The Twilight Zone

I’ve decided to temporarily–or not–take a break from the Twilight Zone.  Things are pretty quiet here anyway.  Thanks for visiting and perhaps we’ll meet up again.

Best, Nora

The last time Nora posted, she had her knickers in a twist over Sara.  She doesn’t anymore because Sara is so nice.  She oozes charm, and Nora is susceptible to that.  Besides, for Nora to get upset over missed connections for a movie was childish.  Sara and Nora didn’t really talk about it because Sara isn’t the type to sort over things.  She prefers to live in the moment, which, at their ages, is a good place to be.

 In the last few days, Nora has been helping her oldest daughter, Anne, move.  Anne is single although the mother of five children who are all living on their own now, two away at college.  Anne moved from a funky apartment to quite a different one, in–hard for Nora to believe–a senior building!  That is, one for 55-year-olds and older.  Does that ever make Nora feel like Grandmother Time.  Anne is fifty-six but looks not much older than forty.

 In the moving in, carrying boxes and stuff, Nora was mistaken for the new resident by people she met in the hallway.  One old geezer actually kind of flirted with her.  Anne at first was a bit dubious about moving to a senior residence because she will, so the manager told her, be the youngest person there.  “Well, it’s better than being the oldest,” Nora said.

 Anne brightened considerably when the manager told her that her next-door neighbor was a black musician who had a jazz band.  Anne loves jazz.  When she and Nora were passing his door, Anne said, “I can hear some music,” but Nora, with her poor hearing, did not.  “I think he’s beating a drum,” Anne said.  Nora thought, well better you than me.

 At her old apartment building, Anne had a garage full of things that she hadn’t been able to fit in the apartment, stuff from the house she used to have when her kids lived with her.  What to do with it all?  Her new apartment was even smaller than her old, and a storage place was expensive.  Her oldest son Caleb had rented a truck and was helping her move.  When he saw all the things in the garage, a round oak table, a small piano, a large couch, patio furniture, etc., he said to his mother, “It’s time to cut loose, Ma, to begin your new life.  Can you do it?”

 Bravely, Anne decided to.  So Caleb went inside, to her computer still up, and got on Craig’s List.  He entered under “free stuff” the contents of the garage, gave directions on how to find the place, said “Come now and haul it away.”

 Nora wasn’t there to see (she wishes she had been) but was told later by Anne:

 “You couldn’t believe the people, Mom.  They swarmed over everything.  They came in pickup trucks and brought their neighbors.  In about an hour, everything was gone.”

 Nora was truly amazed.  First, that her daughter, who had been something of a pack-rat, could let go of some pretty precious belongings, and that there was such a demand for them by other people.  (She should know, being such a thrift-store shopper).

 However, when she arrived on the scene, there were still many small cartons remaining on the concrete apron of the garage, some open, revealing their contents of clothing, utensils, and bric-a-brac.  “What will you do with these?” she asked.

 “Don’t worry.  People will just come.  Let’s go back inside.  I need you to help me do something.”

 And, sure enough, in a couple of hours, like a corn field stripped by locusts, the area with the boxes was bare.

 Sometime later, Nora returned wearily to her own diggings at the Zone.  As she approached her apartment door, she could see something hanging from the handle.

 It was a little nose-gay, in a pretty sack, with a note saying, “Happy May Day.”  Underneath, at the bottom, were chocolates.  It wasn’t signed but Nora knew the handwriting, like a Mother Superior’s.  She’d often teased her friend about how perfect her writing was.

 How can you stay mad at someone who does things like that?

About Sara

Nora has mentioned that she and Sara had “a monstrous falling-out.”  Oh, dear, what can that mean?  What has happened between these two good friends?

Well, to try to explain:

Remember, when Nora first became acquainted with Sara, her impression was that Sara was a “country club type woman.”  By this, she meant Sara was extremely proper, somewhat haughty, and a bit holier-than-thou.  Who knows where Nora gets her idees?

She soon revised her first impression.  She found Sara to be, above all, kind, which covers a multitude of sins; charming (which has its own pitfalls), indulgent, and, best of all, a lot of fun (priceless, in a place like the Zone).  However, though, the two women are quite different in many ways, and they don’t always understand each other.  Therein lie the difficulties.

Particularly, in the hot-house atmosphere of the Zone.  Happenings become accentuated.  That is, something trivial can get all blown out of proportion.  And some of the Zoners frequently act like the children they are reverting to.

Sometimes Nora gets very tired of living in the Twilight Zone.  She does because of the frequent struggle to “be” with people in the right way. And what way is that?  Well, appropriately, charitably, easily.  But each one of these words is founded on quicksand.  Obviously, now, something has happened to upset Nora’s equilibrium in the Zone.  What was it and should she even talk about it?

Well, it’s really not all that bad.  Here’s what happened:

Three of them went to a matinee at the local Cineplex.  Do you remember Nora sneaking around with Sara to avoid being seen?  Only, this time, the tables were turned. She was the sneaked-upon one this time.  Sara, Betty, and Vera went to the movie without her! 

Actually, she was told about it in a phone message left on her recorder by Sara 25 minutes before departure time.  But she’d been out and got the message too late.  Then she found out from Vera later that “they’d talked of going to the movie” a week ago.   In fact, when they were all—including Nora—playing Canasta.

But Nora did not hear that talk; her poor hearing and another reason:  a lot of the conversation wasn’t directed at her.  Poor thing!  She is feeling distinctly abused now.  So what happened when Vera told Nora that the movie plans weren’t as impromptu as Nora had believed? 

Well, our Nora, for reasons her only shrink if she had one could understand, lost it.  Right there in the activity room amongst other people, nondescript people like Blah and Dither and Whozzit.  Only she and Vera were, fortunately, in a small pocket of the room’s life-stream, so largely, except perhaps for a new woman named Camilla who noticed and probably wondered what planet she’d landed on, the other denizens of the Zone were blissfully unaware as they usually are to most undercurrents of emotion.  Sara wasn’t there this evening.

Nora, uncharacteristically, said things and flashed things from her eyeballs and used body language that was creaky from disuse, appalling Vera and also herself because it was so out of form for her.  She got really angry.  She said to Vera, “That’s it, we’re done!”  Whatever that means.  One old lady telling another old lady that because she wasn’t included in a daytime outing with other old ladies.  How bizarre can that be?

And now Nora doesn’t know what to do about it.  There is the matter of the twice a week games they play in the evening.  She doesn’t feel like participating anymore.  But in a place like the Zone, such an action like not showing up for the games has a ripple effect.   And would she regret her rashness and come slinking back later?

It’s so silly!  When you think of what’s going on in the world.  The miniscule travails of these old women in a retirement home!  Does it make a particle of difference in the universe?

And yet, to them it does.  Vera was distinctly upset and Nora could scarcely sleep last night.  Was she slighted?  Of course, Sara is the lead character in the drama.  Or is she imagining things? 

And so, what is Nora to do?  Move on.  Fuggedaboudit!

And this is where affairs are left now. 

What a funny thing it is to be old, because no matter how fit and attractive one looks, approaching or passing eighty is damned old, and still to make the mistakes one made in youth! 

Where is this vaunted wisdom?  The Zoners have some but it can be replaced in a moment by thoughts and feelings childishly immature arising out of their hearts’ needs. 

They are all this way, every last one of them; you can see it in their faces even though it isn’t always expressed.  Younger people, like their children and grandchildren who are seen frequently in the hallways on their way to visit their elderly relatives, must look at them with a mixture of sympathy, a touch of repugnance at the ugliness of age, annoyance (at the inconvenience of having to perform some service), and the youthful urge to “be outta there” as soon as possible.  And with very little interest, because, after all, what could be interesting about someone old? 

Old people’s minds are stagnant and they don’t have the pressing worries of living in the world like young, active people do, so it is hard to give them more than a passing thought. 

Yes, Nora thinks, this is how it is with younger people.  She remembers how she was with her father, the loving aunt who’d helped raise her, her “wicked” stepmother whom she’d finally softened toward, and especially, the remote person who’d been her grandmother. 

She had never given much thought to what went on inside of them, their thinking, feeling selves.  And, of course, the old spare the young just like women who’d birthed never tell a woman who hadn’t yet how having a baby actually felt.    

So the pain of being old was largely kept a secret from the young out of regard for their sensibilities, not that they’d be able to imagine it anyway.  Some things in life have to be experienced first-hand to be believed. 

Nora’s beautiful, bursting-with-youth-and-vitality grandchildren can see in her all the obvious diminishments of aging, mentally and physically, but what would they think if she told them of her interior state?

How spring-like her thoughts and feelings are sometimes; of the hot, inward tears, the swift, caring stab, the ever-young sap of life within her?  (Maybe she should take a bicarb.)  What would they think if she could express it to them?  They would look at one another with soft rolling eyes, sweet lips cursive with indulgence.  Not believing, not understanding that someone of her great scary age could possibly have those feelings.

She’ll delight in looking down from Heaven upon them someday, say 60 years from hence.

I am switching my blog from Blogspot to WordPress.  I hope you will be able to find me here.  This is my first post.  I’ll add more in a vew days.