Chapter 3: Where did I put my memory?

One week to Christmas - every year it comes around quicker. I'm no sooner finished taking down the tree and sweeping up the needles then I'm putting a new one back up again. I'm sure I'll eventually get to the point where I'll get an artificial tree and just leave it up all year round.

This is my last posting till after Christmas, so happy holidays to you and your family and loved ones!

              

CHAPTER 3: WHERE DID I PUT MY MEMORY?

We rented a movie the other night. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this; in fact, lately, it’s unusual for us to go out to a movie. In the past 5 years we’ve almost never seen a film the year it comes out. Going to the movies just doesn’t grab me the way it used to, partly because I loathe these huge multiplex cinemas, and partly because, as an over-50 female not interested in “chick flicks”, there are very few films made for people like me.

There’s nothing new about this – since the 1950s movies have been skewed to teenagers and young adults, because they’re the ones who go see them. But you have to wonder if maybe it isn’t a chicken-and-egg situation; maybe young people go to see those movies precisely because they’re made for them and if Hollywood made movies the rest of us liked, maybe we’d go see a film more often. But what do I know? There are market research companies that do nothing all day long but try to work out who goes to the movies and why. If they say people want to see movies about zombie aliens blowing up trucks, who am I to differ?

Anyway, back to the movie. It was called “Last Orders”, and it starred Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, and David Hemmings. Tom Courtenay was in it, too, and Helen Mirren. Maybe you’ve seen it? It’s about a group of old friends who take a trip to the seaside when one of them dies in order to spread his ashes on the water. Sounds a bit morbid but it’s not. At least, I don’t think it’s morbid, but then I’m someone who considers a trip to a cemetery a great day out. I like wandering around old tombstones, thinking about the people buried there and the lives they had and how we all, eventually, end up dead – actually, that is pretty morbid, now that you mention it.

So we watched this movie and it wasn’t until maybe two minutes before it went to black and the credits started rolling that I realized I’d already seen it. Six years ago. Watched the whole thing and had no idea . . . no memory of the plot, characters, dialogue . . . nothing. Not till right near the end – there’s this scene where Helen Mirren, who plays Amy, the dead man’s wife, is saying good-bye to her disabled daughter – well, I don’t want to give the plot away but that’s when it hit me. That’s when I remembered that I’d already seen it.

I mention this because it’s the most recent example of something that’s happening more and more often – not people saying goodbye to their daughters. That may or may not be happening more often, I’m not in a position to say. No, I’m talking about my memory. Specifically, the lack of it. I just don’t remember things the way I used to.

Oh, I know my name and the names of my children and depending on how much wine I’ve had the night before I generally wake up knowing what day it is. I don’t forget important occasions like birthdays or dentist appointments and I haven’t got lost in my own neighbourhood since I was 6. (All of which is a relief, to be honest. The Alzheimer Society of Canada lists 10 warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease and those are some of the things they mention: repeatedly forgetting important appointments, getting lost driving, getting lost walking in familiar areas like your own neighbourhood. There’s nothing funny about Alzheimer’s and I suggest if you are truly concerned about your memory – or that of a loved one – that you check out the website: http://www.alzheimer.ca/)

All of the women I know are forgetting things these days – we laugh about it when it’s not driving us crazy. I’ll be emailing a friend of mine and suddenly I can’t remember the name of her children. (“And how are the little ones?” only takes you so far, especially when her kids are old enough to have “little ones” of their own.) Or some store clerk will ask for my telephone number and I’ll draw a complete blank. I’m forever signing up for online services and forgetting my username and password. (Before you say, “Why don’t you write them down?” you should know that I do just that, and then forget where I’ve written them.) I put things away in “safe” places and never find them again. And, of course, my favourite – coming downstairs to get something and having no idea why I’m there. Do you have that happen? Do you have to turn around and go all the way back upstairs in order to remember? Welcome to my world.

Now, this is going to come as a shock but when I was young I did not have a huge range of talents. I couldn’t throw a ball, I definitely couldn’t catch one, and I’m the only person I know who grew up in northern Canada and never learned to skate. I did eventually get the hang of riding a bike, but unless you’re qualifying for the Tour de France this is not something that garners you much praise. In terms of athletic endeavour, it’s seen as slightly more strenuous than walking upright and just below jogging.

At the risk of being appearing immodest, however, I had a prodigious memory. I could – and did – rattle off poetry at the drop of a hat. When I was 8, I memorized “Alice in Wonderland” from cover to cover and by the time I was 10 I could, if requested, recite the entire libretto of “HMS Pinafore” off by heart. (Not surprisingly, I was seldom asked to do this.) If you’re getting the sense that I was a rather solitary child, you wouldn’t be far wrong. While my peers were involved in healthy outdoor activities like playing kick-the-can and learning how to smoke, I was trilling away to Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts. My parents, I think, thought of me in much the same light as you would a talking gerbil: an astonishing feat, no doubt, but how will she ever make a living?

This memory thing continued right through adolescence – when I was 12, I won a prize at church camp for knowing more Bible verses than anyone else. Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” See? I can still do it. But my telephone number? Forget it.

Years ago I knew enough Spanish to carry on a relatively civilized conversation; these days I’m left with, “Dónde está mi abrigo?” “No sé, lo siento mucho.” (“Where’s my overcoat?” “I don’t know – sorry.”) I have no idea why this particular exchange has stayed with me when so many more interesting and colourful phrases have vanished. I did, at one time, know how to insult someone in Spanish – loosely translated, it went along the lines of, “Your mother is no stranger to the caresses of barnyard animals.” Perhaps it’s just as well I’ve forgotten. I’m sure it has no place in a book written by a respectable middle-aged woman.

Anyway, it’s not just about remembering things I used to know; it’s about trying to learn anything new. My son, who’s been teaching in Korea for the past three years, brought his girlfriend home to meet us last Christmas. I’d been hoping to ask her about her family and the work she does and, you know, generally get to know her, but my efforts to learn a few simple Korean phrases were fruitless. Her English is quite good and we managed all right – still, a week is a long time to nod and smile and talk about how cold it is in Canada in December.

There are ways, they tell me, to improve your memory – things like mnemonics, which I remember from elementary school: “Every good boy deserves fudge” for the lines of the treble staff, Roy. G. Biv for the colours of the rainbow. (My husband has one he came up with in university to remember the cranial nervous system of the rat: “Old ’orrible oranges taste terrible and f***ing awful.” I asked him what it stood for and he said he couldn’t remember . . . which is one of the problems with this device. You remember the mnemonic rather than the information.)

I suspect, though, that what’s needed in my case is something a little more radical – lately I’ve been practising “neurobics”. Think of it as pilates for the brain. Proponents say just doing routine things a little differently will help your brain stay fit. Using your non-dominant hand to write or brush your teeth, for instance – which, by the way, is harder than it sounds. Being right-handed, I tried brushing my teeth with my left; it was ridiculously awkward, the strangest part being that my right hand immediately went into spasm, imitating the brushing movements, as if it was holding some kind of invisible toothbrush. Very weird.

I’ve had better luck with some of the other suggestions, such as taking a shower with my eyes closed, which is really quite restful, and distinguishing coins using only my sense of touch. (They suggest that, if you really want a challenge, you try to do the same with paper money but as I never have any it seems a pretty pointless exercise. I mean, who carries cash any more? Try it with your credit cards, instead. Now, that would be a challenge.)

These exercises make sense, of course, only if you do them. Which means you have to remember to do them. Which brings us back to where we started in the first place.

Maybe I just have to be realistic about this whole memory thing. These lapses are probably just a normal part of aging and not necessarily a sign that I’m slipping into dementia. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, how different it is when you’re young? You’re like an athlete who takes her prowess for granted. You don’t think about why things come easily to you until they don’t.

One day you’re reeling off Bible verses like a madwoman and then, all of a sudden, you’re sitting through movies you don’t remember watching. It gives you pause, I tell you.

Chapter 2: Life is a moveable feast

Thanks so much to all of you who sent me comments on the first chapter - I hugely appreciate it and I think I've now managed to fix the settings so you can make your comments here. Please give it a try and let me know if it works. You can always reach me at margietlr4@gmail.com.

CHAPTER 2: LIFE IS A MOVEABLE FEAST

I got one of those moving circulars in the mail the other day – you know, a local company promising to make my next move “as pleasant and affordable as possible.” Pleasant and affordable, my eye! In my opinion, there’s no such thing.

At the risk of sounding like a crank, you should know that I speak from experience, having moved twenty-seven times in all. Twenty-seven moves, and those are only the ones I remember. There’s a faded snapshot of me in a carriage outside what appears to be the rooming house where my parents lived when I was born, but I don’t remember living there. I know I took part in a half-dozen or so experiments in communal living when I was at university, and I don’t remember much about those either. Generally they lasted a month or two, depending on the noise level and/or sanitary standards of my roommates, at which point I’d roll up my Mucha posters, reclaim my clay baker, and move home. Home being the home of my father, whose door was always open to his daughters, their friends and their boyfriends. (To be truthful, the man was a saint – were I to wake up to a living-room full of sleeping bags and strangers, I’d be tempted to call the police. Not my father; “mi casa es su casa,” that was my dad.)

Dad was always pleased to have me back – well, initially, that is. The mutual thrill of it all tended to wear off within a couple of weeks, and I’d be casting about for new digs, as they say, getting ready to pack up my things and make another move.

The thing is, in all those comings and goings, I don’t remember ever – not once – asking my father to help me move. He didn’t so much as lift a shoebox. And why would he? I was the one who was moving, not him. It would simply not have occurred to me to ask him to help me move – and anyway, sweet man though he was, he wouldn’t have done it. Moving, like mowing the lawn and clearing out the garage, was what boyfriends were for. You didn’t expect your parents to engage in that kind of manual labour – they were too old!

So here I am, at least ten years older than my father was when I was going to school, and in the past decade I have helped my daughter move nine times. Nine times. Are you doing the math? Add that to the twenty-seven I told you about and the others I said I couldn’t remember and you have a ridiculous amount of time spent shifting people around. With all that moving of beds and books and kitchen utensils, it’s hard to imagine finding time to do anything else. Think of the books I could have written had I not been packing and unpacking boxes all my life! It explains a lot.

I’m not alone in this, I know. Half the parents I know do this on a semi-regular basis; the other half have kids who’ve never left home, which will be discussed at length further on in this book. (If you’re dying to find out what I think of perfectly healthy adults being allowed to live, rent-free, in their parents’ basements, stay tuned for Chapter 6, “Two’s Company, Three is Just Plain Wrong!”)

I have yet to meet anyone, young or old, who likes moving. People like to have moved – they like to be settled in a new city, a new country – even a new apartment. But nobody, I think, likes moving. It’s like flying – we look forward to leaving the snow and gloom of winter for tropical sunny beaches and some of us even like being on the airplane, but can anyone say, especially these days, that they enjoy the process of driving to the airport, lining up at the ticket counter, and going through security? We do it because we have to.

So why do we continue to move our children? (Now, I know that at least some of you right now are shaking your heads in that faintly reproving way you have, and saying, “Ridiculous! I haven’t helped my son/daughter move since he/she was eighteen! It’s your own fault, Taylor – you’ve brought this on yourself and I have no sympathy for you and your spineless, wishy-washy ilk!” And all I can say to that is, Yes, you’re right, of course, but that’s the kind of column this is and if you feel that way, you probably shouldn’t be reading it in the first place - it's only going to upset you.)    

There is a reason, I think, why we continue to move our children long past the time when we should physically be doing so: it’s because all their lives we’ve fed them this myth that we are ageless. That, unlike our parents, and our parents’ parents, WE WILL NOT GET OLD. We have fed them this myth because, on some weird, inexplicable level, we believe it. In some part of our post-World War II, hippy-dippy brains we think we’re still the Who generation, hoping to die before we get old. We think that by telling our kids we’re not up to hauling sofas down three flights of stairs we’re somehow giving in to Old Father Time.

Well, here’s a news flash, boomers: WE’RE OLD. Not ancient. Not necessarily decrepit. But old. Older than we were, not as old as, with any luck, we will be. Too old to move our kids. Take a look at the generation we’ve raised. Thanks to unprecedented dental care, skin creams, and better nutrition, they’re probably the healthiest generation of young people the world has ever seen. They’re taller than us, they’re stronger than us, and they’re fitter than us. They have equally tall, strong, fit friends who owe them favours dating back to junior high. THEY CAN MOVE THEMSELVES. (Sorry about all the capital letters but I seem to have got into a bit of a flow.) SO LET THEM DO IT. (Okay, that’s it, I promise. It worked, though, didn’t it? You got the point.)

Brave talk, I know, especially from one who is notoriously spineless and wishy-washy. (Still smarting from that comment, but determined to rise above it.) But I’ll have a chance very soon to try out my new resolve. My daughter has plans to move again next spring. Her lease is up in April and they’re raising the rent. It’s a bit of a blow to her father and me, I have to admit. When we moved her in last year, we had hopes that this might be it – for one thing, her apartment has storage space, which means we’ve been able to unload several boxes of her assorted memorabilia, including 4,000 Archie comics she plans to sell on eBay. Some day. For the first time in years, there’s actually room in the garage for the car.

Now she’s talking about moving into a smaller place, where she’ll be lucky to have room for herself and the dog, let alone her stuff.

Well, as Marie Antoinette said to the peasants, “Sorry, hon, not my problem.” I’m taking a hard line approach here – it’s the new me. Tough – no nonsense – firm as the Rock of Gibraltar. We Taylors are made of stern stuff, after all – we didn’t survive the Siege of Exeter by letting our kids push us around. “Stock up on bubble wrap, darling,” I’ll tell her. “The torch has been passed. Give me a call when you’re settled and I’ll pop by with a plant. Toodle-oo!”

Harsh words, perhaps, but they must be said. I figure I have one more move left in me, and I’m saving it for the condo in Florida. The one with the private elevator, ocean views and tennis court. And not an Archie comic in sight.

Okay, here goes!

So here it is, the first chapter of my work-in-progress: 60 IS THE NEW 20: A BOOMER'S GUIDE TO AGING WITH GRACE, DIGNITY, AND WHAT'S LEFT OF YOUR SELF-RESPECT. My plan is to post a new chapter each week, and I'd love to hear from you. Like it? Loathe it? Lemme know... and if you have any thoughts on topics I should tackle, suggest away! Some of this will be familiar to those of you who read my columns on CBC.ca - "This Aging Thing" was based on these chapters. My plan is to publish the book in the spring, but before that I'll get the chapters up on my website as podcasts (as soon as I figure out how to do podcasts!!)

CHAPTER 1: 60 IS THE NEW 20

My Grandmother Heald was old. She was old when I was born and she was old while I was growing up. The whole time I knew her, which was until I was twenty-three, she was a grey-haired matriarch who put the fear of God into my boyfriends and had an unnerving habit of flicking my skirt up to make sure I was wearing a slip. Grandma Heald was of a generation that believed in hard work and good china and saying grace before meals. I loved and respected her enormously, but she terrified me, too, just a little.

I realize now that some part of me confused my grandmother with the Queen…not that I actually thought she was the Queen – it’s just that I knew, without coming right out and saying it, that if the Queen should happen to come to my home town and take a notion to drop in to have tea with my grandmother, she would find everything exactly as she was used to having it done back home in Buckingham Palace. That’s the kind of grandma I had.

It has only recently occurred to me that Grandma Heald was 58 when I was born. Two years younger than I am now. Five years younger than Cher. She hadn’t even turned 60 and she had been old for ever.

Of course, that was the way it was in those days. Fifty-eight was old. Fifty was old. Good grief, thirty was old. Friends of mine who planned to become stewardesses (the term “flight attendants” had yet to be invented) knew they had ten to twelve years to meet a rich, eligible bachelor on a flight from New York to Paris and charm him into marriage. Thirty was the cut-off for stewardesses – hell, it was the cut-off for life. Anything really interesting – modeling, traveling the world, writing the Great Canadian Novel – had to be done before you turned thirty. Even having children, which wasn’t all that interesting but was, after all, expected, had to take place before you turned thirty.

Something happened to women after thirty, something sad and hormonal and inexplicable, that apparently didn’t happen to men. Men, like fine wines and old books, improved with age. They took on a rumpled, leathery sheen that was only enhanced by a few wrinkles. Cary Grant was pushing sixty when he romanced Audrey Hepburn in “Charade” – she was thirty-four. Did we throw up in disgust? We did not. Would we have been aghast if the tables were turned? Absolutely. Did we think there was something “sick” about relationships between older women and younger men? Of course we did. It went against the natural order. Older men, younger women – we didn’t necessarily like it but we didn’t question it. Like the annual spawning of the salmon, it was the way it was and had been that way, verily, since the dawn of time. I have no proof but I’m willing to bet God created Eve a good five years younger than Adam. Just because He could.

There’s a story, maybe apocryphal, about Marilyn Monroe at a party the year that she died. “Thirty-six,” she kept saying, “it’s all over.” Because it was. Blonde and beautiful and over the hill – that was the way it was.

If only Marilyn had been born a little later – well, quite a bit later, actually – she’d be facing forty with new lips, new breasts and a baby on the way. As for her sex life – the best was yet to come.

I know this because I recently started writing for one of those new seniors’ magazines. This is what freelance writers do, by the way – if this is a career that interests you then listen up, sweetie, here’s a tip. Take stock of yourself every ten years or so, and figure out what interests you now that would have bored the socks off you ten years ago and write about it. Ten years ago I was all about teenagers – teenage dating, teenage curfews, teenage angst. Now – phooey on all that! (Does anyone actually say “phooey” any more? Did they ever?) Let the teenagers take care of themselves – they’ll survive somehow – they always do. These days I’m all about retirement communities – reverse mortgages – vitamin supplements. You know, geezer stuff. And there are, conservatively speaking, a gazillion magazines out there catering to geezers. They have all kinds of cute titles: The Good Life, Living Well, Active Adult – these are code words for “reading material for old people” without really calling a spade a spade.

According to these magazines, getting older doesn’t mean what it used to when my grandma was alive. Now it means continuing to do everything you always did but doing more of it – traveling, dating, having sex. Especially having sex. If these magazines are to be believed, there are sexual gymnastics going on in those “assisted living” apartments that would rival a frat house toga party. (Okay, okay, I know – nobody has toga parties anymore, I know that – this is what we writers like to call making a humorous allusion. Play along with me here.) One of the articles, in fact, shows a picture of an elderly couple “romping” in the bedroom – having a pillow fight, if you can believe it, as a playful prelude to “doing it.” It also includes a section on “safe sex”, which I assumed had to do with being careful not to do anything strenuous that might put your back out, but turned out to be about STDs.

Well, good for them. Although, I have to say, I can only imagine my husband’s reaction were I to pick up a pillow and bash him over the head with it. I don’t think “playful sex” would be the first words that would come to his mind.

Although it never came up, thank goodness, I can assume my grandmother’s sex life was pretty well finished by the time I was born. Back then it was fairly commonly accepted that one of the compensations for aging was the ability to settle down at night with a good book and not have your slumber interrupted by a randy partner. Sex was for young people.

And now it seems that every retiree in the Western world is having sex. Who knew? I suppose it’s Viagra that’s done it – and now they’re working on something similar for women. Pretty soon there won’t be a single good excuse left not to have sex, and those of us who aren’t rolling in the hay with our partners every night are going to feel guilty as hell about it.

What I want to know is, who are these sexual athletes? Do you know them? Because I don’t. I have single girlfriends who haven’t dated since Clinton left office (just a coincidence, I’m sure, but still…) I’m relatively certain they’re not having sex. And my married friends are preoccupied with the usual stuff: jobs, grandchildren, aging parents, the economy. When we get together we talk about mortgage rates and house prices and how it would be great to get away for a couple of weeks but who can afford to take the time off anymore? Sex just never seems to come up, as a topic of conversation. The people I know may be having hot sex and keeping it to themselves but I doubt it. Our generation was never terrific at keeping secrets. The only thing better than having great sex was talking about it afterwards. In fact, come to think about it, the talking was often better than the having.

I think Winston Churchill and his wife had the right idea. They had separate bedrooms, so he could sit up late drinking scotch and planning the war while she got a decent night’s sleep. If he was interested in a little fun, he wrote her a note suggesting they get together and waited for her response. That seems to me the height of civility. No bashing themselves around with pillows, no playing hide the sausage, not for Winston and his beloved Clementine. Nothing kinky about their sex lives.

Although there is a quote attributed to him about “rum, sodomy and the lash.” He was referring to the British navy. I think.

So here's the thing....

At the risk of sounding like a grouch - what with it being so close to Christmas and all - I have to say I'm getting just a little sick of hearing how40 is the new 30, 50 is the new 40, and so on. If you believe everything in the self-help section, life for the boomers is just getting better and better - we're not growing old, we're growing fitter, and richer, and having more sex.

It's time, I think, for a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek look at the boomers by one of their own. I try not to complain about getting older - I mean, consider the alternative, right? But, as Leonard Cohen so aptly put it, “I ache in the places where I used to play.”

At the risk of sounding like a whiner, most of us aren't as rich as we thought we'd be - well, who is? But still, didn't those old Freedom 55 ads make you think you'd at least own a sailboat by now? Even if, like me, you're terrified of the open sea??

And what about those of us who are still supporting our (practically) grown-up kids? Come to think of it, there's almost no way to talk about these things without sounding like a whiner - but I'll try.

I'm a writer, editor and former journalist, and my latest project is 60 IS THE NEW 20: A boomer's guide to aging with grace, dignity, and what's left of your self-respect. If you've seen my online columns on CBC.ca you'll have read excerpts from the book already. The plan is to publish it in the Spring of 2011 - each week I'll post a chapter here and on my website: http://www.margietaylor.com/ (I'll let you know once I get it up and running).

I'm also planning to create podcasts of these chapters, which will also be available on the margietaylor.com website. So, have a read, have a listen, and get back to me - pro or con, it's all good.

And if it isn’t, there’s always chocolate.