Passerbys are starting to look like people I know lately. Either we have all passed each other before, or life is running out of templates.
Everyone is aging except those I know and love. Billy Crystal, Kelly McGuiness, I hardly recognize you. Give me a minute when you step on stage, as I have to time-travel to catch up with today. When David Letterman lost all that weight for his late night talk show, he didn’t anticipate that he would look like the little old man who just lumbered across the sound stage to kiss the hand of Lauren Hill. A man I used to fantasize about dating, every night.
But visiting my parents in the third residence we have set up in their retirement, my mother bounces about her new apartment like the leading lady in an episode out of “Barefoot in the Park.” And if daddy only knew how young he looks, when not stressed and when feeling well.
Again, everyone ages but those we love. I continually give my husband this pass. If you were to ask me in a crowded room which one is Paul, I might describe a tall man with dark hair—and you’d never find him.
My friends and I are on the verge of thinking we should either continue to climb all the stairs we possibly can every day, or consider eliminating them and look into one-floor living. Not for now, of course, but the future. The future being that cloaked stalker waiting right around the corner.
We need to have each other’s backs, as we are all lined up like dominoes. And love is the only pass I know.
I can’t remember whether Paul and I had married yet when I first brought him East to meet my grandparents. Being the gentleman he was, Grandpa rose to the occasion and took to Paul right away, giving him a tour of his home and sharing secrets I had never known. Like where the family safe was kept. I mean, who even knew there was one?
The two men then moved on from that location to the front parlor, and standing before my grandparents’ wedding picture—which the family had enlarged and mounted to poster size on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary—Grandpa gazed at it and noted fondly, “Mary hasn’t changed a bit.”
While Mary, my grandmother, so small and frail, sat confined to her chair in another room, unable to walk or to talk having suffered yet another stroke.
Love is blind and you’ve got to love it.
a little elbow room
a little elbow room 