Mirror, Mirror...

It’s August.  Soon the leaves will show signs that fall is approaching.  They will turn red, gold, deep brown, and patent-leather shiny black.  There is an autumn-smelling wind blowing over my back. 

It won’t be long before I begin to rake leaves, go to football games, make soup, and celebrate harvest.

I’m not sure just how that happened.  I never am.  Where did the time go? 

 As any athletic competitor will affirm, Father Time is the only competitor who’s undefeated. Time makes life a blood sport.  

Tempus fugit be danged.  Time doesn’t fly.  It hurtles.

Didn’t I just take down the Christmas decorations?

Wasn’t I just moaning about making New Year’s Resolutions?

I had another birthday.  Hung one more up on the wall. 

There are a lot of miles on the odometer.

Am I getting old?  Ha!  Forget the “getting.”  I’ve lost all my muscle memory.  I have muscle amnesia.  More like muscle alzheimers.  Unfortunately, I have ample “flab recall,” more’s the pity. I hold up my arms, and the skin falls in crepey folds and puddles at the crook of my elbows.  I suppose if I counted the folds, like the rings on mighty tree trunks, it would be an accurate gauge of the years that have passed. It really is later than I think.

Recently, I went to Jackson Hole.  I stayed in a lovely lodge that had every conceivable accoutrement…including an inordinately large magnifying mirror that revealed my reflection like an IMAX movie screen.  I.  WAS.  HORRIFIED!  Optics are tricky, but I looked like a biological oddity.  A subcutaneous life form spawned in the primordial ooze of the LaBrea Tar Pits. A fossil. The Missing Link.  My mouth dropped open in a silent gasp, and in the exaggeration of this glass of horrors, I had the bite radius of a great white.  Oh, the hu-MAN-ity! 

So I did what every woman does when confronted with vicious reality.  I bellowed.  I recoiled.  I hissed.  I brayed. I belched stentorian gorilla vocalizations. However, being straight-jacketed by my own morality, I did not give voice to the words that were being spawned in my throat.  But those very obscenities were turning my saliva to magma on my tongue.

My horror festered.

WHAT HAPPENED???  I could not believe that was me in the mirror. My organs dropped into my shoes.  When did I become Quasimodo? I’m sure it’s an immutable fact of the second principle of Thermodynamics, but I reeked of decomposition. 

I’ve been thinking about time a lot lately. Time is so predatory.  It takes no prisoners.

Ah, but I digress. As I was saying, I became plagued by bodily confusion.  What is it about our physical terrain that makes us crazy?  And seeing every disgusting pore as a lunar crater with no possibility of restoration without a dump truck full of industrial strength mortician’s putty, can drive a woman to fall into her own footprint.

Oh, I’ve got skin in the game, all right.  That’s just the problem.  Mirrors are wicked.  They shatter the illusion that one is a mass of feline grace.  But is it wanton hubris, wild excess of self narcissism, to dread looking like an ancient Mongolian warrior monk? I hardly think so.

I cursed this mirror, ranting that magnifying mirrors are nothing but architectural deception.  And yet, the evidence was glaringly undeniable.  Wrinkles, heck.  My skin is corrugated.  I’m smothered in facial fault lines.  One is the size of the Continental Divide.  Another should be registered as a repeat offender. 

My entire dermis sags and ripples.  There are great hollows and gorges in a facial canyon. I am withered and wizened.

I hold these wrinkles to be self-evident.  And that they are.

Needless to say, I was catapulted into depression.  I became aggressively, aerobically, robustly inert. I couldn’t brain the whole day.  I had the Dumb. I just wanted to sequester myself in a yert for the anatomically impaired, isolate my atoms, and feel the hurt. Where’s my dopamine?  

And I realized for the first time, really, that I am a casualty of programmed obsolescence.

But this is preposterous.  How revolting. You want torture?  There is no terrorist more potent than a mirror that magnifies. Mother Nature has a demonic sense of humor.

I looked positively Cro-Magnon.  My hands were clawed and shriveled.  My teeth looked like they needed to be scoured by CLR.  My skin was the color of Spam.  I was a crustacean, a mollusk on steroids.  And I haven’t even begun to go into the geriatric skin tags and nasal hair reforestation.  Yeah, we’re talkin’ woolly mammoth meets Jabba the Hut.

Now, I know there are those who could distinguish between me and a prehistoric mastodon.  But it’s a difference without a distinction.

Of course, I know that there are natural laws that are irrevocable, but why can’t there be exceptions once in a while?  Would it violate some grand schematic cosmic order in the scrum of life if gravity didn’t ALWAYS cause our component body parts to crease, fold, dimple and mutate?  And why, may I ask, is the trajectory always downward? 

But what can be done that doesn’t necessitate a surgeon with a scalpel?

Where can I buy extinction insurance? 

Oh, I suppose we all have blind spots regarding our own reflections.  I, personally, am in flagrant denial of the face that confronts me each morning. I think it’s called “body dysmorphia.”  Denial has its place in any beauty regimen.  It is the opiate of women.  I understand that. In fact, denial seems to be the chloroform of the masses.  One has only to look at the current political climate for verification.

Perhaps the solution is simple:  Stop looking in the mirror, and start looking out the window.

To be fair, I do have days spent in reckless celebration of defying all dread, days when the world seems perpetually blue-skied, and I am high on solar endorphins. Sometimes, the laws of gravity actually are suspended. Those days have no mirrors.

Yes, Time is predatory. But it is also elusive.  Just when you think you can capture it, time evaporates.

Time is scarce.  It is not so much an immutable force of nature, as it is a psychological phenomenon. Perhaps it is the EXPERIENCE of time that really matters. Time is a commodity to be invested. One would be wise to invest it in that which is of most worth, and has the greatest value.

I guess the reflections in the mirror teach me the things I must grow into.  Every fold, every crevice, every irregularity, each laugh line is a vessel of history.  They all bear silent, but undeniable, witness of the chronicle of my life, and all those who saturate my story.  It is layered with loved ones, places, events, memories.

 So, can I endure looking at myself under a microscope?  Perhaps.  But I just wish the reflection were as lovely as all the beautiful things that have imprinted my visage with such exquisite sweetness.

Tidying Up

Ah, yes!  T. S. Eliot was right:  April IS the cruelest month!  And I know why – it’s tax time!  In the middle of a month that is a veritable orgy of abundance, the Tax Man cometh. 

Taxes make life very untidy.  My financial profile is disheveled, like a ballot laden with a horde of hanging chads…and every chad is hanging in a different direction. My accounts are in disarray, as if they were the hairballs that had just been disgorged by a deranged cat bent on offing himself with an overdose of Ipecac. 

When my investment adviser was showing me the numbers on my tax return, it was obvious some governmental subversive gone rogue had kicked my assets into a higher tax bracket. I was stupefied. I was wracked by jagged breaths. I broke into a high-pitched lament, a primal whine, and began emitting various unintelligible, wordless growls. Oh, the convulsions!  Oh, the paroxysms of desperation!  Oh, the tendency to hyperbolize! 

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m no miser.  I fully expect to pay my fair share to Uncle Sam. But it was with great mandibular activity on my wad of gum that I refrained, in the name of karmic justice, from flinging a tantrum, conjuring a plague of pustules and imposing the likeness of Mick Jagger’s lips on every inefficient politician responsible for tariff terrorism. Really?  The amount levied by the IRS has the same quantity of numerical digits as my accountant’s cell number! I laid in a sump of self pity.

What’s going on in Washington? It’s hostile territory. Has someone who is genetically challenged and teetering on the surreal edge of normalcy, made a Faustian deal to test the limits of human endurance…not to mention hapless widows?  I always thought there was specific neuronal wiring that distinguished us from other animals.  After April, obviously, I was wrong. Of course, I read somewhere that hemorrhoids have a higher favorability rating than Congress. So, apparently, do root canals. Go figure.  Hemorrhoids can be surgically removed.  That explains a lot.  Washington is not exactly saturated with a population of aspiring candidates for intellectual glory. Every time certain politicians open their mouths, they subtract from the sum total of human knowledge. Talk about a checklist of depravity. Perhaps that explains the current state of the Presidential election – a mind-numbing drop in this country’s collective IQ to a single digit.

Thank goodness April is also saturated with lilacs.  Lilacs are concentrated blossoms with a singular fragrance, comprising the sublime whole.  They are truly more than the sum of their parts. There is never anything wrong with life that can’t be fixed with what is right with lilacs.

Lilacs bloom in inhospitable geography.  Lilacs are a glorious lavender…or white or a soft blush.  They leave one with a sort of divine befuddlement…how could something so incandescently lovely, bloom in tax season?  Smelling the perfume of lilacs is singular, like reading Psalms to ward off fear. 

There’s something permanent about lilacs, although their blooming season lasts only two weeks.  It’s amazing that a blossom so fragile can serve as anchor to the soul…like poetry or scriptures. 

I once said that lilacs have honorable subtlety.  They are a symbol of the deep perfection of life, as well as reminders of anniversaries that give one a sense of self. I never miss an opportunity to denude some unsuspecting neighbor’s lilac bush of its precious blooms.  When life becomes revolting and coarse (witness the messy electoral process currently assaulting this country, laced with vitriol and vulgarisms), lilacs bring a brief refinement, a distinct grace, a sweet respite from all that is fetid in the political arena, or any arena, for that matter. Now, I don’t embezzle any other flowers.  I have my ethics, after all. That’s not evidence of integrity on my part.  Merely the lack of energy to transgress with the same zeal and energy of my youth. However, if theft of lilacs were a felony, I would plead guilty as charged. It always gives me the most disturbing sense of satisfaction to breathe in the intoxicating perfume of contraband lilacs. But I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers.  That’s mostly because my peers don’t have the zeal or energy to judge.  I’d get a full pardon.

My task at present, however, is to tidy up in May the mess that was made in April.

 There is a book called “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” by Marre Kondo.  Apparently, the premise is: Power comes to those whose chads are all in a row.

Ok.  I’ll buy that.  It’s caused me to rethink my whole life. 

So I’ve decided to (metaphorically speaking) impose order on my personal chaos, knit up my unraveled sleeve, be aglow with cleanliness, pledge to become chipperer, and smite dead the fearsome dread of THE UNTIDY that creates scabby growths on my mind, binds the bowels and results in emotional constipation.  I will NOT join the ranks of the comically useless, or worse…the beguilingly incompetent, simply because I flung a tantrum of the untidy, and caused chaos in the universe!

I will be the Attilla the Hun of ordered, analytical reason, the Mother Theresa of the methodical, the matriarch of meditation, the gladiator of the shipshape…structured, logical, systemized…corpulently punctilious…

I’m going to change my life. 

LET’S. DO. THIS!

But…uh…where do I begin?

I think that was a rhetorical question. (Note to self: look up “rhetorical.”) 

Carpe cerebral:  seize the brain.  The physical and the mental do not have the same texture.   Before one can put the physical in order, one must put the mind in order. Actually, in spite of being naturally platinum, I am clandestinely erudite. And, beneath the façade of conventional behavior, I am an organization freak.  I throb to the rhythm of structured logic.

If I am to tidy up any stratum of my life, I must first start with my mind. Forget the corporeal. But before I can decide what is in disarray within the confines of said mind, I must begin with what is in order.

Is there anything lovely in the structure of my mind that I could place before a tribunal of tidy people that could be for the well-being and elevation of mankind?  (I always like to begin with lofty goals.  Woman is vain, after all. Besides, what is the purpose of any intelligence, if not to serve others, and make them succulent with inspiration?  Then I will at least have the satisfaction of having done my duty.) I refuse to be a casualty of insipid vapidness. (Note #2 to self:  look up “vapidness.”)

Ah, but I digress.

Some of the order in my mind is not necessarily symmetrical.  But the following is what has managed to emerge from the clutter and chaos of confronting the worst that is imaginable…and possibly extracting the best.

*Being joyful is a state of mind, not circumstance.

*You’re never aware of personal strength, until being strong is your only option.

*The prime of life can be at any time of life.

*Being hugged by a six-foot young man you once walked the floors with when he was a colicky baby is a singular joy.

*While one can have multiple aka’s in one’s lifetime, (e.g. mother, grandmother, widow, matriarch, etc.) one must never forget the importance of being a woman.

*LOVE is the best medicine.

*Expecting children and grandchildren to fill every empty space in life is unrealistic, and places unfair pressure on all parties.

*Rock ‘n Roll is still the finest music around.

*If someone is invited to grow old with someone, one would be wise to give the matter one’s most serious consideration.

*Optics are tricky. Dawn is a matter of intuition, not necessarily visual perception.  Light can be perceived before it is actually seen.

*It is impossible to be angry when one is laughing.

*Broken wings heal, and one can eventually resume flight.

*True friends know each other by heart.

I suppose tidiness is a matter of simple economics.  Life gets messy.  You go through trials.  You learn from the experience. You keep moving forward. 

Ok. Bottom line: yes, life is often untidy, like an unmade bed, and all we need to do is make crisp hospital corners.

Got it. 

It's Just a Matter of Time

Grief alters everything.

For the past few years, I have been living a well-structured life of order and discipline.  La dolce vita.  I’ve been slavishly compelled in keeping everything tidy.  No ragged edges or hanging threads.  Meticulous synchronization. My ducks are all in a row.

I’ve maintained strict jurisdiction over the basic components of every aspect of my existence. 

Its very precision has allowed me power over obstacles and emotions with fluid control.  I denounce disruption or intrusion.  I’m closed and cloistered, as I dance the dance of the seven veils. 

No jolts.  No surprises.  Nothing to mar its perfect symmetry.

I have custody of the empire.  I have dominion over all I survey.  And best of all, I am the alpha Yoda to my tribe of little Yetis. 

I have even declined making New Year’s Resolutions of late, because I wanted to change the world, not me.  The world is witless.  Sometimes the planet seems feeble-minded and predatory, and this whole satellite could use a serious frontal lobotomy.

All this has created a state of grace…an exquisite, impeccable life.

 A masterpiece.

And what could possibly be wrong with that?

Apparently, everything.

It seems, unbeknownst to me, I’ve been suffering from twin surges of pride and delusional myopia. 

This was a somewhat stark and rather unwelcome revelation.  Is it possible perfection is not all it’s cracked up to be?

Where did I go wrong? How did this happen?  Did some of my ducks break rank?

Okay.  So.  A while ago, I began seeing someone.  I know.  I know.  This flies in the face of all my decrees and proclamations I disgorged with vigor, that this ain’t EVER happenin’!  I would NEVER accept invitations from the well-meaning, but chronically confused.

With grim resolve, I determined to remain feloniously solitary.

But with the passage of time, a curious thing happened.  I began to calcify.

So one day, I suspended my habitual reticence.  In this case, the exception was justified.  After all, Michael and I have been friends all our lives.  We were even participants in each other’s weddings.  When his wife passed away, it was only natural that we would gravitate toward each other.

It might have been chance, or karmic distribution, but as time went by, I discovered life could have even more meaning when raised to the power of two.  I also discovered it was ultimately more satisfying to be centered than self-centered.  Who knew?      

Not sure just how this whole thing evolved.  After all, I had established my universe on such admirable traits as being logical, sensible, dependable, responsible, respectable, reasonable, and level-headed.  But sometimes this becomes the refuge for the weak.  What good is it to build a dream residence if it’s nobody’s home?  Living in solitary confinement guarded by a phalanx of Tibetan Warrior Monks humming Gregorian chants might not be as exciting as it sounds.

But then came Michael.

Apparently, fortresses of cinderblock don’t count for jack in his mind.

At first, I politely uh-huhed his invitations.  But then they began to take on a certain appeal.  He preferred watching sunsets in Zion, and going on early-morning bike rides that tested my endurance and made the back of my legs feel twangy, to murmuring mantras in the lotus position. He has an aversion to too much intellectual inbreeding.

As a lawyer, he has taught me words like “scintilla” and “tort.”  I try to work them into every-day conversation, like, “Wow! Take a look at those torts!” (Hey, I’m working on it.) He also explained the concept of “quid pro quo.”  If I understand correctly, it simply means that if he gets the movie tickets, I get the popcorn. It’s all so easy, it’s a wonder I never went to law school.

He can make a contract that is legally binding and as tight Scarlet O’Hara’s corset, and then turn around and belt out the old novelty caveman song, “Allie Oop.”

Michael is articulate and fluent in French.  Recently he wrote, “Que tes revec soit doux.”  Loosely translated, it means, “Darlin’, you have spinach lodged between your teeth.”

Most important, he was Dennis’ boyhood friend, and mourns his loss as I do.

I, on the other hand, have had a rather confounding change in attitude and latitude.  I’ve been seriously contemplating removing the sewing machine from the oven so I can bake cookies.  Yeah, right.  Like that’s ever going to happen!

But I do find myself wanting to pluck, shave or wax all rogue facial hair, and firm up the protective arm flab that’s marbled with juicy fat and serves as a playground where the Mbuti Pygmies of the Congo can frolic.  I want to become smothered in muscle. I no longer hang out in long, winter woollies. I’m trying to soften my architecture.  I may be multi-chinned and Buddha-esque circumferentially, but he doesn’t seem to notice, much less care. 

Michael carpet-bombed my well-ordered citadel, and persuaded me to follow the life I never planned. 

Sometimes we all need rescuing from the predicament of the “perfect” life.  It helps to be fearless, but it’s not a prerequisite.  Maybe change isn’t always for the worst.  I’ve learned nothing works out according to plan, but it always works out.

A relationship is a living entity.

I don’t know what will eventually happen, but perhaps for the first time in a long time, I see alternate possibilities.  Maybe my myopic vision has distortions, after all.  But I’m ready to take a chance.  It’s an adrenaline rush. 

Who knows?  Maybe it’s just a matter of time.

Pustules and Politics

Autumn is a verb.  It has a rhythm all its own.  It’s that calendar season when leaves cover the ground, and doctors’ appointments cover the day-planner.

After an interlude of several years, I figured it was time to hie me to the dermatologist.  Makes sense.  The skin is the largest organ of the body, and mine has been getting larger and folding in on itself of late.  And I wanted every fold, pleat, crease, and wrinkle parted and excavated for anything the least bit suspicious, asymmetrical, discolored, or resembling last year’s Halloween candy.

 I don’t know why doctors’ appointments fill me with dread.  I would actually prefer sliding on razor 

wire. 

As personable as I’d heard this dermatologist is, I entered the office with ragged breath and emitting sulphuric belches.  Waiting is nerve wracking. 

When she came into the exam room, I saw that she was officious, professional, and diminutive.  I liked the diminutive part best.  Just how much pain could a petite, middle-age woman inflict anyway?

Apparently, quite a lot.  Geez, that woman was packin’ heat!

She asked about my particular areas of concern.  And like an idiot, I told her!

She examined the targeted areas with hands that seemed to know more about my anatomy and the lay of the land than I did.  I had nothing on but a loin cloth and the radio. I felt like the landing point of a kamikaze suicide mission. She parted the Red Sea, and explored every gully and ravine in the terrain with a GPS, sonar, and a gloved hand. 

When she was satisfied that she had “left no Joan unturned,” she headed for her artillery.

Talk about “Carpe Blow Torch!”  She seized flame throwers and Roman candles as she began plotting out strategic assault sites that would have made Atilla the Hun jealous.  She was a thermonuclear Jedi Master.  Ripley looked like a wimp. 

Then, nostrils flaring, she cranked up the wattage, as she genuflected at the foot of a full-length portrait of the god Vulcan.

It was Jihad on the bod!

I was panting and whimpering, wishing I could have had an oxen ring piercing my nose instead.  I would rather have eaten my weight in rubberized French fries.  I was muttering vulgarisms so potent, they subtracted from the sum total of human knowledge. It was scorched earth warfare that left me screeching all “Hindenberg-like,” “OH, THE HUMANITY!!!” 

Just as I was ready to “rage quit,” it was all over.  She blew the smoke from the double barrel of her oozie, which was engraved “The Blister Whisperer,” and returned it to her holster.  Then she carved another notch in her belt, and swaggered up to the bar for a shot of the “hair of the dog that bit me.”

My face was frozen into a kabuki mask, white and stark, and speckled with spittle.

Finally, I was able to unclench my jaws, bloodied but not bowed, and survey the carnage.  I watched a globular cluster of pustules appear where there were once only liver spots.  They were runny and slippery, like egg whites.  I had been transformed into an ambulatory placenta, viscous and gelatinous, so large it had its own zip code.  I was a mass of ooze draped over hamburger.

My wounds were so tender, I told everyone not to touch me. But no one seemed to want to.  Most people didn’t even want to get near me.

As a humanitarian gesture, I’ve been wearing my haz-mat burqa.  It’s my small cubicle of personal privacy, and protects children and small animals from being traumatized.  I also binge-guzzle 

recreational dirty coke to replace my precious bodily fluids.

Luckily, it’s October, the month of Halloween, and my grandkids think I intentionally look like a gargoyle in drag and wearing a fright wig.  I don’t know what I’ll do when it’s November.

I don’t regret my ordeal, but given the choice between a few minutes with Dr. Rambo and listening to three hours of political debates, well, I’d really have to think that one through.  Both leave me gasping for air and ready to perform in the all-male Japanese theater. 

Actually, the more I think about it, the pustules will eventually heal.  End of discussion.

The Prodigal Blond

When one is naturally platinum, AND a mental nomad, one is not always aware that time is passing.  Of course, a feeble mind is better than none, I suppose.  It’s September.  I’m perplexed, and wondering where the summer went.  I can account for each day of it, but not the whole of it.

The grandchildren are all back in school.  So far there have been few problems that can’t be explained  by aggravated puberty.  

It seems so quiet.

School started earlier than usual this year.  The annual ritual of delivering children on the first day sun-browned and solar-bleached to their classrooms never seems to get easier, especially for grandmas whose hearts are collateral damage to the education system.  I guess I’ll always be reluctant to share custody.  I’m a veteran by-stander to hard moments.

Because school started earlier, so did autumn, proving that fall is not regulated by the calendar.  I love the harvest season, even though it forces me to adjust my circadian rhythm from vacation standard time.

Our family took a road trip to Washington state in July. Talk about malfeasance in grandparenthood! But it seemed like a good idea at the time. Being cocooned in an enclosed container traveling at 80 m.p.h. down a freeway with pre-pubescent adolescents for extended periods of time makes me wonder just why we don’t eat our young.  It actually affects the lungs, like a suck of immense force and duration. But any grandparent who braves such an adventure and survives, learns a lot.  It’s predatory knowledge.  I’ve become a living proverb.  Learn from me.

So the following is my essay on “Things I Learned This Summer.”

1.      Facial Coding.  I learned very quickly that when the kids begin to look bored, it is only a matter of minutes before they are fighting like Philistines.  Now, I’m not averse to the shedding of a little blood now and then, but not in my new Lexus. 

2.     Possible Solutions to Sibling Carnage:

a.      Hurl empty threats that have lain fallow since our last family trip, without the remotest possibility of exacting consequences. My personal and most impotent favorite:  NON-SURGICAL LOBOTOMIES FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY!  However, as every grandparent knows, empty threats are the prized conduit of faux authority. 

b.     Point out that the aforementioned culprits have all just bartered away their birthrights-their dreams of an inheritance…peat moss!  (Note to self:  Skyrocket the eyebrows while issuing threat.)

c.     Appeal to the better angels of their nature by reminding them we are a “forever family” and then bleating vulgarisms at decibels greater than their tantrums.  The cosmos completely absolves any matriarch who mutters harsh language on family excursions.

d.     Blow vuvuzelas till my eyeballs are bulging, veined and cavernous, hoping the annoyance

threshold sends them insane, and they are forced to seek silence in compliance.

(FYI:  My new favorite word:  “persevere.”)

Speaking of facial coding, we have all learned from experience that when Beckham goes red, then white, then blue in rapid succession, he is not being patriotic, he’s nauseous.  So we pull over, grab the emergency emisis bucket and pray the projectile actually hits the intended basin.

I also learned a lot about music.  It has been said that music calms the savage beast.  I say, it depends on the music. 

After extensive periods of time listening to the current hits, I am now very well acquainted with Pink, One Direction, Imagine Dragons, Katy Perry, and Lady Antebellum. I like today’s artists.  But a steady diet of “We’re never, ever, ever, ever, ever getting back together,” can actually produce polyps.  Really.  Hippocrates declared that fact an immutable law of anatomy hundreds of years ago. He was a grandparent at the time.

So, knowing that music can be therapeutic in treating mental illness, enhance mood and calm agitation, I suggested some old-fashioned rock ‘n roll, maybe even something mellow like Simon and Garfunkel or James Taylor, or Barry Manilow, or how about The Beatles.  The ensuing protests were louder than a Donald Trump rant.  The kids were making exaggerated gagging gestures in hunched bundles, and putting garlic around the windows of the car to ward off evil.  They feared a protracted discussion of “the good old days,” and the accompanying stroll down memory lane. Then they’d text comatose emojis to the cousin sitting next to them and sarcastically remark that they were “feelin’ groovy.” There seemed to be something going unsaid here.

 I tried my own facial coding, but a smirk looks absurd in the adult species.

  We all worked to establish token distance. 

I had the distinct impression they could look at my face and calculate the half-life of plutonium simply by counting the wrinkles and dividing by my bra size.  They looked at me like I was primal woman squinting at extinction.  I’m sure they were expecting death rigors at any moment.

It was the classic clash of generations.  I could barely refrain from shrieking…”Back in the day…”  Job has nothing up on a grandma on a roadtrip! 

Learning absolutely nothing from Washington, and in a state of moronic optimism, I took the gang to Cedar City for the annual Shakespeare Festival. My biggest challenge was convincing my tribe that 

Shakespeare and I were not classmates.

We had seats on the front row, and I prayed the grandkids wouldn’t pick any orifice on their faces, belch the National Anthem with their hands cupped over their armpits while making simulated flatulent noises, and make me fear my internal organs would drop to my shoes… or do anything to cause me to wish for a retroactive contraceptive pill. 

Astonishingly, they did not do anything that was socially unacceptable, or couldn’t be explained away by an undeveloped frontal cortex.

It was all good.

And now it’s fall.  The offspring have returned to class, and I, the eternal platinum prodigal, am singing, “I 
am the eye of the tiger, and you’re gonna hear me roooaaaarrrrrr.”  It enhances my mood, calms my agitation, and helps me keep from missing the younger generation too much.