14 March - Falling & Oldies

An exchange of emails with A., an old friend (met when we were 8 years old or thereabouts). She writes that her 73 year old mother who in the last two years has developed in the last an equilibrium problem and has already fallen off a bicycle and broke an arm last year and as a result now has a live in carer… has fallen again and now has broken some vertebras and has to be in bed for 3 months. I reply not with some adult sympathy, but reverting back to our 13 year olds language, full of ’f uck, shit, don’t need this, what a crashing bore for you, can’t believe it, they never leave us alone’ type of rant.

We used to have these (mostly as epistolary exchanges as we lived 200 miles apart and the phone was guarded and monitored for expense) in letters that had envelopes totally obliterated by slogans, drawings and photos of David Bowie and Mick Jagger pasted all over them. Our parents then seemed very old to us when in fact they were younger than we’re now. Much. But they were old. They had to tell us off all the time for whatever it is that teenagers do and clearly didn’t understand that Bowie was God.

Some letters were read by them (where does one hide stuff in a family home? My then diary caused mother many sleepless nights, such was the hatred that poured out of it for… just being stuck in a family and not in the desert with Crosby Stills & Nash – and Young) and the fathers were incensed to be referred to as ‘baldie’ (hers) and ‘belly’ (mine). Well that was being kind as hers was not only balding by then, but growing even uglier than he’d ever been (teeth sticking out and a speech that always worried me that he may spit on me as he spoke. Especially when old. No chance of that happening as he died of cancer now ten years ago). Of course what we wanted to say was that we wished our fathers were Marlon Brando and Marlon Brando. We were obsesssed. As it happens, it's with great relief that we're not his daugher, considering the sorry, tragic end of his kids and the fact that he was a bit of a weirdo all things considered.

I went on to say that truly it’s too much to have to worry/look after old people when we haven’t even been to the top of Everest yet and /or want to go live in Bahia California, and it would be much better if we all had lives terminated at 75 max as even if in the minority of those healthy ones not requiring anything much till 95… what was the point? Clearly it was just a jokey railing at the passage of time which will get us too (except that as we have no children, nobody will be stuck with the problem and money is set aside for the hospice). She has not yet replied. Maybe she’s grown up and I haven’t….

Talking of old, which he is at nearly 79 (and past my above mentioned termination threshold), but my father is still vain. The belly has gone largely due to recent illness but he cares about his hair etc. So when I was home recently and he told me he pulls out any white hairs on his eyebrows, I told him he shouldn’t as they never grow back. (is this true? My friend C. says if you pluck one out, 7 grow back in its place – which old wives tale to believe?). I trimmed them anyway, as absolutely hate sticky out 2 inch eyebrow hairs on old men. And then I thought of a solution. I got a brown eyebrow pencil (my sister’s as hers are fine and I don’t need one as me and Brooke Shields in the 80’s were one and the same) and by holding my forefinger under the longish eyebrows, I just coated the white hairs with brown. And voila’. He was suddenly Humphrey Bogart. You’d think a man would tell you you’re mad and not allow you to do this. But he’s my father and he cares about how he looks. I doubt he’ll do it himself, but now he has the tools.