Falalala Lalalala

 

A couple of weekends ago, Joe and I, along with our friend Janice, attended a Christmas concert performed by the Marietta Pops Orchestra, held at Marietta First Baptist Church.  

 

 Joe and I had moved to Marietta, a former small town and current suburb of Atlanta, from real Atlanta over a year ago, but, because of the pandemic, we couldn't get a good feel for all that Marietta has to offer.  Plus, we were a little snobby.  The bad thing about living in Atlanta is, duh, the traffic, but the good thing is access to fine dining and the arts.   

So, when we arrived, in the rain, at Marietta First Baptist Church that evening, our expectations weren’t particularly high.  We figured the church would be just as beautiful inside as it is outside, and it was.  But the Marietta Pops Orchestra? Really? How could they hold a candle to the Atlanta Symphony? 

  

But, Oh Holy Night!, they were amazing.  I don’t know enough musical jargon to adequately describe what we experienced but those folks could play.  There were regular violins and those big violin-looking things that sit on the floor.   And horns!  French ones and trombone ones and those little piccolo ones.   There was even a guy with a triangle. I'm telling you, that Baptist front altar area was full of people who knew what they were doing, and we felt lucky to be there. 

 

However,  this post isn’t really about how great the Marietta Pops Orchestra is.  It’s about how much Joe loves Christmas music and what a bad singer he is.  

Although Joe and I had known each other for over twenty years when we met up again, there were still many things we didn’t know about each other.  We started dating in the Spring, so we had quite a bit of time to reconnect as Spring turned to Summer and Summer turned to Fall, and thoughts of Winter and Christmas began dancing in our heads.

  

But I quickly found out that, for Joe, the Christmas season comes musically sometime in early November when he cranks up his car Spotify app with the likes of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer and Bob Dylan’s Christmas album.  Let me be clear.  Early November, not after Thanksgiving November.  

That first early November, before I knew what hit me, The Carol of the Bells was playing on Joe’s car radio when he arrived to pick me up.  Not only that.  He was singing along. I think.  

 

I’m not sure what Joe does can be described as singing.  I would call him a one-note wonder, but doing so would be way, way too generous.  That’s because Joe’s one note isn’t a note at all.  It’s some mysterious guttural sound that one might make if one were perhaps digging a deep ditch in inhospitable soil. 

 

Poor Rudolph, poor Santa, poor Frosty, poor sweet Baby Jesus, the man has no pity. He’s an equal opportunity carol abuser. There is one notable exception, however.  Joe’s a master “rum-a-pum-pum"-er when enjoying The Little Drummer Boy.  He even gives it a flourish, a rolling of the “r” in “rum”. 

But, back to that recent Saturday, you can imagine how thrilled Joe was when, right there on our performance program, he observed that a section of the presentation would be a sing-along.

 

All I could hope for, on that bleak early Winter’s Night, was for God to rest my merry gentleman so we could all have a silent night. 

 

Which we did, as the Marietta Pops Orchestra completed its superb performance to a standing ovation, and we drove home, quietly enjoying the Christmas lights around the Square. 

I Have No Words

 

Well, maybe not no words.  I have plenty of words.  I just can’t always find them. 

Joe will tell you that a lack of words is not a problem for me, since I seldom stop talking.  But what I mean is certain words at certain times.  For example, I'll have a word I want to say; I can actually see the word, but before I can get it out of my mouth, it flutters away, and I’m left bereft and abandoned without it - at least for a while. 

When I talk to friends my age, I realize I’m not alone with this problem, although I have other friends who don’t suffer from this at all, enough to make me fear that my synapses have over-snapped themselves. 

In most cases, nouns are the problem. I do OK with verbs and adjectives and adverbs and gerunds and participles and past participles and oxymorons and, most notably,onomatopoeia.  Why nouns?  Nouns you can see in many cases, so it seems they would be easier to recall.  However, for me, it’s not the meaning; it’s the sound, the articulation of the word.  For example, just recently I was talking to friends, and I was trying to tell them that I had just purchased a poinsettia at Publix.  Exciting repartee, I know. As soon as I got close to saying poinsettia, it just flew away like a pigeon with a day-old french fry.  Hydrangea perched instead, as did portulaca, dahlia, daffodil, and daisy.  But, being Christmas time, I knew that the missing flower name was none of those.  When my friends kindly helped me out, we moved on. 

Nowadays, I can’t take part in any conversation having to do with Hollywood or popular culture.  If I do, it goes something like this: “Remember what’s her name who used to be married to what's his name, but she’s married now to what’s his name and she’s in that new movie what’s its name?” 

All I can say is thank goodness for Google.  What on earth did old people do before Google? 

My worries about my problem are exacerbated by the test I am now am required to take as part of my annual physical checkup.  The test consists of having to remember three items, and then drawing an analog clock with its hands pointing to a specific time.  Being a former second-grade teacher, I am all over that clock even though analog clocks haven’t been used by anyone younger than 45 since the turn of the millennium.  It’s the three items that cause me to lose sleep the night before my check-up.  The first time I was given the test, I wasn’t expecting it, and I could only remember two of the words.  When I later told Joe, who was having his physical at the same time in a room down the hall, he said he made a perfect score.  I found that hard to believe so I asked him his secret.  He told me he wrote the three items down on the sheet of paper they gave him to draw the clock.  When I guffawed and accused Joe of cheating, he maintained that no one told him he couldn’t write the items on the paper, so it was okay and, in fact, indicated good problem-solving skills. 

I now use my own trick to outsmart my doctor.  I envision myself immersed with the three items.  This last time, I saw myself eating a banana while sitting in a chair while looking at the moon.  So far, that has worked, but I hope they don’t change the test next year.  In addition, it would help if they would give me the banana and the chair and the moon again. 

Of course, we all know that, as we age, we have burdens.  For some of us, it's arthritis or cholesterol or diabetes or hearing or vision or other physical problems.  But for most of us, it’s the thought of dementia that scares us most. As we look for signs, we stay vigilant and do what we can to hold it off. We take medications we purchase from the internet; we complete our crossword puzzles, we sign up for classes at our community college, we volunteer, we exercise, and we eat our fruits and vegetables. We do what we can to shore up our bodies stimulate our minds.  

And, in my case, I guess I start my blog back up. 

 

 

 

Skipping at the Hanks’

 

 

 

My husband, Joe has known Tom and Linda Hanks for a long time.  They grew up in the same town in upstate New York, which is a very cold place.  Meanwhile, I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, which is a very warm place. The good news is that Joe and Tom and Linda had enough sense to move South, which made it easier for me to meet them.  

 

When Joe and I started dating, the Hanks became our first couple friends. And it’s now been close to ten years that we’ve remained friends despite our political differences, and the fact that Tom and Linda have much better taste in decor, attire, and especially cuisine as Linda is an excellent Italian chef, and I failed brownies as an ill-fated Home Economics major in college.

 

We’ve had some great times with the Hanks, but recently some tough ones, as most likely everyone else has.  I’ve had four eye surgeries and now contend with three pairs of spectacles and light-up magnifying glasses. Joe’s had shoulder surgery and a second knee replacement. 

  

But that's nothing compared to Linda’s almost lethal bout with appendicitis, and Toms near-death experience after being hit by a car while riding his bike, and the loss of their beloved dogs within just a few months of each other. 

And then, of course, there was (and is) the pandemic.  Although we fared better than many, like most people, we spent our days and nights afraid to go anywhere or to see anybody, or to cough in public, or God forbid, to sneeze behind our masks. But just recently, we poked our heads out of our long hibernation and took a risk.  Not a huge risk as each of us is triply inoculated, but still a risk. 

We went to the Hanks' for dinner, something we often did before the operations, before the near-death experiences, before the losses, before the thing that changed everything. 

We had such a lovely time.  We dined at their beautiful table, enjoyed Linda’s delicious cuisine and their well-paired wine, and laughed at Tom’s outrageous opining.   

And we skipped. 

What? 

  

Skipping like what you do to “my Lou”?   

Is skipping a new cure for Covid or a side effect of too much Moderna? 

The skipping happened because of something I noticed during one of the about a thousand football games Joe and I have watched this season. I noticed that players who score seem to skip a few steps in celebration, perhaps now that they can’t be over the top like in the good old days.  Just a couple of skip steps instead of a hearty throw down.  

 

That led me to thinking about the last time I skipped, which had to have been over 50 years ago.  Joe didn’t have to think about it because he maintained that he had never skipped.  During a commercial break, I tried skipping, and to my great sadness, I realized that I couldn’t.  My old legs and my old arms just didn’t have enough giddy-up.  I tried with my arms up, I tried with my arms down.  With a lotta jump and just a little.  Nothing worked.  Joe even tried, but, sadly, to no avail.  We decided to let it go.  We had to for our emotional health. 

But at the Hanks’, after dining on the delicious fare and drinking the exquisite wine, we tried again, as did the Hanks, all four of us gathered in their beautifully appointed foyer on their most-likely hand-dyed, hand-tied rug.  

Linda was the only one who actually managed a good skip.  I did a bit of hopping in place; Joe galloped; and we aren't quite sure what Tom did. 

But the moment was sublime.  We tittered.  We guffawed.  We laughed until we cried. 

It felt so good. We felt alive again, carousing in the foyer, spending time with good friends, feeling better about the future.  Looking forward to more fun, more trying new (and old) things. 

More life.