Tag Archives: wife

A Loss For Words

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Most people who know me would likely tell you I am rarely, if ever, at a loss for words.  But they would also assure you, I trust, that I am far from being a blabbermouth.  My own opinion is that in most social situations, I can hold my own in conversation without becoming annoying or overbearing.

Most of the time, I listen; when appropriate, I ask questions.  If prompted, I will hold forth on a subject (if I know something about it), but not to the point of boring my friends to tears…I hope.

There is one situation, however, where all of the above is not true, perhaps the only circumstance where I find myself virtually unable to get a word in edgewise.  This unfortunate state of affairs occurs every time I find myself on a FaceTime call with my wife and daughters.  I hustle into the den with my iPad, leaving my wife with her screen in the living-room, so we won’t get feedback during the call.

When I say ‘unfortunate’, I mean for me, of course; for all I know, the ladies find it delightful when I sit, practically mute, at my end of the line.

The problem arises, not because my wife and daughters ramble endlessly on and on, not because they’re rude or inconsiderate, not because they delight in ignoring me, even politely.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  In fact, they are all among the most considerate of creatures on the face of the earth, and they love me dearly.

No, the problem occurs almost every time we’re on a call because they appear to react faster than I do.  And to think faster, too, I suppose.  Regardless of the subject, I’m usually listening attentively as they express their various points of view, waiting for my brain to kick into gear as I consider an appropriate response.  The sad fact is that, by the time I have a response, one of them has already jumped back into the conversation ahead of me.

Another issue causing me a problem is their propensity to change subjects at the drop of a hat.  We might have spent five minutes batting a particular topic back and forth—the three of them talking while I listen—and Boom!  Without warning, one of them will introduce a brand-new thread, or ask about something entirely different from what we’ve been discussing. 

Even as my brain registers the change, a part of it is crying, silently and forlornly, that I haven’t yet kicked in my two cents’ worth on the first topic.

But they aren’t rude, as I have said, so at some point (perhaps noticing my silence), one of the girls might say, “What do you think, Dad?” 

“Ah…let’s see,” I reply, “can we go back to that first thing we were talking about?  I had a thought about that, but I couldn’t get in.”

The three of them laugh and roll their eyes at this, chide me to ‘keep with the tour’, then blithely resume their three-way conversation.  It’s probably just as well, I guess, because by the time I’m asked to chime in, I’ve often forgotten the point I wanted to make, anyway.

I must admit, though, all modesty aside, that I generally look surprisingly good on those FaceTime calls.  I sit up straight, look right into the camera (with an occasional peek at my own image), and keep myself centred in the screen.  They, by contrast, let the screen wobble all over the place as they walk from room to room tending flowers, picking up dirty clothes, starting early prep for supper, training their camera on their dogs.  It drives me crazy, but I can never worm my way into the conversation to ask them to stop.

I’ve explored various strategies to help, but none seems to.  I’ve tried holding up my hand, for example, when I want to cut in, but all I get is a return wave, as if they think I’m leaving the conversation.  “Bye, Dad!”

On more than one occasion, I’ve cut my video feed for a few seconds, hoping they’ll wonder if I’m okay, but all I hear is, “Looks like Dad has left the conversation!  Was it something we said?”

“No!” I want to shout, as I turn the video back on.  “It’s because I haven’t said anything!”  But they’re already talking about something else, so once again I can’t get in.

I recognize that the limitations of the FaceTime technology, marvellous though it is, play a part in exacerbating my dilemma.  The offset between audio and video transmission makes it difficult for me to pick the right moment to jump in—like watching a TV commentator interviewing someone far away, each of them experiencing a delay in hearing the other, resulting in dead air.  If I speak up too soon, while one of the girls is still talking, no one hears me; if I wait ‘til she’s finished, someone else has already started.

Still, I persist in taking part in these FaceTime calls, not only to hear what the girls have to say, but to look at them as they’re saying it.  And I console myself that, if ever I had anything pertinent and crucial to share with them, I probably did it years ago.  Whatever I might add now is probably just more of the same.

The ironic part of the whole thing, though, is after we’ve ended the call, I’ll wander back into the living-room and my wife will say, “Are you okay?  You didn’t have much to say today.”

And that always leaves me at a loss for words.

A Party? No Thanks!

Another birthday, the eightieth since my actual day of birth, is looming.

If I have my way, there will be no party celebrations to mark the occasion—no gathering of friends, no gifts, and most mercifully, no public rendition of that ubiquitous birthday song by a bored, yet dutiful, cadre of restaurant servers.  Rather, the occasion will be marked by a fond embrace from the one who has been alongside for all but the first twenty of those eighty anniversaries.

For me, the party tradition has gone on too long.  It’s not only over now, it’s overrated.

The last big celebration I remember was on my twenty-first birthday, when my parents planned a party to honour the passage of their firstborn from boyhood to manhood—as if it had happened all at once on that given day. 

In 1802, Wordsworth memorably observed, The child is father of the man…, and so it has always seemed to me.  But truth be told, in all the years spent being a man since then, I don’t believe I ever left the boy behind.  He lurks behind the adult mask, only rarely emerging, as though fearing he’s no longer welcome.  But I still search him out sometimes, if only to reassure him.

I don’t really remember that twenty-first birthday party, of course, it having occurred almost sixty years ago.  But I do have photographs to remind me of the momentous occasion—washed-out Kodachromes of people who meant the most to me back then—some gone now to their spiritual reward, others, like me, to lingering adulthood.

My mother and dad grace several of the photos, beaming with parental pride (I’ve always chosen to assume), both of them decades younger than I am now.  How can that be, I wonder, and where did those years go? 

My siblings—a brother and three sisters—all stand with me in other pictures, our arms around each other, full of that relentless, youthful optimism that has not yet encountered the eroding onslaught of time.  It did assail us eventually, of course, but so far, all but my brother have survived.

A couple of close friends were present at that party, too, both mere weeks older than I, and eminently wiser (or so I imagined, given their earlier entry into manhood).  Both remain  fast and true friends to this day—and they, too, like me now, have reached the end of their eighth decade.  Imagine!

Most dear of all in those faded photos is my high school sweetheart, smiling happily, if a tad uncertainly, still getting to know the large, somewhat strange family whose son she was keeping company with. 

On that day, we were still two years removed from the moment when she would accept my offer of marriage, and she, I’m sure, had no idea right then that such a fate awaited her. Even I, it must be said, had only begun to suspect she might be the one. That longed-for wisdom prevailed, I suppose.

Anyway, that’s the last big celebration I recall.  There have been many so-called milestone birthdays along the way—the thirtieth (Never trust anyone over thirty!), the fortieth (Forty is the new thirty!), the fiftieth and sixtieth (the golden years, so dubbed by those who couldn’t avoid them), and even the seventieth (entry point to the last of the three stages of life: youth, adulthood, and You’re Lookin’ Good!). 

But the milestone birthdays never impacted momentously on me.  Each was just one more marker in a so-far-endless progression of years, gratefully attained, yet no more important than any of the others.

Among the most special greetings I receive on every birthday are those from my two daughters, both of whom endearingly insist that I’m not old, I look terrific, and I’m every bit as good as I once was.

“Hmm,” I tell them, “maybe I’m as good once as I ever was!”

For the past twenty-one years, I’ve been further blessed to hear from a younger set, my grandchildren, five in number now, who cannot for the life of them understand why there won’t be a big party on my special day, with balloons, and cake, and lots of presents.  Not to mention the goodie-bags they used to get at their friends’ birthday parties when they were younger.

“Don’t you like parties, Gramps?” one of my granddaughters once asked.

“Don’t you have any friends, Grandpa?” my grandson chimed in.

But I always told them I’ve had more birthdays than I have friends and family combined, and that on my birthday, I’m more than content just to have my grandchildren loving me.

“Oh, we love you, Gramps,” they affirm.  “But grown-up goodie-bags might still be a good idea, y’know.”

I do know.  My goodie-bag has been overflowing for eighty years.

To Make An End

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language.  
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
                                                                    - T. S. Eliot

As another year draws to an end, and with it the approaching close of my eighth decade on this journey, I know I am among the most fortunate of my fellow-travellers.  For sixty years of my passage, I’ve been accompanied by the wonderful young woman I first met when she was but sixteen.  She is young no more, of course, but as W. B. Yeats wrote in When You Are Old (almost as if he had her in mind)---

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

I still do.

Also with me for fifty-plus years of my journey have been the two magnificent daughters who have graced their mother and me with their love, their friendship---and increasingly now, their protection against the failings of age.  When they were little, we made a pact to hug them close for as long as we could, then let them go when time dictated.  As you might expect, the hugging was easy; the letting-go was hard.

But it has been written that when we love someone, we should set them free, and if they come back, then their love is ours forever.  That has certainly been the case for us, for which I’m eternally grateful.  Our girls are women now, but as I’ve often told them, although they are no longer children, their mother and I will never stop being parents.

In due time, those women brought two wonderful men into our lives, and with them produced five wonderful babies of their own---four granddaughters and a grandson for us.  It was as if the cycle started up again, but with my wife and I one step removed this time---loving them, wishing the best for them, but somewhat distant from the immediacy of their lives.  We strive to remain relevant, of course, and they, in return, take pains to make it so.

Kahlil Gibran wrote of that in his meditation, On Children---

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

And in that last line lies the very essence of the joy and sadness, both, that are implicit in our lifelong journey.  Things begin.  Things end.  Things begin anew.  Or so it has always been for me, and will be for some time to come, I fervently hope.  But there will eventually come a moment, I know, when no next beginning will follow the final end.  Despite my reluctance to face that day, I do not fear it.  My approach to its inevitability is summed up in this final stanza from one of my own poems, I Haven’t the Time--- 

I haven’t the time for anger or rancor, or grumbling, self-pity, or frown.
Life’s about living, getting and giving full measure before it winds down.
When that day is nigh, as ‘twill be by and by, I hope it will be widely said,
That as man and boy, I strove for the joy of living until I was dead.

My closest companions along the way have certainly brought that hope closer to reality than it might otherwise have been.  To paraphrase the late Queen Elizabeth II, my dear family have been my strength and stay the entire way.  As we enter into 2023, I hope for all of you who read these posts that you will feel as blessed as I, and that the ending of this old year, no matter its triumphs or tragedies, will be a new and happy beginning for you.

To make an end is to make a beginning.

Happy New Year!

Threescore and Ten

When we were very young, the biblical threescore-and-ten seemed a lifetime away—as, indeed, it has been.  But in a few short days, my partner, my lover, my wife, will complete her seventieth year, thus beginning her eighth decade.  C’est incroyable!

We met when she was sixteen, courted for five years, then married, a loving relationship that carries on to this day—fifty-four years from high school to septuagenarian sweethearts.

 donna-1970-2

 

 

 

 

A few years ago, when we lived in a forest home on a lake, I wrote this poem for her, and I include it here to mark my best friend’s seventieth birthday—

Sunlight,

Slowly streaming, peering, through tree branches

Seeming reaching up and out to touch it

And be touched.

Dark shade-spots, never-lasting, shift on forest-run

And up the stretching trunks,

To dance ‘cross leaves turned up to see the sun.

Water,

Reflecting morning back to bluing sky

Above, from fiery diamond-dance of light

Atop the waves.

The lake awakes as light turns trees of green to gold

And traps their images

In mirrored mere, quicksilver, green and cold.

Mist,

Wet, wraithlike trails of dew that do not seek

The morn, but rather gather, clutched, and drift,

And look to hide

Until, discovered by the sun’s relentless rays,

Surrender to the light

That thrusts elusive phantoms from its gaze.

Breezes,

Approaching shyly, coming on to shore,

From jigging o’er the watertops and waves

That lap the land.

With sighs they softly rise to stir the trees awake,

Then us, through mesh that screens

The out from in, and stubborn sleep from wake.

I stir,

And lying on the bed in my repose,

With eyes still closed, I draw a morning breath

Into my soul.

And then, eyes opening to the world dawning anew,

I also turn to see the morning sun…

And it is you.

donna-dec-03

It is you, indeed!