Yesterday it was sunny and cold when they decided to clean out the garage. I'd been napping, so the first I realized that was happening was when my granddaughters excitedly brought some aged Christmas ornaments inside to hang on the tree.
They looked vaguely familiar; then I recognized them from my own Christmases past.
When I made it stiffly outside to the scene, I found a large pile of my old possessions strewn all over the driveway, being picked over by several darling neighbor kids. There was that very old Christmas stocking with my name on it. There were more ornaments, some reduced to broken shards. There were toys, baseball cards, letters, utensils, books, fishing tackle, bottles of seagrass -- items that once had been my treasures but now were mere curiosities taking up too much room.
Once the kids realized that these items had been mine, back when they had meaning, they asked me whether I wanted to save them or throw them away. I peered at the mess and grabbed a few things for posterity's sake, or whatever. Then I left the rest for the garbage collectors and turned away.
When I had turned several of the items over in my hands, memories came flooding back of former times when these things were special. This one, when it arrived from a relative in the mail, or that one when it was clumsily created by a child long since grown up. Those chipped white porcelain angels that had belonged to my aunts who passed away decades ago.
They were remnants of a very different life than what I have now. This year, I don't have my own address or a wreath on the door or a closet for keepsakes or a Christmas tree and certainly no need for my own ornaments. Or much of anything, actually. That all belongs to my past life; the one that nearly ended in 2019.
That was then, now is now.
I didn't feel sad exactly. There was a measure of relief to see these things one last time before they disappeared into a landfill. Maybe someday an archeologist will ponder who "David A. Weir" was. That was the name inscribed inside some of the books that no longer reside nearby.
***
You know, friends, I assume there are four stages to life: Youth (<20), Young Adult (20s-30s), Middle Age (40s-50s) and Old Age (>60).
These are physical stages we're all familiar with.
That said, a person's emotional & mental age may not track according to the same calendar, because they depend on the environments we find ourselves in. When I'm flirting with somebody (yes that still happens, though subtly), I'm likely to explain that emotionally I'm only about eleven.
But since I'm technically in Stage Four, and yesterday was most definitely one of those Stage Four days, you'd think my overall outlook and feelings would strictly be those of an old person. But my main peer group these days is made up of Stage One people. No one influencing me day-to-day has white hair, walks with a cane, or can remember what the line "lost in the fifties tonight" might mean. No one but me can't hear out of their left ear.
Nope, my peers are much more into jumping on the trampoline, playing video games, finishing their school assignments as quickly as possible, dreaming about the Easter Bunny, and fantasizing about what outer space is like.
Only when I glance in a mirror, which happens inadvertently now and again, do I ask, "Who is that old guy?" Where did he get those lines, that scar? That frown?
That guilty look in his eyes that he is living on borrowed time?
One thing you can't resist doing once you've recovered from a stroke, a heart attack or cancer is to check out with Google your newly adjusted life expectancy. (If you haven't done this, listen to me, please don't.) The search results are inevitably sobering, and suggest you ought to be getting your affairs in order rather quickly.
Having lived in an assisted living facility, where the inmates were all old and nice and the staff were all young and even nicer, it was all too easy while there for me to imagine that the only direction left in life was the street sign heading that way. You know, a black-and-white arrow tilted downward.
But hanging around energetic young kids has the opposite effect -- maybe you can't do what they can do, exactly, but why not go along for the ride?
Anyway, there are moments that I feel I hear more wisdom from children than older folks, as they navigate a world that remains largely mysterious to them, one that only reveals its workings in spurts and stops. Yesterday, for example, I learned you can actually tell the age of an apple by how many times you have to twist the stem before it comes off.
Trust me: You'd never learn that in an old folks' home.
***
Here's the news:
* Analysis: The Impact of SolarWinds Hack -- Data Breach Today Podcast (ISMG) This report suggests the latest data breach may be the worst ever. (Thanks to Jack Brodbeck).
* The hopes of millions of Britons that Covid-19 restrictions would be eased over Christmas were dashed on Saturday, after scientists warned a new strain of the virus is spreading more quickly than others. (CNN)
* Trump Claims Credit for Vaccines. Some of His Backers Don’t Want to Take Them. -- A deep distrust of the government is fueling vaccine hesitancy among Republicans, who are more likely than Democrats to resist being inoculated against Covid-19. (NYT)
* Schools, caught by pandemic and confronting systemic racism, jettison testing for admissions (WashPo)
* Google rolls out free, weekly at-home COVID-19 testing for all U.S. employees (Reuters)
* Trump convened a heated meeting in the Oval Office, including lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter said, describing a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump's aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn's more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election. Flynn had suggested earlier this week that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election that he lost to President-elect Biden -- an idea that arose again during the meeting in the Oval Office, one of the people said. It wasn't clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully pushed back and shot it down. (CNN)
* Trump’s Future: Tons of Cash and Plenty of Options for Spending It -- When President Trump departs the White House, he will have a huge pile of cash to fuel his future ambitions. He can hold rallies, hire staff and even lay groundwork for a potential 2024 run. (NYT)
* Trump administration and Biden team at odds about presidential transition in the Pentagon (WashPo)
* Newly Released COVID-19 Data Show Most U.S. Cities Are 'Sustained Hotspots' (NPR)
* College freshmen question the value of a first year turned upside down by pandemic (WashPo)
* ‘A Social Species’: How Kangaroos Communicate With People -- Researchers say that kangaroos are the first wild animals to exhibit interspecies communication that is more commonly seen in animals that have evolved alongside humans. (NYT)
* The leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, said he participated in the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner that had been ripped from the facade of a historic Black church during unrest in downtown Washington following a rally earlier this month for President Donald Trump. (NewsTimes)
* Even as Trump remains defiant, his aides are quietly starting to move on (WashPo)
* As holiday shopping season wraps up, U.S. equity investors are gauging whether long-languishing shares of brick-and-mortar retailers can sustain their recent rebound in anticipation of a full economic reopening in 2021. (Reuters)
* "How did Santa get the vaccine, and is it safe for him to go in the house?" 8-year-old Lucy, of San Rafael, asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, who answered, "I took a trip up there to the North Pole, I went there, and I vaccinated Santa Claus myself." (KQED)
***
LOST IN THE FIFTIES TONIGHT
Call on the memories here in the dark
We'll let the magic take us away
Back to the feeling we shared when they'd play
Hold me tight, oh, shoo-doop, shoo-be doshoo-doop,
Shoo-be doo be do, shoo-doop
Shoo-doop, doo; so real, so right
Lost in the fifties tonight
Love's all that matters while the past is alive
Now and for always, till time disappears
We'll hold each other whenever we hear
Hold me tight, ooh, shoo-doop, shoo-be do-be do
Shoo-doop, shoo-be doo be do, shoo-doop
Shoo-doop, doo; so real so right
Lost in the fifties tonight
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