Well Seasoned

Youthful Exuberance

By K. K. Wilder

When I was young, I sincerely felt sorry for older people, especially those over 30. Thinking everything fun in life was all over by that age, I wondered—to myself and aloud—what such old people found enjoyable about living.

Eventually, I reached 30 and, much to my surprise, was still enjoying myself. Now, I thought being 60 years old was truly sad. For sure, everything worthwhile was behind a person by that age. I couldn’t even imagine living to be that old.

Now I’m 60 . . . and then some. And there’s not a day goes by that I don’t find joy in living. Perhaps it takes less to bring a smile to my face or lightheartedness to my spirit. I don’t know. But, for sure, I know one thing I enjoy now more than ever: youthful exuberance.

I’ve several debilitating conditions, one I was born with and a few I grew into. Consequently, I have caregivers most days but Sunday. Any caregiver I’ve had is young enough to be a daughter or even a granddaughter. And what amazing traits I find in each of them!

One facet of growing older can be the fact that Americans are fixated on youth. Because of that, we are often admired more by our peers if we’re young looking, still very fit, or able to leap tall buildings. There’s an 86-year-old gardener in my community garden who still skis, hikes, and amazes others his own age with his abilities and constant exuberance.

And that’s wonderful; I’m one of his biggest fans. But the point I’m making here is that not all of us can look 50 when we’re 75, or have the strength of a 40-year-old when we’re 84. It took me a long time to feel okay with that. And one of the biggest helps in achieving that comfort was seeing myself through my caregivers’ eyes. They don’t look for me to be peers; they appreciate me as an older person.

One says she likes me because I’m easy to talk to and I care about people. I can say the same for her. Another, in her 20s, says I’m like the grandmother she lost years ago, so that brings her fond memories. I like her because she’s going through the same kind of growing pains I went through when I was her age. Still another says she wishes I’d been her mother. What a terrific thing to say. I wish I’d been her mom, too.

What a great support I receive from my youthful caregivers. Of course, they like it, too, if they see something in me that seems much younger than my age. One of them thinks I don’t look 60-plus and that’s all fine. But I am definitely willing to look my age. I feel sorry for people, especially women, who Botox™ and plastic surgery themselves in a desperate attempt to look young. As some women say, I earned every gray hair and the older I get, the wiser I become. I agree. But that’s another column.

Back to my young people. It’s like a breath of fresh air to experience the sight of their new tats (tattoos), see their latest technology (iphones, iPods), clothing fads (little ballet-type slippers with individual toes for running), and hear the funny and innovative terms they use for what could be drab language. Bad, or sick, means very good, for example. I never laugh at my young workers; I only enjoy the ways they like to set themselves apart.

Young men in my city ride their bicycles naked at least once a year. If it’s cold, they wear shoes, socks, and gloves. That’s it. One of the ways I might not yet quite be an “old fogie” is that I find it outrageously funny when they ride by. It doesn’t shock me; it only reminds me of the crazy things I did when I was their age. And I thank goodness that they still have that spirit to their souls!

Can I say I’m lucky I need caregivers? Well, maybe sometimes I miss the total independence of my earlier days. But we all have to find ways to bring joy to our lives. I consider myself blessed with having the youthful exuberance of my caregivers around me and often enjoy moments vicariously through them.

K.K. Wilder lives in a Senior Citizen high rise in Vermont. Reach her through this magazine or online at KKWilde@aol.com.

Dealing with Regrets

by K.K. Wilder

If you’re old enough to read this magazine, you’re old enough to have regrets about something, maybe even multiple somethings, in your life.

When I was young, I declared to my friends, “I have no regrets.” Don’t you just love the bold statements we make before we know better? Whether it was selective memory or downright denial, I didn’t recall the errors I’d made. Now, however, it has come back to me that I wasn’t faultless. I’m happy to say that somewhere along the way, I did learn to say—and sincerely mean—“I’m sorry.” That has saved many a friendship and helped not only others forgive me, but helped me forgive myself.

And that’s the point of this column: Sometimes the difference between growing older gently and turning into a crank lies in facing up to our shortcomings, and also learning to forgive ourselves and others.

Somewhere in Maine is a woman who, as a little girl, was marching as a majorette in a parade when she started feeling ill. She marched more and more slowly until I brought up the next group of baton-twirling youngsters in the group following her. I was nine years old and thought the fate of the country depended on our groups being orderly and an appropriate distance apart. Besides, my co-leader, Linda Eaton, and I were doing jumping splits, so, when the girl in the group ahead of us became so slow that she was falling back into our line, I poked her in the back with my baton. Hard. She cried out but I don’t remember feeling a bit sorry for her; after all, she was breaking the cadence. But today, many decades later, I still remember the look on her face as she turned around after the jab. She looked as if someone had absolutely betrayed her…and I had. Priorities are probably different when you’re nine years old, but if I didn’t know it was a wrong thing to do at the time, how come I still remember it?

Then there are things we regret without actually having had the power to change them at the time. This kind of regret is a misplaced guilt. We can be sorry some circumstances were beyond our control or ability, yet guilt trip ourselves mercilessly in our older years, a complete waste of time. As I always say, “What is, is.” That’s not to talk as Popeye the Sailor Man, who said, defiantly, “I yam what I yam.” It’s just to realize we’ve made mistakes and they’ve already been made. If we can rectify them, we need to do that. If we can’t, well, we can’t. We need to learn to acknowledge it, live with it, and let it go.

There’s a type of guilt I’ve seen play itself over and over in friends who have lost loved ones, especially to death. They might have treated the person with loving kindness the entire time they knew them, yet, once that person dies, they keep berating themselves for some little slight they made toward that person or argument they had or an imperfection they harped on when the person was alive. What a waste of time! How much better to come to terms with what has been and go forth from there, being mindful of trying not repeat those mistakes with someone else, and just doing the best we can.

One of the most powerful programs to come along in the last century was the AA program with its twelve steps. The steps aren’t just used for alcoholics or other addicts, they are used in everyday life to deal with ourselves as human beings. One of those steps is number nine: “Made direct amends to people we had harmed wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” You can see that it’s direct in letting us know it’s not always possible to make direct amends and sometimes it isn’t even helpful to others. But I’ve come to see that it’s always possible within ourselves and to use the step as a change agent in the way we treat others.

Does this thinking mean I’ve reached perfection? Heavens, no! I still have to make apologies, still kick myself when I fall short — far short — of my goals. I’m still a bona fide human being and expect to be until I depart this plane. But by facing up to our shortcomings and learning to forgive ourselves and others, I believe we can be content with our lives and concentrate more on the great things that come to us every day.

Theologian Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (1882-1971) wrote what is known worldwide, especially in all the Twelve Step groups as “The Serenity Poem:”

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

K.K. Wilder can be reached through this magazine or at KKWilder@aol.com).

Nature’s Bounties

By K.K. Wilder

When some of us, those referred to as “foodies,” remember flavors from our past, our taste buds tickle and salivate as keenly as Proust’s when he thought of “…squat, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which looked as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell.” He said nothing seemed wrong in his world when he recalled those cookies. Some of my food memories happened many decades ago and I expect never to experience them again in my lifetime.

In the ‘70s, when my husband and I lived on the Maine coast, we took advantage of the myriad of foods nature provided—and the provisions were exquisite. There were thick blueberries covering either side of the path to our well, currants hanging profusely behind the barn, apples from the old heirloom Tollman Sweet tree long ago abandoned that my husband pruned back into bearing enough fruit for us, the raccoons, and visiting city friends. We traded my homemade bread, pickles, jellies and jams with the most famous local lobsterman along our part of the Blue Hill Peninsula: Seth Hodgkins. Seth had those blue eyes and deep cheek crinkles you see in pictures of elderly Maine lobstermen. Whenever we took him a batch of my goodies, he’d light up and give us all his culled lobsters of the day. Who cared if they had a claw missing: They were fresh from the sea and we steamed them and froze them for heavenly winter stews. And in the summer, when our Boston and New Haven friends arrived to wash their hair in our rainwater filled wash tubs, eat never-ending kettles of steamed clams, and veggies from our 90’ x 55’ mulched garden, they knew they’d also get at least one meal of lobster stew made with our neighbor’s fresh, raw milk, my homemade rolls and butter, the ripe cucumber pickles I had put away, and blueberry pie.

Is it any wonder that whatever I’m given to eat nowadays just can’t hold a candle to those hippie meals of the ‘70s?

And I’m not alone: I saw an old man recently, walking back and forth in front of the soups at a local store. He looked frustrated and kept picking up one can of soup after another. I asked if I could help him. He said, “I can’t find the lobster stew.” I pointed out a small can of stew, but he said, “No, no, that won’t do. I mean the kind with top milk and whole claws.” He wasn’t going to find it; ever. It was a meal he wouldn’t have again.
Part of the time my husband and I lived in Maine, he was a caretaker of a “summer place” owned by wealthy Massachusetts people — a 26-room stone house so elegant the locals called it “the castle.” The road to the house went through a 30-acre peninsula into the Atlantic. The owners gave us a nine-room Cape Cod to live in. It caught the sunrise on our east side and the sunset on the west. An apple orchard graced the sloping hill to our salt water garden. More often than not, we’d dig clams along the abundant flats and laugh when our dog let zingers out after cleaning up the necks for us.

A few times each summer, however, we’d go to the huge pier outside the castle and jig for young mackerel and pollack. The fish ran together so thick that we need only tie something shiny—anything that glistened in the water—to a long line and count to ten. Our lines would tug a few times and there would be a perfect fish on every jig. Within an hour, we’d have enough for a wonderful meal. On the way back from the dock, we’d dig two huge handfuls of new potatoes, and while he was cleaning the fish, I’d wash the potatoes. In no time at all, we’d have steamed fish over the little potatoes and be sitting back congratulating ourselves on having devoured a meal we knew we couldn’t find at any restaurant.

Mature people all have their favorite memories. Many of mine are food items, gifts from nature. I know you must have some, too. What are they?

KK Wilder lives and writes in Burlington. Reach her at KKWilder@aol.com

Tears

by K.K. Wilder

You’ve lived long enough to read this magazine, so you already know that what draws laughter from one person may shock another. While one might sit there trying to puzzle out the meaning of a joke, another could be chuckling. “That’s NOT funny,” I’ve heard people say when various comedians appear on stage. Make a joke of something many people would call definitely too serious to kid about, and others catch the gallows humor right away and laugh.

Take the time my doctor asked if I had a Living Will. I said I didn’t, but I’d make one. She told me that would be a good idea and to be sure to give her a copy. Since I’d just been diagnosed with heart trouble, I immediately thought she was trying to tell me, albeit gently, that I was on my way out with a one-way ticket. No, I didn’t think it was funny. And I kept the news to myself at first.

But then I began to think of various wakes I’d attended and how many funny stories people told of the departed. I decided I’d really miss hearing my friends speak at my memorial — there would be great stories. So I had an idea. I’d throw a K.K. Wilder Pre-memorial Potluck. I invited my closest friends, those I figured would want to say the most. Strangely, it came out to 12 people and I wasn’t even trying to imitate anyone else’s last supper—it just happened that way. We’d have such a grand time.

It didn’t go as I’d planned.

Yes, everyone I invited showed up. But instead of raising heck and telling humorous stories about me, they were mostly subdued. Instead of lots of various conversations going on at once, some stood around and, in fact, remained in the same place all evening, very quiet. Just one fellow did something silly, as I’d hoped all would do. I laughed appreciatively and genuinely, but most of the others reacted with tepid barely seen smiles.
It’s been 20 years since that gathering, which I now refer to as “The First Annual Pre-Memorial Potluck.” I’m still around, so I guess the joke was on me (sigh of relief).

The time I was most embarrassed by my dark sense of humor, however, was actually my mother’s fault. Her second husband, Bob, had just died. It was a hot summer day, we were both grieving, and so decided to go to a nearby lake for a swim to try to work some of it out. We were ready to leave when she said, “Poor Bob,” and began to cry. “Did I tell you that I called a funeral home to come to the hospital for his body and forgot I’d already told you to do the same thing? Well, two funeral directors from different mortuaries showed up at the same time to claim the body. Poor Bob. He never had so much attention when he was alive!”

Then she started laughing. I immediately burst out laughing, too. We were both sobbing and giggling all at once when there was a knock on the door. We tried to control ourselves, but were still howling when Mom opened the door. It was the next door neighbors. Both had a look of horror on their faces. After a few seconds, one mumbled, “Er, we just wanted to come by and give our condolences.”

Mother said, “Oh, thank you, thank you very much,” but I’m sure they could hear us laughing even harder when we closed the door. We always avoided those neighbors from that time on.

They say sometimes people laugh when they really want to cry. But truth is, some people do both at once.

K.K. Wilder can be reached at KKWilder@aol.com.

Auld Lang Syne

by K.K. Wilder

Many of us, especially Americans, think of the song “Auld Lang Syne” as something sung only at midnight on New Year’s Eve to toast our current friends. Few of us realize that the poet Robert Burns, who referred to it as an “old song of the olden times,” took down the beginning words from an elderly fellow Scottish man. The ballad, printed in 1711 by James Watson, shows considerable similarity in the first verse and the chorus to Burns’ later poem and it is a fair supposition to attribute the rest of the poem to Burns himself.

Many of us also mistake the actual meaning of the song. It wasn’t originally meant to celebrate our friends in the room at New Year’s Eve parties. Rather, it was meant to ask the literal question: Should we forget our old friends? It’s generally taken we would indeed forget the old friends, and never bring them to mind…except on New Year’s Eve.

Old friends might slip our minds, but I don’t believe they ever slip our hearts.

Some unknown poet wrote “A simple friend thinks the friendship over when you have an argument. A real friend knows that it’s not a friendship until after you’ve had a fight.”

I always say some genuine disagreement between friends is unavoidable if both people are being genuine with each other. And it’s when such disagreements happen and the friendship gets tested that we find out what we really want most: to be the “right” one or to respect and love each other enough to truly want to work out our differences and build the friendship on an even deeper level.
I knew a woman once who treated her new friendships like a grammar school crush. She would rave in total appreciation of someone she met who seemed like the perfect person. But, oh, let that new friend make a mistake—act human, if you will—and that was the end of the friendship right then and there. She would never trust them again, she would see all the flaws she hadn’t noticed before, and she’d simply cross them off her list. The only so-called friends she ever had were sycophants, servile people who thought of her in a more powerful position than themselves and flattered her to keep themselves in her good graces. Such relationships never lasted. Inequalities don’t foster true friendships.

People who truly love their friends don’t forget them. They might not be in touch or talk very often, but when they do it’s as if no time has passed and they start right up where they left off.

Over twenty years ago, when I was first diagnosed with heart problems, my physician asked me if I had a Living Will. I was aghast at the question and thought for sure it meant she was trying to inform me in a gentle way that my time was very limited. I wanted to be brave. And I wanted my closest friends to know how important they were to me. I also didn’t want to miss any of the fun they’d have at my memorial party which, I was convinced, would be coming up soon. I gave the whole matter a great deal of thought in the few weeks following my doctor’s question. Then I decided what I’d do.

I’d have the K.K. Wilder First Annual Pre-Memorial Pot Luck. I slipped the “First Annual” in there because I wanted to make light of it; I certainly didn’t expect a “Second Annual.” I started thinking about my closest pals. One lived on the Rhode Island border in Massachusetts; others lived in various parts of my own city and state. Each laughed when I spoke to them on the phone with my invitation. As it turned out, I invited 12 people and no, it wasn’t a knock-off of the Last Supper; it was just a coincidence.

When we recently entered the new year, I began to think of that party and the fun it was for me to gather with them, hear their jokes, and celebrate some of the weirdness in my personality—and theirs. Not all the 12 friends are with me today. Some got disillusioned with me; others have taken strong turns in their lives that our friendship didn’t adjust to. Some, I’m happy to say, are as loving and tender toward me as they were way back then.

So, in answer to that ancient question: Should we forget our old friends? I say let our hearts remember every good moment we had with them. New Year’s blessings on our new friends…and on our old ones, too.

K.K. Wilder can be reached through this magazine or at KKWilder@aol.com

Christmas Past

By K.K. Wilder

Once upon a time, many decades ago, no Christmas toys, wrap, ribbons, or decorations appeared in stores until after Thanksgiving. Lights were strung on town commons around December 1st and Santa arrived on Main Street about the same time. Yet, amazingly enough, all the people who celebrated that holiday seemed to have a great time.

Kids were able to dream of the goodies Santa would bring, but they didn’t have any particular brand names in mind. If a boy wanted sneakers to wear in basketball games, they didn’t have to be a nationally advertised brand to be acceptable. If a girl wanted a doll, it need not be a Barbie™ or Brat™. It could even be a homemade rag doll and a little girl’s eyes would still light up on Christmas morning.

That’s not to say all of us marched in a goose step with all our peers. Not even when it came to accepted customs. I, unlike my little playmates who gleefully climbed into the lap of our largest department store’s Santa, stood to the side, terrified of the jolly fat man with the long white beard. If he had tried to get me on his lap, I would have kicked him and run away screaming. (I was the same way with nuns, who in those days wore long black robes and faces framed in stiff, penguin veils – but that’s another story).

My brother and I did, however, leave something for Santa on Christmas Eve. No, not cookies and milk. Our Santa didn’t care for cookies and milk. He much preferred sherry and crackers topped with extra sharp cheddar. Two glasses of sherry, actually, and a good size plate of the nibbles. Evidently, that was to carry him through his dancing after putting our gifts around the tree. And ironically, he liked dancing to the same song my parents did: The Blue Tango.

So we left Santa the sherry, cheese, and crackers and made sure The Blue Tango was on the record-player. He must have been pleased because early in the morning we’d find exciting gifts he’d left. We were allowed to play with the unwrapped items and use anything Santa had left in our stockings: comic books, candy canes, paper dolls, and the oh-so-scrumptious orange left in the very tiptoe of the stocking.

Good salespeople know that anticipation is half the joy in getting something new. Once our parents got out of bed, which always seemed to take forever, we still couldn’t open the rest of our presents. We all sat down to an outrageously hearty breakfast: eggs scrambled with cheese, Polish sausage, homemade muffins with Mom’s plum butter, freshly squeezed orange juice, and milk. By the time we finished, we were groaning and I, quite frankly, was a little sick. I mean, fried Polish sausage in the morning?!

That didn’t slow us down, though. There were piles of gifts to be opened. We weren’t allowed to open them all at once. Instead, one of us would pass out the gifts, one at a time, to each member of the family. Everyone was to watch as each person opened a gift. It sometimes took us until noon for this part of the day! And I—always Miss Frugal—insisted wrapping be folded and saved, along with bows. So I always volunteered for the job of collecting everything to be stored for next year. It never occurred to me to wonder why we never seemed able to find those ribbons and wrap the following Christmas.

Christmas dinner usually meant more groaning. A table covered with roast beef, potato casserole, creamed onions, celery stuffed with cream cheese and olives, homemade pickles, and rolls came much too soon after the fried Polish sausage, but we all managed to make a dent in the huge offerings. With no room for dessert, we kids were now allowed—finally!—to go outside and try out our new toboggan, sled, skies, ice skates, or whatever piece of terrific winter gear Santa had left us. Shortly after dark, we’d come back inside, shed our wet clothing, and settle down to homemade pie for our supper.

As a youngster, it never occurred to me that not everyone had holidays overflowing with gifts and tables ladened with fancy food. Now, when I look back at Christmas Past, I realize we might not have lived in the fanciest house in town, but we were rich beyond measure. I hope that somewhere this season, there’s a sherry-drinking Santa who loves to do the tango after leaving off gifts for every child.

K.K. Wilder makes her home in Vermont. Reach her through this publication or at KKWilder@aol.com.

Thanks Be

by K.K. Wilder

Poet Max Coots wrote a wonderful poem that had to do with all his friends, comparing each of them to one of the vegetables we might have before us at the Thanksgiving table: “For funny friends, who are silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions….” For years, I sent his poem to my friends in November. As humorous and clever as were Coots’ words, it was definitely a poem of giving thanks.
When I was young there was a popular song sung by Bing Crosby called “Count Your Blessings.”

The lyrics started “When I’m worried, and I can’t sleep/I count my blessings instead of sheep/and I fall asleep/counting my blessings.” I don’t tend to do that. Instead, I look over my slate of good stuff early in the day. First, I’m grateful for waking up, though it’s not as early as it used to be. Then, I read the thought for the day in William Cleary’s latest book, We Side with the Morning, non-denominational prayers that are filled with gratitude and hope. Next, I affirm that I will experience at least one thing that day to make me glad I’m alive.

Setting the tone for the day is very important if I want to gather blessings. Start off right, I figure, and the rest will follow. It might be a smile from a neighbor, the joy of seeing an infant or toddler discovering the world, playing with an animal who is thrilled  just to chase a ball or leap in the air for a cat dancer. These sound like small blessings. This isn’t to say something won’t happen that turns out to be a big, huge treat on any particular day. I remember one gray day in November when I was on my fifth day in the hospital after an illness and hoping I’d be going home that day. Just then, in walked my doc, saying, “We’re kicking you out after breakfast.” I was almost in tears, I was so glad. But I had no time to cry. In came my breakfast tray, carried by a beloved friend who had driven to see me from two states away! Talk about a wonderful surprise.

So what’s the point? Simply this: We never know what the day will bring. My husband used to say, “There’s nothing as unpredictable as the next sixty seconds.” He never gave up hope, and he was right.

Someone was talking to me the other day about the Biltmore Mansion she had visited in Asheville, North Carolina, America’s largest home. I thought about my own home, an apartment in a senior building in Vermont. So many times when I’ve watched the news, I’ve seen people who live in housing that has been bombed by enemies or destroyed by Mother Nature gone wild. When I look around my apartment I realize that to people who are packed 20 in a hut, my place would seem like a mansion. Everything is relative.

We get forms now and then to fill out in our senior housing. Many times two of the same questions are asked: Do you feel safe in your home, and Do you have enough food? Each time I answer “yes,” I feel so fortunate to be able to do so. I can only imagine what it’s like to be aging in a war-torn area or in housing that keeps flooding or collapsing in mudslides. As Jon Gailmor sings, “How can I keep from singing?” If we’re busy being grateful, we don’t have time to complain and whine.

Something that I want particularly to share with you, my readers: I have immense gratitude whenever I think of you. I love receiving your notes and e-mails. Most of the time, you share your own thoughts with me about something that was jogged in your memory when you finish reading one of my columns. Other times, you take me to task because you disagree with something I wrote. Either way, I always learn from you and delight in hearing from those of you I know and others I’ll probably never meet.

I hope you have multitudes of blessings to count during this season of gratitude. May you find many reasons to say “Thanks be.”

K.K. Wilder makes her home in Vermont. Reach her through this magazine or at KKWilder@aol.com.