Getting Old Sucks

In about six weeks, I'm going to be hitting the age 50 milestone. This post is not whining about that. I actually am not especially bothered by the idea of being 50; despite the inconvenience of things like reading glasses and that nagging 10 pounds that won't go away and possible hearing aids (bad, bad heredity, unfortunately), I don't feel too much different than I did at age 30.

However, a couple of things I've read recently have made me think about what is (probably) coming down the line in my life - not in the next year, maybe not even in the next 10 years, but eventually, if I live long enough. Those two converging works are The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks and an unpublished memoir manuscript I am reading for the sister of a friend.

I certainly didn't go into reading The Notebook expecting to start thinking about aging. To be honest, I wanted to read it as "market research" to give me an idea of what kind of romantic books (beyond "romance novels") are popular with readers. (And to keep being honest, I didn't particularly care for this book. If you are interested, there will be a brief explanation of why at the end of this post.)

Not to give away any plot points, but The Notebook is a story within a story, about the same people at two different points in their lives. One story is about the rekindling of their teen romance when they are in their late 20s/early 30s; the other is about their lives now that they are living in a senior care facility of some kind. Allie, the woman in the story, has Alzheimer's disease to the point that she rarely recognizes her husband, Noah, the love of her life. Noah, however, remains devoted to her, and in fact, courts her so she will fall in love with him each day after forgetting him from the day before.

I'm not going to say much about the second book, since I don't have permission from the author to talk about it. It is the story of the struggles a family faced when they had to deal with their aging father's dementia by committing him to senior care against his will when he was clearly unable to take care of himself any longer but wouldn't admit it. It's a very compelling story, and I hope the author will be able to get her story out for the public to read someday in the future.

Although we don't really want to think about it, as we get older, chances are that we are going to be faced with substantial loss. For some of us, as in The Notebook, that loss may be of our most significant human relationship, either through death or to dementia. For others, it may be loss of freedom and control of our own destiny, as in the manuscript. For some, it may be both.

I was thinking after reading The Notebook how sad it would be to lose all the memories built up during the years of a relationship (which is, of course, why there was a notebook in the first place). I suppose you wouldn't really lose your own memories of the relationship if it was the partner who suffered the dementia, but it seems to me some of the value in memories is their sharedness. I think about some of the things that have happened in the 23 years I've been married, like the year we spent together in graduate school in Kansas, or building our house, or the birth of our kids. Of course, we both have our personal memories of those things, but there are certain elements that have become so intertwined that the story doesn't seem complete unless both sides are told. Even the telling of the story is often intertwined. How lonely would it be to have one piece of that story gradually disappear so that there's only a ghost of it left?

To lose one's partner to dementia would certainly be lonely, but the manuscript tells a story that is sadder, in a way. The father in the story has always been a very independent, resourceful, in-charge kind of man; as he grows older, however, he begins to do things (like get lost while driving) that are dangerous to himself and to others. His children have to wrest away from him all the trappings of independent life - his car, his house, his ability to come and go as he pleases. (Of course, this process is agonizing for them as well.) I'm not completely finished with the manuscript yet, but I know from talking to my friend that the process was very painful for all of them. Think about it; most of us are so used to being able to direct our own daily affairs that it would be incredibly frustrating to have that taken away. In some ways, it would be to lose one's very self.

I think about my grandfather who recently died. He stayed in his own home until the end and died in his own bed, which I imagine most of us would aspire to. However, I've always told people he was able to do that because his children were all close by and worked together to make it possible for him to have that life. The manuscript author pointed out something else that is necessary: the willingness to accept the help one needs. That's something her father was not willing to admit, and that's part of what made the process for him so difficult. I also now believe that's one reason Grandpa was able to do what he did. Even if it meant losing his dignity as the "father," he was willing to pay that cost to be able to stay home. I don't know that you can have both dignity AND self-determination. In all probability, you can't have either. Getting old sucks.

As I transition into my "senior years" (I actually joined AARP the other day so we could get the discounts on hotels on our recent family trip, ha ha), I'm not going to dwell on getting old. But I think it is important to do two things to get ready for what could be coming: 1) get those memories down in tangible form somewhere (like Grandma's memory book from my earlier post), and 2) develop the willingness to recognize when I need help and to be able to swallow my pride to accept it.

As promised, a brief review of The Notebook: For all the pathos of the situation, I didn't really develop any emotional connection with any of the characters. There were also a number of things Sparks did that I see over and over labeled as characteristics of weak writing: head-hopping and "telling" rather than "showing," among others. Finally, Sparks' techniques for trying to build suspense just drove me nuts. The end of the book was especially frustrating. Did Noah die, or not? 

A Thin Connection to Life 100 Years Past

Here's what we had for supper, all from our farm - sauteed collard greens, boiled new potatoes, broiled yellow squash, fresh green beans, and blueberries. I'm not trying to gloat, honest; these  veggies remind me of something I was thinking about yesterday.

We just returned from a little family vacation down in Texas. One of the unplanned stops was at the Lyndon B. Johnson State and National Park site near Johnson City. I'm glad we stopped, because there was quite a bit of historical information there (and the countryside in which the ranch is located is lovely in sort of a desolate way). But my favorite part was the Sauer-Beckman Living History Farm.

The farm is a replica of a German settler's farm from about 100 years ago, the period between 1912-1918. The exhibit includes the barn and all the outbuildings for livestock (including a hog pen with a HUGE sow and a hen house complete with three setting hens), a garden, a windmill and water tank, and the house itself, which consisted of three parts - a working/canning kitchen, the regular kitchen, and the sleeping/living area. (My husband and I had different explanations for our daughter about why the house was in three parts - he said it was so the sleeping quarters were separated from the kitchen in case the wood stove caught fire; I said it was because the kitchen would generate so much heat. I think we are both right!)

One thing I really liked about the exhibit is that we were able to walk around and look at things as we wanted to - there was not a pre-set tour with a guide giving us a canned speech. We could lift the dishcloth over the sourdough starter and peek in on it, we could touch the pieces of harness hanging in the tack room in the barn, we could look inside the outhouse (a two-holer. I can't imagine why anyone would want a two-hole outhouse, ha ha). There was a woman dressed in period costume at the exhibit, but she seemed to be there more as a resource to answer any questions; other than greeting us pleasantly, she didn't say anything to us, just kept working with the beets she obviously had pulled from the garden earlier in the day.

As you can imagine, this was absolute heaven for a writer of historical fiction set on a frontier farm! I could have stayed for hours, no lie, looking at every tool in the barn and every dish in both kitchens. But I had to be considerate of the rest of the family, who are not quite as into this as I am.

As I walked around the grounds, I began to realize that while this was history, some of it was also simply living for me. Except for the fact that I'm using electricity rather than firewood as a heat source, I'm still doing a lot of food preservation, just like the matron of the farm would have been doing 100 years ago. With only a few exceptions, most of what I "put up" for winter comes from our own garden. We have only a couple of hens, not a whole lot, but we do get eggs from them most days. I also still have memories of "helping" (as much as a kid can do) on hog butchering day, with the big cast iron washtub rendering down lard. I also remember the bowls of fresh milk sitting out on the cabinets at my grandparents' house waiting for cream to rise to the top, I'm lucky to have those memories; in the coming years of my life, there are going to be fewer and fewer people who will have seen those kinds of things.

Of course, there are a lot of differences between the few things I do and the daily life of a farmer's wife 100 years ago. I am spoiled by the convenience and safety of pasteurized milk and by the softness of store-bought bread. But something as simple as having a meal filled with vegetables that my husband and I planted and harvested, cleaned and cooked, helps me feel there's still something of a connection with those hard-working people in the past, small as it may be.

First in the Hearts of His Countrymen

As I've grown older, I've really come to recognize how inadequate history classes in school are. I'm not trying to be snarky; it's just that history is so "thick" and filled with so many details there is absolutely no way a person can learn much more than the basics of names, dates, and places. That's one reason I like to tackle some historical nonfiction once in a while to go along with my favored diet of historical fiction. My latest was Joseph Ellis' biography of George Washington, His Excellency.

Shortly after beginning this book, I realized I knew very little about George Washington. Sure, I knew he was the commander in chief for the Continental Army and the first constitutional president of the United States. I'd heard the story about how he thwarted the mutiny of the Newburgh Conspiracy by using his spectacles and a sentimental reference to his advancing age. But I didn't have much of an understanding of the amazing human being that was behind all those accomplishments. While Ellis' biography isn't as focused on George Washington the human being as say, The Unexpected George Washingtion: His Private Life by Harlow Giles Unger, Ellis does give some analysis of Washington's psychology. (I borrowed both of these books from a friend and while I'd like to read the Unger book, it took me 2 1/2 months - YES - to read the Ellis book. I'm ready to get back to some fiction! And I want to return the books to the friend. Maybe I'll get to Unger some time in the future.)

I'm not going to go into everything I found interesting about Washington's life (although I had no idea he was a smallpox survivor and how that played a strategic role in the American Revolution). To keep this post short and sweet, I'll just focus on two things that gave me new respect for Washington: his planned solution to the problem of frontier settlement and Indian rights to the land, and his determination to somehow, eventually free his slaves.

Probably because I am working on a story which is centered around the conflict over land between the Cherokee and white settlers, I paid special attention to the section of the book that talked about Washington's plans as president to deal with the Indians. Ellis points out Washington firmly believed the nation's future lay in expanding into the interior of the continent, which meant there had to be some policy for dealing with the peoples who were already there. Unlike many officials (especially Andrew Jackson later), Washington respected the Indians as "familiar and formidable adversaries fighting for their own independence; in effect, behaving pretty much as he would do in their place." That view led him to come up with a policy of creating Indian "homelands" that would house the tribes as foreign nations with which the United States would interact just as they would with the nations of Europe. Washington was apparently opposed to confiscation of Indian lands, which he believed would "stain the character of the nation." Unfortunately, early on, the state of Georgia ignored Washington's Treaty of New York with the Creek Nation and sold more than 15 million acres that would have been the Creek homeland to a land speculating company. As Ellis pointed out, "Eventually Washington was forced to acknowledge his vision...could not be enforced." He may have had a magnanimous attitude toward Native Americans, but not enough people shared his view - or too many were too greedy for land to care.

I also found it interesting to follow Ellis' discussion of how Washington gradually moved from oblivious slave owner (oblivious to the rights of slaves, that is) to a man who freed his slaves in his will. Ellis spends considerable time discussing the development of Washington's moral stance on slavery; although Washington came to see slavery as in contrast with the democratic principles he fought for in the revolution, he was still constrained by his vision of economic security. Part of the problem was that he didn't have full control of all the slaves; more than half of his slaves actually belonged to the dowry that came with Martha on their marriage and he couldn't free them without paying their value to the estate (which he obviously wasn't willing to do). Part of the problem was also that Washington felt strongly the new nation couldn't survive the political battles that would break out if he as president made moves to eliminate slavery. Ellis notes how complicated the slavery question was for Washington, who had a strong commitment to avoid breaking up slave families by selling slaves and who continued to support all the slaves even when it didn't work economically for Mount Vernon. I suppose we could condemn Washington's position on slavery by saying he waited until he was dead and would no longer need their services to give his slaves their freedom. However, I look  at it this way - Washington was the only one of the slave-owning Founding Fathers who actually did anything about slavery, even if it came after his death. And his will didn't simply throw the slaves as free blacks out into the world; Washington allotted funds to provide care for the older or sick slaves for the remainder of their lives, and he called for the younger slaves to be taught to read and to do some kind of trade before being freed completely at age 25. And he was serious about it; his will included the following statement: "see that this clause respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place without evasion, neglect or delay."

Even though it took me a long time to read the book, it was not because the book was boring or poorly-written. I thought it hit a good balance between giving an overview of the many significant events of Washington's life and of the motivations and personality of the man who lived those events. I'm glad I read it, and I'm glad to have more flesh put on the paper cutout figure of Washington that I had from studying American history in school.

Food for Thought, or Thoughts about Food

Since the weather was cloudy and cooler when I went out to feed the cats this morning, and since I had promised three gallons of blueberries to a couple of ladies at church sometime soon, I decided to go out and pick those berries this morning. Well, the weather didn't stay cloudy and cooler for long, and the berries are very thin this year, so it took me all morning to get the three gallons. Normally, I would have to come in from the patch and get something ready for lunch, but today Lily came out around 11:00-ish and asked if it was ok if she made cream of potato soup. I was hot and tired and soup didn't really appeal to me, but I didn't want to be that mother who squishes all her child's ideas, so I said "sure." It crossed my mind that Lily has never made cream of potato soup before, but I was still about a gallon away from being finished, so I didn't let it concern me. As long as she didn't burn down the house.....

I finished my picking at 11:45 and came in to find three bowls of potato soup waiting and a very proud young cook. She had used the good old Better Homes & Garden cookbook, but when the soup didn't taste quite right, she added some pepper on her own (I guess watching all that Food Network with her father came in handy!). We supplemented with leftovers, and it was a very nice lunch. Let me tell you, I was very grateful to have lunch waiting. And I was impressed when I found she had made a white sauce as a base for the soup all by herself. White sauce is not the easiest thing in the world to make, and she had never done it before. Good for Lily!

One of the leftovers I had to go along with the soup were some cornbread pancakes I made for supper last night. I didn't even warm them up, just spread some margarine on top. They went well with the soup. But that's not why I'm telling you about them. Now don't laugh at me, but one of the by-products of writing historical fiction for me has been a desire to learn how people used to live. More than "learn" in an intellectual sense - I want to be able to learn by experience (as long as I'm not giving up electricity for an extended period of time, lol). One of the things I became very aware of while writing my book was how limited people's diets were on the 19th century frontier. Throughout the book, my characters are living on cornpone and salt pork. (I know there would have been other foods available to them, especially seasonally, but I imagine cornmeal and pork were the staples of the menu for working-class people.) Last night, inspired in part by the Hatfield/McCoy movie on the History Channel, I decided to make a batch of cornbread pancakes, also known as johnnycakes.

I had tried them before with a Betty Crocker recipe and found them to be greasy and not very good, but this time I found a different recipe online that turned out much better. They were easy, easy to make. This recipe made flat little cakes with a slightly sweet taste and enough body to them to stand up to butter and sorghum molasses. They were just as good today without being warmed up, and they were plenty filling.

The experience of making and eating these cornbread pancakes gave me some valuable insight into an aspect of everyday life in the 19th century. These pancakes were made with simple ingredients and were so easy to mix up and cook on a griddle that a busy wife or mother could throw together lunch quickly, even if she was tired from working in the field or garden. The recipe made probably 12 pancakes, so it would be enough to feed a fairly good-sized family. They could be stacked and eaten as pancakes, or they were thin and flexible enough they could be used to wrap around a piece of meat (much like a tortilla). And if the work to be done was out in a field far enough away from the house that it would take too much time to come back home for lunch, the johnnycakes hold over well, would taste good cold, and would be easy to eat picnic-style.

It's a small thing, I suppose, but I like learning that kind of information. Sure, history is about the big things like wars and treaties and elections, but it's also about the little, day-to-day things like filling one's stomach.

There was also another interesting little side path Lily and I talked about over lunch. I was putting sorghum on my cornbread pancakes, and Lily asked why I called it "sorghum" when the jar says "molasses." Well, I didn't know, so we looked it up. "Sorghum" is the genus name for the plant which has the sap that is cooked down to make the syrup; "molasses" is "a syrup made from boiling down sweet vegetable or fruit juice." So to be technically correct, we should always call it "sorghum molasses."

This was a very educational lunch!

In case you want to experiment with the cornbread pancakes, here's the recipe (from Allrecipes.com):

3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup buttermilk (I didn't have buttermilk, so I used the old trick to use vinegar to sour the milk)
2 large eggs
3 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled

Mix dry ingredients together, then mix wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Add wet ingredients to dry and blend well until the batter is smooth. Cook the pancakes on a hot griddle until golden-brown on each side.

The Most Nerve-Wracking Critique

I'm teaching a course in our three-week summer term called "The Story and the Script," which deals with the major elements of storytelling, applied to writing scripts for television and film. Today we talked about the importance of finding people to give critiques. One of the things we discussed was how awkward/difficult it is to have people who are family or close friends to do a critique of your work, because either a) they won't be completely honest in favor of sparing your feelings, or b) they will be completely honest, which might hurt your feelings. Regardless of who does the critique, we agreed it's important for a writer to separate the work from one's self - to remember the story is NOT you and says nothing about your ultimate value as a human being.

I hope I was listening today, ha ha. A couple of weeks ago, I had a copy of my manuscript printed by Lulu.com, not because I'm ready to publish it, but because I was tired of looking at it as a collection of pixels and wanted to see it in tangible form. The picture above is the cover I designed, which I am quite happy with. I'm actually quite happy with the whole project. The day it arrived, my husband commandeered it and started reading it.

This is a big deal, folks. I've been working on this book for eight (yes, eight) years, and while I've talked a lot about the story, I've never let him read any of it. I always told him it was probably not a book he would be interested in, since he's not the target market. But this time I decided I wouldn't stop him - it's time. But it has made me jittery to come in and find him reading it before bedtime. I guess I'm afraid he'll think it's stupid - and he wouldn't be shy about telling me so (he's used to judging band contests and saying exactly what he thinks about a performance). Who wants your life partner to think your favorite hobby is stupid? (Not that it would make any difference if he did....)

In the week and a half he's been reading it, he hasn't said a word about it. Not one. And though it has been REALLY difficult for me, I haven't asked what he thinks. As I told my sister (who has been ultimately patient in listening to me talk about this project for the whole eight years, bless her), I guess it's a good sign that he has kept reading.

Tonight he finished. And what was his comment? "Your chick story gets really sappy in the last chapter." That sounds kind of cold, I guess, but his nonverbals let me know he didn't mean it in a bad way. Actually, it's about what I expected. It's as I always told him - this wasn't his kind of story.

I'm going to let it stand at that for the moment, but believe me, he's not going to get off that easy! After I finish cleaning the kitchen, I'll pin him down and make him give me more details. And now I can ask him to read and give me feedback on the first draft of the sequel, which is told from the male protagonist's viewpoint and has more history in it - less of a chick story. I've been needing a male reader for that story - now he's trapped!

My Inheritance, Part 2

I have to admit, the pattern cabinet as an inheritance was rather unexpected on my part - well, not totally unexpected, I guess, since I'm the only one in the family who does much with sewing clothing. Since then, however, I've received a second inheritance from my grandmother, and it was the one I was really, really hoping for.

A long time ago (I'm not even sure when), I gave Grandma one of those "Grandma's Album" journals that had blank pages with writing prompts as a Christmas present (I think it was Christmas). This little note is written on the first flyleaf:

Oct. 11, 1999 - Greta, Mother always told me it was an evil wind that blew no good. So maybe these sick bouts I have had for the last 3 months have had some good in them. At least, not being able to do anything else has given me a chance to write in the album. Grandma.

Most of the pages that follow are crammed full of content, ranging from family stories Grandma wrote out by hand, to pictures of my family going back to my great-grandparents and forward to my own children, to little notes and Valentine cards drawn by me, my sisters, and my cousins.

What a treasure! I knew Grandma had filled out the book, because she had mentioned it to me in person a couple of times, but I had no idea how much she had put in there. A lot of the content was also stuff I hadn't seen before, like a picture of my dad on his tricycle when he was maybe three years old. There are also pictures of things I had seen but forgotten, like the picture of all the clothes she had made for family members for Christmas one year.

The best part, though, are the stories. Some of them are short, like the one about her being "Marigold" in the senior play and having to cry a lot for the role. Others fill two complete pages with close-set handwriting, with little added notes stuck in catty-cornered with details she remembered after the fact. I knew the basic factual outlines of some of the stories, such as that Grandma and Grandpa got married and wanted to keep it secret for a while. But these versions of the story are more detailed than I ever heard them told, and it really brings the stories to life. Priceless, absolutely priceless, both as a granddaughter and as a writer.

I feel very fortunate in that I have stories from both my mother (she wrote a book - as a novel - about her early childhood) and now from my grandmother, from opposite sides of my family. I think it's important that someone in a family write down the stories - not just the "factual" stories, but the way the facts affected people. And both of these stories have something personal added to them; Grandma's is written in her handwriting and in her voice, and my mom's has wonderful little sketches she made of things like the sorghum cane harvest. Priceless.

Looking through the book this week, it was like visiting with Grandma again, even though she's been gone nearly 12 years.

My Inheritance

About six weeks ago, my last grandparent passed from this life to the next. Grandpa was just a few weeks shy of his 97th birthday, which would have been this past week. Since that time, his children have been going through and dividing up his belongings, which in this case also included the belongings of his wife, who died about 11 years ago.

Grandma was an incredible seamstress who made clothes for everyone in the family, from three-piece suits for the men to frilly "doll dresses" for the little girls. I'm really the only one of the children or grandchildren who makes much clothing - others in the family are talented with quilting or doll-making. So when it came time to bequeath Grandma's cabinet full of clothing patterns, I was the recipient.

When I say "full of clothing patterns," I am being quite literal. The cabinet is a commerical pattern cabinet, probably purchased when a fabric store was changing its inventory or going out of business (though I'm not sure about that). Of its four drawers, three are simply stuffed with patterns. One of the drawers (seen in the above picture) held a number of boxes with brand-new zippers, sorted according to color. (The boxes, by the way, are another of Grandma's hobbies - she covered cardboard boxes with wallpaper scraps to make storage containers that are beautiful as well as functional).

Since Grandma died in the late 20th century, most of the patterns are pretty badly dated. I don't know how old the oldest patterns in the cabinet are, but I know they will probably go back to the 1970s and maybe even earlier. The night the cabinet was delivered, my daughter had quite a lot of fun looking through the old clothing styles. Because I've been so busy with the end-of-year grading and with finishing up my chapter of the university's self-study report, we haven't had a chance to go through them since that night. It's something I'm looking forward to for this summer (after I'm through with the summer class I'm teaching). The good news is, some styles seem to be coming back into fashion, judging from what I've seen while shopping for my daughter (I once said - aloud - "When did clothes from my high school years come back into style?!!"). Maybe we can find some patterns that we can use this summer to give Lily a very fashionable wardrobe to take back to school in the fall.

One thing about Grandma that made her unique is that she drew a lot of her own patterns by copying from a piece of store-bought clothing (another useful skill she taught me - hooray!). One section of one drawer is devoted to the homemade patterns, all of which are in regular white envelopes and labeled, in Grandma's handwriting, with the name of the person the pattern was for, the size or person's age, and a brief description of the piece. I could tell Lily was beginning to feel a little left out as she saw pattern after pattern drawn for cousins and (especially) for her brother. I told her not to expect to find one, because she was only two years old when Grandma died, and so there wasn't a lot of time for Grandma to have made something for her. However, she kept looking, and eventually she found two envelopes with her name, including one for a Valentine's Day dress full of ruffles made when Lily was three months old.

It was really cool (for lack of a better word) to see Lily's satisfaction at being part of the legacy. I look forward to exploring this inheritance with her this summer, and maybe to pass on this tradition to another generation.