No Hurry

I’m on my way out the door and Tizi says, “Be sure to take your foot off the accelerator when you approach a stoplight.” This strikes me as oddly specific. Why not a more general expression of concern, like drive carefully? Now she adds, “Sometimes you mistake the gas pedal for the brake.” 

Do I? 

I had not noticed that.

It’s a Thursday. I’m on my way to a high school class reunion, a noon picnic organized by the class of ‘68 with an open invite to all FHS classes. I do not ask her to go with me, which means up and back, a couple hundred miles total in the car by myself, music blasting, my foot on the accelerator and, when necessary, on the brake.  I’m class of ‘70. Attendance at these things is light. They’ll take anyone, from any class, so long as you’re old. It’s not until I’m on the road that it occurs to me–the day and time of the event is tailor made for older people. No one driving at night. Everyone back home in their comfy chair by late afternoon. I’m good with that.

I’ve been following Anne Lamott’s column in the Washington Post. She just turned 70. She’s working out what it means to be that age.  She says, ““I think that I am only 57, but the paperwork does not back this up.” She says of 70 that it’s “a young age for an older person to be, but it is the oldest I have ever been.” I’m ahead of her by a couple years and still getting used to it. The little things smack you upside the head. Checking in for a flight recently, with an airline I had abandoned a while back, when asked to enter my birthdate I was horrified by the long scroll, the one after entering day and month, track-balling back in time, going back, back, then back some more, all the way to 1952 on the pull-down menu. What the hell.

Tizi’s faith in my driving has been shaken, mostly by non-lethal mini-events. She’s fond of saying, “Check your mirrors!” I do. Except when I don’t. For a few years now, also, I’ve been noticing my difficulty parking the car, her van, in particular. It’s long. It’s equipped with lots of alert-the-driver sensors. If she’s in the car with me, she alerts the driver too. As soon as I approach the two parallel lines in a parking lot or the curb on a city street, her vigilance faculty lights up. When I slip the vehicle into Park, she cracks her door open, looks down, and shakes her head. “You’re on the line,” she’ll say.  More often, “You’re crooked,” she’ll say. “You could pull up further,” she’ll say. Or, “I can’t open my door and get out.” I have not consulted the literature, but I wonder now, as I’m sure she does too, if difficulty parking your van is a sign of dementia onset. 

The reunion is in a township park just north of town. Coming from the south I pull up to Freeland’s stoplight and survey the damage. I mean progress. No, I mean damage. Everything on the southwest corner has changed. Razed, removed, and reborn. Where there was a century-old hotel, a coffee shop, and a grungy bar downstairs we called The Rat Hole, and my father’s full service gas station, there is now a Subway, a Taco Bell, the Entre Amigos Mexican restaurant, and, pitched in a brand new strip mall, another strip mall, what Freeland really needed, this one backed up to the river, I see the U Spa Salon (and more), Lavender Dreams, and Evolution Aesthetics. What the heck are those? The “and more” is part of the signage. I wonder, What more? On the northwest corner, adding to our dining possibilities, is a Jimmy John subshop. I think for a minute, I could be bad. I could stop in at the reunion, eat light, then slip away and go back to Jimmy John. How great would it have been to have a Jimmy John in Freeland when I was a kid? But, no. I circle through town and go back to the south to pick up a tub of baked beans and a tub of beet and onion salad at Pat’s.

Pat’s, too, is new and improved. It’s no longer just Pat’s Food Center. 

Pat’s, of course, has a website. And departments. I mean Departments. Where those departments were once meat, bread, produce, cans, and dry goods, Departments now means: fresh bakery, delicious deli (with baked beans and beet and onion salad to go), bountiful produce (my favorite kind), quality meat, catering, hardware, and services. Hardware? I can’t NOT click on services. And feel a rush of surprise and admiration for all that Pat’s has become: money orders, floral and greeting cards, window and screen repair, live bait, custom paint mixing and & matching. Fax services (is Fax still a thing?). Next year there will probably be a link to crypto currency.

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When she wonders about her age and others’, Anne Lamott remarks on the two forms of dementia: angry and “gentle spaced-out.” My mother’s was the spaced-out variety. Before she disappeared completely, I’d notice her looking off into the distance with a smile on her face. When I sat down across from her at a restaurant one time, my father asked her, “Do you know who this is?” “Well, sure,” she said. She was beaming. “This is Walter.” She beamed a lot, but she also got irritated at times, befuddled when she was supposed to be somewhere to meet her dad and her grandma, when she couldn’t remember where the bathroom was in their little two-bedroom home. But otherwise, in her transition, she could seem downright beatific. If it has to happen, I hope to slide toward gratitude not mad-itude.

Tizi told me the other day that ice can cause dementia. I like ice. Hearing loss correlates with dementia. That’s in my genes. My ears aren’t what they used to be. Insufficient sleep may be causal. I haven’t slept seven full hours in decades. These days microplastics are on her radar screen. They’re hard to see, their impact TBD. I notice, but do not tell her, that my why-did-I-walk-into-this-room forgetfulness seems to have worsened. I’m standing at sink washing a dish and turn to the fridge, open the door, and can’t remember why. That’s forgetting at the speed of light.

#

At the reunion, parking is easy. A wide sandy lot, no lines. Welcome.

Many upperclassmen are in attendance, fewer upperclasswomen. What’s that about? The park north of town has a pavilion with picnic tables. We are fifty, maybe sixty high school grads. In the food line I see chicken, chicken, and chicken; pasta salad, tossed salad, bean salad, Greek salad, beet and onion salad; baked beans; and cookies, cakes, and brownies. We lean across tables and look at name tags. Who are we? Hey, Greg Lewis. Lyle Brewster. Really? Tom Halm, Herb Vasold, Duke Diamond.  Some faces are unmistakable: Clarence Daughendaugh, Doug Anderson, Pat Throop, Denise Bennet, Tom Neuenfeldt, Mike and Fred Hoewe. There’s a lot of laughter. We’re here, after all. The wife of a ‘68 I talk to, someone says, is in hospice. A ‘66, when I ask about his brother class of ‘69, just says Dead. The other brother? Also dead. This ‘66, when he speaks, his expression is labored, his affect flat. He seems hollowed out. Something happening. Or not happening.

In attendance, they’re all class of ‘68 and older. Before I leave, a youngster says, “Hey?” It’s Wayne King, class of ‘71. We sit and talk. After high school he learned a skill, electric motor repair, and worked in that for years. He talks with obvious pleasure about this and his other his specialized skills and how they supported him over the years. I bet he checks his mirrors and is good at parking, fitting his vehicle perfectly parallel to the lines.

#

I take it easy on the way home, no music, cruising 60 mph, staying in the right lane. It occurs to me that, in this contemplative frame of mind, I become something of a pariah on the road. I’m in no hurry, but sixty on the freeway is too slow for any sane driver. Okay, then, I’ll go 65.  No one wants to be stuck behind me. Around home I’ll find myself doing 35 in a 45 mph speed limit and step on it out of consideration for other drivers. On the freeway semi trucks and trailers pass me. That slow. 

Long drives we’ve made, on I-70, -80, and -90 out west, I’ve noticed truckers using emergency flashers when I flash my brights to give them space in front of me. Their tail lights flash on and off once or twice. It’s how they say, Hey, thanks. I’ve begun doing that in city driving. Hey, thanks. 

And also, Hey, sorry I was going so slow. When I remember which pedal is the accelerator, I press on it to go a little faster.