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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe ottoman is weathered with crisscrossing scratches and dings, but it is an inviting look. The same lived-in look on upholstery \u2013 tattered, frayed \u2013 would call for a freshened, upgraded makeover. I share a serene sense of identity with my ottoman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nI look at my hands and realize that if I hyperextend my wrist, my lax skin is thrown up into folds that look like a mountain range from the beginning of time.\u00a0 As I slowly clench my fist, the skin tautens, the wrinkles disappear, and a flat plain of smooth skin emerges, like an unruffled desert\u00a0 \u00a0I practice simulating the millennia of erosion and imagine the dinosaur era, from the Mesozoic through Cretaceous period when an asteroid wiped them all out.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nA distinct memory from my 45th<\/sup> birthday burbles up – the moment I realized my life was surely half over.\u00a0 This did not prompt thoughts of how to ennoble my remaining time.\u00a0 I was completely consumed with the responsibilities of parenthood and a career.\u00a0 The care of my aging parents loomed on the horizon.\u00a0 Now, at seventy, I have graduated, with honors, from the \u201csandwich\u201d generation, parents peacefully departed after full, well-lived lives, children fully fledged with lives of their own.\u00a0 I am a grandmother of two.\u00a0 \u00a0Thoughts of mortality now have the time and opportunity to slither from the depths of my mind.\u00a0 They hover patiently at the periphery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Decisions need to be made about my remaining time. I don\u2019t want to make my parents mistake. They did not embrace technology beyond the clicker on their TV \u2013 no cable, no internet and had nothing to entertain them as they transitioned to a sedentary life. My father could have spent hours researching his passion of antique cars, my mother would enjoy witty emails with remote friends. What technology should I keep up with? How about a Twitter handle, an Instagram feed? What will sustain me for the long haul? When will it be too late to start? <\/p>\n\n\n\n An offensive genre of books gleefully proclaims, \u201cThe 100 Things [To Eat\/Visit\/Travel, etc.] Before You Die.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t want anyone else telling me what I\u2019ll be missing.\u00a0 However, my bucket list needs attention.\u00a0 My only item consists of my goal to author a \u00a0crossword puzzle that is published by the New York Times Sunday magazine.\u00a0 I\u2019ve already nailed the concept.\u00a0 It will be titled R.I.P.\u00a0 The theme answers will be idioms for death, such as \u201ckick the bucket\u201d or \u201cbite the dust.\u201d\u00a0 I hope that the New York Times will publish it on Memorial Day.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ensconced in the senior generation, I\u2019m at an age where a friend advises me to get to know my doctor better because inevitably I will need his services more.\u00a0 Fortuitously, I have had few encounters with the medical profession.\u00a0 Over the past seventy years, I have broken a leg, an arm and a rib (not all at the same time), have had two benign breast biopsies and have had surgeries for an obstetrical mishap and a stone-laden gall bladder.\u00a0 A pretty decent record that I\u2019m proud of, but I recognize that I\u2019m heading into a decade where death will seem increasingly less untimely.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n My mother, at my age now – or to give myself a bit of breathing room maybe in her mid-seventies \u2013 shopped for a wardrobe suitable for funerals, \u201csince I will be going to so many more.\u201d\u00a0 Any moment of forgetfulness, previously easily dismissed, now acquires an ominous aura \u2013 perhaps flailing to recall the word etui, an essential piece of my vocabulary built on a 50-year history of the New York Time Crossword puzzle., a persistent cough, a skipped heartbeat, a splotch of blood where it doesn\u2019t belong.\u00a0 So far so good.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I look down at my socks, decorated with birds on a wire.\u00a0 The jagged outline of a troubled toenail strains at the fabric succumbing to the planned obsolescence of novelty socks.\u00a0 They won\u2019t last the summer.\u00a0 My living room is filled with images of birds, some gathered on my own, but many are gifts from friends who know my interest.\u00a0 My son once counted over 50 birds in the room, but he inflated the number by counting every bird in a flock of sandhill cranes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n A hutch filled with ceramic birds sits on the mantel.\u00a0 Many years ago, I glued an aspirin to one eye as part of a rousing \u201chide in plain sight\u201d game for a large family gathering with many young kids, now all grown up.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t played the game in years, but the aspirin is still there, as is the penny glued to the eye of a copper bird statue on the table next to the ottoman.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wonder what will happen to all these birds when it comes time to dismantle this house.\u00a0 Will anyone play the \u201chide in plain sight\u201d game again or wonder why there is an aspirin glued to a bird\u2019s eye?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our dining room contains portraits of my triple great grandparents, salvaged from the attic of my uncle\u2019s garage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had recently stayed in a bed and breakfast whose dining room featured similar portraits.\u00a0 When asked about their ancestors, the owner told me she had picked up the pair at a flea market to enhance her Victorian theme.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want my triple greats to become random tchotchkes.\u00a0 I removed the portraits from the impending dumpster, repaired them and hung them in my dining room.\u00a0 One 32nd<\/sup> of my DNA can be traced back to these pioneers who left their farm in upstate New York to settle in Illinois.\u00a0 However, I sense that any connection to these folks has become so tenuous that it is unlikely they will escape the dumpster on the next go-around.\u00a0 They take up valuable wall space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I became a compulsive quilter during the pandemic, completing thirty quilts in the past two years.\u00a0 I\u2019ve given away many as gifts to friends, as wedding gifts or contributions to silent auctions, but keep my favorites for myself.\u00a0 What will become of them?\u00a0 I have no control over how anyone chooses to remember me or my possessions, I do hope that my more creative improvisational quilts will be passed on to future generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concessions to age accumulate. I always check bags on an airplane, fearful of dumping my overpacked roller bag on the head of a fellow traveler. We no longer replace the heavy storm windows on our own but dragoon a likely candidate passing through – a hearty nephew, younger friend, or a repurposed tradesman in exchange for a quick and grateful tip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reading a book this afternoon is another concession.\u00a0 I don\u2019t ever recall seeing my mother read a book.\u00a0 She was a bright and curious woman but focused on physical and social activity.\u00a0 She collected all her projects in a notebook embossed in gold with the title, \u201cWoman of Action.\u201d \u00a0Reading in the afternoon would suggest that someone had a serious case of not enough to do.\u00a0 She would say, \u201cit\u2019s a beautiful day, why don\u2019t you get outside?\u201d\u00a0 Aside from violent weather, she considered every day a beautiful day wasted on sedentary pursuits.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I still carry this guilt, particularly since I will surely fall asleep.\u00a0 A nap in the middle of the afternoon would have been anathema to my mother.\u00a0 The book is an important prop, it keeps me sitting up and makes the nap seem like an inadvertent mistake.\u00a0 I choose a hard-back book because it lends a certain gravitas to the tableau.\u00a0 A magazine, (and God forbid a People magazine) would double down on indulgence, a sight unfit for public consumption.\u00a0 I align the spine of the book on my sternum.\u00a0 The equal weight pressing on both sides of my rib cage feels like a comforting and protective hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n An elder friend\/mentor of mine forwarded me the link to \u201cWeCroak,\u201d a website focusing on mortality. The website explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe WeCroak app is inspired by a Bhutanese folk saying, \u2018To be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times a day.\u2019\u00a0 Each day, we\u2019ll send you five invitations to stop and think about death.\u00a0 Our invitations come at random times and at any moment, just like death.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m momentarily tempted, but the app requires a two dollar per month subscription. \u00a0At the onset of my eighth decade, I see no need to offer a paid encouragement to mortality to step forward from the shadows for a full-frontal view.\u00a0 The meager website following of 175 subscribers \u2013 within the range of family and friends \u2013 suggests that the bigger world of strangers shares my reaction.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several years ago, my son Ned was traveling on a slow train through India, seated next to a proselytizing Hindu determined to convert him. He kept asking Ned about his thoughts of the afterlife. Ned stopped the interminable harangue with the simple statement, \u201cI\u2019m willing to be surprised.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I could spend quality time with deep philosophic thoughts as so many others have \u2013 how to take advantage of the time that is left, the death moment itself, how people will remember me, and how long will that memory be retained by future generation. Not today. I don\u2019t have the emotional wherewithal to do more than skitter around mortality\u2019s fringes. \u201cI\u2019m willing to be surprised\u201d is the perfect solution at this very moment. I lean back and feel the gentle spring sun. A breeze riffles the pages of my book. I close my eyes. <\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: I sit in the leather chair, feet outstretched on the ottoman, pillow on my stomach, book resting on top of that. I have a very limited view of myself, basically my hands and the outline of my feet inside a … Continue reading <\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"