Tag: Dana

Sorry. Must Have Nodded Off. What Were We Talking About?

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20242 Comments

Dear Will:

The changing calendar has forced me to confront the fact that I haven’t written in a while. I’m so sorry. It seems 2023 sort of got away from me. I’m not sure “laziness” qualifies as an excuse, but it certainly makes for an excellent explanation. 

You could also blame old age, I suppose, inasmuch as there is so much evidence around here that Dana and I are not as young as we once were. Consider:

20 Ways We Can Tell We’re Getting Old(er)

  1. For the past decade-plus, roughly 30% of what we pull from our mailbox is from the AARP.
  2. We finally lived long enough to pay off our mortgage.
  3. The Red Cross will no longer accept our blood donations. They have standards, apparently.
  4. Between the two of us, each day we swallow roughly 29 pills and supplements, none of which seems to make any difference whatsoever.
  5. One of us is always cold. (Scratch that: This has been true for the full 37 years of our marriage.)
  6. Speaking of which: We have been married for 37 years. Pretty sure.
  7. All three of our children have moved out, graduated from college, and started their careers, except for the one who graduated and moved back home, and the other one who has recently returned to school. 
  8. At last count, 50% of our original hips and knees have been replaced. (Note: One of us still has all of his original equipment.)
  9. We legit could be collecting Social Security right now if we wanted to.
  10. If we can get the technology to work, approximately 98% of the time we are the oldest participants on any given Zoom call.
  11. Our children have started having children. (We have a granddaughter!!)
  12. We keep a different pair of reading glasses in every room of the house. Somewhere.
  13. Two words: Ear hairs.
  14. We are struggling to keep up with Dana’s 96-year-old father.
  15. Sorry. Must have nodded off. What were we talking about?
  16. Recently we have found ourselves repeatedly using the word sciatica. 
  17. We spend zero minutes per week on TikTok and never feel left out.
  18. Sometimes we remember stuff. And sometimes the stuff we remember is from a long, long time ago.
  19. People observe us carefully and then cautiously inquire when we are planning to retire.
  20. We’re not dead. Not yet, anyway.

But even so, life is pretty good around here. We keep waking up in the morning, working out and walking the dog like people do. They haven’t yet asked me to stop showing up at the office, and the checks keep clearing, which I always take as a good sign. The roof doesn’t leak, and when we open the fridge there is always food inside, which the kids still come over to eat from time to time. We’ve been blessed, is what I’m saying. Even if I forget or don’t quite get around to writing to you every month. 

I’ve promised to do better in 2024. But chances are that in a couple of months you’ll have to remind me that I made that promise. You know how it is with old guys like me.

PW

Photo by Hendrik Terbeck

Call Me Woo Woo

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20223 Comments

Dear Will:

By any objective measure, I think you could say that throughout my life I have been an above-average athlete—assuming, that is, that you include all of the certifiable non-athletes in the worldwide population. On the playground, I was never picked first, but also never last. As I grew, I was good enough to make the team, but never a star.

Ninth grade at Goddard Junior High was suitably representative of my athletic prowess. In my only year of tackle football, I was a backup tight-end—140 pounds of grit, squeezing into the huddle and whispering: “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do on this play.” To give you a sense of the intimidating figure I cut on the gridiron, the coaches nicknamed me Woo Woo.

Perhaps more impressive was the fact that I was one of only a dozen or so guys who made the Goddard basketball team. Less impressive was the fact that I began the year as a starter (!) but ended it as a third-stringer at the end of the bench. On the track team I was a high-jumper with neither technique nor natural ability, also pressed into service as our last guy in the 440-yard dash. In that race I never finished better than fourth.

In spite of that manifest mediocrity, as a kid I was full of aspiration. Jerry West was my guy, and I dreamed of one day playing in the NBA like him. I once I even wrote him a letter asking what I could do to become a better dribbler.

But I never mailed the letter. I knew without posting it what my idol’s answer would be: “Practice.” Even at that young age, I knew he would urge me to spend hours doing drills with both hands, honing and then mastering skills that could eventually find their way into a real game. It would take work and focus and determination—none of which I had. Rather than mail the letter, I turned it into a paper airplane. (True story.)

That airplane does not fully explain why I never made it to the NBA (or onto the varsity at Glendora High, for that matter). But it is emblematic of my athletic career. Perhaps because I had so many other interests as well, I never chose to dedicate the time and effort necessary to be really good. To this day I am more enthusiastic about playing the game than working at it. You want to have fun? Hang out with me. You want to get good? Find a different training partner.

My true talents (and lack thereof) emerge in just about any sport I try. For instance, around the time I was not mailing letters to Jerry West, I remember golfing with a friend who was a ranked junior golfer. During one backswing, I had him laughing so hard that he hit his ball about two feet . . . straight out of bounds. It’s not as if I don’t have skills, is what I’m saying. But as you can plainly see, they’re not the sort of skills that help you (or your playing partner) shoot a better score.

However—and this is key—there was one critical time in my life when my athletic inclinations aligned with my actual skills in a beautiful way:

I was in graduate school. My friend Chris told me that they were offering free aerobics classes in the church nearby. The price was right, the time was convenient, and there was this added bonus: the teacher was a total babe. So Chris and I went to her class a couple of times a week, presumably to try to stay in shape. We weren’t the most determined aerobicizers in the Southland, to be sure, but we did keep the class laughing. They could have gotten a better workout without us, but with us making cracks from the back of the room, they definitely had more fun.

Plus, I ended up marrying the teacher. They didn’t call me Woo Woo for nothing.

PW

Increasingly, “Once in a Lifetime” Probably Applies

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20222 Comments

Dear Will:

Several months ago, Dana and I decided to celebrate our vaccinations by throwing on our masks, venturing out from our pandemic bunker, and going to a movie. In a theater! It was both disorienting and exciting to be doing something so familiar that nevertheless seemed new and foreign after so much time away. We were welcomed by a freshly trained, chirpy kid at the ticket counter who asked if either of us was over 60. I assured him that we were not. “Actually,” my wife corrected, “we both are.”

Wait. What?

It gets worse. Soon thereafter, I tried to justify this brain-lapse to my daughter Bryn. “I wasn’t trying to pretend to be younger than I am. It’s just that I’d never been ‘carded’ like that before and it caught me off guard. There has never been a time when the answer to that question could possibly have been yes. And since when did they make the senior citizen cut-off so low, anyway? I thought it was 62, or 65, or whatever.* Besides, I turned 60 only a few weeks ago, so it’s an innocent mistake.”

“Actually,” my daughter corrected, “you’re 61.”

So, to recap: Apparently, at some point during the pandemic, I became (ahem) a “senior.” It’s like something out of a Hemingway novel: How do you become an old guy? “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.” Your head goes bald and your beard turns gray one hair at a time, and before you know it gray is white and you can’t remember how old you are.

Sixty-one, or so I’m told. Barring a tragic encounter with a deadly virus or a moving bus, that means I’ve got maybe 30 more years to play with (give or take). I still have thousands of meals left to eat and untold hours of television and movies ahead of me. Cut back on those hours a bit and I’ll be able to read hundreds of books as well. There’s plenty of time, in other words, to choose both bad restaurants and good ones, true art and mindless entertainment, classic literature and low-brow page-turners. On those fronts, I can still be sloppy with my choices and no big deal.

But I have only so much adventure currency left in my account. Realistically, how many more backpacking trips will my knees and back let me get away with? Eight? A dozen maybe? Twenty if I’m really, really lucky? Likewise, between now and the last one, how many far-flung vacations will we be able to eke out of our savings and creaky joints, and which ones will they be? Every choice to invest time and resources and energy into something memorable also represents countless alternatives that we simply will not get to.

So, no pressure or anything, but when it comes to those extraordinary, “you should have been there” experiences, increasingly the term “once in a lifetime” probably applies. If I follow my urge to one day walk across Scotland, it might ultimately mean that I will have to skip the Fjords altogether. I’d better choose wisely, is what I’m saying, lest I squander one of my remaining adventures on something kind of lame. I would hate to get to the end of my life and say, “Well, I never made it to Waikaremoana, but that week in Fresno was . . . well, it was kind of a dud, wasn’t it?”

I don’t mean to pick on Fresno. I’m just more aware now of my diminishing opportunities, and I want to get it right. Even at this moment, I’m pondering my options for this summer. Do Bryn and I follow through on our threat to hike the Sawtooth Wilderness Loop? Can I also take Seth up on his offer to return to Mineral King so he can see firsthand what Bryn and I loved so much during our backpacking adventure there in 2019? And what about that trip to the UK that Dana and I had to postpone because of the pandemic? For now, the primary limitations are time (I do still have a job) and money. But sooner than I like, my spirit may remain willing for this kind of thing even while my flesh is becoming too weak to tag along.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing the voice of the poet Mary Oliver in my head, and it’s getting louder: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Such a good question. Ask me again in a couple of years, and I’ll show you pictures. By then I’ll be [checks driver’s license] . . . 63!

PW

* Turns out that the actual cut-off at our favorite theater is 55. We’ve been overpaying for years and didn’t know it. No doubt because we look so young and nobody bothered to ask. Right?