music from a different era

We get up early and are in my dad’s room by 9.  He is sitting in a chair — the first time he’s been out of bed since his surgery.    He has color in his cheeks and a smile on his face.  Later today he is being moved to the hospital’s rehab center, and the hard work will begin.  He barely seems ready.

By 11 we are back in the car, on our way to New York.  My sister’s radio is programmed to play songs from the 60’s and 70’s.  If there were a show where contestants were quizzed on rock-and-roll bands from the late 60’s to mid-70’s, my sister would likely be the winner. 

My ability to pair artists with songs is pathetic. I know The Beatles and Rolling Stones, and not much else.  I recognize the songs, can sing many of the lyrics, but cannot name the band.  My only surprise match is naming The Stone Poneys as singers of Different Drum.  Although to be honest, I call the group The Stone Cold Poneys, confusing them with the ice-cream company. But I do know that Linda Ronstadt was the group’s singer. 

Conversely, Valerie can identify almost every singer within a few chords of the song.  She knows popular groups and obscure ones.  She knows which singers left which groups and where they ended up.  For example, she knows:

• Syndicate of Sound (whom I can’t remember EVER knowing) sang Little Girl.
• The Seekers sang Georgy Girl (and the song won an Academy Award).
• The New Vaudeville Band (another band I’d never heard of) sang Winchester Cathedral.
• All the Bee Gee’s by name, and that Barry is the only one still living.
• Mark Lindsay was the lead singer for Paul Revere and The Raiders.
• John Denver died while piloting an experimental plane.
• Neil Diamond wrote I’m a Believer for The Monkees.
• Gary, of Gary Lewis and The Playboys, is Jerry Lewis’ son.

The ride home provides me with a wealth of information on 60’s rock.  It is incredible, really, that Alexander (like most kids his age) knows and appreciates some of the music from my youth.  The Beatles.  The Rolling Stones.  Eric Clapton.

We are back in our apartment by four.  Alexander immediately turns on his iPhone, and music from a much different era fills my ears.  I wonder which bands today will still be listened to in fifty years?  My guess?  No one.  Because no group is that good.  

a visit to the cape

Alexander and I are meeting Valerie in Stamford.  From there, we are driving up to the Cape.  We get to Grand Central in plenty of time for our 9:34 train, which is scheduled to arrive in Stamford at 10:21.  It should be a quick ride.  But what should be isn't.  The schedule I had checked Sunday night has changed.  Our train still leaves at 9:34, but it now takes 67 minutes instead of 44. And, I don't realize this until it's 10:20 and we have about five more stops.  My sister is not happy when we arrive close to 11.

Things get worse from there.  Torrential downpours.  Traffic jams.  Hovering clouds.  An accident.  A wrong exit.  Our three hour trip from Stamford takes five. 

We arrive at the hospital in late afternoon and my mother and sister Jean are already there.  My dad is clearly happy to see everyone.  Unfortunately his ritz-style room has been downgraded to one nearer the nurse station, as he needs more care than originally planned.  My dad looks good, but is clearly still in pain.  He is on medication and my mom describes him this way:  He’s a little loopy.

The rainy, damp weather has turned my short, blown-dry hair into a frizzed, unstyled mess.  I can’t wait for it to grow back.  Two inches should take about four months.  Valerie’s hair looks great.  Long, blond-ish, and straight.  Before we leave, my dad looks at my sister and says, “Valerie, your hair looks horrible.”  It actually looks beautiful, as it always does, and mine looks dreadful, as it frequently does.  We laugh until tears dot my dad’s face, his humor still intact.

uphill from here (we hope)

Yesterday morning my dad was operated on.  The orthopedic surgeon informed my mother afterwards that everything was routine — nothing complicated, no surprises.  The doctor left shorty after for his daughter’s high school graduation. 

My mom tells us that my dad is being moved to a new wing of the Falmouth Hospital.  His room sounds like a nice hotel, complete with a sofa where my mom can sleep if she wants to (she doesn’t, since she lives nearby), a computer, and even a view.  The doctors and nurses there are compassionate and friendly and have quickly bonded with my very likeable mother.  In fact, before the surgery, the surgeon got my mom two blankets to keep her warm, as the hospital, according to my mother, is freezing.

My mother surprises us all with her strength and laughter.  She can get totally crazed about impending snowstorms, and worries needlessly about traffic (even someone else’s), but she is calm and rational when it comes to caring for my dad. 

Valerie, Alexander and I are going up to the Cape tomorrow, and Jean will come down.  We are hoping by then that my dad is alert and relatively pain-free.

I am watching the long love story of my parents play out, and it is an envious one.  But man, this aging thing is not for the slight of heart.

My mom,  six months after her wedding; October 1949

My dad,  the same day

eating machine

How is it possible that someone can eat so much and still be thin? 

Alexander is barely done with one meal when he is on to the next.  His constant complaint is that we have no food in the house.  But I do, I want to scream.  I have fruit.  Cheese.  Bread.  Milk.  Yogurt.  Tuna Fish.  Eggs.  Salad Stuff. Soup.  Lamb Chops.  Chicken.  Shrimp.  Crackers.  Pasta.  Rice.  Dried Apricots.  I mean really.  “I liked it better when you didn’t care what you ate,” he tells me. 

He has breakfast around 11, lunch around 1, snacks around 3, dinner around 8, and then maybe something else around midnight.  Where a big box of vegetable chips from Agata could last me two weeks, now it’s gone in two days.  It’s as if my growing boy is inhaling food.

Yesterday, for example. I make Alexander three hard-boiled eggs for breakfast with toasted walnut-raisin bread.  My son wants carbs for lunch, and ignores the tuna salad he has asked me to make.  He buys a box of pasta that indicates it provides 8 servings.  He makes half the box.  Dinner is grilled shrimp. In between lunch and dinner and midnight snack, my son eats buttered bread because he’s hungry, and I don’t have anything else good to eat.  Around 11:45 pm, I hear dishes rattling around in the kitchen.  He is making a salad.  I wake up and only one store-baked cookie remains of the three I recently bought.

Alexander has about 10% body fat and is in incredible shape.  His arms are thinner than mine.  He tells me I eat nothing, which compared to him is true.  Maybe if I worked out like he does I wouldn’t feel guilty having a piece of 7-layer cake for dessert.  Not to mention how nice it would be to have thinner arms than my son.