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Nothing like a family funeral to sow salt powder into the clouds. Everyone does their duty--puts on their funeral clothes and somber faces, fills their pockets with clichés: "I am sorry for your loss,” or “They’re in a better place.” Duties are done, flowers are ordered, donations are made but old hurts are awakened and they simmer as they keep the phone lines open: “Do you remember when…” As I near the peak of life expectancy, I can’t believe this is still going on--even in me and my own extended family. It seems to me that, by now, we are all older and should have some life experience and perspective. We’ve all been through stuff. Hard stuff. When we hope for understanding and acceptance, why is it so hard to give? Looking back, maybe that aunt wasn’t rude; maybe she was just painfully shy to the point of avoidance. Maybe an aunt literally shopped ‘til she dropped to keep memories of a savage beating in a public square at bay. Maybe the cousin who couldn’t hold a job wasn’t just a loser. Maybe he was a kid overwhelmed on the inside by a frantic level of anxiety and ADHD as he tried to negotiate life in a family so busy that they invented the word frenzied. Maybe the jovial aunt WAS funny, but she was also cruel and hot-tempered at times--and maybe a bit too often. Maybe the uncle with the bad temper wasn’t mad at the world. Maybe he was stuck in a grief that had overwhelmed him since childhood. Maybe a cousin wasn’t just an addict, maybe he drank to medicate horrific memories of losses that time would not heal. On earth, we are all flawed humans. Maybe we invented the idea of heaven because we all desire to be better, perfect even, and we know we just can’t do it on our own. The promise of the after-life is that we will be made perfect, but what is this perfection that gives us hope? Do we expect all of the manufacturing flaws that burdened us on earth to be erased? I wonder about that version of heaven and of God. Maybe heaven is heavenly because we surrender our defenses at the gate. Once inside, we won’t need them anymore because, just maybe, in heaven, the streets are not lined with gold, but our hearts are lined with mercy, mercy for ourselves and for each other. When I was a freshman in high school, I had to memorize “The Quality of Mercy” from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The words come back to me now: The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. Tis the mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown… It is an attribute to God himself. At this personal moment and in these stormy times, we could us a gentle rain…Lord, have mercy.
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She’s my little deuce coupe. You don’t know what I’ve got. – The Beach Boys
My old car shakes and rattles as it rolls. Despite good maintenance, I cannot undo the damage done by that exhausting passenger Time. For the many practical and financial reasons we all know, I dread the day a mechanic says, “She’s gone. There was nothing more we could do to save her.” As my old coupe edges closer to the graveyard, I feel a swell of fondness for her. This anticipatory grief leads me to wonder: when do things, people, places, and experiences cease to be new? What is the turning point at which they lose their sparkle? When we begin to take them for granted and pursue something else? When we lose enthusiasm for their care and curse the burden maintenance has become? When we buy into all of the advertising that new is always better? At other moments in my life when faced with loss or change, I have thought that if a genie popped out of my teapot and granted me one wish, my wish would be to see things again as for the first time and re-experience the wonder and the delight when those things were new and were mine at last. Today and during this difficult period in which we are living, I am going to do my best to not wait for the genie. I am going to challenge myself to try seeing people, places, things, and experiences again for the first time--before they are gone, before I write the eulogy. If I can’t make them new maybe I can reinvigorate my memories. Today when I get into my old car I will remember the day I drove it off the new car lot. I will picture all of the adventures in between that day and this: college visits with my children, filling the car with Christmas trees and Christmas presents, a million trips to the grocery store, friends who filled the passenger seats, trips across the country where I made new friends, listening to NPR and singing along to classic Motown CDs. I will bless the old coupe for the thousands of safe rides here and there and back home again. At 69, my own weary frame now rattles, weary from the miles I’ve traveled, from the bumps in the road and the shocks absorbed. To remember and to treat ourselves, our things, our places, our work, our people as though they were new is to experience and to express the deepest form of gratitude and to spare ourselves regret. I guess the miles and the people and the experiences are woven into the fabric of me. Maybe I don’t want to untie all of those threads and start over with everything new. Can we really make things “good as new” when time has already made them better? Back to the shoes…
Now that my fingers do most of the walking, my feet are having a word. That word is “No!” My feet have gotten louder and more opinionated as I age--nothing like six-plus decades of weight-bearing to embolden sagging arches. Now, my feet stage a daily coup against cramped, harsh quarters. They don’t want to be cute or trendy they say. They demand their right to be comfortable. So, I traded in my heels, pointed-toe flats, and trendy boots for new athletic shoes. The moment I tried them on, the ecstasy was X-rated. The salesperson had to lower the blinds and close the store to other customers. I was born again! Comfort, bounce, and lift are the holy trinity of my new religion. And just when I thought it couldn’t get better, along came slip-on athletic shoes! I didn’t even know that was possible. Lives have been changed. Someone deserves the Nobel Prize in Physics for this quantum leap in footwear. Let’s face it; we’ve got enough other reasons to be tied in knots. We don’t need our shoes resisting us too. I would call my new shoes a big bang for the buck--expensive but worth the dough. When I put on my new athletic shoes, the universe expands. No longer am I a body at rest. I eagerly defy gravity by getting up from the couch. My spreading mass is exchanged for energy proving the theory of relativity and that I am much smarter when my feet don’t hurt. Who knows, there just might be a little Einstein in each of us. Get the shoes and see for yourselves. A prisoner of winter and freezing temperatures, I take to cleaning out the closets for physical activity. Every time I engage in this effort, I ask myself, “Why am I still holding onto this stuff?” Then I toss out .01% and congratulate myself. Despite the thousands of times I have been through this effort, I manage to convince myself that what I am discarding is “enough for now.” I tell myself that I might “need” the remaining stuff “someday.” The fact that I am 68 years old is leaving me with less and less “somedays,” but I ignore the math, and then I congratulate myself on being an optimist, a personality trait for which no one who knows me ever gives me enough credit. In my wardrobe closet there is a row of shoes that I haven’t worn in years. I need a carbon dating system to recall the years of purchase. There are some jeans in there that I purchased in 2010 and haven’t worn much since. For some reason, I keep these items “just in case.” In case of what I wonder as I stare them down for the millionth time. Maybe in case the daily news isn’t torture enough. Working people seem to love their blue jeans. They can’t wait for a jeans day at work. Jeans symbolize down time, me time, free time. Somehow wearing jeans to work can make work seem like, well, not work, like folks chose to come in and hang out on their own time. A Friday jeans day and you’ve got a long weekend. Not me. I’ve never had that kind of relationship with jeans. Somehow they never seem to feel quite right despite so many style options. And when I say “quite right,” I mean wearable. And does anyone just slip into a pair of jeans anymore? Seems more like a wrestling match thanks to both style and spandex. I guess my mother’s critique of clothes worn too tight stuck with me: “Those clothes look painted on” or “they look like a stuffed sausage in that outfit.” Thankfully, my mother did not live to see jeggings. It would have killed her or caused her to go blind. Allegedly, jeans “go with everything.” You can pair them with high heels or strappy sandals, blazers and silk blouses, expensive jewelry. Maybe. If you are the size of a Barbie doll. But my Barbie never wore jeans, and I always loved her. And my other idol, Nancy Drew was never described as wearing jeans. Instead, she slipped into a speedy roadster for a life of adventure. Take that Levi! Perhaps I just didn’t get the gene for jeans. I didn’t get the gene for high fashion either. Karl Lagerfeld, the famous fashion icon, said “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life, so you bought some sweatpants.” It hurts to admit it, but yes, that’s me. I guess I just gave up too soon—sometime in childhood I must have thought haute couture was the French pastry responsible for making jeans too tight. If I am ever convicted of a crime, I won’t need prison. Put me in a pair of jeans and call it solitary confinement. I won’t be able to move, eat, or breathe. In addition, I will have the mental torture of thinking of nothing more than how miserable I am. The authorities won’t have to worry about me causing a prison brawl. All I will be able to do is roll with the punches. Maybe the Geneva Convention prohibits prisoners from wearing jeans and that’s why they get the comfy orange jumpsuits. The only thing I can say in favor of jeans is that the holes, shredded fabric, and faded spots do hide a lot of laundry failures and mistakes, but that’s not me either. I am a pro at laundry. It has been my life’s work. Thank you very much. And yet, here I am, standing in the closet holding onto the jeans just in case “someday” I am an undefeated, tall, thin, high-fashion model. It could happen… I save the shoes for another day. Through the centuries, we faced down death by daring to hope. – Maya Angelou In 2012 Brene Brown published the book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way we Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. The subject of this work is vulnerability, and Brown took her inspiration from a quote by President Theodore Roosevelt: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. Brown’s book has been wildly popular as are her TED Talks, but there is another example, an earlier one that stands out in my memory and one that has been updated more recently. Back in the 1990s, Robert Reich served as the Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. Reich stepped down from the post in 1996, and I recall reading the reason for his decision in a Parade Magazine tucked inside my Sunday newspaper. The gist of the story was this: Reich had two teenage sons, and he wanted to spend more time with them. He said something like this: “Teenage boys are like oysters. They only open up once in a while. When they do, you have to be there to see the pearl.” I’ve never forgotten that wisdom, and back in the 1990s, it would have been a big deal for a man to step out of the suite of power for the sake of his children. Reich has remained active in his field and currently hosts a podcast. Sometime ago, he was interviewed and spoke about his time as Secretary of Labor. One of his statements that again grabbed me was that he wished he had done more when he had the power of his position. He said that, at that time, he did as much as he dared. He now has some regret that, perhaps, he did not dare greatly. We are entering an unprecedented time in American history. Each day the news of the upcoming administration’s plans, appointments, relationships, and rhetoric increases my alarm. I have never felt more vulnerable. I fear we may be on the cusp of an American holocaust manufactured and aided by the hate-proliferating algorithms of social media. While many have analyzed the outcome of the presidential election and criticized Kamala Harris’s and the Democrat’s messaging, the truth is that hope, optimism, and reason do not get the same traction on social media that hate and conspiracy theories do. These sites are built to manipulate the users in order to increase engagement. This is well documented, and Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans know this and mine it like gold. They are master manipulators themselves. Today the headlines shout that Meta will no longer being doing fact-checking because Trump and the MAGA Republicans consider fact-checking an attack on free speech. Honesty is not their brand. Relentless lying and hate are. A vocal, angry, hate-filled minority now influence all decisions that disrupt the common good. We are losing our minds, civility, and our country for the sake of selling ads on social media. I never intended for this blog to become a political one. I realize now that from the moment we draw our first breaths, air quality becomes an issue. We become political. Now, with the stakes so high, I fear for the future of my children and yours. I see now that the gift of older age is daring. There is little time left and much less to lose, and so I commit now to daring greatly in the days, weeks, months, and, if God provides, the years to come. Individually, we do not have the power of a single oligarch. But collectively, we do. They made their fortunes from us, and we can each do something toward the greater good. We have choices to make. Posting on X is a choice. What to post is a choice. Reading the Washington Post is a choice. Buying from Amazon is a choice. Commenting on Facebook is a choice. How to comment and what to share are choices. Giving away our healthy minds and mental health to participate in conspiracy theories to sell ads is a choice. Words have power--some words more than others. Hateful words and distorted facts grab us and the social media oligarchs know this. Our brains are tuned to discrepancies and resentment—turning those thoughts over and over again in our minds, we try to make sense of them and we become increasingly emotional and less rational in the process. But we can all choose and use our words more carefully. We must find a way to be heard without being hate-filled. “What about the other guy” provides neither an excuse nor an explanation. Pointing out someone else’s faults and bad behavior is a way of getting away with murder and creating helplessness. We must stay focused on the actions, words, and behaviors that are troublesome. And we must dare to speak out, to write letters, to send emails. The 85% of thoughtful, informed Americans who care about issues must find a voice to speak over the vocal 15% influencing public discourse and decisions. It is exhausting, I know. But it is necessary. My constant mental companions and advisors are the voices of the actual Holocaust survivors I have known. The measure of daring will be unique to each of us and to our circumstances, but every day we have an opportunity to, in some way, elevate and transform the world we live in. Please join me in the arena in the days to come. I double dog dare you. I am taking a break from the pall following the national election to consider something more uplifting. I have begun to notice a proliferation of storefronts, signs, and electronic billboards in my urban neighborhood. It would seem that day spas and cosmetic treatment clinics are more popular now than the fast food chain Wendy’s, and popping up faster than my age spots. When I was young I never really believed that the changes of aging would happen to me, and so I took a definite stand on face lifts—I would never get one. Since the early days of face lifts, a long menu of other cosmetic treatments have steadily appeared even as my firm youth has turned to Jell-O. No longer as committed to accepting my flaccid fate, I study the menus that promise to change my appearance, smooth out my wrinkles, reshape my features, lift my sagging skin, make me more comfortable with my appearance, and boost my self-esteem. Yes! Give me some of that Kool-Aid. The fast food list consists of Botox injections, chemical peels, hair removal, laser skin resurfacing, and non-surgical fat reduction. The ads promise to get me “in and out.” The gourmet cuisine which takes more time to prepare and involves slicing and dicing includes liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery, tummy tucks, and breast lifts. It sounds a little harsh if not downright scary. An image comes to my mind of road workers resurfacing the highway with deafening heavy equipment. Ouch! Since I try to avoid unnecessary medical interventions and pain, in general, I ask myself, what got me into this flabby, furry state? Maybe if I change my behavior, I can spare myself additional lines, wrinkles, and pesky chin hairs and save a few bucks. So I study the ingredients: too much frowning, squinting, and raising my eyebrows. Even laughter is a culprit. According to the literature, all of these facial expressions have furrowed and folded my skin giving me frown lines, laugh lines, and crow’s feet. My skin is dull from cellular changes, reduced collagen, and free radicals. What to do? My jeans did fit better before my butt cheeks began to slap the backs of my knees, and my shoes did fit better before my thighs drifted downward into my socks. Perhaps enormous lips and three inch eyelashes would distract from these lower regions and boost my glamour profile. Sleep has been hard to come by this week, a week that added greatly to my sagging and dulling, furrowing and eyebrow raising. I don’t think I want to lose too much more sleep over this decision. In the end, I have to consider the times in which I am living. A furrowed brow and free radicals may be my only form of resistance. Let my dull, hairy chin sag! Someday, I will laugh again, too.  Outside my window the streetlamp flickers. In rapid-fire succession, it turns on and off, on and off, on and off, unable to commit in a David-and-Goliath match-up with the sun. Though subdued, the waning sun mocks the timid streetlamp daring it to take a stand. The sun has a hard time letting go on a summer’s evening, and so do I. As that giant spotlight dims and the soft aisle lights come on, I linger in the empty theater of the day, the music still playing in my ears. If I dawdle, will there be an encore? As I embrace the peace and the quiet, my mind slowly releases the echoes of the day. For that brief time just before total darkness, I live in the fairy tale world of twilight, a world that gives birth to imagination and sets the stage for dreams. What I most love about a late summer evening is the way it melts into a puddle of sleepy darkness for small, sweaty children exhausted from outdoor play, children who, like the sun, are unable to give up on the day, unwilling to go to bed. Each evening in my twilight zone, I remember the bath times and the bubbles that washed away the sooty remnants of the day and the stretchy, footed pajamas that became the uniform of the night. I relive the hours spent in an old wooden chair, its hypnotic rocking motion closing resistant but tired eyes. I see the tiny mouths quivering, each gentle breath a kiss blown to the departing day. And the scent! Oh, that exquisite, unforgettable scent of a sleeping child! Surely, it is a perfume called Enchantment. In my quiet, empty theater of today, I wonder: where did all of those yesterdays go? They were spent so quickly. Now, in the twilight of my life, those yesterdays return to me in the twilight of the day. Surely, twilight is nature’s master class on letting go. Outside my window the fireflies rejoice as they come out to dance upon the late evening air. The emerging stars wink back. And without a fight, they put the sun to bed. |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
June 2025
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