When I was very young,
still at home with my parents, Dad expected us to have what he called “polite
conversation” at the kitchen table. Everything was a learning opportunity, so
he delighted in having a captive audience while we sat for meals. We said grace,
kept our elbows off the table, and were expected to “converse” while we ate our
cold cereal, our afternoon sandwich, or our casserole at dinner. Topics got more difficult
in high school and college. Gone were the days of discussing what we had
learned in school that day; we were expected to discuss the news from the front
section of the newspaper, something Walter Cronkite had reported on the Evening
News, or the many uses of math in one’s life. It may sound like a drag,
but it stuck with me, and I likewise expected my three to participate in
“polite conversation” during our sit-down meals. Likewise, my grandchildren
cringe when I subject them to inquisitions about their everyday life, their
progress in math, and the latest book t…
On my fortieth birthday, the “morale” committee at the
middle school where I worked decked the teachers’ lounge with black crepe
paper, black balloons, and black cardboard cutouts of head stones announcing I
was “over the hill” and “older than dirt.” I realized I shouldn’t have been so
forthcoming about my age. As I slunk away to the teachers’ parking lot at the
end of the day, I found my silver convertible covered in more birthday graffiti.
They left a bull’s eye open on the front windshield so I could drive it home,
but I stopped at the first car wash and erased all of it. That was thirty years ago. I don’t remember my fiftieth birthday nor my sixtieth.
My birthday amnesia stems partly from a divorce when I turned fifty, and I
was wiser when I turned sixty and kept my age a secret from everyone but a
close few, but this one is big. It’s real. I can no longer pretend to be
“young.” I may never be older than dirt but I am definitely “over the hill.” I don’t feel old nor do I have regre…