Unless you have been off the planet for the last five years, you’ve heard about Hamilton, the musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda that took Broadway by storm and packed theaters around the world until the pandemic closed them.

We tried to see it many times. We entered all kinds of contests that offered Hamilton tickets as prizes, but we never won any.

So imagine my delight, a while back, when a friend said she had an extra ticket and asked me if I wanted to go. I spent a milli-second wondering if I should go without Peter. Then I said yes.

Our tickets were in the last row of the balcony. The acoustics were not ideal. The stage looked like we were seeing it from the wrong end of a telescope.

To complicate matters, my friend fainted as we waited for the theater to open. At one moment, she was standing beside me. The next moment, she had collapsed on the floor. She recovered and we went in. But worrying that she might faint again affected my enjoyment of the show.

So when I learned that a film of the show with the original Broadway cast was opening on Disney+ ($6.99/month), we subscribed and watched. I was captivated. The next day we watched again.

It won’t be the last time.  

About ten days ago, Peter finally got his pandemic-delayed hernia operation.  It required the usual preparations, even though it was only minor day surgery.  And, of course, it required someone to take him there and bring him back home, supposedly after a couple of hours.

The hospital was forty-five minutes away, and we had to be there at 7:45 in the morning.  No problem.

But, when we got there, I was told that I couldn’t go into the hospital because I had not been tested for Covid-19.  Fortunately, I had my book and my phone. I went off to park the car in the designated lot.  I phoned a friend and we talked for about an hour. When the excitement of that wore off, I walked around the parking lot for a bit of exercise.  Then I read the paper.  Then I walked around the parking lot again.  Then I picked up my book and started reading, expecting a call from the doctor at any moment to tell me “we’re bringing him down”. But it didn’t happen.

After a while I began to worry—not about Peter, but about my bladder. Some more time passed and I realized worrying wasn’t good enough anymore.  Fingers crossed, I stepped through the hospital door, and shouted to a woman behind a desk, “Can I possibly use a restroom?”  “Of course”, she said.  “There’s one just around the corner.”

Peter’s surgery went well.  They had kept him longer because he had been given general anesthesia.  He said that everyone and everything about the hospital, from the intake to the juice and cookies after he woke up, was perfect.

Not clear who was the “patient” one that morning.

Although those of us living in our “bonus years” appreciate our “bonus days”, we also anticipate a diminished quality of life as we grow older.

So I propose that we all get a seven-day reprieve at the end of our lives in which we relive some of our most perfect days.

And if that were miraculously to happen, how would we decide which days to relive?  Perhaps the day we fell in love.  Or the day we became a parent.  Or perhaps the day we made a life-changing discovery.  Or won a marathon.

Here’s my list as of today. 

1. The campfire on Martha’s Vineyard more than a half century ago when I realized I was in love with Peter.
2. The days our children were born (not the labor, the first holding).
3. A day of biking in the Dordogne region of France.
4. The day I held our first grandchild.
5. My first book talk after publishing 70-Something.

My list could be longer.  It could change every day. 

But it’s fun to think about.

Several  80-something readers have told me that the link to our daughter-in-law Katrina's blog didn't work.

Try this https://thecookiemomsterblog.blogspot.com/

Apologies…

Judy

Pandemic Cameos

I have pandemic fatigue.  I am ready 1) to not wear a mask, 2) to hug my friends 3) to see our grandchildren 4) to have a vacation from Zoom and 5) to be entertained by something other than our TV.

But I have to admit that I am enjoying some things, that I might not have noticed in normal times.

1. I watched in awe as a man rode his circus-style bike down a traffic-free Brattle Street.  The front wheel was huge, and his seat was so high that I wondered how he got up there, and I worried about how he would get down.
2. After chatting with a friend in the garden behind our building the other day, I decided to add my left-over glass of water to the near-by planter, full of basil, chives and thyme. We had had a long dry spell, and I thought the herbs could use some attention. As I emptied my water glass, I noticed some clippings of grayish “grass” surrounding a nearby chair. I realized that, with all the barber shops and beauty parlors closed, someone had found a place to get a haircut.
3. A neighbor stopped me and said she thought I looked fabulous.  At first, I thought it was my very tight white pants and sleek black top.  Then I realized that it could have been my masked face that prompted her remark.

I am looking forward to an end of this pandemic fun.

P.S.  Be sure and check out our daughter-in-law Katrina's new blog for moms.

A few months ago, our older son Seth, who lives in New York City, told us that he had a new friend.  Shortly after that, he told us her first name and the week after that, her last name. As an experienced mother, I knew that I could not ask for more, so I was pleased when Seth sent a picture of the two of them taken on a walk in the park.

You can imagine how excited I was when Seth called on the Friday of Father’s Day weekend and said that he and his friend were going to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts and that they would visits us in Cambridge on Sunday before returning to New York, adding a mere five hours of driving to their weekend.

The four of us spent a delightful three hours together.  Seth’s new friend charmed Peter from the get-go and me within minutes.  They wanted to be carefully socially-distanced so there was no hugging, but  conversation was easy, as we had iced tea and snacks in the garden behind our apartment building.  They brought alfajores, a Brazilian sweet, for Peter and an orchid plant for me.

The three hours flew by.  There were no good-bye hugs, but we’ll make up for that next time.

I can’t wait.

Journalists are taught that every newspaper article they write has to answer the questions: “Who, What, Where When and Why?   In conversations between Peter and me, one of those “W” words is used more than the others.  Can you guess which one?

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we don’t hear each other so well anymore. “What?” is the usual response when one of us speaks. We seem to spend a lot of verbal energy repeating ourselves.

People used to comment about how much Peter sounded like Hawkeye Pierce (aka Alan Alda) in "Mash".  Little by little, Parkinson’s has taken the boom out of both their voices.  As for me, I am a new hearing aids owner who hasn’t quite got the whole system down yet.

Just another ageing challenge. More to come…

When our grandchildren and their parents were invited to spend a week at a friend’s vacation home in western Massachusetts, only two and a half hours away from us, we talked about how we could get together.  Normally, we travel to Maryland to see them several times a year.  But this is not normally.

At first, we thought that they would drive to Boston to spend an afternoon with us.  Then the grandchildren began to worry that they would infect Peter and me with Covid-19, even if they had no symptoms. 

Then Peter and I considered driving to the Berkshires for an afternoon no-touching visit, but for us, five hours of driving roundtrip when we couldn’t even hug the kids ruled it out.

Instead, we had a long Face-Time visit.  We “toured” the house and grounds and chatted with everybody.  It was almost like being there.

Still, I spent the week thinking that they were only 101 miles away.

Our bedroom window overlooks a small private park for the residents of our condo building.  On a bright mid-June morning with a blue sky and a scattering of fluffy clouds, it feels like everything is right with the world.

But it isn’t.

As I stood looking out the other morning, I thought, there are good times and bad times for us, but the sky and the clouds and the tall trees stirring in the breeze don’t know the difference.  It’s hard to believe how radically our lives have changed in the last three months. We have enormous challenges ahead. 

Times have been bad before and we will get through this and return to a much-changed new “normal”.  

But when? If we had an end-date, this would be much easier.

Peter’s Parkinson’s Disease was diagnosed thirteen years ago. At the time, we were relieved to have a cause for his increasing fatigue and to learn that although there was no cure, there are some effective medications that would help him function.

But there are no effective medications for caregivers. 

Our first major change came when Peter decided that he shouldn’t drive anymore.   I had been the designated night driver for a while, but this was different. I became his Uber. 

When we rented a house in Bethesda, Maryland to “try out” living near our grandchildren in 2016, we spent most days on the Mall in DC, visiting the museums and other sights.  When we moved to DC eighteen months later, it wasn’t the same because Peter broke his femur shortly after we arrived and was hospitalized for six weeks.  His mobility declined significantly and that was a real setback.

Returning to Cambridge nine months later was difficult for both of us but it was the right thing to do.

But my amazing husband who never complains has not been able to stave off his increasing immobility, so we had limited our activities considerably even before the pandemic.  We used to have a joke—when one of us asked the other to do some trivial task, the other person would say, “What, do I have to do everything around here?”

Now, I do have to do everything. 

If the situation were reversed, Peter would do more than everything.