Growing Old (Part 1 of 2)

Growing Old

Copyright 2013 by
Bill Rayburn

Rondroid Peculiar Smith always secretly felt his parents were insane. He hated his name and it was, of course, his parents who had hung it upon him, an unseen yoke provoking a lifetime of questions and potential abuse.

Why don’t parents think about the long term, the big picture before naming a child? Especially before naming a child, their child, Rondroid Peculiar. Their claim that it was an attempt to make him stand out immediately from the crowd, to avoid being lumped in with the thousands of other ‘Smiths’, fell on the deaf ears of their son after the first beating he took on the playground at the age of five. Some bully had begun a chanting of his middle name and quickly had sworn the other boys to refer to Rondroid only as Peculiar, and nothing else. Rondroid had, of course, gone after the kid, a six year old who was the same size as he was but who also apparently knew how to fight. Peculiar came home with a scraped knee, a slowly swelling lower lip, and a bloody abrasion on his forehead.

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Now, approaching his 80th birthday, Rondroid lived alone. His parents had passed away almost 20 years ago, within three months of each other, a fairly common occurrence amongst couples married a long time. Kind of cute and quaint, but usually a double whammy of loss for the remaining family members. His own wife of 35 years had passed away 15 years ago of breast cancer. He had made the conscious decision to not be quaint and cute and follow her to wherever she went. He loved her and he missed her, but both of those feelings lessened with each passing year. They had had one child, Duncan, who was a computer programmer and who lived down on the peninsula but worked up here in the city.

Duncan, now 46, had gone to Stanford, met his sweetheart and married her shortly after graduation, and then he and his wife Connie had blessed Ronald and Janice with twins, a boy and a girl. Her two grandchildren were the only bright light in the last two years of Janice’s life.

*******************

Ronald was reading the morning Chronicle, a part of his AM ritual that included a pot of coffee, some Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster, eventually some toast and maybe a fried egg, but always in the winter months, a fire was going in the fireplace. This January morning was no different.

The San Francisco fog sat upon the city like one of those manatees down at Pier 39 lounging on the wooden decks in the harbor; simply a dead weight that was everywhere.

The fire was going strong. He was an expert at building fires. A learned skill from his childhood spent in a central California farming town on a ranch surrounded by orchards that grew everything from walnuts to raisins, a climate where the winters were dry but cold, and a warm fire was a wonderful thing to come back to after walking the dogs in the early morning mist.

These foggy San Francisco mornings reminded him of that era of his life. Carefree, he was. His tasks clearly spelled out for him each day, starting with the dogs being exercised and their bowels emptied and their bowls filled. He then had to deal with the four cats, all of whom slept in a back closet behind the laundry room, a room kept warm by a heat lamp dangling from a beam and left on all night during the winter. The cats he only had to feed, and thrice a week clean out their litter boxes. Then, later, once the fog had begun to lift, he would let them out for the day, only to have to gather them at dusk for re-installation in their 6x6 bedroom, where they slept on beds of straw.

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He’d begun drinking coffee at ten, having been allowed to grow up quickly because his parents believed in offering freedom until the privilege was abused. Rondroid rarely, if ever, abused it. Able to build a fire at eight, weaned off of cream and sugar and graduating to straight black coffee by the time he was 12, Ronnie, as he’d finally convinced his friends and fellow students to call him, felt like a man. His dad did little to discourage this. The sooner the better, he thought, watching his young son one morning swinging a hatchet and chopping up more firewood.

***********************

Ronnie, who had gradually become Ronald as his twenties evaporated, now sat at his counter on his comfortable stool, padded leather seat, back and arm rests of solid oak, swivel available for easy exit, and read with growing dismay an entry in Dear Abby.

It was written by a man about his age who was lamenting growing old:

“I have lost all faith in free radical therapy, green tea, red wine, Geritol, and prayer. I am aware of the painful disappointments that await most 80-year-old men. For a while I was reading my alumni bulletins, always the necrologies before the class notes, and then I realized that I can no longer remember who the dead ones were. I've had enough of the positivity psychologists who promise a glorious, sensual, wise, healthy and virtuous old age. What a swindle. More often old age is a desperate struggle not to be laughed at, sneered at, or looked down upon---often with reason. I look at my own decaying scholarly capacities and find that I can no longer reliably come up with words like 'croquet' or 'refrigerator'. I must also endure my wife's hand gesture of irritation that says "get on with it."

My granddaughter has done her best to convince me that my life is something more than a pathetic decline into the state of a softening banana turning black in a compost heap. Mostly by her proposal that we take the stories, poems, and anecdotes that I am asked to read at Christmas and New Year's gatherings---and arrange them for a pair's presentation. She is sixteen, likes to perform, comes to me for coaching when she makes a presentation at school, and still laughs heartily at Ogden Nash, Shel Silverstein, Pooh, and several of the gems we read together when she was a child. She wants to expand our repertoire, not simply assume my yearly performance.”

This was powerful stuff that tapped almost directly into his current mindset. He felt, basically, useless. Even though he was far from that state, perception is reality and he knew that if he felt that way now, it was only a matter of time before his actual behavior would follow suit.

Duncan lived in Palo Alto, about 20 miles south, down the peninsula. Both of Ronald’s grandkids were juniors in college; Andrew at Stanford, Beverly at Cal, which made for some very fun and interesting holiday gatherings. He saw his son usually once a week. Duncan worked in the City and made a point to meet for coffee with his dad, usually at a small café in Noe Valley where Ronald lived in a very nicely appointed two bedroom flat on, appropriately, Duncan Street.

They were to meet later this morning at 10:30am at “Perk Up!” a new café just around the corner from Duncan’s flat on Church Street. It had been open for over a year and was doing quite well, but there was usually a mid morning lull that allowed the two men one of the three outside tables.

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“Am I useless?”

Duncan slid into the steel chair opposite his father, his back against the front window of Perk Up! It afforded him a good view of traffic, both pedestrian and automobile. Church was a fairly busy street that, with each boutique and café that opened, became even busier. Ronald didn’t seem to mind.

Duncan shrugged out of his overcoat, folded it and laid it on the empty chair next to him. He took a testing, cautious sip of his double latte, nodded to himself and set it down and looked at his father.

“Where the hell did that come from?”

Ronald was drinking an espresso, sipping it, pinkie extended, as if he were at a café in Palermo, Italy discussing whether or not to have an annoying Sicilian underling whacked.

“Never mind that. I’ll tell you later. Just answer my question.”

His tone of frustration might have been easy to misinterpret as rudeness, but these two men knew each other. Duncan was keenly aware of his father’s recent growing frustration with growing old.

“No. Okay, hell no,” Duncan said, setting his glass mug down and taking a bite out of his biscotti.

“Not even a little?” Ronald took a bite out of his piece of carrot cake. They always ordered the exact same things.

“Dad, Jesus Christ. You’re about to turn 80, you have all your own money, you appear to have most of your marbles, you seem to be enjoying your retirement, you live alone, you are totally self reliant, as far as I can see. Shit, you won’t even let me take you grocery shopping.”

“Most of my marbles? Kiss my 80-year-old ass. Seriously, I don’t do anything anymore. My trips to the grocery store are sometimes the highlight of my week. And it’s one of the few opportunities to take out the Chevy.”

His ’55 Chevy had won many a show in its heyday. It still was spotless and ran like a new Mazda, but Ronald didn’t care about entering it in any more contests. It was a rag top and he still enjoyed tooling around the city with the top down in the warmer months.

“Dad, you have season tickets to the 49ers, we go to every game. We even got the Yorks to move you down to where you had a minimum of stairs to deal with, because of your hip. I enjoy every game we go to, the tailgating is priceless, we eat and drink like kings. You can still hold your booze, you enjoy a cigar or two every day, you read, you even go to the cinema when Hollywood manages to put out a half decent flick. Your life is fuller than many people I know who are half your age. Christ, you have to be the oldest white guy in the world who still loves basketball. Sometimes, especially since the kids are away at school, your life seems busier than mine. What’s got up your ass?”

“Yeah, but most of that shit you mention I do for me.”

“The 49ers games are for both of us. I never take for granted that you insist on paying for everything.”

“Still, what do I do, what do I accomplish, anymore?”

“Pissing straight and waking up each day is an accomplishment at your age. That should be enough.”

“Very funny. I can always get Elmer to go the 49er games, you know.”

Elmer was Ronald’s only true friend who was still alive, but he was losing his teeth, battling dementia and was about to be put into a home by his wife.

“Yeah, maybe. But you’ll be eating yogurt sandwiches and mixing up Metamucil-flavored martinis if you do.”

Duncan laughed heartily and realized he needed to.

They were silent for a moment. There was another moment of unspoken eye contact.

Duncan took another sip, lowered his mug to the gnarled cardboard coaster, and said quietly, “What’s wrong Dad? Do you think you should still be building houses? You’ve done all that there was to do in your life. Now is for enjoyment, contentment, peace of mind. Remember how stressed you were as a contractor?”

“Yes, but I got to the end of the day, and I had built something. There was evidence, something tactile, to reflect what I’d created during my day.”

“Dad, I’m a computer programmer. I’ve never have anything tactile to prove at the end of the day that I’ve actually created something. You were lucky to have that scenario. Life is more abstract than that, normally.”

“Now I got nothing. No sense of accomplishment.”

“Dad, you retired when you were 70, which was 10 years ago. Why are you feeling this all of sudden?”

Ronald took out the article from the newspaper that he’d painstakingly cut out of the Chronicle, and handed it to Duncan.

He read it. Twice. Then handed it back to his father.

“Seriously Dad. Dear Abby? Dear fucking Abby?”

“Wisdom is where you find it.”

“That is not wisdom. That’s whining. That’s someone who is probably not nearly as healthy as you are. Other than some arthritis and your creaky hip, you are in perfect health. Do you know anybody else your age who can say that?”

Ronald shook his head. “My health is not an accomplishment.”

Duncan sighed heavily. “Is Arturo’s open yet?”

Arturo’s was a Mexican place down the block that served up some of the best tacos and burritos in the city, and had a full bar.

“Eleven o’clock, seven days a week.”

“Let’s go, I need something stronger than coffee.”

When they’d seated themselves at the bar and each ordered a Dos Equis Amber, they picked up the conversation.

“Dad, living the life you live, at this age, is a great accomplishment. Most folks your age fear being the butt of an “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” joke down at the rest home.”

“My standard of living has always been a little higher than that.”

“Agreed. So why punish yourself now? I don’t get it. It’s gotta be more than that silly article.”

Ronald had carefully folded the article and put it back in the breast pocket of his plaid wool shirt. He patted it now.

“This just brought it all to the surface. I’ve been feeling this way for a while now. Probably since your mother died. I mean, the novelty of ‘retirement’ wore off long ago. I actually get bored sometimes, can you believe that?”

“Not really. What do you do then?”

“I’ve come here a few times for lunch and not left the bar until 3pm.”

“Good for you. That’s not boredom, that’s a good solid way to spend three hours.”

They both grinned and then touched bottles in a silent toast.

Then Duncan, grinning wickedly and said, “Though it is a peculiar way of living at 80.” He winked at his father, who never liked to hear his middle name.

“First of all, I ain’t 80 yet. Second, I can still drink you under the table.”

“Jesus Dad, we haven’t done that sort of thing since your retirement party.”

“Sounds as if we’re overdue. Can you take the rest of the day off?”

“You know I can.”

“Care to go to the coast? Starting and maybe ending at Moss Beach Distillery? You in?”

Duncan looked at his father and felt a wave of love, affection and maybe most powerfully, admiration, cascade upon him like warm tropical ocean air.

He nodded to his father, who said, “I’ll hire a car for the day.”

Ronald knew how to close a deal. Duncan finished his Dos Equis, nodded affirmatively and watched as his dad pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and made travel arrangements.

****************************

Ronald found it refreshing that his son was so solidly entrenched at his job that he simply called his boss, said “I’m takin’ the day off and going to the coast with my old man,” with nary a recrimination from management. He didn’t own his own business like Ronald had, but it sounded like he had many of the same freedoms professional independence offered.

They had another Dos Equis while waiting for the town car. When it pulled up, Ronald saw it through the window, paid the tab and they stepped outside, blinking into the bright San Francisco winter sun. The darkness of the town car’s interior was a welcoming contrast and Duncan noticed with pleasure that it was a car equipped with a full bar.

Ronald went about preparing a pitcher of gin martinis. He knew his son preferred gin to vodka and though he preferred Absolut vodka, it was a small price to pay to pour a healthy slosh or three of Tanqueray into the brushed silver shaker. Two miniscule dollops of good quality dry vermouth, drop in two small pearl onions, and shake vigorously. Duncan sat grinning, watching his father perform a ritual he’d seen many times, but had only partaken with him on a few occasions.

Today was going to be special.

**********************

As they climbed down the stairs, gingerly for Ronald, to the stone ledge that hangs off the back end of Moss Beach Distillery and which offers an unimpeded view of the Pacific Ocean crashing its waves onto one of Half Moon Bay’s little beaches that are mostly unreachable except for the hardiest of hikers, they both stopped at the bottom of the winding wood stairway to take it all in: the crisp sea air, the misty fog that offered a slight but not view-destroying shroud, and the sound and sight of the waves crashing on the craggy rocks and the little spit of sand about 300 feet below.

As always, the ledge was tastefully appointed with strategically placed bronze fire pits that were mesh-encased so rogue embers didn’t ignite patrons. Positioned to heat as many of the intimate seating arrangements as possible, two of the attractive black bowls were currently lit and the two men chose a sturdy stand-alone bench that swung gently on husky chains extending from a thick wooden frame above. They had good access to the fire and a rectangular oak wooden table was before them for drinks and appetizers. The view was nothing short of spectacular.

They perused the two menus that were already on the table.

Ronald knew quickly what would go with the scene, the mood and his son.

“Oysters Rockefeller, prawn cocktail, cheesy garlic bread.”

Duncan smiled and quickly folded his menu and put it on top of the one Ronald had laid on the table.

“I, of course, never argue with perfection. Might I suggest the crab cakes as well, and maybe some celery? But you have to let me get the drinks. Please.”

Ronald nodded. “Make mine an Absolut this time, please,” he chided as he watched his son go back up the stairs to the bar to get the drinks and order the food.

**************end of part one****************