April 1, 2011--Snowbirding: Beach Walk
It isn’t easy not thinking about illness, dying, and death living close to a mother, who, though she is in remarkable condition, is nearly 103; where we are surrounded by aging relatives and friends in various forms of medical purgatory; and where nearly every shopping plaza includes a place to have cataract’s removed and a convenient place to schedule an MRI exam.
Local TV channels run endless ads for retirement communities, assisted-living facilities, and “final resting places.” In regard to the latter, there is Boca Raton’s Gardens Memorial Park where the tag line is “Dedicated to all those who have lived, and all those who live today. What a clever use of verb tenses it seems to me.
Someone told me recently that she is arranging to have her ashes kept there because it’s a nice place for people to visit since they have meditation rooms, periodic musical presentations, and poetry readings. Also, she was excited to share, they are known for their “Transitional Care.” When I looked at their Website, out of curiosity and, in truth, since we were thinking about visiting the place because we do not as yet have our own final resting places, I discovered that this is the Garden’s version of a pre-planned, pre-paid funeral. A transition for those of us who are living to those of us (all of us) who (eventually) will have lived.
There are everywhere the obvious reminders of time passing and where we are all headed, in stages, from early-bird dinners at the Chinese restaurant to the beckoning ophthalmological surgeon’s office in the same shopping plaza, to the MRI lab, and after that to the assisted living place just west of here. While all the while we live with the knowledge that we have a final reservation for two at the Gardens.
As time passes, time itself loses its quotidian meaning. Having lived for so many years by a daily calendar of appointments and meetings, not needing to pay attention or even notice the differences between morning and afternoon has its liberating attractiveness. But it can also mean feeling dislocated in time, with time being of little consequence or having value, where nothing seems to accrue. Where time is not money but, well, just time.
Even after an aggravating day in the office, after work, over a much-needed drink, one can at least add up or review how one spent one’s time. If a friend asks, “How was your day” you have real answers.
“Well, my morning meeting got us thinking about what we need to do about . . . And I hade a good lunch with ____ who promised that . . . Then, during the afternoon I spoke with ____ in order to . . . .”
When a friend here asks how yesterday went I have difficulty remembering what happened an hour ago. And when I manage to, I tend to mutter and stammer or make apologies for having done seemingly so little. Rarely is there anything to sum up or otherwise quantify. Since we were conditioned for so long by parents asking what we did in school today (though the usual answer was “Nothing”), or how things were in the office (though the usual answer was a list of meetings, phone calls, and emails), it is difficult to switch gears and come up with self-satisfying explanations for watching the changing tides and weather or the virtues of a nap or reading much less justify spending so much time listening to the wind or even music.
Note the “spending” part because some of that conditioning was to place commercial value on time. It may be a rationalization for how much time I now spend, sorry, devote to non-productive, more intrinsic things, but for the moment calling it that--intrinsic--is the best explanation I can come up with.
Further complicating my orientation to time is my disorientation with the days of the week. If it weren’t for the New York Times and its Tuesday science section and its Wednesday food section there would be little to distinguish between the days. Wednesday is not the Hump Day any longer when you don’t have a Monday-Friday, 9-5 kind of reality. And even Friday, which I used to thank God for, has lost its potency.
It further confuses and concerns me that we spend an inordinate amount of time considering the weather. Until recently, I claimed that I would never live in a place where the primary topic for discussion and debate was the weather. How boring, I thought it must be, to pass so much time contemplating it. Doesn’t this reveal the paucity of local stimuli? What, with the drama derived from work and making and spending, what with all the museums and restaurants and theater and concerts of a real city, a real place, who cares about the weather? Even when there is a storm, no problem. The city will make the snow disappear, and even if they can’t, taxis are intrepid regardless of the conditions and the subway in New York, racing blow the streets, makes a mockery of even a blizzard.
So when I catch myself here spending hours in discussions about today’s weather versus yesterday’s—how it is a little warmer, true, perhaps even hot, but isn’t the humidity lower; and what about last year at this time when it was chilly, not cold, and rainy, yet not stormy; that is until the rainy season set in and it was stormy, except that the storminess did not last all day but was more of the squally, tropical kind . . . .
Like the Eskimos who in their native language are said to have dozens of words for snow and snow conditions, or what linguists call lexemes—words for a version of the same thing. In English, for example, non-meteorologically-- trash and garbage qualify. In Inuit they have five lexemes for snow on the ground and two for crust on fallen snow while there are many more for snowflake.
Here, in snowbird country, we have numerous lexemes or ways to describe varieties of rain. We are aficionados of rain, poets of temperature, and connoisseurs of humidity. And before we notice how we live so much of our day, while pondering and pontificating about these nuances, it becomes time for a bite of lunch and soon after that a nap.
About this napping business there are an almost equal number of lexemes, which we fully explore both in the doing and the recounting. From catching some shuteye or forty-winks to catnaping and siestas. We have made a science of this too and, as such, is there a surer sign of approaching mortality than the ways in which we slip almost unnoticed into the intoxicating universe of napping? This capitulation to the art of the mid-afternoon snooze is more a sign, isn’t it, of the beginning of indolent decline than the occasional detached retina or need to have a few polyps removed?
These are my thoughts as we think about our final days here. Not our final-final days, mind you, just those before heading back to New York City where, I fear, that after more than four months of tranquility, we will be unprepared for all the action. How will we handle time when for most who live and work there it is decidedly equated with money or is otherwise available for pleasure or simply ignoring? How will we fare among all those young people with their hard bodies who have barely been touched by it’s passage?
To distract me from these anxieties, Rona suggests, “Let’s take a beach walk.”
“Good idea,” I say.
And off we go to wile away more time—another unfortunate expression, wile away time, which in this case, etymologically, is about tricking or fooling it. On second thought though, perhaps this wiling notion captures some of what I am trying to accomplish with my remaining time. I do feel the need to devise a strategy to toss in a few tricks to at the least slow it down.
And so, with that thought, we head for the beach right outside our door.
There is a storm amassing well off shore and we think about ways to describe the changing conditions—the nature of its potential threat, the hints suggested by the graying of the sky and then a dash of portentous orange. “Could there be waterspout possibilities?” I ask as if to myself.
“Again, you’re talking about the weather,” Rona admonishes me, “I thought you said you wanted to get away from that, from your endless intimations of mortality, to quote a favorite poet of yours.” She suspects that will distract me and get me to change the subject.
“That’s immortality, I correct her, “from Wordsworth.”
“I know that silly, but I also know you’re half an atheist and do not accept the idea of immortality. I thought, therefore, that contemplating intimations of mortality is more your thing. I am simply searching for ways to rouse you from your dark mood.”
“But that won’t get the job done. You’ll still have me contemplating final things. But, I am not in a dark mood. I just know how old I am, how we are living, and what we are surrounded by. They make me . . .”
“Realistic?”
“Exactly!”
“And dark. We need to lighten up. Get more enjoyment from life. Here we are by this magnificent ocean. A storm is approaching and . . .”
“And now who’s talking about the weather?” We both laugh at that and it helps to lighten the mood if not the sky.
“Look at that surf,” Rona points to the roiling water. “And what’s that? Over there?” She races ahead into the wind.
When I catch up with her, gasping for air (another sign of my advanced condition), she says, now pointing at the sandy margin, “That looks like a dogfish shark to me.”
“A beached one,” I say. “He probably was chasing the bait fish close to shore, where they come to hide from their predators, and the surf must have tossed him up onto the beach. Let’s see if we can help him get back into the water.”
But before we can, it manages to twit itself around on the hard-packed sand and, using it’s pectoral and pelvic fins, waddles back toward the sea from which it had come.
“Amazing,” I say, “We are seeing a form of reverse evolution. Remember, in time before counting, at one point some fish made a similar mistake and wound up on the beach, decided to stay on land, and before you know it, voilà, here we are.”
“You keep telling that same story over and over again.”
“Well it’s basically true and I think makes a pretty good story.” My mood is lightening.
“I’m just teasing you.” Rona moves closer and puts her arm around me. “I actually do like hearing you talk about fish and Darwin.”
“You know,” I say tentatively, afraid I will slip back into my intimations and spoil the developing romantic mood, “I’ve not only been thinking about sharks coming up onto the land.”
“Really?”
“I’ve also been thinking more about that Memorial Gardens place. That Boca cemetery.”
“And?” I hear her rising skepticism.
“Well, maybe as we think about our final resting place we should be thinking about these waters that were our ancestral home.”
Now fully on guard, “And?”
“Who’s going to come visit our urns?”
“Urns?”
“The ones for our ashes. Which will be stashed for eternity, or the Gardens’ version of eternity, in some slot in a wall. Even with the meditation room and the poetry readings, nobody we know will visit and . . . ”
“And?” Rona is by now humoring me.
“And so how about returning to the sea? Our ashes of course. It would even save money.”
“There you go again, talking about the cost of things. Another sign of you-know-what.”
Local TV channels run endless ads for retirement communities, assisted-living facilities, and “final resting places.” In regard to the latter, there is Boca Raton’s Gardens Memorial Park where the tag line is “Dedicated to all those who have lived, and all those who live today. What a clever use of verb tenses it seems to me.
Someone told me recently that she is arranging to have her ashes kept there because it’s a nice place for people to visit since they have meditation rooms, periodic musical presentations, and poetry readings. Also, she was excited to share, they are known for their “Transitional Care.” When I looked at their Website, out of curiosity and, in truth, since we were thinking about visiting the place because we do not as yet have our own final resting places, I discovered that this is the Garden’s version of a pre-planned, pre-paid funeral. A transition for those of us who are living to those of us (all of us) who (eventually) will have lived.
There are everywhere the obvious reminders of time passing and where we are all headed, in stages, from early-bird dinners at the Chinese restaurant to the beckoning ophthalmological surgeon’s office in the same shopping plaza, to the MRI lab, and after that to the assisted living place just west of here. While all the while we live with the knowledge that we have a final reservation for two at the Gardens.
As time passes, time itself loses its quotidian meaning. Having lived for so many years by a daily calendar of appointments and meetings, not needing to pay attention or even notice the differences between morning and afternoon has its liberating attractiveness. But it can also mean feeling dislocated in time, with time being of little consequence or having value, where nothing seems to accrue. Where time is not money but, well, just time.
Even after an aggravating day in the office, after work, over a much-needed drink, one can at least add up or review how one spent one’s time. If a friend asks, “How was your day” you have real answers.
“Well, my morning meeting got us thinking about what we need to do about . . . And I hade a good lunch with ____ who promised that . . . Then, during the afternoon I spoke with ____ in order to . . . .”
When a friend here asks how yesterday went I have difficulty remembering what happened an hour ago. And when I manage to, I tend to mutter and stammer or make apologies for having done seemingly so little. Rarely is there anything to sum up or otherwise quantify. Since we were conditioned for so long by parents asking what we did in school today (though the usual answer was “Nothing”), or how things were in the office (though the usual answer was a list of meetings, phone calls, and emails), it is difficult to switch gears and come up with self-satisfying explanations for watching the changing tides and weather or the virtues of a nap or reading much less justify spending so much time listening to the wind or even music.
Note the “spending” part because some of that conditioning was to place commercial value on time. It may be a rationalization for how much time I now spend, sorry, devote to non-productive, more intrinsic things, but for the moment calling it that--intrinsic--is the best explanation I can come up with.
Further complicating my orientation to time is my disorientation with the days of the week. If it weren’t for the New York Times and its Tuesday science section and its Wednesday food section there would be little to distinguish between the days. Wednesday is not the Hump Day any longer when you don’t have a Monday-Friday, 9-5 kind of reality. And even Friday, which I used to thank God for, has lost its potency.
It further confuses and concerns me that we spend an inordinate amount of time considering the weather. Until recently, I claimed that I would never live in a place where the primary topic for discussion and debate was the weather. How boring, I thought it must be, to pass so much time contemplating it. Doesn’t this reveal the paucity of local stimuli? What, with the drama derived from work and making and spending, what with all the museums and restaurants and theater and concerts of a real city, a real place, who cares about the weather? Even when there is a storm, no problem. The city will make the snow disappear, and even if they can’t, taxis are intrepid regardless of the conditions and the subway in New York, racing blow the streets, makes a mockery of even a blizzard.
So when I catch myself here spending hours in discussions about today’s weather versus yesterday’s—how it is a little warmer, true, perhaps even hot, but isn’t the humidity lower; and what about last year at this time when it was chilly, not cold, and rainy, yet not stormy; that is until the rainy season set in and it was stormy, except that the storminess did not last all day but was more of the squally, tropical kind . . . .
Like the Eskimos who in their native language are said to have dozens of words for snow and snow conditions, or what linguists call lexemes—words for a version of the same thing. In English, for example, non-meteorologically-- trash and garbage qualify. In Inuit they have five lexemes for snow on the ground and two for crust on fallen snow while there are many more for snowflake.
Here, in snowbird country, we have numerous lexemes or ways to describe varieties of rain. We are aficionados of rain, poets of temperature, and connoisseurs of humidity. And before we notice how we live so much of our day, while pondering and pontificating about these nuances, it becomes time for a bite of lunch and soon after that a nap.
About this napping business there are an almost equal number of lexemes, which we fully explore both in the doing and the recounting. From catching some shuteye or forty-winks to catnaping and siestas. We have made a science of this too and, as such, is there a surer sign of approaching mortality than the ways in which we slip almost unnoticed into the intoxicating universe of napping? This capitulation to the art of the mid-afternoon snooze is more a sign, isn’t it, of the beginning of indolent decline than the occasional detached retina or need to have a few polyps removed?
These are my thoughts as we think about our final days here. Not our final-final days, mind you, just those before heading back to New York City where, I fear, that after more than four months of tranquility, we will be unprepared for all the action. How will we handle time when for most who live and work there it is decidedly equated with money or is otherwise available for pleasure or simply ignoring? How will we fare among all those young people with their hard bodies who have barely been touched by it’s passage?
To distract me from these anxieties, Rona suggests, “Let’s take a beach walk.”
“Good idea,” I say.
And off we go to wile away more time—another unfortunate expression, wile away time, which in this case, etymologically, is about tricking or fooling it. On second thought though, perhaps this wiling notion captures some of what I am trying to accomplish with my remaining time. I do feel the need to devise a strategy to toss in a few tricks to at the least slow it down.
And so, with that thought, we head for the beach right outside our door.
There is a storm amassing well off shore and we think about ways to describe the changing conditions—the nature of its potential threat, the hints suggested by the graying of the sky and then a dash of portentous orange. “Could there be waterspout possibilities?” I ask as if to myself.
“Again, you’re talking about the weather,” Rona admonishes me, “I thought you said you wanted to get away from that, from your endless intimations of mortality, to quote a favorite poet of yours.” She suspects that will distract me and get me to change the subject.
“That’s immortality, I correct her, “from Wordsworth.”
“I know that silly, but I also know you’re half an atheist and do not accept the idea of immortality. I thought, therefore, that contemplating intimations of mortality is more your thing. I am simply searching for ways to rouse you from your dark mood.”
“But that won’t get the job done. You’ll still have me contemplating final things. But, I am not in a dark mood. I just know how old I am, how we are living, and what we are surrounded by. They make me . . .”
“Realistic?”
“Exactly!”
“And dark. We need to lighten up. Get more enjoyment from life. Here we are by this magnificent ocean. A storm is approaching and . . .”
“And now who’s talking about the weather?” We both laugh at that and it helps to lighten the mood if not the sky.
“Look at that surf,” Rona points to the roiling water. “And what’s that? Over there?” She races ahead into the wind.
When I catch up with her, gasping for air (another sign of my advanced condition), she says, now pointing at the sandy margin, “That looks like a dogfish shark to me.”
“A beached one,” I say. “He probably was chasing the bait fish close to shore, where they come to hide from their predators, and the surf must have tossed him up onto the beach. Let’s see if we can help him get back into the water.”
But before we can, it manages to twit itself around on the hard-packed sand and, using it’s pectoral and pelvic fins, waddles back toward the sea from which it had come.
“Amazing,” I say, “We are seeing a form of reverse evolution. Remember, in time before counting, at one point some fish made a similar mistake and wound up on the beach, decided to stay on land, and before you know it, voilà, here we are.”
“You keep telling that same story over and over again.”
“Well it’s basically true and I think makes a pretty good story.” My mood is lightening.
“I’m just teasing you.” Rona moves closer and puts her arm around me. “I actually do like hearing you talk about fish and Darwin.”
“You know,” I say tentatively, afraid I will slip back into my intimations and spoil the developing romantic mood, “I’ve not only been thinking about sharks coming up onto the land.”
“Really?”
“I’ve also been thinking more about that Memorial Gardens place. That Boca cemetery.”
“And?” I hear her rising skepticism.
“Well, maybe as we think about our final resting place we should be thinking about these waters that were our ancestral home.”
Now fully on guard, “And?”
“Who’s going to come visit our urns?”
“Urns?”
“The ones for our ashes. Which will be stashed for eternity, or the Gardens’ version of eternity, in some slot in a wall. Even with the meditation room and the poetry readings, nobody we know will visit and . . . ”
“And?” Rona is by now humoring me.
“And so how about returning to the sea? Our ashes of course. It would even save money.”
“There you go again, talking about the cost of things. Another sign of you-know-what.”
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:35 AM
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