“Feel like things are getting on top of you, and you can’t keep up? Don’t worry – Leap Year Day is a free day that only comes around once every four years! Use it to catch up, slow down, and prepare yourself for another four years of hectic madness!”
-Random Acts
Several of my early childhood memories come from photos; things I think I remember but can’t possibly. Or I remember the distorted memory combination of vagueness, photograph, and someone else’s recollection.
One thing that I distinctly remember happening was when we were living in a Queens apartment. It was a somewhat dark apartment with table lamps and heavy drapes. We lived on the second floor and there was a big picture window across the living room. I think I was wearing a yellow dress and my hair wasn’t a bob – it was too messy to make a proper bob, but it was neck length and all over the place with those baby curls that nearly everyone has in toddlerhood.
We had no screens on the windows and they opened with those crank handles. There was a bird sitting on the windowsill, chirping, and I wanted him to come in to play or to visit or whatever toddlers think they want when nature is so close and yet so far.
I cranked open the window and in he flew.
This was great for about a second and a half until the bird realized that he was inside and I also realized that he was inside. He didn’t bounce off walls or shriek. He left that to me. I ran around our living room and then into our kitchen – it was a combination kitchen/dining area and stood on the table, yelling at. my mother to get rid of it.
It swooped and hovered and never once tried to leave.
My mother with all the grace of a cackling scarecrow chased it around the apartment with a broom until he flew right back out of the window.
My mother cranked the window shut and that was the end of my bird watching days.
She may have given me a glare as reprimand.
This might be one of the reasons that my family never had any pets.
Another week passes. Looking at it in its minutia I’ve learned nothing. I’m sure in two more months I’ll remember something important from this time of the year. Time passes so slowly in the moment, but so fast at the passing of another week, or month, or year. My son will be turning 19 in another month. He was just awarded firefighter of the year. It feels as though it was yesterday that he was dressing up as a fireman and running around the house making siren sounds.
Our family has been doing a lot of family television. We eat dinner, and then settle down in the living room with that night’s program. It’s the mid-season and most of the shows are back. The Walking Dead returned last weekend, and Gotham comes back on the 29th. My kids get very upset when I miss a show and have to catch up the next day, like I’ve done the last two weeks Legends of Tomorrow. The first week I attended a memorial service and this week was another show I wanted to watch. Luckily, the CW has a great app to catch up as well as to watch interviews and previews. I wish the AMC app was that good.
Last night, we watched The Martian. My husband has been picking out new things for this year. I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing it, but when he put it on, I started to watch it. It was good. I was afraid that it was going to be Matt Damon alone on Mars for the whole movie. I was happy to see that it wasn’t that at all. I did enjoy it, and would recommend it to anyone interested in space travel, suspense, and action. It’s also funny and emotional – all the things you want in a good movie. I told my husband that I thought I preferred Apollo 13. They’re not exactly comparable, and The Martian is more modern, taking place in the future.I think what I found more compelling about Apollo 13 was that it’s history; it’s a true story. We know the outcome, and we still find it suspenseful and we worried along with the astronauts’ families.
Family time is what we make it. Whether it’s watching movies or reading comic books, preparing food or shoveling the walk. We’ve been spending a lot of time together. In the afternoon while my husband is still in his office working, the little ones and I are together with our tablets or our books, reading and laughing, no one doing their homework, and trying to get as many snacks as they can before dinner.
The kids are home this week for winter recess even if it hasn’t been much of a winter. I’m definitely not complaining about the weather. I can’t stand the snow, and almost never drive in it. We’re going to be full up on family time by the end of the week.
Unfortunately, this is also our low money week. The paycheck where we pay the mortgage leaves us not much left. We get by – we don’t use credit cards so we kind of have to work with what we have.
This might be the week I start the taxes.
I wish money didn’t make the world go round.
This is the second week of the second month, and I had anticipated being so much far along in my reflections. I’m still not sure how I want these to flow; I just feel that my fiftieth year deserves something a little special; a little different; a little more.
My age has always been one of those oddities for me. Between not caring at all and caring too much, I can never remember how old I am without doing the math. Being born in December, I was always the youngest in high school and college, having just made the cut off to attend school in my year. My middle son is usually the youngest (October birthday) in his class and my daughter is usually the oldest (January). One of my closest college friends was born in January, so he and I were quite literally one year apart. At my first job in the early childhood field, I remained the youngest or at least close to the youngest for most of my tenure there. Things evened out a little bit after my first son was born with colleagues and other parents in school, but I still tended to be one of the oldest in any give group. Even now I am either the youngest (at church or the Red Hats) or the oldest (at any other school or friend function.) My closest friends are in their mid-twenties/thirties.
I don’t know how I feel about the whole age thing.
I already feel adrift, falling somewhere between baby boomers and gen Xers, a forgotten generation of sorts. Too old and practical for my twenty-something friends, and too flighty and culture savvy for my aged peers.
People laugh and think it’s vanity that I can never remember my age. It’s not intentional; it’s just never been important enough to stay on my mind. Oh, I knew 18 and 21, 25 and 30. Forty didn’t bother me like I was told it would, but 41 made me cry, pretty much all year. Forty-one was tragic. I looked forward to 42 – my Douglas Adams birthday as I called it, and I expressed my age that year every chance I could. But after that….it feels like a countdown, and I don’t like to dwell on it or that I’m not quite where I wanted to be at 49. It didn’t help that 45 came with the baggage of a heaping pile of a previously unknown and undiagnosed severe case of depression and anxiety that is finally beginning to stay on the track it’s supposed to be on.
One thing that I do enjoy lately is that we’ve have hit the moment pop culturally where most of my favorite television shows have actors around my age: Misha Collins-ish,Jensen Ackles (at least they’re not twenty), Norman Reedus, Alan Cumming, Robert Downey, Jr, John Barrowman. (Notice the obvious lack of women/actresses in my age group to look up to, though.)
At the end of the year, I will be 50, and I wonder what that means. I’m beginning this series of reflections. My aim is to do about fifty of these, originally planned for one a week, and I’m not going to worry about it being the second week of the second month. I’m going to go with the flow. Some of the time. This is the year of positive thinking. I’m just going to trudge on, and make my way through this year, paying attention, noticing, writing, and moving forward.
Always moving forward.
I am in good company, however:
This past weekend, the Super Bowl turned 50.
In September, Star Trek, one of my most formative childhood and adolescent guides to my world will also be 50. Star Trek formed and inspired my creativity, my writing, my thoughts about the future and space travel (I was born during the Apollo age), and my never-ending love of science fiction, which begat fantasy. Star Trek was very important in my life.
NOW (National Organization for Women) was founded.
Batman: The Movie was released and was soon followed by the television show.
UFWOC (United Farm Workers Organizing Committee) founded.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas aired for the first time.
The first Kwanzaa was celebrated.
Nolan Ryan made his debut in the big leagues with the NY Mets (my favorite team. I grew up near Shea Stadium.)
The SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) was formed at author Diana Paxson’s graduation party at UC-Berkeley. The name was created by author Marion Zimmer Bradley. Like Star Trek, the SCA was a tremendous influence and inspiration in showing me new worlds, new people, and new skills like costuming and jewelry making. (It’s kind of amazing how many of my life’s influences were born the same year as I was.)
Days of Our Lives premiered.
The Supreme Court case that brought us the Miranda warning to our collective vocabulary and basic civil rights was decided.
The start of Medicare.
The Department of Transportation was created.
The Black Panthers formed.
Pampers creates the first disposable diaper, and I for one, can’t thank them enough.
I sometimes wonder…
Am I a writer or an author?
A blogger or a freelancer?
A memoirist?
A dabbler? Professional?
A nobody?
Sometimes, I don’t know what I am or what I’m doing here and elsewhere. Maybe one day it will come to me or all fall into place or whatever it’s supposed to do.I know that there are things pulling at me, and I have stories and half-written anecdotes and notes since my high school and college days. Fan fiction gave me a language and a society – a camaraderie that is often not found, even in the writing groups I’ve attended. Not belonging because of the subjects or the philosophies or the age difference – I tend to be either the oldest or the youngest. Neither one is preferable. They are both on the outside looking in.
Some of my writings are avoidance; conversely, some of my writings are avoided, each with a labyrinth of excuses and reasons, one more valid than the next.
I recently heard something on one of my favorite television shows. It’s funny to admit or even to say out loud to those who aren’t in the fandom and therefore don’t understand the inspiration that I get from this program and its cast and crew.
This isn’t the first time that their words have helped me move forward with a less than tangible hand to hold and shoulder to lean on.
“You wanna know the secret to living a long and happy life? Follow your heart. You do that, all the rest just figures itself out.”
– Mildred (played by Dee Wallace) to Dean (played by Jensen Ackles)
Griffins and Ginger Snaps 