Cora, Dante, Kelley, Sienna, Tony, Cheryl, and Audrey (Larry is the photographer)

Like any published memoir, our own life stories should also come with a disclaimer: “This story that I tell about myself is only based on a true story. I am in large part a figment of my own yearning imagination.” And it’s a good thing, too. As we will see, a life story is an intensely useful fiction. ~ Jonathan Gottschall

I’m ruthlessly seized by the irrational fear that the sand in my hourglass is slipping away at a torrential pace, and there is no way to stop this relentless progress. It’s pooling at the base of my container, which is ironically familiar, and standing on my head for long periods of time is not helping.

Birthdays do this to me. I get delusional, okay untenable, some would say irrational, with a disposition that is unflattering at best. Even Dante Alighieri agrees. He says, “The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.”

I blame all this Post Traumatic Stress on the birthing process I endured 63 years ago. No doubt my mom was a pro by the time I came along, but I still don’t like crawling in or out of small dark spaces. Clearly, contractions are the problem, both physical and mathematical, but the general population remains astoundingly naive to this revelation.

Now you know.

Did you know if I were a chemical element, I would be Europium at 63. Europium is a silvery-white (how telling) metal that reacts readily with air. Don’t we all? It is the least dense, soft enough to be cut with a knife, and extraordinarily rare. EU, its nickname, makes the television screen brighter. How apropos.

At 82, you’re lead, and it goes downhill from there.

The day I was born is simply a blatant reminder on the calendar of life that I am aging, like it or not, and I will continue to wrinkle despite the copious amounts of sunscreen I slather on my readily reactive Scandinavian skin. 

But I have good news to counter all these banal revelations. 

This year is an anomaly of all anomalies, and I imagine that hourglass got turned upside down, if only temporarily. For one, my daughter Julie and her husband Nic have flown the coup. They are traveling in Italy for several weeks (17 days to be exact, not that I’m counting) to celebrate their 10th anniversary. We’re in charge of their three foundlings while they are away. 

My daughter Kelley, who lives in New York with her husband Tim, has come into town to salvage the precarious situation of parentless children, although solo as Tim is covering the Eastern Conference Finals. Which is a hoot because our friends keep sending us screenshots of Tim Bontemps live, apparently, he’s everywhere.

My son Dante is working locally this week which only happens a few times a year, so we are gifted with his presence every night. And my other son Tony, who lives in Portugal, is going to be in the United States for six weeks (without Thalita, but she’ll be here soon) to attend a program/course in San Mateo for entrepreneurs. 

All of this is occurring simultaneously as Larry, and I continue to combat a severe case of jet lag and vacation slideitus (the need to show two hundred and fifty vacation slides to every person who innocently comes into contact with us). And from a quick AI search, there is no cure. 

The first to succumb to a case of vacation slideitus was poor Dante. He was the only one home, forced into close proximity with parents that missed him fiercely. At the conclusion of a lovely dinner, he was promptly corralled into the living room and ruthlessly presented with an endless array of slides and detailed DESCRIPTIONS of our trip to Japan. 

All I can say is Dante never wants to see another shrine as long as he lives. 

The very next evening, while everyone else was avoiding us, we gathered our equipment and walked over to our unsuspecting neighbors, Jim and Sue, who graciously let us through the door. We led with a nice bottle of GiaDomella Zinfindal. After imbibing a few glasses of wine, Larry said, “Hey, we have a few pictures of our trip if you’re interested.”

Sue (bless her heart) says, “Sure, we love to see your vacation pictures.” Trust me, she will never utter those words again.

Larry gets all set up, we start with the horrendous tale of packing up our bike and a well-rehearsed monologue on the flight snafus. By the time we got to the palaces of Kyoto, they were fast asleep.  We tip-toed out of the house with our equipment after covering their slumbering bodies with a blanket. No need to wake them up! It’s well after midnight.

In the meantime, single-handedly, Kelley is trying to help me combat the aging process. One day she cleared all the obstacles from the living room, threw a couple of mats on the floor, and instructed me to sit Indian style facing the large screen television. She has signed into her Pelaton app, a secret source of anti-aging programs and tortuous tutorials. 

They call this one yoga. 

This is the practice where you bend and stretch, twist up as if a pretzel, and then hold a plank (which is right up there with waterboarding) for as long as you can stand it. But! At the end of the session, you get to lay on your back, close your eyes, cover yourself with a warm blanket and rest while listening to elevator music. 

It’s divine. 

She set me up on a thirty-day program, and my stomach muscles are so sore I can barely laugh. If you were to interrogate me, I would readilly admit I don’t look a day younger, but I’ll let you know if anything changes after the prescribed sentence.

As my birthday is banging on the front door, so is my son Tony, who flew in a few days early so that he would be with me on my birthday. I know, tissues, please. He just endured a ten-hour flight from Lisbon to San Francisco. I really don’t care if he’s jet-lagged. He’s mine for the rest of the night and a good part of the weekend. 

I’ve already done the food shopping for three days. I have refreshed his linens, placed a new bar of soap in his shower, and I’ll admit to spraying his pillows with a little lavender so he sleeps well. 

After dressing the patio table with a bright Italian cloth, we gather around the small table (I’ve yet to convince Larry of the need for a larger one) to celebrate the birthday girl woman and Tony’s homecoming. The patio happens to be the most used space on the property, but it gets the least amount of attention. I plan to rectify that by summer’s end. 

Larry thoughtfully bought a bottle of champagne for a toast which went gloriously with the fresh shrimp appetizer. 

I know what you’re thinking. How long before Larry brings out the slides?

But we were having so much fun that we lingered around the small table long after the food was consumed and caught up on each other’s lives in and around the dripping grandchildren who wanted us to join them on the slip-and-slide. Eventually, I shepherd them all into the tub (the children, not the adults) like an old English sheepdog, allowing for massive amounts of bubbles before washing three heads of hair and three adorable bodies. 

I hand them off to Kelley at the end of the night. She’s living across the street so the kids can sleep in their own beds and keep their regular routines. Which means our sleep continues uninterrupted.

We only have Tony for a few days, the program he’s enrolled in is intense, and he’ll be off the grid for a week. There are field trips to San Francisco, camping trips in the wilderness, and a lot of networking, from what I’ve gathered. It’s hard to have him so close and not be able to see him, but we have three distractions that are keeping us pretty occupied. 

If I’ve learned anything these last few weeks, it’s that every day is truly a gift, although some are packaged better than others, each one is unique and comes with its own revelations and surprises. 

We’ve had a couple of missteps during our tenure with the grandkids. The tooth fairy was a day late when Cora lost her front tooth, Sienna’s is hanging on by a thread, I’m worried it’ll fall out in her sleep, and she’ll swallow it. Then Kelley tied Cora’s other loose tooth to a string of dental floss, tied it to the door, and shut it. There was blood but the tooth remained attached. Total fail. Then we missed the twins’ soccer banquet, lunches got put in the wrong backpacks one morning (in my defense, I did not have my full cup of coffee), and we forgot a few important permission slips. 

The days are passing quickly, Julie and Nic will be home soon, Tony has started his program, Dante is back on the job site, and our exclusive time with Kelley and the grandkids is coming to an end. 

Birthdays remind us to cherish all those grains of sand because time passes through the hourglass so quickly, and it can not be retrieved by standing on my head, doing hours of yoga, or slathering on sunscreen. 

What is the greatest gift this life can bring?

I’ve discovered that time is pooling in our memories, contained in the core of our most profound relationships, and its purpose is simply to allow us to love from the day we are born. 

Happy birthday 63…

I’m Living in the Gap, aging swiftly, I’d love to hear what’s pooling in your memories.

Grow Damn It is available at Amazon. If you want to give me a birthday surprise ~ write a review! It gives me something to read after the kids go to bed.

There are signed copies at Books Inc. in the Pruneyard. Only one left!

Black Rose Writing will sell you a copy, no questions asked.

And Barnes and Nobel have copies on hand for those of you trying to put Jeff out of business!

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