Tag: personal

A short walk on the aging path

Every morning I go for a walk, for health reasons and to have some time to listen to audiobooks or podcasts. Also, I’ll admit, to stay away from the mess of trying to get kids to school on time.

Over the years, I have become familiar with the people who go out to walk the dog, run, or walk at the same hour.

We’ve hardly exchanged words beyond “good morning” but I’ve become a bit attached to them anyway. A small catalogue includes: the bald man who runs at a fast pace and just doesn’t age; the blond woman who runs and shows some wrinkles but is still in great shape; the lady with the hat and sunglasses; the guy who walks his old dog but carries a dog-cart in case the aging animal fails to walk back; the three ladies who walk their dog together.

It seems odd to become attached to people you haven’t even talked to, but still, I haven’t seen the lady with the hat in a while, and she didn’t look great last I saw her. I hope she’s ok. The bald man had also disappeared for a while, but he’s back, and he still looks the same age as the first time I saw him a few years ago. I’m pretty sure running makes you immortal.

But today, I met the guy with the old dog, and I was taken by a sudden sadness, thinking of when the dog may die. I imagined a whole life for the man and his quadrupedal friend, of going through good and bad times, and the man still takes care to walk the dog, even tho it’s been years since the dog has ran after a tennis ball, and it can barely lift a leg to pee now. And then sometimes soon the dog will die, and the man will maybe take a walk alone, or maybe just sit in an armchair after breakfast, and kill time.

This month I turned 45, which, my friends make me notice, is interesting because 45*45=2025. They also made me notice I’m now closer to 50, then I am to 40. I’m not exactly sure when middle age starts or ends, but I think I’m firmly in it.

Possibly this means I’ll get a divorce and a Porsche. But to be honest, my wife is still far more attractive than I ever was, and I don’t like cars very much. I guess a mid-life crisis can entail a variety of things, and perhaps noticing you’re getting old is the first step.

Cause you see, Dear Reader, I just noticed today that almost everyone on my morning walk is old, for some value of old. There’s a couple folks in their 20s or 30s, but I think almost everyone is above 50 and 60.

“It’s so odd, everyone is old but me!” – I thought to myself, before noticing my mistake. I feel I’ve been old for a long time, even when I was younger. I also feel still childish, even as I grow older. Maybe people don’t really change with age.

I’m at a point in life where I’ve reached most of what I looked forward to. I’ve got a family, a job, a home. I never cared much for career or fame, so I don’t feel a need to struggle to become CEO of the World™.

I got bored a lot as a kid, so I learned to be entertained with little, I feel I could spend the next few years just playing silly games, watching TV and reading. I look forward to seeing the kids age, and I hope to see some more babies among family and friends. Some more traveling too.

Perhaps this is what a mid-life crisis looks like. If that’s the case, I think I’m fine with it.

Or perhaps, it’s just the end of summer, and the sight of an old dog.

On Dad’s neck

Some time ago, I realized my daughter had become too heavy to carry on my shoulders. I could still do it, but it’s no longer something I’d do trivially. She doesn’t ask for it anymore either, probably sensing it wouldn’t be a good idea.

She still holds my hand, tho, and I try to hold hers when I can, until she grows old enough to think parents suck or something.

Some time later, I was on a walk with my son, who’s two years younger, and I thought: I should carry him on my shoulders now, it might be the last time. So I told him to jump on, and he was surprised cause he’s a big boy now, but I told him it was for me.

And so I remember, somewhat, the last time I carried my son on my shoulders§.

I planned to write about this at some point, but then I never did. But recently, I was watching The Grand Tour, and Jeremy Clarkson mentioned how, if you think about it, there’s always a last time you do something, and usually you go through it with no awareness. It seemed an incredibly profound thought delivered by a random dude in a car comedy show.

Perhaps you know the last day of school, your last university exam, your last night unmarried. You don’t remember the last time you played hide and seek, or the last time you kissed your first love.§

It’s easy to remember when something happens the first time, you know it’s the first! But it’s hard to know when something will stop happening. You have to pay attention to what’s happening and tell yourself: this may be the last time I experience this, dear brain stop being in cruise mode and actually focus.

When I had my first blog§ I remember writing about coincidences, and someone (Nicola, perhaps) telling me: at your age you still believe in coincidences? Now that I’m older I’ve learned it’s much better to believe in the manifest narrative sense of the universe than in chance (or believe your mind primed to notice coincidences).

So a few days after Clarkson’s epiphany, I discovered the concept of ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会). Supposedly§ this means “one life, one meeting” and it points to the fact that every meeting you have is unique and irrepeatable§, and you should cherish it.

I like the idea, and it rhymes with a lot of old-wisdom-sounding modern advice about “being in the moment“. I think it’s probably good advice, but it’s really hard, and probably impractical.

Do I really care about meeting the bus driver for the last time? Should I really treat my team’s daily stand up meeting as if it was the last? How about lunch with my family? And what of dinner out with my wife?

I don’t have an answer, nor multiple answers. But I think it makes sense to try and think: if this was the last time this happened, would I do something differently?

And the other question is: would it matter? I remember when my father died, in a hospital bed, sedated, and I don’t remember the last thing I said to him, nor the last thing he said to me. I remember my mother telling me she hated those situations in movies where someone gives an “I love you” to someone on their last breath, or viceversa. If you haven’t bothered to tell them before, what’s the point of doing it now?

Maybe that’s the point of “as if it’s the last time”: think of what you should have done before, and haven’t done yet. It didn’t matter to my son that I took him on my shoulders a last time, and it didn’t matter much to me either.

But it’s good to remind me of all the other times I took him, my daughter, my brother, friends, and girlfriend on my shoulders. Maybe one day my grandkids, if I’m lucky. When that happens, I’ll update my memories once more, and think I did well to pick them up when I did, and to tell them I love them, and not wait until the last moment.

PS

the title of this post is “on dad’s neck” rather than “on dad’s shoulders“, because of a little poem my kid learned in kindergarden, and I’ll offer a modest adaptation here. The original always uses “on” where I wrote “from” but I think this scans better. Traduttore traditore.

On Dad’s Neck (Shoulders)

(badly translated from “Apu Nyakában” by Gáti István)

From Dad’s neck
You can see the neighbourhood.
No need for binoculars
Nor miracle glasses.
A thousand and one adventures
Promises the distance.
The newspaper vendor is a dwarf
From Dad’s neck.

On Dad’s neck
there’s a pirate tattoo.
A comfortable seat,
Better than the subway.
A hundred meters high
My legs float.
I can be a pilot
On Dad’s neck.

If Dad puts me down
Quite unusual.
The sidewalk becomes huge
Here I stand below myself.
A big dog runs.
I’m no coward.
But still…
Put me on your neck!

Me and my fern

The apartment in which I grew up had a long balcony, and lots of plants on it.

When I was little, there was a big Cycas, and I hated it, its leaves would sting me or scratch me all the time. I don’t know why I was near the plant, maybe some toy had fallen behind it.

I remember my dad watering the plants in summer nights, my grandma (his mother in law) always said you should water plants when the dirt is cold, either morning or night.

I do not know if this is true, but I believe it. I have noticed there are many things I was told once as a kid and I have assumed to be true, and I think it’s a too late to challenge them now. So I water my garden when it’s cold.

We kept geraniums (or rather, pelagorniums? English is odd), basil, rosemary, ficus plants, and a host of succulents. Cyclamens were often present, as I always bought one for my mom, grandmas, and a specific grand aunt for Christmas.

After my father died, my mom cared less about our balcony plants, so there were more succulents. Also she got obsessed with pigeons shitting on the balcony, so an increase of spiky plants was a pro.

And we had ferns. In the beginning it was a single fern, I believe, in a big terracotta vase. Then at some point they became two, I seem to have a vague memory of my father splitting the plant into two big terracotta vases.

My mom died about two years ago. She got cancer, and was gone in a few months after finding it out. I count myself lucky that I managed to spend some time with her in those months, and to be with her in her last days. And I was happy she got to see her grandkids once more in that summer, even if she had gotten thin, and weak, and could not play with them anymore, nor take them to the beach.

Me and my brother had both moved out years ago, and I remember my brother first bringing up the balcony issue in the last days, or perhaps she was already dead: now the plants on the balcony would dry up and die.

I asked my aunts to try and water them from time to time, and I believe they did. As did I, when I visited the place, and my brother, when he did. At some point, one of the ferns died.

I noticed this spring that the other fern seemed quite dried up too, so I resolved to do something about it. I’d split the plant, and take some with me. Maybe my plant would survive. I see it now, in the subconscious choice of words.

A fern is a big ball of somewhat independent stalks, roots, bulbs. I researched a bit and formulated a plan: I would detach the whole plant from the vase, turn it over and pull it out, split the stalks in a few smaller vases, and replant them. Seemed easy.

But the fern had been in this vase for years, decades, perhaps since the dawn of time . The vase is so old the clay on the top has partially eroded. I used a long bread knife to try and detach the fern from the vase, I hurt my hands on a million old broken stalks. At some point I realized the vase had two big intersecting cracks on one side, and probably the fern’s roots are the thing keeping it together.

So I went with plan B: I would cut out chunks of the plant by cutting diagonally into the dirt, and pull them out using the stalks themselves. I managed to do it, and I ended up with half a fern in his original vase, with some new soil, two smaller ferns in smaller vases, and a smaller fern in a big vase. I put some bulbs in some vases too, maybe they’ll sprout.

And I took one of the ferns with me, thousands of kilometres by car, and I put it in our garden. I’ll move it inside later, maybe. My hope is that it will survive, it’s a rustic, robust plant which doesn’t require much. My mother was like that too, I realize, subconscious again.

My mom didn’t go for jewels, nor expensive clothes (but she liked quality clothes). She used to say to us, when we were little, that me and my brother were her jewels. She had a wonderful sapphire ring, and it was stolen in a house robbery years ago, and her regret was she almost never wore it.

Mom was serious, and severe, when we were little. And she always seemed angry with us. She seemed softer with the grandkids, and I don’t know if it’s because she was softer, or because she didn’t see them enough, or because I’m not a child anymore, and I don’t consider “you already had ice cream” a cruel statement.

I felt very guilty, being away from home in the last years, after my father died and my brother moved away. I am happy I told her this, and she told me I should not be. I still feel guilty, but less.

My mother always made us feel loved, unconditionally. I remember when I was about ten, and she somehow got in her mind I could be gay, and told me, if that was the case it’d be ok, she’d love me anyway. I guess this should be the default these days, but I’m not sure this was the case in Italy 40 years ago.

Since I had kids, we built a routine of calling grandma a couple times a week. During COVID, they didn’t go to school, and she’d read them stories via skype. The modern world is a strange place.

I used to call my mom often when cooking. How do you prepare this? Do I fry the garlic? How do I tell if something is ready? On one hand, to make her feel useful, and thought of. On the other hand, mom was a fantastic cook.

That’s when I miss her more. At some point, you realize you can’t ask your mom anything, anymore. Whatever you failed to learn, you’re not going to learn anymore, your chance is gone. Whatever you didn’t say, you can’t say. I am lucky, very lucky to have told my mother that I loved her, and she told me I didn’t have to say it, she knew it, and what’s the point of telling someone you love them when they’re dying, if you didn’t show them love before?

So, I miss my mom, a lot, and so does my wife, and my kids. But I have a fern now. I will try to keep it alive as long as possible. I’m not sure I’ll manage, but I have nothing else to do, and perhaps it will fill that huge, gaping void in my life, a bit. Or perhaps it won’t, and when the plant dies too, it’ll be a chance to cry, like writing this piece.