address conflict when it happens, soothe and support, ask questions.  Still no small feat.

Often, I ask myself what is at stake here?  This could be my last chance to get it right.  I realize that I may have 20 good years left to live.  More, if I’m lucky and my gene pool is consistent and I take better care of my body — my life support system.   At 60 there is less urgency and more thoughtfulness about my intentions.  I am less compelled to travel the globe and more intent on getting to know people more deeply.  My body clock ticks to a different rhythm — child bearing years are long past and I look to a future that finite.  This scares me.  I have never wanted to die.

At the swank hotel dining room, his grown son is waiting our table.  The walls are paneled in rich dark wood, the chairs are deeply upholstered tapestry, oriental rugs cover the parquet floors, lush lined draperies swag the windows, a mouth-blown opaque globe radiates a glow of warmth across the room.   The surprise evening plays out perfectly course by course.  We are too full of wine and red meat and chocolate and champagne to do anything but gently kiss each other on the lips, climb into the plush hotel room bed and say goodnight.