Things About 104

The other day I got to visit somebody who will be 104 in a few days. 104 years old - in human years, even - and she's got a quick tongue and a sharp wit and sometimes gets those two things confused, which, at 104 is Exactly All Right.

She told me that perhaps it was time for me to consider a new profession because what I do and the means of doing it can be rough on a body. She's not wrong. At 104, you aren't often wrong. She wasn't quite feeling herself, a little disoriented, as so she was in the hospital. She told us that if anything she said made sense that somebody should take note of it. If you're 104 and aware that you might be saying things that don't make sense, I think you're probably doing pretty well.

She said that she never planned on being 104 and wasn't quite sure how it happened. It just flew by, she said, and the closer she got to 104, the faster it seemed to come. Here I stand at 40, thinking it took me positively forever of doing All the Wrong Things to get here, and she says that 2.6 times my years happened so fast she can't account for it.

She said that she wasn't sure why God wanted her to be 104. That she wasn't sure what she was supposed to be doing. As if taking some time to visit the Critical Care Unit at the local hospital wasn't preoccupying her, or even important in the slightest.

At 104, she has plenty of advice to give, and absolutely no reason to not give it. She recommended thinking hard about my future, and how I want it to be, which is something that I tend to avoid because it's Scary. She said that I can do whatever I want. At 104, I guess she would be an expert. Maybe she became an expert from doing things other than what she wanted, or maybe she always did exactly what she wanted. Either way, it's good advice, because I CAN do anything I want.

She thinks being 104 isn't a big deal. It's just something that happens. Granted, it happens to less than .02% of the population in the U.S., but still... I don't think I have ever belonged to a demographic so elite. Other than percentage of Homeschooled U.S. Residents with the Last Name Stecker and Multiple Pet Dachshunds, or something ridiculous like that. Actually, there's probably a lot of us like that, so never mind. 104 is special. It's rare. Although researchers say that by the year 2050, that percentage will have grown nearly tenfold, so in another three decades, our odds of making it to that age improve greatly.

In the meantime, my 104 year old friend is a long term anomaly in a world with a shrinking attention span. She's pragmatic and practical, still sporting a sense of humor and an analytical eye for success and efficiency. She was born in 1914. She's seen this country through a half dozen wars, technological progression, economic depression, recession, and cultural revolution. When she was born, most homes didn't have electricity. Now most INDIVIDUALS have hand held devices that connect them instantly with The Whole World. When she was born, automobiles had only been commercially available in the U.S. for six years. In 1914, planes had barely gotten off the ground. When she was born, white males were the only legal voters.

Compared to the changes that she has witnessed, our own societal and cultural changes seem to be crawling at a snail's pace. It's hard to imagine, but it's easy to understand the black and white worldview that more than a century has given her. Of course I can do anything I want. Look at the last 100 years. Anything is possible. Who knows? I might live to be 104, and I can only hope, still possess a quick tongue and a sharp wit - only occasionally confusing the two.

The view from a 104 year old's home. She's got it figured out.

Things About Getting Lost

I would assume that growing up, the idea crossed every kid's mind at least once that they must be adopted. For me, it was usually once a day. Even though my walk is unmistakably my dad's, and my mouth is without question my mother's, but still... something about me just didn't fit. Lately it's been occurring to me that maybe I wasn't adopted, but maybe I wasn't actually SUPPOSED to be here at all. Maybe I snuck my way into the universe like some cosmic accidental joke that God played on my parents. And then all three of them were like "well, Jeez. What are we gonna do with this one?" Nothing has ever quite worked out the way it "should have" for me. I have been coming to terms with the fact that I won't ever have a 60th wedding anniversary, or a burial plot next to someone. And that's ok I guess, since I really want my ashes scattered somewhere really fun, so people can remember me every time they hang out there. But I still think that maybe I just don't fit into this life quite right. I am a square peg in a round universe. Maybe, just maybe, I am SO accident prone that I have unintentionally missed every rendezvous with death that has been appointed to me. I showed up late, true to form, for all of the stellar alignments that would return me to my rightful place in the Order of Things.

All of this crossed my mind as I was leaving Walla Walla yesterday. Walla Walla is the epicenter of my existence. The place that destined me to birth, if such a destiny was in the first place. The beginning of it all. I was there for the memorial service of a great Uncle/Cousin named Solomon Frank, whom I remember meeting as a little girl, probably between Easter Egg Hunts and visits from The Real Santa Claus, who apparently lived across the street from Grandma Schiffman in 1983. Solomon Frank was triple related to me, since at least three Schiffmans married at least three Franks, and both lines crisscrossed repeatedly in a somewhat Appalachian fashion. Volga Germans, the Franks immigrated INTO Russia (I know, right?) under the reign of Catherine The Great and set up German colonies along the Volga river, and then crossed over to the US when Russia started thinking maybe German-Russians shouldn't be a thing after all. Staunch Lutheran Reformationists, this family, getting all mixed up with the ever-imbibing Schiffmans, hard drinking Germans with a penchant for all sorts of vices. I was there with my parents and my Aunt and Uncle and clone-cousin, and we had some interesting conversations about what made us the person(s) that we are, which is quite nearly the same, and a repetition for all intents and purposes of our great grandmother Francis Hawk. Who was neither Frank nor Schiffman, but threw in her own dash of awesome for the perfect mix. Francis was a woman ahead of her time. She was on stage with Adam West, the actor who first portrayed Batman on the big screen. She helped excavate and curate the historical site of the Whitman Mission, an amateur archaeologist after my own heart. She was a photographer, an artist, a mountaineer, a mother, an a journalist for the Associated Press back when they were worth their mettle in World War II. My cousin Hannah and I have (often unintentionally) pursued almost the exact same exploits. It's a little bit eery.

Anyway, I left Walla Walla and foolishly followed SIRI's directions off into the wheat covered hills of the lower Palouse. I was lost in thought as I travelled a couple of different two lane, winding highways dutifully, disregarding a curious note that they were oddly named roads, but trusting the painted double yellow to not be destination-less. After about 45 minutes SIRI told me to turn on to a gravel road. Sensing immediately that this was it, her final play to do me in, I disobeyed. As far as I knew, I didn't need to take a gravel road ANYWHERE between Walla Walla and Northport, and it was obviously nothing more than an attempt to shake me. Nice try, SIRI. I continued on the two lane for another 20 minutes or so and then it ended. Well really, it turned into a gravel road. Which was disconcerting. The gravel road was well maintained and pointed int the general direction of the Columbia River which gave me some peace. I reassured myself that I wasn't in a hurry, and since I was already looking at backtracking at least 20 miles I might as well try it. SIRI started sputtering about having no service and Proceeding To the Route, which apparently now was off in the middle of a wheat field somewhere. I followed the gravel for 18 miles and at last there was a tiny little farm town. I knew a highway had to be nearby. Until I got close and realized that the tiny farm town was actually just a huge farm. With lots of campers. and no highway. I tried taking the road through the farm and it was fenced off  in the direction that SIRI insisted was the way to Northport. South facing, interestingly. She's vicious. I took the only road out and started thinking about that family that got lost on the forest road in Oregon and the dad starved to death. I figured my odds were slightly better because there was lots of wheat around, plus all the fire snacks I brought home, and if I ever overcame my pride and the hint of terror that the farmhouse might be the den of a serial killer, I could always ask for directions. Fortunately, after another 20 minutes of driving too fast on a gravel road, with no cell service and no radio reception, so basically, running for my life, I ran into WA State HWY 261, which I didn't even know existed. For the record, it is my personal belief that HWY 261 is actually a roller coaster. hiding in a witness protection program after a few too many suspicious theme park deaths. I survived that road/ride with only a touch of carsickness and then raced my gas light to the nearest gas station, which it turns out was NOT in Washtucna. I met a nice family of healthy black widow spiders living in a public restroom provided by the Washtucna Lions Club. (Note to Lion's Club - get in there with some big boots and a shop-vac STAT!) Once again, narrowly escaping the death that has been pursuing me since my unintentional inception. Somehow I got to Ritzville alive, and remarkably, ahead of schedule.

All of that near-death-defying experience made me think about accidents, the unfortunate ones, and the serendipitous ones, and how a wrong turn can be the thing that makes your life what it is. The extra bends and turns and the little bit of uncertainty that makes your heart beat a little bit faster. Knowing for certain that there are a LOT of wheat fields out there that you can't see from the highway. A lot of stuff to see and know, that you can't reach from a direct route. It's ok sometimes to get off course, both to see the sights, and to know that you won't die. Not at the hands of a serial killer or a black widow or starvation. And that it's ok to go with your gut - sometimes you wind up on a questionable gravel road, but in the end, it all works out.

Things That Are Out Of Order

I definitely have a problem. It's been mentioned to me before, in shocked looks and over reactive arguments, so I never really gave it too much thought, assuming it was merely the vicious contrivance of an enemy mind set to undermine my sanity. But then it hit me square in the face. This morning. When I dropped Dagny off at the vet for her spay appointment and had to fight a mild panic attack, right before I left Aspen standing on a street corner in front of her school and several quasi-questionable vehicles parked in the shadows.

I worry more about my dogs than I do my kids.

Before you slam your computer in disgust and disappointment, or send me a congratulatory note for finally coming to my senses, let me clarify:

As human beings, it is built in to us to control our environments. We change positions or temperatures or colors or smells or really anything that we don't like to live with. We cultivate careers and hobbies and pastimes and families and communities around things that make us happy and captivate us. It's instinctive to draw little compartments around our lifestyle choices and create the most realistic sense of security and control that we can. It's what we do. In 2009, I remember lying awake in a humid bedroom in Uganda, staring at silver-dollar sized holes in the mosquito net above my bed, when the reality that I had four human lives for which I was solely responsible, innocently depending on me, thousands and thousands of miles away,  across oceans and continents and hours and days. They were there, I was here, surrounded by other children and people and families. And I realized, in that moment, if anything happened - whether an earthquake shook a roof in on top of my sleeping babies, or a horse trampled one of them, or some driver texting his mom swerved in the wrong second, anything could happen, and I would not be there to control, fix or prevent it. I had a few moments of absolute terror. Anxiety like I have never experienced. The sense of not-being-in-control was something I had never really thought about. Life is just something you coast through and everybody is ok, until they aren't. But there is this thing in the back of our minds, as human beings, that everybody is ok, and things are just fine, because we make it that way. Because we are doing it right. Because we've got it handled. And then one day, somehow, we realize that we don't. Some of us take longer to learn that than others. Some people never figure it out. For some of us, it takes the Most Terrible Thing We Can Imagine to happen to us before we understand that we never "had it handled" in the first place.

This is where we begin to wax all philosophical and talk about the Goodness of God, which I will not contend, or that Everything Happens For A Reason, which I truly believe, and sometimes we even indulge the Sowing and Reaping conversation in an attempt to place blame and reclaim our own control. This argument usually doesn't end well for anyone, unless a life of guilt and bitterness and shame appeal to you...  But the reality is that at some point, as human beings, we have to come to  terms with the fact that we Do Not Control Things. Some things, maybe. Small things. Things that Have Little Consequence. And this brings me back to my original point: I worry more about my dogs because the world of my dogs is small. It's petty, it's dependent entirely upon me, and it's something, that more or less, I can control. More so than the elementary school where I dropped Aspen off. Who's to say that Ensworth Elementary could never be a Sandy Hook? More so than the swirling emotions of a teenage girl that can't be grounded away. More so than the outcome of the potentially terrible and yet somehow necessary thought of handing over the care and upbringing of one of my children for several months to a family I barely know. More so than a walk down the street with any number of potentially lethal accidents, criminals and catastrophes hanging in the balance overhead.

I realized several years ago that I have little to no control over the lives of other human beings. Including my own children. Whether I am in Uganda or the next bedroom doesn't change whether MacKenzie's heart or Natalee's cello playing fingers will get broken. But my dogs. I tell them where to go. When to sit. When to eat. I subjected Dagny to the pain and suffering and confusing loneliness of a surgery this morning. I can't tell her, like I could tell Halle, Don't worry, this will be worth it, you'll get a prize at the end... Dogs depend on me to control their world. They trust me. My kids already understand the folly of looking to me for a reliable and well-scripted destiny. They have already undertaken the human operation of controlling their own worlds and environments, even the ones I have tried to craft safely for them, they have changed. They have plastered Harry Potter posters over the soft alfalfa-hay green walls that I provided them. They have added chocolate to the perfect cup of coffee that I built. Dagny knows nothing better than the piece of dry dog food from my hand. Simply because it's from my hand. It's easier. Worrying about dogs. It's friendlier to a power-hungry human.

My kids probably feel like they play second (or fifth?) fiddle to a herd of dogs, not knowing that I have channelled my urge to control the outcome of their choices and life events into their canine counterparts. Emmy, with all of her anxiety issues and strange behaviors, is someone that I can effectively mold and shape, whereas the more pressure I put on MacKenzie to conform, or relax into a mold, the more she struggles and fights and makes her own shape. I guess I am just lazy. Or scared to take responsibility for the outcome of my kids. Not that I can avoid it. Whether I shape them passively or aggressively, I get to take some of the credit for how they turn out. But what life delivers to them - I can't control that. I can't put them on leashes and build a fence and tell the doctors exactly what to do them. Remove their ability to reproduce (although this isn't a terrible idea), microchip them so they can never wander without being brought back, trim their toenails so they can't dig in and defend themselves... In some ways the energy seems much more well spent on a pack of dogs. I guess that is what separates people from animals. That sense that we each have our own path and at some point, we have to wander it ourselves. If I let Emmy wander her own path she'd be right back out in the middle of the midnight street, narrowly missingthe bumper of every passing car. I don't have to test her to find out. But Halle - where will she go? If her last adventure didn't work out so well, she'll re adapt, look for a new way. I can be here to offer suggestions and reminders and ideas, and she can take them. Or not. Either way she will learn and grow and experience, for better or worse, all of the things that she needs to. To be her. Which is not me.

So my task is to practice investing my care into my kids, even while knowing I can't predict the outcome, at least as much as I do into my dogs, where I can determine what happens. Human life, relationships, they're all about control. Relinquishing it, maintaining it - this has been my way of clinging to control. I need to learn how to stay involved even when I can't have the last word. This is probably the hardest and most worst thing for any parent. I'd rather wash my hands and walk away then share the burden of one of my kids Big Mistakes. But that's not why we're here. If my parents walked away from all of my Big Mistakes I would be hopelessly adrift. I was for awhile. It sucked. It's a terribly hard transition. To stay invested but not in charge. I don't like hard. I like easy. I like dogs on leashes in sunshine better than kids and tough decisions and letting go. But I've got both. And I need to own both, and love both, and be both. Rarr.