Lori Borgman

On a morning walk to catch the last colors of fall, we saw what appeared to be a large pile of vanilla wafers in the easement up ahead. Whoever trashed an entire box of vanilla wafers clearly has no appreciation for banana pudding.

A few steps closer, we saw the mound was not vanilla wafers but an enormous puffball of small mushrooms. They blended seamlessly with the leaves nestled around them, each and every one a perfectly toasted golden brown.

The husband took pictures and I identified the UGO (unidentified grounded object) with an app on my phone as ringless honey mushrooms. Desarmillaria tabescens is their proper name, which is why we continue to call them vanilla wafers.

We crouched down on the sidewalk for a closer look and at the same time provided entertainment for middle school kids at the bus stop across the street. More old people doing weird things.

The mushrooms were a work of art and marvel of creation. As we continued on, leaving the puffball behind, it struck me how close I came to missing it. What with multitasking, speed walking, always thinking three days ahead, I could have shot right past them.

I am my own worst distraction, often doing two things, thinking about a half dozen other things and then befuddled that I can’t remember where I parked my glasses.

All through the long, dry month of September, I pined for the beauty of fall with rustling leaves, changing colors, funky pumpkins with warts, open windows and an extra blanket at night.

Fall entered stage left. It was beautiful, but my mind was weeks ahead planning Thanksgiving. One 6-foot folding table, a card table in the dining room and a crockpot warming potatoes in the garage could alleviate overcrowding in the oven.

I am susceptible to every rushing wind that blows in the next event, the next season, the next celebration, and the next storm.

Christmas has been known to be so overwhelming that it often swallows New Year’s whole. Winter’s bleak skies and bitter cold drag on, tulips and daffodils bloom and disappear in a flash and it is time to plant the vegetable garden. Picking peas in 98 degree heat, I wonder when fall will arrive.

How often I think ahead and miss the now. If only I could be in the present—which reminds me, Christmas is coming.

“Sit down and take a deep breath,” the husband says, as he brings in the mail. “You’re going to love this.”

“We won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes!” I yell.

“No,” he says.

“It’s a check from the government saying they’re sorry they overcharged us on taxes for the past 45 years.”

“Wrong again,” he says. He dangles a small 4-by-6-inch white envelope in front of my nose.

“It can’t be,” I whisper. “Something from a real person?”

Day after day, week after week, our mailbox is stuffed with junk mail, circulars, flyers, unwanted promotional catalogs and advertisements, but real mail? We get real mail about as often as we get invited to Buckingham Palace.

He slowly turns the envelope around so I can see the address on the front written in purple ink. I recognize the handwriting.

“Be still my heart—a thank-you note!” I shriek.

Some say thank-you notes are no longer necessary, that they are as out of date as rotary-dial phones and Farrah Fawcett’s big hair.

I didn’t know saying thank you had term limits. Saying thank you is always in style—even in the digital age. These days, receiving a handwritten thank-you note is like a gift in return for a gift. Saying thank you keeps us human, kind and courteous.

A well-written thank you quite simply does three things: It lets the one who gave the gift know that the gift was received, that the gift is appreciated and that the gift will be enjoyed.

The first sentence of our thank you, from an 11-year-old who recently had a birthday, said, “Thanks so much for my foot bath-spa.”

The second sentence expressed how she feels about the gift. “I LOVE it!” (Big exclamation point and LOVE is underlined.)

The final sentence detailed how she planned on using the foot bath-spa, which in this case is often. “I have used it about 100 times already.”

The writer then concludes with her name and a tender embellishment – a drawing of her foot.

I am firmly in the pro thank-you camp. A handwritten thank-you note is a work of art, which is why ours is now hanging on the fridge.

We often race one another clearing the table after dinner. It’s not an overt race with running shoes, numbers strapped to our chests and the crack of a starting pistol, but a low-key, passive-aggressive run-walk type race.

I move toward the sink with a dish holding the scattered remains of a lone chicken enchilada. He pulls back his chair; I quicken my pace. Just as I am about to dump the enchilada remains into the disposal, he reaches from behind, catches the remains midair in a small plastic box and seals the lid.

“You weren’t going to throw that away, were you?” he asks.

“Of course not.  I was just holding it over a running garbage disposal to toy with it, sadist that I am.”

He delivers the enchilada remains to the refrigerator, where they are welcomed by other small containers holding 15 kernels of corn, three broccoli florets, 2 tablespoons of brown rice, five wilted spinach leaves and half of a dried and aging lemon smothered in plastic wrap.

You’d think the man grew up food deprived. He did not. Their family refrigerator absolutely bulged. With leftovers. It was said no one had reached the back of that refrigerator in decades, where there were rumored to be leftovers dating back to when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

All that to say, the Tupperware doesn’t fall far from the tree.

At our house, no food dies before its time. Some never die at all; they simply fossilize and petrify. Many of the small containers ease into a slow rotation with other abandoned leftovers.

As the chicken enchilada takes center stage, aging spinach moves to the side, pushing browning celery sticks in a baggie to the back, leaving a dish holding something growing blue fur sandwiched between an expired carton of half-and-half and an aging jar of kalamata olives. Checkmate.

The husband will eat anything set before him and never complain, even if he doesn’t like it. He would have made a great pioneer heading west on a wagon train, living on dried meat, day after day and week after week.

Because the man does not believe food is capable of going bad, there are some questions I never ask him, such as: Does this smell rotten to you? Do you think that white fuzz is normal? Any guess how old this salmon is?

Last week, he brought home a slice of pizza from our daughter’s house because he thought she was going to throw it out. Seven days and counting. Four more days and it will be genuine leather.

Could someone please explain how a person sitting in the front seat of a vehicle can be labeled a backseat driver? A backseat driver would be someone in the back seat.

Fortunately, a specific label is of little concern to me as I am ambidextrous and can direct from either the front or the back.

My husband is a lucky guy. I remind him all the time.

That said, my driving and directing tips are often seen as unnecessary, as in gasping. Yes, I sometimes inhale sharply, but usually only when it appears we may miss our exit.

Hitting my imaginary brake is also unwelcome. Guilty as charged, but sometimes my right leg spasms and smacks the floorboard in front of me. This most often happens when vehicles in front of us slam on their brakes in rapid succession.

Holding out my arms as if bracing for impact is also frowned upon. I prefer to call that move “front-seat tai chi.” I’m just exercising. There’s no need to take it personally.

I work hard at not being a backseat driver. I know what it’s like to be the driver and have someone (male voice) in the passenger seat (co-owner of the vehicle) telling me where to turn, or which lane to be in, so I try not to do that to others.

Case in point — I keep a stress ball in the glove box. I picked up this tip from one of our daughters who has inherited my front- and backseat ambidextrous gift for directing. It’s a genetic condition most often passed from mothers to daughters.

There have been times I have squeezed the stress ball so tightly that my fingernails have cut through the stress ball and into the palm of my hand. At least it feels that way.

Backseat drivers are nothing new. When you look at illustrations of wagon trains heading west, what do you notice? That’s right, there are two people on the spring seat on the front of the wagon. A man is holding the reins, and a woman is beside him giving directions.

And why is it that Lewis and Clark are never referred to as Clark and Lewis? Because Lewis was in the front seat of the canoe and Clark was in the back seat giving directions.

The husband asks how it is that he has driven many times without me in the car and never had an accident.

“Funny you should ask that,” I said. “I’ve asked myself the same thing.”

I blame Merriam-Webster. They define “we” as a plural pronoun when everybody knows “we” most often means another person in the room.

For example, we are eating a stuffed crust pizza and I say, “We need to watch what we eat,” meaning my better-half might want to lighten up on the late-night ice cream.

“We” is most often a subtle way of one person telling another person what to do.When the husband says, “We should go back to Maine next year,” that means he’d like me to plan a trip. “We” is how ones lobs the ball onto the other side of the court.

“We really should plan a trip to Maine,” I say, which is me returning the serve. Score: 1-1 and nobody has taken the initiative on planning a trip.

All that said, there really are times when we do things together. Case in point, “we” recently cleaned the gutters.  I stood at the bottom of the ladder as a safety measure and he teetered at the top of the ladder, reaching and stretching to scoop out wet heavy gunk and heave it into a trash can below.

Misuse of “we” can happen in any number of situations. When the doctor suggested I take a vitamin supplement, I asked why that would be necessary. He smiled and said, “You know, as we get older. . .” The man is 40, 42 tops. Unless he has a mouse in his pocket, there’s no “we” getting older. I am the one in the room getting older. That said, nice try, I appreciated his sensitivity.

Trying on clothes in a department store, a helpful clerk asks, “Would we like to try that on in a different size?” This is very confusing, as there is no one else in the dressing room and at no time will the clerk and I simultaneously try on the same article of clothing.

Misuse of the word “we” can be traced back to kindergarten when the teacher would say, “Now class, we need to roll our mats out on the floor for rest time.” I always kept one eye open during rest time and not once did the teacher roll out a mat on the floor and take a short nap.

I hope we have cleared up this matter once and for all.

I have come to the conclusion that aging is simply a different version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, only this one is Pin the Aches and Pains on the Old People. In Pin the Tail on the Donkey there is only one winner, but in this game everybody wins. No matter where you put the pin, you’ll tag something.

More and more, when we are together with friends our age and older, the conversation frequently turns to health matters. The conversations quickly become rounds of “Can You Top This?”

Someone announces a new knee problem, and someone else shouts, “Had that when I was 50!”

Someone reveals they are scheduled for shoulder surgery, and someone else shouts that they’ve already had two. Comparing aches and pains can be a highly competitive sport. Unfortunately, there are no ribbons, trophies or all-expenses-paid trips to beautiful islands.

The husband enjoys these conversations, as he considers them free medical advice. When I asked what he planned on doing about a knee issue he’s contended with for months, he said he’d know more next week after he talked to our friend Kathy. She’s been treated for the same issue multiple times and is undergoing treatment again. Who needs a consult with an ortho doc when you have Kathy?

A while back, a woman who sits two rows in front of us at church had a knee replacement. Six months after that, a woman who sits one row in front of us had a knee replacement. Knee replacements aren’t contagious, but all the same, I moved to the back row. At this age, I’m not taking chances.

Sometimes the conversations concerning health matters are so intense that I want to lead an impromptu round of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” just to see who’s still agile. Of course, that would lead to a lot of snap, crackle and pop, more technically known as Rice Krispies Syndrome.

It’s important to stay positive and make the best of every situation. Case in point is a friend who says his bones may ache, but he’s getting pretty good at predicting the weather.

Among our friends are those contending with vision issues, joints that pop like bubble wrap, hearing challenges and decrease in overall speed and flexibility. Thank goodness we can all still drive.

After our son grew up and began carving out a life of his own, he left home as young men often do. It was about 21 years, one month, 17 days, three hours and 10 minutes ago, but who’s counting?

He married a young woman whose passion for camping, hiking, dogs, night skies and the great outdoors matched his. After tying the knot, they fled to the wilderness—Chicago.

We missed his old truck with the loose muffler rumbling into the driveway late at night. The walls no longer shook because he was playing drums upstairs. Towels in the bathroom magically began staying on the towel bars. Strawberry Pop-Tarts on a pantry shelf let out soft sighs of loneliness.

Meanwhile, he and his bride were exploring the foreign terrain of tangled interstates and towering stands of concrete in the Windy City.

After their fifth baby was born, they moved back to our neck of the woods, settling just an afternoon drive away amid rolling hills blanketed in maples, red oaks, tulip trees and coyotes that serenade in the dark.

Our extended family numbers had swollen to 19 by then. Meaningful conversations at family gatherings consist of:

“Did someone put the mac ‘n’ cheese in the oven?”

“We need the piano bench and a 6-foot folding table from the garage!”

“Anybody find a black tennis shoe?”

One-on-one time with adult children or their spouses is a rarity. But once in a while, our son passes through the city on business and stays overnight at the house.

He texts an approximate arrival time. I run the vacuum, freshen towels in the bathroom and whip up a batch of his favorite cookies. We watch the clock and peer out the windows as his ETA draws near. We catch his headlights turning into the drive.

He walks into the house, and we try not to wag our tails like overly excited labradoodles. We sit at the kitchen table and talk about kids, work, family projects, everything and nothing.

I can still see the toddler who loved dinosaurs, the schoolboy who dismantled appliances and the high school kid who installed stereo speakers in the garage ceiling. I slide a plate of cookies his way. He acts surprised and takes two. Then a third.

We talk for a couple of hours, bouncing from topic to topic, then turn in so he can be ready for an early morning appointment. The last light is out and the house feels full.

We say goodbye in the driveway the next morning before the sun rises and watch the taillights disappear.

That was four days ago, one rumpled bed, a wet towel slung over the towel bar and a scattering of new gray hair around his temples, but who’s counting?

 

 

When a technician pronounced our refrigerator’s ice maker beyond repair two years ago, he bowed his head, marked the event with a moment of silence, then handed us an outrageous repair bill.

Not going down to defeat, or life without ice, we went out and bought two plastic ice-cube trays. Making our own ice was such a throwback to the past that I bought a poodle skirt, the husband greased his hair, and we began jitterbugging.

Who knew what could happen next? Would we start drinking out of the garden hose?  Would we call the bank for current time and temp? Ride bikes without helmets? Put rabbit ears on top of the television?

Recently, a son-in-law pulled the fridge out from the wall, dismantled the ice maker component, installed a new unit he bought online, waved a couple of tools over the whole operation, shoved it back into place and said, “Fingers crossed.”

I wish more repair people had his honesty.

He checked the ice maker during dinner and announced water had filled the tray for cubes. Excitement reverberated around the table.

There weren’t any other signs of ice during dinner or after dinner. When they left for home, he said, “Just chill. These things don’t happen quickly, but delivery could be soon.”

We promised to stay cool, but it was like waiting for another grandbaby to arrive.

I cracked open the freezer door every few minutes and gave updates. “The water in the tray is freezing. I think it’s getting close.”

We even whispered as though our voices might disturb the ice maker waiting for the big moment.

Texts flew back and forth.

Any ice yet?” our daughter texted.

“Still waiting! We’ll keep you posted.”

“Ok,” she texted “we’re going to bed soon but let us know if there’s any news.”

A working ice maker would be a game changer. We’ve grown accustomed to buying big bags of ice at the grocery, having them meld into one small iceberg and then whacking the bag with a large mallet in the garage as people arrive. It’s a rather unsettling start to social gatherings.

We sat on the sofa, waiting and listening, listening and waiting. At exactly 10:23 p.m., a low rumble was followed by the clatter of ice cubes dropping into the bin.

Houston, we have ice!

We can finally retire our plastic ice cube trays, as they are now mere water under the ‘fridge.

 

The question these days is not, “Can we afford to eat out?” but, “Can we afford to tip?”

If you pay on a screen at a restaurant, the tip choices are 15 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, and “take my wallet.” The awkward part is thinking it through and doing the math while the server stands there watching you.

We always tip, but sometimes one of us has to wrestle the other one for the payment screen to ensure a generous option.

I have worked a good part of my life in food service: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fourth of July, Labor Day, birthdays, anniversaries. It may not be the same as working at a sit-down restaurant, but the feeling in my feet at the end of the day sure is.

Why I didn’t put a tip jar in the middle of the kitchen table years ago is beyond me.

Still, the matter of tipping poses more questions than answers.

We tip pizza delivery and DoorDash, so why don’t we tip the Amazon guy?

If I were to tip Amazon for leaving a package, would I also tip the clerk at the UPS store for returning the package?

I question the need for tipping at self-service kiosks. If I punch in the order, pick up the order and carry out the order, the one I should be tipping is me. That will be 30 percent, thank you.

I recently bought two donuts at a donut shop. The young woman took three steps to the left, leaned into the counter, pulled out two donuts, dropped them in a bag, handed it to me and twirled the payment pad around with options for a tip.

Will they be asking for tips at drive-throughs soon? You can
shout the amount of your tip into the speaker along with a request for extra ketchup.

Some recommendations for tipping percentages look exorbitant, but the fact is many full-service restaurant workers are paid little more than $2 per hour. They bank on tips to bring them up to the standard minimum wage and, hopefully, beyond.

They put bread on your table, why not put some on theirs?

My new therapist is sitting on the edge of my desk, legs crossed, head slightly bowed, with his beady eyes peering at me through his black framed glasses as he holds a pen poised over his clipboard.

He’s three inches tall, made of molded plastic, and looks like a cross between Freud and Dr. Leo Marvin from the movie, “What About Bob?”

The therapist was a gift from one of our girls who thinks I’m stressed. Why wouldn’t I be stressed? We need a new garage door, and for someone to install a new garage door, the garage floor must be cleared.

It’s probably been 11 years since we had both cars in the two-car garage. The truth is I am a minimalist married to a collector. We are living proof opposites attract.

Half of the garage is filled with big plastic storage tubs holding old scrapbooks, family records and journals, old family photographs, sports collectibles and random memorabilia.

When I push a button on Dr. Marvin’s chair, he asks thoughtful counselor-like questions. “What was your childhood like?”

“Organized. A place for everything and everything in its place.”

I like this. It’s good to hear my thoughts out loud. Then he says so, “Tell me about your mother.”

“Don’t bring my mother into this!”

The husband’s defense is that he only saves things he finds interesting. The trouble is, he finds everything interesting.

If we were to take this tug-of-war family wide, every single grandkid would side with Grandpa. He brings home vintage board games, cool ride toys, scooters, butterfly nets, play money, hula hoops and any kind of ball you can kick, throw or hit with a bat.

Moments ago, I spotted four large water blasters added to his collection. I guess that is two apiece if we decide to settle this in backyard at 20 paces.

Dr. Marvin is intuitive. His next question is: “What do you think would make that better?”

Me: “A dumpster.”

Then Dr. Marvin says, “Let’s bring him back in the room.”

No, let’s not until he has a few more storage tubs cleared out.

Dr. Marvin: “And what kind of changes would you like to make in your life?”

Me: “Aside from erasing some deep lines in my forehead and the dark circles under my eyes, I really can’t complain. Life is good.”

Dr. Marvin: “That’s all the time we have for today.”

“Same here, doc, I gotta get back out to the garage and supervise.”