M-m-m-m-my [De]Generation

In The Who’s 1965 hit My Generation, Roger Daltry tells us, “I hope I die before I get old.” While his sentiment may be a bit extreme (and by “old” he probably meant around forty), I see his point. Let me tell you about my own [de]generation.

At my dentist appointment a couple weeks ago I overheard the doctor say to a patient in the next cubicle, “Your tooth looks fine. There’s nothing alarming. Not alarming at all.” Fifteen minutes later she was by my side, examining a molar that’s cracked around its circumference. “How bad is it?” I asked. “It’s alarming,” she replied. “Very alarming.”

Last week’s recent x-ray of my painful left hand showed “chronic ossicles and severe degenerative changes.”

The MRI of my painful lower back revealed “multilevel disc desiccation and narrowing [of the openings of the nerves of the spine], severe at L2-L3 and L3-L4.”

I told you about my brain and the white speckles that represent its fading efficiency. I don’t see them on this image but don’t you think it’s a good likeness?

But this, on the other hand: what the actual hell? I have a heart shape in the middle of my head and cones for eyes? Terrifying.

I won’t continue with my interminable list of complaints, except to say that it’s strange, after a lifetime of remarkable physical health, that all of a sudden my body has started to betray me. It’s… well… alarming.

During the entire month of October, Ember counted the days till Halloween. When it arrived at last, she donned her costume (Grim Reaper robes & dinosaur mask embellished with giant furry ears), and she and her friend went in search of loot through our neighborhood.

She scored 105 pieces of candy.

Molly and Josh were kind enough to join us, which made things even more fun.

My sister Katie is always sending me greeting cards as quirky as she is. I love this Halloween-appropriate one.

In protest against Elon Musk, I deleted my Twitter account. I almost never used it anyway—I made maybe 15 posts in total and rarely read others—but it’s the principle of the thing.

I love baseball, but since the pandemic I’ve totally forgotten it exists. So imagine my delight in stumbling upon game four of the World Series last week. One minute I wasn’t even aware of the competition, and the next I had vehement opinions about who should win: my home team (Philadelphia), or the evil Houston Astros who are now managed by the wonderful Dusty Baker? Dusty, now in his 70s, has brought a number of teams to the Series but has never won, so I became suddenly passionate in my conviction that he should have his swan song. He was an amazing player back in the day, too.

As we watched the game, Ember (who surprised me by being riveted) and I noticed one Astros fan behind the home plate, her eyes turned heavenward and hands clasped in prayer. I couldn’t help but squawk. “What: she’s praying to her god that her stupid athletic team win a stupid game?” Maybe I was too harsh, and instead she was making a plea for peace in Ukraine or an end to hunger or a reversal of climate change. Yeah, probably one of those.

In the end, I was thrilled for Dusty’s victory, though my happiness was muted by seeing how sad the losing players were.

Last weekend was our long-planned Twain Harte AirBnB getaway with Lulu. Ember kept herself occupied during the 3-ish hour drive by tallying things the spotted along the way, specifically Teslas, live deer, dead animals, and dead deer.

The night of our arrival we hung out by the wood fire that I expertly kindled, watched The Great Pottery Throw-Down, and wrestled.

The next day we headed up the mountain into unexpected snow, and ended up taking a three-mile hike through it at Calaveras Big Trees, even though we didn’t have proper waterproof gear.

Someone—I won’t say who—regularly pelted me with snowballs.

Slogging through snow is pretty exhausting, especially when you sink up to your knees every time you step off the trail to let others pass, and when the drift grabs your shoe as you try to leap out. After a few stocking-footed paces in the snow, I got it back, though.

One cool feature of the trail was a fallen tree that we walked through.

While there, an imaginary conversation popped into my head, modeled on a real one with a three-year-old Molly:

“Why is it called Calaveras Big Trees?”
“Because it’s in Calaveras County, and it has really big trees.”
“Yeah, but what other reason?”

A good time was had by all, though Ember was drenched by the time we got back to the car.

Back at the B+B an hour later, we dried out and warmed up and applied the animal facial masks that Molly had brought. Left to right: toucan, leopard, pug.

By 10:00 Sunday morning we were back on the road for the drive home (no traffic this time). As I unpacked the car, did laundry and tackled a million other tasks, Ember reorganized my drinks on the kitchen counter.

That’s all for now. Next weekend, life permitting, Ember and I will aim ourselves toward Chico, where she’ll spend most of her Thanksgiving break, and where we’ll celebrate Jesse’s eighth birthday with Eleni’s father and his wife.