SOME THINGS WON'T BE DIFFERENT IN 2021

   While many of us are hoping for a change in tone from the White House in 2021, let’s face it—there probably won’t be any change at all in our quotidian* existence, especially for those of us in our 80s.

   In my case that means:

   --I will go into the downstairs bathroom to brush my teeth and reach first for the stick deodorant instead of the toothpaste. I wonder if Old Spice is bad for your teeth.

   --Opening Listerine bottles will still require concentration and patience. There are arrows on the cap but pushing down and twisting counterclockwise (or is it clockwise?) requires a lot of coordination and seldom do I get all the required steps right on the first try. Caps and tops on all sorts of necessities, including pill and spice bottles, are built to resist easy opening and who ever designed them should get a raise.

   --My rush to pop my morning pills down my gullet won’t abate. This means a pill occasionally misses its mark, disappearing onto the kitchen floor where it is not spotted until a week later near the dishwasher.

   --I must also eat breakfast in a hurry, judging by the droppings on the floor in the breakfast nook. When the urge hits me or Irene to sweep up the bits of egg, toast and other debris, there is one constant: somewhere in a hard to reach area under the table will be a lone Cheerio. “From out of the past, come the thundering hoof beats of the great horse Silver, the Lone Cheerio hides again.”

   --My accuracy from plate to mouth doesn’t improve at dinner. I’ve taken to wearing an apron for my evening meal, saving sweaters and shirts from tomato sauce and chocolate syrup, especially the latter.

   --Cleaning up after supper, I will occasionally save a small amount of food. Sometimes Irene has it for lunch the following day. More often it stays in the fridge until …Until you know what.

   --I will continue to wear on special occasions—defined as a dinner eaten at the dining room table instead of in front of the TV—a favorite LL Bean shirt, a button-down that has the tiniest button holes in the collar. On Christmas Eve, I spent five to seven minutes on each collar, coaxing my fingers to force each button through the hole. I’m not suspicious by nature, but someone at a shirt factory in Sri Lanka could have decided to have a little fun with an uppity American, and I just happened to be that uppity American.

   --Our bedroom has a glow. (Sorry, I hate to brag.) The glow is from various pieces of electrical equipment—a heart monitor for me, a hearing aid charger for Irene. To glow is healthy. When I get up at 4:30 or 1:30 to do what old men do at 4:30 or 1:30 (or both), I don’t need to turn on a light to see my way to the bathroom. The glow from the devices provides just enough light for me to feel my way to and from bed. Those mornings when I make the trip back and forth with my slippers on the wrong feet doesn’t strike me as a big deal.

   --In cold and/or snowy weather I will put on my LL Bean winter boots and realize ten minutes later on my morning walk that one lace has come undone. It doesn’t matter how tight I tie the shoe laces one of them is going to get loose.

   --While backing the VW Tiguan out of our driveway, I’ll brush a wrong button or two, setting the back windshield wiper flapping away or muting the radio. Recovery time to restore things to normal will take approximately one minute. While I always think all the neighbors saw this display of clumsiness, I tell myself, at least I didn’t set off the horn.

   --I’ll continue to have days when I’m stumped by my smartphone or laptop. Although my episodes of butt dialing a kid or grandkid have declined, I’ve developed a habit of not disconnecting the phone properly after a call. One of the younger family members will send a text to point out this failure. As for my laptop, sometimes when I do a Google search every letter I write is duplicated. A search line might read ”iiss iitt ppoossiibbllee tthhaatt GGeeoorrggee SSoorrooss iiss rreessppoonnssiibbllee ffoorr eevveerryytthhiinngg bbaadd iinn tthhee wwoorrlldd?”

   --The last thing I do before heading upstairs to bed is to go to the kitchen to turn out a light. There’s really no reason the light was left on, but turning it off gives me an opportunity to grab a handful of peanuts before nightly flossing or to scrounge for something chocolaty—a cookie, a chocolate bar, or even semi-sweet chocolate chips in the fridge, the little devils meant for baking in cookies. Some clichés are true. Old people can never stop talking about food. 

   Welcome aboard, 2021. Only a few more days before the 2024 campaign for the White House begins. Goody, goody. 

*Author’s note: In my many years of writing news copy, essays and letters, I have never written the word quotidian before. I’ve always wanted to and am very proud of myself now.

   (Posted January 4, 2021)

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WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST?

 (UPDATED December 23, 2020) 

   We have steak for breakfast once a year at our house. After much agonizing, it will be just Irene and I eating steak on Christmas morning. We had planned to have six of us around the table, but the closer we got to Christmas the more uneasy Irene and I became.

    We’re both in our early 80’s and why risk catching something as potentially lethal as COVID-19? We’d like to be around for Christmas 2021. Even though there will just be the two of us this time, we will have something to talk about. Irene doesn’t know it yet, but we are about to be rich. Wait until I read her the first few sentences of an email I got today: 

   “We the U.S. Bank Ohio are here to Notify you about the latest development regards your abandoned fund worth US$650.000.00 in our Bank. You were given a huge bill in order to receive this fund which we didn’t hear from you again since then. Now, we are offering a Special BONUS to help all our customers that are having Outstanding funds in our Bank due to the situation of things now.”

   Someone who can write like that should be working for one of the network evening newscasts.

Merry Christmas.

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 We have steak for breakfast once a year at our house. It’s a Christmas morning tradition traced back to my grandfather, William Alva McCoy, who farmed land near Colfax, Indiana. Farm animals don’t have holidays and neither do farmers. I’m guessing having steak for breakfast on Christmas was a treat on a day when cows still had to be milked and fed along with other chores, including feeding the chickens and gathering their eggs. 

   In recent years our son Jack has bought the steak and cooked it. Also on the long dining room table Christmas morning, there are sausages, bacon, pancakes, maple syrup, home-made biscuits, two jams, an egg dish or two (usually one of them has potatoes mixed in), juice, coffee and glasses full or half full of Bloody Marys or Mimosas. To state the obvious, there are no medical doctors or nutritionists in the family, and if there were we wouldn’t invite them to join us.

   After breakfast comes the unwrapping of gifts, by those still awake. This in turn is followed by “did you save the receipts? It looks a little small.” Or “I like it. It’s nice, but you gave me the exact same sweater last year.” Or, my favorite, “Gee, what is it?”

   Almost always Christmas is not a one or two-day affair for one of us. Irene has always been an early shopper and stashes presents here and there around the house. Along about February or March, while doing something in a closet, she will find a gift, wrapped and with someone’s name on it. She then contacts the lucky person, suggesting they stop by to pick it up.

   Another family tradition I grew up with was oyster stew on Christmas Eve. Where my folks got oysters is one of the mysteries of my youth. My hometown, Frankfort, Indiana, was nowhere near a decent body of water, let alone one that had oysters. 

   But that yearly bowl of oyster stew proved that Mom and Dad loved me. At the time I didn’t like oysters, and they only put one of those slippery devils in my bowl. We don’t do oyster stew these days. In normal times, Jack and his family have been our hosts on Christmas Eve, serving lobster bisque.

   Next Friday there will be six of us at Christmas breakfast instead of the usual 12. We will be wearing masks and sitting far apart when not at the table, but the menu will be basically the same. Here’s hoping Christmas 2021 has a much different look and feel with more of us around the breakfast table, waiting for someone to pass the steak. 

Merry Christmas.

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   In Praise Of Pie

   This senior citizen thinks he’s solved the problem of what to give younger people when a gift is in order: I bake them an apple pie.

   Two young couples who live next to us in Rockville Centre have recently been given apple pies and, I’m happy to report, returned the pie plates. One of the couples had just had twin boys, their first babies. After my wife Irene bought two onesies, I got busy peeling apples and measuring flour.

   The second couple already had twin boys (could it be the Rockville Centre water?), and they got a pie because they refused to let us help pay for a strong new metal fence on their property which replaced a rotting wooden one on ours.   

       One sturdy fence for one apple pie is a heck of a deal. Feeling a smidgen guilty, I took over a loaf of homemade bread a few days before handing the pie over the fence. (Have I mentioned that the fence is strong and sturdy?)

   I started making pies back in 1998 when, having worn out by welcome with yet another employer, I had lots of spare time. This transplanted son of Indiana bought “The Hoosier Cookbook,” a volume that was in my mom’s kitchen, and found two simple recipes for both the crust and the filling.

   As an octogenarian—what a long word to denote “old”—I haven’t a clue what inexpensive gift to buy for grandkids or neighbors, so I bake. Most of the time it’s an apple pie or bread. Baking eliminates worrying about what size sweater a kid takes or the colors they like or investing in some social media apparatus you know nothing about. I’ll admit I’m pleased when we invite grandkids over and they ask, “Are you going to make an apple pie?”

   Giving a pie or bread to an adult is a clear sign that you went to some trouble to show your appreciation and didn’t run to the liquor store and ended up guessing whether the recipients prefer red or white wine. 

   Baking a pie or bread from scratch really isn’t that big a deal. Outside of those two items, my talents in the kitchen are limited to omelets, pancakes, meatloaf, chicken cutlets and roasts. I could live to be 150 and never unravel the secret of making gravy.

   There’s no reason you shouldn’t occasionally give yourself a gift. I recently had a birthday and baked myself an apple pie. Not wishing to be vulgar, we put a single candle in it. A few slices were left over and the grandkids took them home.    The two younger ones love to start their day with apple pie for breakfast. Good for them. 

   I’m counting on them to remember how much they liked the pies when I’m really, really old and my chin needs wiping.

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(First published November 2020 in Hope, the CAW Anthology/Winter 2020, a book of poetry, short stories, essays and plays. CAW is an acronym for Calling All Writers.)  

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