Getting Old As My Mother

George Harrison was a genius.

The first time I heard him sing this line, I thought I knew what it meant. Ha! That was twenty years ago. What did I know?

I fell into sudden, uncontrollable weeping the other morning because I tried to say the words, “I’m getting old now and I’m afraid of dying,” and I could hear my mother’s voice saying the exact same sentence a few years ago.

A close friend told me that I was getting more harsh with him, being critical and snippy, and that it was hurting his feelings and more than that, wearing him down, after a close and foundational friendship that’s lasted a couple of decades. I wasn’t even aware. I’ve struggled all my life with my shoot-from-the-hip manner, working to temper it with empathy and slowed reflexes, and can point proudly to a warm circle of friends and students as proof that I’ve succeeded, but apparently the closer you are to a person the easier it is to let yourself be…a natural bitch? I don’t want to be this person.

I remember my mother saying, “I don’t want to be this person.”

Yes, and I remember saying to myself, “I don’t even think she’s aware when she’s being critical and harsh.”

I would say yikes, but that’s being funny and this isn’t funny.

If you don’t want to be happy, don’t tell my husband what your heart’s desire is. (This works for me, our children, and the friends who’ve tried it – I don’t know if it would work for you, but it might.) Because the minute he knows what your heart’s desire is, he starts trying to figure out how to get it for you.

A year ago, I wrote that if I had just a year to live, I’d get enough sleep. Well, that wasn’t rocket science. I sleep more now. Several days ago I wrote about my perfect day, the one where the first action of every Endless Day was to pick up a hardbound journal and start writing. I swore that if I ever retired (this is defined, for me, as nobody needing to eat in the morning) I’d have mornings like this. Boy, I thought, this would be heaven, but then I thought that probably I’d get to the actual heaven before I felt that I didn’t have to get up and make breakfast for everybody. For the past week now, Ed has brought me coffee and oatmeal, our kids have gotten themselves out the door, and I’ve been writing, learning new songs, and building a web page…from six in the morning until about noon. Then I get up.

Yep, it’s heaven. But it’s confusing. I do have a list of goals, wouldn’t know how to go through a day without one, but Ed pointed out that the list is too long to finish in a day or a month and I shouldn’t worry too much about a timeline. After a lifetime of breaking goals down into tasks and creating a scope and sequence of work, and scheduling the tasks into little fifteen minute increments in my calendar, it feels funny to swim from thought to concept to essay, to these lyrics and that jazz arrangement. Yesterday I spent half an hour on a website entitled, “The Fifty Most Sexy Women Over Fifty.” It’s important. I want to be a club singer and have to believe that I’m not all washed up. Then I went to Red Light, a local consignment store and bought three really tight gold dresses for $68. Then I came home and sang along with a bluesy accompaniment to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and put together a list of songs for a coaching session.

This is my job now?

I’d like to say that I haven’t been so snippy in the last few days and that I’m more tuned into what’s coming out of my mouth. I can say that I’m trying. And as much as it hurts, it’s good that I have friends who will tell me that I’m hurting them. I’d like to think that the harshness comes from a place of disappointment and feeling like it’s too late to create a life that fits – and that when I’m given the chance to live that life, the sharp edges will melt away. Last night I heard myself saying, “This was a great day.” I don’t say that very often.

Working on it, working on it. In the meantime, just in case they don’t all know it already, and while I still can, this is what I want to say to those closest and dearest to me, especially my mother,

I wish you shelter from the storm
A cozy fire to keep you warm
But most of all, when snowflakes fall
I wish you love.