Sep
1
I bought sliced turkey deli meat the other day and then a few days later read about how nine (!!) people have died from eating listeria-laden deli meat from Boar’s Head. I went and peered at my own paper-wrapped bundle: sure enough, Boar’s Head on the label, along with the price which was frankly astronomical for a mere half-pound of limp beige flaps. Surely they have recalled the meat in question and THIS turkey has been given the all clear, I thought, before hurling the package into the trash, because I’ll be goddamned if overpriced turkey meat is what takes me out. I prefer to die from a far more likely source, anyway: choking on a half-sucked Werther’s while laughing at something stupid I saw on TikTok.
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John and I went to Cannon Beach recently and the first night was so calm and cool; the sunset was like a dollop of orange-red paint spread across the sky. Nearly everyone was taking photos, one after another. We all wanted to keep the moment in our pockets. People huddled around little fires that glowed as the night came on. The seagulls were absolute menaces and continually tore into carefully-packed beach bags whenever someone’s back was turned, which gave a comical element to the whole picture-perfect evening. Ah, there’s a lovely couple in striking silhouette against Haystack Rock, and there goes a screeching gull with half a wheel of their brie speared on its beak.
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When I was a child I was diagnosed with a bicuspid aortic valve, which was initially treated with great respect (rounds of antibiotics before any dental procedure, ongoing gooey-stickered heart scans) and then fully ignored as I sailed off into adulthood. Once I turned 50 I figured it was time to check in with a cardiac specialist and so I recently saw one. He was disarmingly young and lean (I strongly recommend the Mediterranean diet, he told me, and also wrote in my notes; I pictured him at home having small portions of fish grilled with olive oil and never once housing an entire box of Deli Rye Triscuits) and efficiently sent me off for an echocardiogram right after our visit. Later, someone called me and said guess what, you don’t have a bicuspid aortic valve after all, you have a leaky mitral valve. They were largely unconcerned about this since it’s apparently been leaky all my life, long enough for heart-valve-diagnosing technology to leap forward and offer a far more accurate view of things.
I had a strange sort of reassessment of self after hearing this news: you’re not THIS, you’re THAT. Neither one being all that scary or bad except maybe it’ll get worse? Or maybe it won’t, who can say but the gods of widowmakers and listeria and car wrecks and cancer and windpipe-clogging butter rum candies. But also: it feels so right? I have always suspected that I have a tender, leaking heart.
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We’ve got an ongoing heat wave happening here in Eugene and I’d like to speak with the manager of late summer about it because I had just peeled away the unattractive aluminum foil I’d taped over the windows of my studio thinking that crisp apple-scented fall temperatures were on the way. This is the first summer I can remember feeling like it’s overstayed its welcome, maybe because the broiling highs started early this year and have hung around for days/weeks at a time, unusual for the PacNW. I look forward to switching up my complaining as the days get painfully short and the grey skies settle in and I trade the discomfort of constant boob sweat for long-pants waistbands.
We have, at least so far, escaped the worst of the wildfire smoke, which has become a depressingly routine summer experience. I’ll never forget the toxic Mars-like red haze that settled in for a long terrible week in 2020, just about when it felt like everything everywhere was literally and/or figuratively on fire. It was almost too on the nose. Jeez, I’d think, peering outside each day and making my mouth into a sad little flat line, we GET it already.
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Riley just turned nineteen! And he’s leaving for college later this month! I don’t know what to say about the passing of parenting time except that it both does and does not feel real that it has been nineteen years. It does and does not feel real that he is heading off to live on his own. It all flew by so quickly, just like everyone said, but that’s only when you’re looking in the rearview. We lived every bit of those nineteen years together, so many great times and fun times and boring times and hard times and just times, just time, and that was right and good and so too is this next stage. We took so many pictures along the way to try and stay the moment, a million spectacular sunsets of our growing boy Riley, but everything goes forward forever and that can be a real heartbreak and it can also be the greatest most heart-leakiest gift.
Feb
14
Time seems to be moving along at a VERY fast clip lately. Riley (18!) has just returned from a solo trip to check out a potential college in central Washington, and Dylan (16!) not only just turned 16(!) but also nailed his driving test. Who are these tall-ass fully licensed adult-shaped humans ambling around my house leaving trails of Eggo crumbs?!
(Because waffles will always be a snack.)
While I’m complaining about the passing of time, let me expand that to include the ravages happening to the body as one creeps up on 50. I can’t believe I ever used to think that wrinkles were the biggest visible change when it comes to facial aging, when in fact it’s all the mysterious goings-on under the skin that make the real impact. I vaguely picture that all over my body there’s this layer of — what, collagen? Peanut butter? Fleshy goo? — that is actively degrading into what I once saw Anne Lammott refer to as “grandma pudding.”
A major topography change appears to be underway everywhere: my once-smooth cheeks have incipient sagging jowls now, I have crabby-looking marionette lines, my under-eye circles are both gloomy and cavernous, my chin just droops into my neck, and I recently noticed that the left side of my face is looking rounder/fuller than the right and I suspect it’s because I routinely sleep on my right side.
Tough stuff, to be honest. I know we’ve all got a whole plethora of shit to be dismayed about these days, but have you ever tried combining pure vanity about your appearance with multiple layers of existential despair? *kisses fingers, makes smacking sounds* Fucking nom nom IRRESISTABLE.
I do have a little trick for working through these feelings. Whenever I find myself getting too spun up about my aging face — as in going down the mental rabbithole of surgical/invasive treatments — I think of the horse I ride, Little Joe.
Little Joe is 18 years old, which makes him an older middle-aged/senior guy. One of the signs of aging with horses is that they lose fat and muscle tone around the eyes and experience bone resorption just like we do.
I think of his dear face and then I imagine the idea of his face not being good enough. I imagine needles of filler going into his eyesockets, or a surgical procedure that pulls his skin tight. Then I try to just let the batshit insanity of that feeling wash over to my side of the fence.
Perfection as is.
That might hold me over until my next Zoom call, anyway. They say aging isn’t for the weak, but the truth is it doesn’t matter if you’re graceful about it or a big old fat crybaby: it comes either way — assuming you’re one of the lucky ones.
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