Author Archives: Lois DeSocio

My Stool-Sample Story

06 Friday Sep 2013

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Drawing by Julie Seyler.

Drawing by Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

Last week, as part of my annual check-up, I had routine bloodwork done. I was also given “homework” in the form of a stool-sample kit, which tests for blood in your feces. If they find blood, it could mean you have colon cancer, which is highly treatable in its early stages, but frightfully deadly later on.

The stool-sample kit is ingenious. You lay a piece of thin paper on the surface of the water in your commode to create a temporary floating platform, “make your deposit” on it, then jab the top of the floating waste with a tool resembling a spiky plastic toothpick – twisting to ensure full coverage. Then you snap the befouled toothpick into a sterile plastic carrying case, wrap the case in a sliver of bubble wrap, and slide the whole thing into a padded, postage prepaid envelope addressed to the testing lab. Dump the envelope into the nearest mailbox, and it’s done.

Are we having fun yet? Surely not half as much fun as the lab technician whose job it is to unwrap and test those spiky sticks all day long.

Anyway, I dutifully completed the test, mailed it off, and totally forgot about the blood work and stool sample – until I went home after four days away and listened to the accumulated phone messages. There were four: one wrong number, and the next three, ominously, from my doctor’s office. All three merely recited that it was Dr. Gold’s office calling for Robert W. Smith, and asked that I give them a call. I’m not technically savvy, so I couldn’t figure out whether the messages had been left over three days, or three hours. Nonetheless, I was a bit alarmed that the doctor’s office was so anxious to reach me.

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Remembering a Summer, and the Girl Who Had My Heart

30 Friday Aug 2013

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ronnie 3

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

It started innocently, as all these stories do. I was on an open-ended summer vacation at Lake Erie. In September, I’d return to New Jersey and my junior year of high school. I’d count the days until I got my driver’s license, and could return to this summer place.

That day, my buddy drove us in his VW Bug to a new shopping center in Mentor where the stores were connected and under one roof. It was the biggest thing to hit northeastern Ohio in 1970 since practically ever. The Ohio kids got their license at 15 – geeze, 15! – if they wanted.

While wandering aimlessly along the cavern of shops, a frantically-waving hand on the other side of the window inside a Friendly’s Restaurant caught our eye. It was my buddy’s neighbor Cyndi, and she was so excited to run into us so far from home. I knew Cyndi, and her mom sitting there, but the new girl – let’s call her Ronnie – caught my eye.

Soon I found myself spending a lot of time at Cyndi’s, and her cousin Ronnie showed up nearly all the time. Evenings, we sat on the front steps listening to the Woodstock album on the eight-track. Ronnie liked listening to the Beatles because they were banned in her house because of something John Lennon said.

As a group, we went practically everywhere. Cyndi drove, and we went here and there, to pick up pop, visit a farm stand, or hit the miniature golf links. And I tagged along with the family to the kid brother’s Little League games at Cederquist Park.

One time, we teenagers got volunteered to work at Cyndi’s church cleaning the ceiling tiles in the kitchen. As long as Ronnie was there, it didn’t matter where there was.

Ronnie and I took walks around the block where Cyndi lived. We were still too shy to hold hands, but we were hanging on every word the other said. We were looking for clues that this summer thing would be a forever thing. Walking and talking with the pretty girl lifted the veil of shyness.

A long distance relationship is fine for a shy guy. At home, you could always defer to your girlfriend hundreds of miles away, and say things like, “Gee, I have to run. I owe her a letter.” And, “I can’t wait until I get back to Ohio to see my girl again.” No one would be the wiser.

But a gal wants someone who’s there. Who can take her to the school dance. Someone she can see in the hallways at school. A guy who’s not too far away to do things with. Long distance phone calls and weekly letters in the mail won’t carry that weight.

It’s been more than forty years since we parted. I’ve had other heartbreaks, but none as permanent as the first. Perhaps our story will become a Lifetime channel movie. We met, lost contact, lived our lives and then one day we each look up at the random table at the random nursing home and see each other again. Of course, I’m wondering if she remembers me, or am I a long-forgotten minor distraction? The music over the closing film credits will be that ’60s Four Seasons song, “I’ll go on living and keep on forgiving, because …” Well, you know the rest.

Is it Ronnie I want to meet in that senior citizens home, or am I deep-down longing to meet myself? Although I’m pushing sixty, inside, much of the time I’m still that sixteen-year-old, wide-eyed, innocent – amazed that a beautiful girl would speak with me. Or leave a burning torch in my soul.

Yep, You Can Start Calling Me Grandpa

29 Thursday Aug 2013

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Frank sonogram

Too soon to spoil?

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

My son told me recently that his new bride is pregnant, and that I was going to be a grandfather for the first time early next year. My reaction was pure joy. It was surreal. And then when I saw the first sonogram picture of my grandchild, it all became real.

Bill Cosby used to say that no one is a real adult until they’ve become a parent. Well, I think no one is a real senior citizen until they’ve become a grandparent. And at age 60, I am now ready to be a grandparent.

Grandparenthood, from all reports, is one of the most marvelous things we over-50s can experience. Our friends who already have grandchildren say that it’s the best of parenthood, with none of the downside. You can leave all the unpleasant things for their parents to take care, and you can spoil them by letting them do all things they can’t get away with at home.

I know this from personal experience as a parent. When we had our children, my wife would often watch her mother’s interaction with our kids and say, “Who is this woman? This can’t be the strict parent I grew up with.” Things that were inviolate rules when they were parents, now become mere guidelines when acting as grandparents. In fact, grandparents sometimes seem to conspire with grandchildren against their parents. It’s like they have a common enemy – that mean parent who says the kids can’t have a pet.

From my standpoint, grandparenthood is really a do-over. You get another chance to be a parent, and correct all the mistakes you made. It’s like a parenting mulligan. Now that I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t, I’m ready to do it right this time. But more to the point, I won’t be phoning it in this time, which looking back, I fear I may have done the first time more that I’d like to admit.

I think most over-50 parents feel as I do that our children’s childhoods flew by too fast. I know that at the time it felt like an ordeal to get through. I used to joke about how on their 18th birthday my kids would get a birthday card from me with a notice that the lease on their bedrooms was up, and they were now financially independent. Of course, that didn’t happen. Our daughter still lives with us, and I’m glad of it. She and her boyfriend provide invaluable assistance to her aging parents.

But I do think there’s something about being a grandparent that gives those of us on the right side of 50 a feeling of a chance at redemption. Sure, I may have delivered a mediocre performance as a parent, but I’m going to blow them away in the second act as a grandparent.

Now, how old do my grandchildren have to be before I can introduce them to the joys of licorice and pretzel sticks?

I Love My Car Because It’s MY Car

23 Friday Aug 2013

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car me

My cockpit.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

I must riff on Julie’s post from yesterday about her car, because I counter her disdain of driving with a kicky passion for it that rivals the romance a pilot must have with taking to the skies in his or her plane. For me, a wheel in hand, and a road ahead, unfailingly filters life’s daily pummels.

I adore my car. I do not have the hip convertible that Julie has (I have my hip, though), but I do have a posh, black … SUV. I’ve had it for three years now. It was my first new car in ten years, and as soon as I brought it home, it would instigate head-scratching among some friends: “Why did you buy another “mom car?” (It’s not a “mom car,” thank you, because it’s not a minivan.) And it does not holster sippy cups, and the seats are never sticky.

It’s neither garish, nor gigantic, but it’s roomy enough to lug my stuff, and generous enough in height to allow a view from above on the highways. And after years of driving the family car, in which I taught my sons to drive, and subsequently shared with them so often that it became more their locker room, and less my wheels, for the first time in decades, I have a car that is mine. Just mine.

It has become a salve to some of the wallops life has thrown my way lately. My car has become the one thing to which I am a coxswain. It is my trusty vessel. It takes me wherever I want to go. It stays where I put it. I can lock out anyone I choose. It’s cool in the summer;warm in the winter. The top doesn’t come off, but it has a hole in the roof that lets in the wind without messing my hair. I can make phone calls in it, ask it directions; listen to music and scream-sing along with abandon. It doesn’t lie, manipulate, talk back or ask for money. (It’s paid off.) And it’s fast. I can merge, slow down, cut off, and speed up as I choose. Or I can just sit in it in my garage and talk to myself. I don’t need it to commute to work, so the milage is low, and gas-guzzling is kept at bay. I plan to keep it forever.

So, in mid-life, when the road ahead can be bumpy, and there’s a need to put the brakes on it all for a bit, it’s my car that often steers me away for a while.

Hats Off to Me: I’m Leaving the Law for Retirement

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

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Bob chair hat

BY BOB SMITH

I began practicing law in 1984, when I was 29. I’m now 58. One week ago today I advised the management of the law firm where I’m a partner that I’m leaving the practice of law as of October 1. I chose that date because it coincides with the close of the firm’s fiscal year, which will make the settling up of my finances neat and clean. But there’s nothing neat and clean about leaving a career you’ve pursued for half your life.

Most people consider a full-time job something that requires you to be at work forty hours a week. But to a lawyer in private practice, “full-time” means all the time. And perhaps because it’s so all-consuming, the prospect of not doing it any more is daunting – how will I fill up my time, I wonder? While practicing law, my time was so full I couldn’t consider any other activities. Life, it seemed, revolved around my work. Everything I did was defined by the demands of the job – and they are many.

Here’s a non-exhaustive, but nonetheless exhausting, list of the things you have to do to succeed as a lawyer in private practice:

  • Think clearly, write well, and verbally advocate your client’s position.
  • Manage expectations, which means having pointed – often heated – discussions with your clients about proposed strategy, potential outcomes, and of course, expected costs.
  • Train, motivate, mentor and supervise younger associates, paralegals, and other support staff.
  • Bill your time, which means writing a detailed narrative of the legal work done for each client and how much time it took – down to the tenth of an hour – to perform each task. To meet your billable targets, you should account for eight or more billable hours every single working day. Like J. Alfred Prufrock, who “measured out [his] life with coffee spoons,” for half my life I’ve measured out mine in six-minute increments.
  • Constantly seek new clients or new legal work from existing clients, which requires you to do things that most people see as recreation: play in golf outings, attend charity dinners, and take clients or prospective clients out to restaurants, concerts, and sporting events. But the fun fades when those activities start to gobble up days and evenings you’d rather spend with your family and friends.
  • Keep abreast of current developments by attending continuing legal education seminars.
  • Speak at legal conferences or other public events.
  • Do pro bono legal work and donate your time and energies to worthy causes that help your community, both because it’s your duty as a citizen and an attorney, and as a way to “get your name out there,” and develop contacts who may refer work to you or the firm.

The list goes on. And the stakes are high: if you don’t do your job right, your clients can lose big money, lose their businesses completely, or be precluded from doing things they want to do. If you make a really terrible mistake, you may be found to have committed malpractice and the firm itself could pay a steep financial price for your misstep, not to mention the personal price you would pay to endure that kind of crisis. In short, you’re under incredible pressure, all the time: to perform, to serve, to produce results.

So why was I so terribly conflicted when I realized I could just get out? There’s comfort in the known, and terror in the unknown. It’s like Hamlet contemplating suicide, and acknowledging that we have no idea what awaits us after death – which ” … makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.” I was afraid to leap from the relative comfort of a demanding, but well-defined career, into the unknown called “retirement.”

bob chair faceBut I’ve done it. I’ve just taken that first leap into the cold pool. And even after only one week, before I’ve fully withdrawn from my life at the firm, I can sense it was the right thing to do. A few months from now I have no doubt I’ll be saying come on in, the water’s just fine.

For now, however, I’m still shivering a bit.

A Keg Tale

16 Friday Aug 2013

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sun blocked keg

Sun-blocked.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Yesterday, Julie wrote of a short supply of non-alcoholic beer in bars. I have a beer story, too. No shortage here, though. A party in my backyard last weekend left half a keg of un-drunk beer. It’s been hanging out for almost a week now. And as one who hates to waste food, and even more – alcohol – I’ve been at a loss as to what to do with all that beer. There’s another party lying in wait right outside my back door! But can the beer hold out?

So for the past six days I’ve coddled my keg. I untapped it, iced it, kept it out of the sun, and taste-tested it every morning for, as Julie describes ” … the nice malty carbonated taste of hops.”

“Have a beer!,” I’ve pleaded to everyone who has stepped so much as a foot on my property.

So while the morning taste-testing yesterday passed my muster (I am also someone who enjoys stale Cheez Doodles, and will eat fish that smells fishy), I was sitting on a potential powder keg. The situation was becoming tense. I had to do something with the beer. A lot of beer. And apparently, despite my pampering – flat beer:

flat beer from above

Low carb(ination).

I found good use for a good portion:

watering plant

Beer Garden.

And then I bought 15 pounds of chicken, pulled out my huge container of oil that I never use:

chicken and oil

And battered the bird with beer:

cooking chicken

Fried it up:

frying

And sent out a come-eat-chicken-with-me text to some friends known for their spontaneity. I managed to lure three. So, with enough beer-battered chicken left over to fill a keg, another party just might be looming. Just bring your own beer.

This “Old Lady” Can Be a Mean Girl

14 Wednesday Aug 2013

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meanoldlady

BY MARGO D. BELLER

When I was growing up, and I am sure when you were growing up, too,
there was usually a rundown house in the neighborhood in which lived an
elderly person. In my neighborhood, it was a woman. She lived alone, the
lawn was weedy, and the house needed painting.

We referred to her as “Crazy Mary” or, “the witch.”

I was around 10 years old at the time, and she could’ve been 50 or 60.
Didn’t matter – to us she was old. We’d dare each other to run in her yard,
but ran away when she came out to yell at us. I can’t remember what
happened to her or the house.

Now that I’m in my mid-50s, I know exactly what “the witch” was going
through because there are times I’m the neighborhood’s Mean Old Lady.

My house isn’t rundown, and my lawn hasn’t gone to weeds – quite
the opposite. That is why I get mad when I find children, deer or the
occasional adult, crossing my (unfortunately) un-fenced yard.

I have no children, and until the last few years, my street had few children
on it. But now my neighbors’ kids have kids, and some still live at home.
Three generations live in a house on one side of me, four generations now
live in the house behind, and my last neighbor said the new owner of his
just-sold house has a small child.

In short, I am now surrounded.

Perhaps if I’d had kids I would be more flexible about their random
wildness; the yelling; the running across property lines. After all, I was a kid
myself yelling and climbing over fences, and making messes.

However, I don’t have kids. I know they are capable of wonderful things, but
I rarely see it. To me, they are just noisy at a time when I get more easily
distracted by noise – especially now that I work from home. It has become
harder to concentrate as I’ve aged, and I used to live in some very noisy
neighborhoods in the past. But that was in the past when I was younger.

On occasion I’ve gotten into trouble with kids (and their parents) for
reprimanding them. Embarrassed, I apologize and calmly try to explain
myself. Luckily, we’ve worked things out – at least to the extent that no police
were ever called. I tell myself to leave them alone. As long as they keep
moving, and don’t harm anything, it’s OK. (I think this about deer, too.)

In this era of Facebook, I fear there is a page about a mean old lady with
my picture on it.

My husband and I enjoy the company of our relatives’ children, and when I let down my wariness to speak to some of the local kids, we are friendly to each
other. It doesn’t hurt waving at them, and saying hello.

Still, to them I am “old.” What goes around comes around. When I watch
parents with kids, I wonder about those decisions I made that will come
back to haunt me when I really become old.

Formatting My Music Includes Keeping it “Reel”

12 Monday Aug 2013

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Music 5

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

If you are on the right side of 50, you have lived through a music migration from records to cassettes to CDs to MP3s. And if you’re someone who never throws out music in any form, you may also have 78s, 45s and 8-tracks. These days, I have to think of the vintage of the music I want to hear to know where to look for it in my house. Beatles – look for records. Bread – look for 8-tracks. Bee Gees – look for cassettes. And if you’re like me, you probably have bought CDs of your favorite albums from the ‘60s that replace records that have more skips than a five-year-old girl. Music 2

Because I have gotten tired of buying and re-buying music in different physical formats, in recent years, I have taken to buying MP3s of my music and storing them on my computer, my phone, and my iPad. I back them up on the Internet. But despite all this redundancy, I don’t trust digital formats. They’re too ephemeral. I prefer to have physical backup. That’s why I still keep all the original source material that the old music came on. I also buy CDs as a backup of my most vital music.

Music 6

Back in 1972, I purchased yet another music source – a reel-to-reel tape recorder. I used it primarily for recording, but I also purchased commercial “albums” that were available in that format back then. For example, I have the Moody Blues’ “Days of Future Past” on a reel-to-reel tape. Recently I dusted off my old reel-to-reel, and played some of those old tapes, and I was surprised at the great sound. Audio enthusiasts insist that records have better sound than CDs, but to my ears, reel-to-reel tapes have better sound than records. More than 40 years of sitting in boxes has not degraded the quality of the tapes. Of course, my children look at my reel-to-reel as if it was a contemporary of Edison’s wax cylinder. But they can’t dispute the great sound.

Frank music

In addition to music, being on the right side of 50 means maintaining machines to play video cassettes, DVDs and Blu-Rays, but that’s another story.

All this is why I have a home entertainment center that looks like NASA launch control while my son has an Ipod connected to a speaker and an Ipad to stream video. I don’t care. I’m not throwing out any of my music and video formats. Someday I may want to listen to my 8-track recording of “Winchester Cathedral.” What? It’s available for 99 cents in the iTunes store? Anybody want to buy an 8-track player?

My B.Y.O.B.: Bring Your Own Brine

08 Thursday Aug 2013

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Brine

I’m big on brine.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

The younger me has memories of dining with my mom at a restaurant, and her dipping into her purse and spreading two or three Sweet’N Lows on the table for her coffee or tea – just in case the restaurant didn’t carry it. And then there was Mrs. W., who would stealthily drizzle her tupperwared low-cal salad dressing, brought from home, on her salads at the diner. And who among us hasn’t known someone who would order a cup of hot water, and then soak a home-brought tea bag in it?

All behavior that mortified me. How uncouth! Beyond rude! Unladylike!

I’m now them. I would never tote a sweetener, a dressing, nor a tea bag. Never. But when it comes to my dirty martini – after years of imbibing many that are not green enough – I’m considering stashing a bottle of olive brine in my bag, and bringing it to the bar.

Unlike my predecessors in gaucheness, though, this is not about my health, or frugality. It is all about sniff, sip, swallow … and salt. You may recall, that for me, it’s that first mouthing of a martini that counts the most, and can make or break the drink. It’s crucial that, “the lips greet the glass with precognitive delight.” And I need to assure that, “that premiere swig” will “always deliver.” Lately, I’ve come to have too many “first swigs” that don’t “deliver.”

If I sip, and my teeth clench, or if my tongue recedes, or worse – if I sip, shiver and shudder – that means the balance of vodka to brine is off-kilter. Sometimes I just suck it up and begrudgingly drink it anyway. Especially when the barkeep smiles proudly, upon delivery, at his or her perceived success at delivering my requested, “filthy, extra-extra-dirty” martini.

But I’ve decided that I can’t take it anymore. What it’s come down to, is me, with a galvanized stare (not unlike a mother teaching a child), explaining to the uninitiated bartender that, “I like it dirtier than most – like the Hudson River.” It borders on begging. Some get it; most don’t.

So, I’ve begun to take back my martini. I will now meekly (always with an apologetic smile), push my glass away from me, and back towards the bartender, with an Oliver Twist(y), “Please sir, I want some more.” Brine, that is.

To which I’ve been admonished (usually with an astonished smile):

“Ew.”
“This drink is a travesty.”
“Why bother with the vodka?”
“Let me see your ankles – they must be swollen.”
“You took the last of it – and you need more?”

But I’ve only taken one personally:

“Why don’t you just bring a bottle of brine with you, and drink that?”

OK, I will. In the tradition of my mom, Mrs. W., and all the tea-bag toters, I guess the older me has earned the right to have it right. The next step is to bring the brine.

So, I’m imagining once I find a travel-size bottle of brine (maybe I should just tupperware-it?), that I will then begin to send back those puny, pea-sized olives that often garnish martinis these days, and ask that my drink be properly topped with big, fat, juicy (bleu-cheese, please!) robin-egg-sized olives. Or I’ll bring my own.