I got a call from my good friend Scott congratulating me on “another successful trip around the sun.” He’s a librarian and isn’t satisfied with something so mundane as “Happy Birthday.”
For my part I think I prefer his version, not for its scholarly tone but for the fact that, for me, birthdays aren’t necessarily happy. Nor are they necessarily sad. They’re just another day out of the 362 or so. The leftovers, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other random holidays I’m sort of compelled to deal with.
Clearly, I’m not big on my own birthday. In fact I’m miniscule on it. I don’t do the full on weekend or week-long celebration. That all seems a bit self indulgent to me but if that’s your thing then, by all means, party on.
This year, I’m completing my 73rd trip. When you’ve done that many orbits, success is often measured in terms of just gutting them out, or at the very least being grateful that you haven’t added another pill or two to the ever growing collection. Having had a cardiac ablation last February I actually reduced the pill count by one. I’m down to blood thinner. Happy birthday to me.
32 DEAD, 40 INJURED ON CARRIER LEYTE IN BLAST AT BOSTON
That was the New York Times headline on October 17, 1953. Meanwhile, 2100 miles to the west, I was being delivered (received?) at Latter Day Saints Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah.
I’ve always found a certain amount of irony in the name of that hospital, given the fact that the deliverer (mom) was a Roman Catholic, from Rome, who favored a nice Chianti, and the original sower (dad) was partial to a nice cognac, and both smoked Camels like chimneys. Add to all of that the fact that the delivered (me) is a dyed in the wool atheist.
Three years after my arrival we were living in the more liberated San Francisco Bay Area.
My childhood birthday celebrations are obscured behind a curtain, seven decades old, and a personal choice to shut out a childhood largely best left forgotten. Mom presided over the obligatory kid birthday parties. That was a time when the local Safeway didn’t have an inhouse bakery that turned out sappy, mediocre cakes. Just about every town had a real bakery that put out real bread, real pastries and – yes – real birthday cakes.
The cakes didn’t have movie or super hero themes. Just a cake with some plastic figures – soldiers, race cars, fire engines, cowboys and Indians (it was, after all, the 1950s) – planted on top of half an inch of icing.
Parties weren’t really a thing until the kid reached four or five. Anything before that was just an excuse for the parents to have a cocktail party. Parties weren’t the lavish catered affairs, with jump houses and mobile video arcades that have become common. The host served some bologna or tuna sandwiches cut up into triangles, chips, soda, and cake and ice cream. There might be a planned game or two but for the most part the kids just had a free for all playing with the celebrant’s birthday presents.
And the invitee’s parents? They weren’t invited and they didn’t volunteer to stay. They dropped the kid off and rushed back home so that they could screw in peace with the bedroom door open. Or in the living room, or the kitchen, or, if they had one, the backyard pool – splish splash.
It was the usual neighborhood group. There was Biff next door, whose dad had served in the British Royal Navy during the war. Rusty lived two doors down. He was the daredevil of the neighborhood who climbed to the highest tree limbs and scaled hillsides that the rest of us begged off of. Rusty grew up to be Russ and died, far too young, when, as a young adult, he was swept away over a Yosemite waterfall. There was Danny, from across the street whose dad may have been the guy who introduced soccer to San Mateo. At least to our own neighborhood. There was Whitey who, even as a child, was identified by mom as a grifting con-man. Whitey was a coniving little shit then and probably grew up to be a big conniving shit as an adult (and who in the hell names their kid Whitey?). Paul W. could be best described as Whitey’s flunky – Igor to Whitey’s Dr. Frankenstein. Robby was the most steadfast kid of the group. When friends turned on friends, as kids are sometimes apt to do, Robby remained kind and loyal. His only shortcoming was his dad, Doug, who sported a George Wallace for President bumper sticker on his truck in the runup to the 1968 election, causing my dad to annoint Doug as a “thoroughgoing bastard.”
Thinking back on those parties I realize that I haven’t given enough credit to mom. By the time she was throwing parties for gangs of unruly imps she’d survived a head-on collision on the San Mateo Bridge that, by all rights, should’ve killed her. It left her with scars, a limp, jangled nerves and a lifelong prescription for tranquilizers. After gutting out those parties she decompressed with a martini or three and a few smokes. Dad spent those parties in the company of Steinbeck or Dickens in the relative quiet of the bedroom.
The excitement of those parties was about as fleeting as the sugar high from overly sweet buttercream. The real treat was the little family celebration – going out to dinner in a nice restaurant – just the three of us. I’ve little doubt that when other diners saw mom and dad walk in with me in tow they assumed that their quiet dinners were about to be disturbed by the little shit box with the cowlick. Ha, how wrong they were. Mom and dad schooled me early on in restaurant etiquette.
We often went to The Shadows, a little German-Continental restaurant on 2nd Avenue in San Mateo. It was fashionable in those days for a restaurant to have subdued lighting with a candle at each table. The Shadows was as dark as a coal mine and diners had to hunch forward and read their menus by the dim flickering light of a candle in a blood red globe. It was in the shadows of The Shadows that I fell in love with sauerbraten.
When dad mustered the courage to drive to San Francisco we celebrated birthdays at Senor Pico, a Mexican-Early California restaurant in Ghirardelli Square. Senor Pico was started by Vic Bergeron who owned the tiki themed Trader Vic’s restaurants that served alcohol charged tropical drinks; sinister compounds that tasted like punch and got you shit faced after a single drink. The cocktails at Senor Pico were no less lethal. Senor Pico was where my parents discovered the Margarita – for the low-low price of 75 cents.
I guess birthdays started to lose their appeal when, in the days just before my 21st, my girlfriend of three years called off our wedding plans and broke up with me. Well, at least I was of legal drinking age. A decade later I saw her at the corner of Fourth and Mission in San Francisco and we met for burgers at Hamburger Mary’s. Last I heard, she’s somewhere in Pennsylvania and I hope she’s lived well.
After Cora and I married I fell into a birthday routine that suited me just fine. I picked up a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Cora picked up a small cake, and we sat down to watch the World Series. It all worked out fine until Major League Baseball fucked it all up by adding layer upon layer of playoffs, pushing the Autumn Classic out to the edge of November. Baseball in a driving rain storm with occasional snow flurries.
We still did dinners out, only we did them on the 24th of October since it fell right between my birthday and Cora’s Halloween birthday.
For years we went to Chevy’s, a Mexican chain that, while not so authentic, served massive portions and bottomless chips and salsa for a reasonable price. After a couple of birthdays during which the staff sang the “happy happy birthday from all of Chevy’s crew”song and gifted a sombrero to the celebrant we just kept the birthday part a secret. I mean, how many sombreros does one really need?
None?
I’ve spent some birthdays here and there; Goshen, Indiana; Tonopah, Nevada; Prague; Munich; and one memorable one in Rome.
My 28th was at a banquet table in the dining room of my Zio Carlo’s flat on Via Val D’ossola, in the Monte Sacro district of Rome. Via Val D’ossola was a short six block long street lined with plain looking apartment buildings that could’ve been mistaken for something in Soviet Eastern Europe.
The book belied its cover. Zio Carlo’s flat was magnificently classic. The furnishings came from another epoch, one that insisted on fine polished woods, and leather that creaked comfortably when you settled into it. Dimly lit, it was brightened and made warm by the fellowship of the large, boisterous family.
It was one of those memorable birthdays that was not unlike a movie scene of the traditional Italian celebration. It seemed impossible that so much food, all homemade and ridiculously delicious could issue from the tiny galley sized kitchen. Soup, pasta, meats, potatoes, and side dishes. Wine and acqua frizzante flowed in rivers. Near the end came the cart of cheese, salamis, and fruit. To finish off there was cake and shots of grappa.
They’re all gone now, the uncles and aunts. Many of the cousins have also passed and those who haven’t are scattered by the winds of time, shifting interests, and of course, death. One cousin, Ricardo, still lives in Rome. I visited him and his children and their spouses two years ago. I hope to make it back again before that tie is cut by the inevitable knife of mortality. His sister, lives in Greece. Will I ever make it there?
On the day of my 36th I left work in San Francisco early to do some grocery shopping. At 5:04 p.m, while Cora was leaving her office, also in San Francisco, most of the liquor department in the El Sobrante Raley’s supermarket exploded on the epoxy floor in front of me. I never realized that a supermarket could actually sway.
The Loma Prieta earthquake sent everyone bolting for the exit. All but the woman who was frozen in fear near the door. I grabbed her by the arm, pulled her out of the store, wished her good luck, and made for the daycare to pick up my children.
My birthday cake was somewhere in San Francisco where Cora had left it. Normally she took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to the El Cerrito Del Norte Station and drove home. BART was down and a section of the Bay Bridge had collapsed. When we got home I watched TV coverage; the flattened Cypress Structure, the fires in the Marina, a fire somewhere in Berkeley and the broadcast from a stopped World Series game at Candlestick Park – and wondered where Cora was.
It wasn’t until sometime around ten that night when I heard from Cora. She’d managed to catch a ride with a stranger to Daly City and was staying with a Filipino family. I hung up the phone, tucked the kids in their sleeping bags into bed and sat on the deck and killed the better part of a bottle of Maker’s Mark.
One of Cora’s friends in Daly City drove her home the next day. It was the long way, around the southern horn of the San Francisco Bay in San Jose and back north up 680.
“Your 40s are good. Your 50s are great. Your 60s are fab. And 70 is f*@king awesome!” – Helen Mirren
Whenever I see these joys of old age quotes I feel like throwing my stewed prunes at the computer screen. Yeah, Helen Mirren, shit’s awesome – for you. You’re literally dripping money. You don’t have to go out and mend the back fence, or teeter on a ladder to hose out the gutters, or worry about stepping into your shower, or carry the groceries piece by piece from the trunk of the car because the whole bag is too fucking heavy. Growing old certainly beats the alternative but I have to take exception to rich celebrities describing old age as a garden of delights.
Here’s some of the genuine “awesome” stuff. You fart a lot – often in situations where farting is unacceptable (and you pray it wasn’t a sh-art). You start worrying about what your poop looks like. You ache in the morning and in the cold and you don’t do well in the heat. Your gut revolts whenever you try to eat all those fun things you ate with impunity when you were 40. Your balance pretty much goes to shit. Forget about climbing 200 stairs to catch the view from an ancient belltower in Italy. Those walking excursions of a few years back that you used to enjoy for their spontaneity are off the menu, replaced by a fixed itinerary senior bus tour, narrated by a 20 year old who would rather be any other place in the world right now. Driving at night becomes a hazard to yourself and to the public. At parties, you and your friends are stuck on talking about pains, prescriptions, and who just died (I walk away from those and join the young people). Doing a one hour long search for your car keys or your glasses becomes a regular pastime – and you could swear you just set those keys down five minutes ago. Or was it last night? WebMD is bookmarked on your computer so you can quickly self-diagnose the new lump, growth, blemish, cough, or rash that twenty years ago you would have blown off.
And all of that? That’s just the minor inconvenience shit. I watched my father’s faculties deteriorate until he couldn’t recognize his loved ones. Meanwhile the miracle of medical science left his physical self going strong until pneumonia delivered him from his misery.
I’ve been watching a family friend deteriorate bit by bit by bit. Infirmity after infirmity. None are life threatening so she’s become like an old car dropping parts along a potholed road. Meanwhile the doctors are keeping the engine sputtering along, albeit with more frequent tune ups and more and more additives (read, pills) that might foul the engine (read, side effects) and may or may not shut it down for good. She can’t do for herself, and needs someone to do the simplest tasks that twenty years ago she performed all by herself. She takes it all in stride and maintains a cheerful demeanor. She’s a loving mother and grandmother and, knowing her, she’s grateful for being around to dote on the little ones. It’s easy for me to say that I would rather not because I haven’t been faced with this plight.
I don’t at all like the limitations that come with growing old, but I need to be circumspect in my complaints. I’m actually grateful that I’ve been pretty damned fortunate. I may have to do the occasional scavenger hunt for my glasses but I can remember the names of loved ones, I have a strong heart and lungs, and the senses and the plumbing all seem to be working well. I’ve had no long hospital stays and, but for a few teeth, I still possess all of the original parts. Sure I would love to be able to go for runs but I can walk fifteen or so miles in a day exploring a new city.
I’m lucky because I’m not the person hauling his oxygen around. Or the octogenarian working at Home Depot because Social Security doesn’t go far enough. I’m lucky to have the support system in a son and daughter who didn’t grow up to be fuck-ups and have partners who also aren’t fuck-ups. I’m not the abandoned soul who spends his days alone, staring at four blank walls in a room that smells like Lysol. Or worse, the grizzled forgotten veteran sitting on a corner in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District.
I fully realize the fact that a lot of people who would have loved to grow old – didn’t. Good people who wanted the simplest and sweetest of life’s pleasures; to be able to see their children marry, to dote on grandchildren, to relax after a life of work (for what it’s worth I’m bitter knowing that while good people leave too soon, there are far too many people still holding on who have spent their lives shitting on people, and ruining lives when their tickets should have been punched long ago).
So here I am – 73. I’m way on the backside of the hill. I’ve been lucky that the new growths have been benign, the poop tests have always come back negative, and the abdominal pains have been gas. But even for the luckiest ones, when it comes to mortality, there’s going to come a time when you don’t draw that ace you needed. I don’t think much about mortality, I guess because I haven’t been compelled to. It did cross my fogging mind as the anesthesia was taking effect before my ablation procedure, but by then it was too late to call time out.
I think I’d like to see 90-something. But on my own terms. When my Aunt Donna was told that her kidney cancer would force her to go on dialysis she opted out and decided that she would rather let nature run its course. This was sometime in the 1980s. Maybe dialysis has changed since then, but when faced with it then, Aunt Donna was about over it all.
I’ve often wondered what my red line would be. Certainly dementia. The other red lines? There are plenty of them out there. I guess I’ll know when I’m given the diagnosis. I am a firm believer in being able to take down the building when it’s falling down beyond repair.
The wisdom of the aged. According to the slushy, saccharine quotes on Goodreads, I’m supposed to be wise now. A wise guy maybe. But wise?
Please.
Those quotes about the wisdom of age are usually delivered in the form of a metaphor about wine or oak trees. Well, I know some people who were real dumbasses in their twenties and now they’re just cantankerous old dumbasses. The only thing they have in common with an old oak is they’re as dumb as a plank.
I prefer H.L. Menken’s notion on the subject; “The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
If I want wisdom, I usually turn to my son or daughter.
When I look back on my life at 73, I realize that I never got close to the career goals that I’d set for myself; but I knew that a long, long time ago. I had shitty jobs, working mostly for shitty people. The saving grace was that, by and large, I worked with good people. But I always had a job.
So here’s some wisdom for you – especially if you’re young. Do your passion. Maybe it’s in being a barista, saving enough money to travel, and then returning and going back to being a barista – repeating as necessary. Do it even if it pisses off your parents because in the end it’s your life.
The best job that I ever had was working in a family owned hardware store in downtown San Francisco. There was no corporate bullshit or petty backbiting. That’s where I met Cora.
The best decision I ever made was to ask Cora out on that first date. During the early years of our marriage I was a dumb shit, not realizing what a gem I had . My greatest talent then was in being a genuine asshole. The fact that I’m still married to Cora is a testament to her perseverance. I guess we’re proof that it pays off.
We’re best friends now. Sometimes we act like siblings. We get into fake fights and flip each other off. She’s not very good at it. It looks more like she’s casting an evil spell on me. We’re each other’s security blanket. We warm each other. When we travel much of my excitement comes from seeing hers. Her tears touched me when she first laid eyes on the Grand Canyon, and the Colosseum in Rome. Fact is, I don’t know what I would do without her.
When we’re not traveling, which is most of the time, Cora and I are pretty boring. We do our own things during the day. We don’t always eat dinner together. After dinner Cora showers, comes downstairs and asks, “Are we watching (TV)?”
“Yeah. But there’s not much.”
Sometimes it’s basketball or baseball. Most often it’s mindless bullshit with gratuitous violence. Cora might remark, “It’s so violent.” Said the woman who looks for shows about drug cartels.
”Yeah, and? Like it or not violence is entertaining. But if you want we can watch The British Baking Show, or The Great Food Truck Race. Wait, let’s watch BBQ Pitmasters.“
“Nevermind.”
Boring suits me fine.
I don’t know what the coming years hold for Cora and I. Who’s going to take care of who?
Looking forward, I wonder about the world that we’re leaving my kids and my grandchildren. Our son and daughter and their partners are all in their 40s now and pretty secure with good health and good heads on their shoulders. My grandchildren are smart, and have good examples in their parents. But we, the collective we, have been doing a pretty good job at fucking up the whole wide world. Things change so much faster now and one can only hope that change will be mostly for the good. But time is a wasting and the people who hold sway don’t seem to care.
So about that wisdom thing.
Be kind – especially to your family.
Don’t kick your dog.
Remember, not everyone is as fortunate as you.
Mind your business.
Eat what you want.
Read books.
Think.
Apologize.
Give a buck to the unfortunate on the street – he needs it more than you do.
If you won’t tip 20 percent, don’t eat out.
Don’t click on sketchy links.
Walk away – just walk away.
Don’t be a dick.
And don’t wait 73 years to figure it out.
All this written, Paul, and I enjoyed the read a lot, I do wish you a happy succesful 73th orbit. 🙂
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