More fucking life lessons

I knew if I put a swear word in the title, you would read it.  If I just titled it Life Lessons, NO ONE would read it, how boring is that?  But these fucking lessons of life, the ones you keep thinking you already learned?  I am tired of them.  I am tired of yet another one throwing itself at my face like cold water from a cup. Surprising me, yet again, with what I do not know. About anything.

I have nothing specific in mind here, just the crap we have to learn as new things pop up: what kind of diapers to buy for your parent, how to handle that subject delicately, (which always reminds me of the Wicked Witch in the "Wizard of Oz" saying to Dorothy "...these things must be done Delicately....") how to ask for time off when your job has no time off and how to act grateful when you get it,(without pay, of course, but in July that will be remedied, thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown) and how to grow up.  That's the big one. We all think, at this age, we are grown up but I don't think that's the case. I don't think you are grown up until you really, really stare your mortality in its friggin face.  And when you do that, well, pretty much you are on your way outta here, so what good did that growing up really do?

More fucking life lessons: thinking about not having enough money for retiring, getting that thing in the mail about fecal samples and pooping on the paper and putting some of it on a stick and mailing it in to see if your colon is working well or sabotaging you as you poop (oh, just you wait, youngsters, til that scenario smacks you in the choppers), listening to your knees crack every morning, having friends die, feeling helpless in your continued journey to old age, sharing grief, sharing despair, sharing depression. Simply acknowledging grief, despair and depression are lessons we learn, over and over, and they are new every fucking time.

But there are good life lessons as well, not to sound like a Hallmark commercial, but there is always hope, there is great joy in sort-of-grandkids ("Julie makes the best ribs" said Sam), the loyalty of dogs, a bit of solitude, of silence.  Bach. Aaron Copland. Double rye whiskey, which always surprises me, again and again, thankfully. Kindness. Trader Joe's Coffee Ice Cream.  The glorious beauty of the sunrise on an empty stretch of road.  I could probably go on and on about these good things longer than the bad.  And that's good.

So, nothing here that is profound, remarkable or memorable except that life lessons, as fucked as they often are, are also, now and then, lovely.  

Sam, I will grill ribs for you any time, any day, just so you know.  Just ask.

xoxo

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