Dave Williams, Author at The Aging of Aquarius : Page 3 of 31

This ‘n that

A chilly and sunny Sunday morning north of Dallas…

I haven’t written here in a while but just saw a link to one of my blogging partner Anita’s recent posts and it inspired me to mention a few things for this weblog, which has become something of a 20-year journal.

July 6, 2023 Bushmills, Ireland — Me, pensive: Giants Causeway, Bushmills, Northern Ireland, July 6, 2023.

The past seven months have been notable. I went to work at KLIF as usual dark and early Monday morning, July 31, having no idea it would be the last day of my 54-year career. After work, I drove CarolAnn to her cataract surgery appointment. From there we decided to have lunch at Mooyah Burgers in Stonebriar Mall. Enjoyed our burgers, sweet potato fries, and shakes. Walked outside to the car and I collapsed in the parking lot where I remained unconscious for a few minutes. I didn’t feel it coming, felt great in fact, and when I started to awaken I was being loaded into the back of an ambulance. After several hours in the emergency and a night in a private room at Medical City Frisco, several doctors shrugged and sent me home with no diagnosis.

Texas law makes it illegal to drive for three months after blacking out so I took a limited disability leave. Over those three months, I had every heart and brain scan that exists; still no explanation for my passing out. It surprised me to learn that this sort of thing is fairly common and usually leaves more questions than answers. Somebody commented that it must be very frustrating not knowing what happened. Actually, I’m pretty good at letting the unknowable pass without pointless wondering. What the doctors were able to tell me is that I didn’t have a heart attack or stroke and I don’t have any brain damage or tumor. Good enough for me.

By the time my waiting period ended and I was able to drive again CarolAnn and I decided I didn’t need to drive into Dallas at 3 AM anymore. I retired and am happily-ever-aftering with my beloved wife and pets. I love it. I’m doing a podcast called Conversations.buzz and writing a weekly column for the Barrett News Media national publication. Otherwise, I do the occasional chore at home, fix CarolAnn’s dinner, talk to the dogs and cat, and I usually work in a nap.

I loved my radio career and don’t miss it a bit.

Some people talk as if retirement is a death sentence. For me, it’s an endless string of Saturdays.

I have also retired from worrying about the world. These are troubled times and I’ve been studying and reporting them daily for 45 years. After five hours of news five days a week, I’m taking a long break. I haven’t read or listened to any news since that last July morning at KLIF. Ignorance really can be bliss. I expect to get over that and go back to keeping up on current events but I’ll be regularly skipping the political wars and daily tragedies that make the headlines. I guess that makes me selfish. I do care. In my own way, I’ve tried to make the world a little better by bringing daily smiles to morning commuters in Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Dallas. I try to be kind to everyone I meet and keep my attitude well-adjusted. I think I’ve earned a break from stress that isn’t all mine.

There is also a great deal of joy to be found in the world if you just look for it.

“Welcome to Texas, now move your ass!”

I’ve been a proud resident of the Lone Star State for nearly a dozen years. CarolAnn and I love it here. Most of all we love the people, the lifelong Texans who grew up with a neighborly live-and-let-live attitude. Unfailingly polite and respectful, always smiling, they’ll invite you to supper and let you bunk down on the sofa before you’ve swapped names.

Texans are a prideful bunch and rightly so. They’ll tip their hat to you as they hold open a door. (Everybody here holds open doors for everybody else.) Kids still call grownups sir and ma’am. Store clerks will joke with you. Strangers smile and wave as they pass.

But…

(You knew that was coming, didn’t you?)

When Texans get behind the wheel of their cars and pickups they’re fixin’ to dance with the devil.

Texas drivers are the most aggressive I’ve ever known. Not all, of course, but enough that it makes an impression worthy of stereotyping.

Here’s just one example: This morning CarolAnn phoned me (hands free, of course) while on her way to work to tell me about a driver who got so pissed off at having to slow down for her in the morning commute traffic that she passed my wife in the suicide (center turn) lane, lurched into CarolAnn’s lane and slammed on the brakes, intentionally inviting an accident. When the accident didn’t happen the angry woman slowed to a crawl and turned on her emergency flashers.

We see this kind of thing more frequently as time goes on. And, as more Californians are transplanted here. Just sayin’…

Still, it could have been a Texan, who knows?

Big-city Texans honk their horns incessantly. If you’re at the front of a line of vehicles stopped at a light the person behind you will honk like crazy when the light turns green before you can move your foot from the brake to the gas.

And yet…

In Texas, you rarely hear about road rage shootings or fights. They don’t want to kill or pummel you, they just want you to move your ass.

Everything I’ve just said is observational. My conclusions are just mine but here’s what I think:

Texans aren’t rude and aggressive by nature, quite the opposite. But they are fiercely independent which they expect of you as well.

“I got places to go and no time for lolly-gaggin’. Step on it or get out of the way.”

These are the same people, by the way, who will stop and change a tire for you. I’ve had that happen twice.

When I had only been in Dallas for a couple of weeks I was getting my hair cut by a sweet young woman with a lovely Texas drawl. I was telling her how nice people are, so friendly and cheerful. She gave me a double-wide country grin and said, “That’s true!…”

“…We’ll give y’all a hot meal and a warm bed if you need it. But if you step off that curb while I’m drivin’, I WILL run you over!”

We both laughed about that.

She meant it.

Christmas Music, Spirits of Our Past

What is your favorite Christmas song or album?

I love Christmas and all the songs that celebrate it but the answer for me, hands down, is the entire Christmas Portrait album by The Carpenters. Even the title is perfect; it’s a glorious audio portrait of everything that fills us with the love and magic of Christmas.

The arrangements, lush orchestration, and Disneyesque choir of this album wrap me in a beautiful soft snowfall and a warm, crackling fire. More than five minutes into an overture and medley of traditional religious carols we are primed for Karen Carpenter’s arrival with her angelic voice singing “Christmas Waltz”.

That album was released in October 1978. My wife and I were in our first new house; our son was approaching only his second Christmas, the first one I figured he could appreciate — bright lights, shiny ornaments, presents, and beautiful music.

And that’s the thing about music, isn’t it? It reflects the powerful emotions of our lives past and gives us a path of hope for the future.

For you, Christmas touchstones may be ignited by Mariah Carey, Michael Buble, or Bing Crosby. Play it loud and often.

In case you’re curious, Elvis had the best-selling Christmas album of all time.

It’s wonderful, but it’s not The Carpenters.

What’s your favorite?

The Radio Book, Introduction

(CarolAnn has always said I should write a book about my radio career. I don’t think it’s a big deal and haven’t cared while I was still working. Now, recently retired, I’m going to try, one short essay at a time. — DW, December 20, 2023)

My senior yearbook picture, Highlands High School, North Highlands, CA, 1969

As near as I can figure, my first day working in radio was June 16, 1969. It was less than a week after I graduated high school with the great honor of addressing my fellow graduates with a speech I titled, “The Crystal Dream”.

I was only 17 but already writing too-flowery purple prose.

The speech concluded, “You can grab this world by the tail but you must be quick, lest you find yourself holding the shattered fragments of a crystal dream.”

(The word, “lest” is a red flag of purple prose.)

Some capped-and-gowned wiseass back near the 50-yard line fired off a bottle rocket. A guy in the front row lifted his gown and flashed me his privates. Parents and grandparents in the bleachers applauded appreciatively; maybe half of my 400 classmates clapped too, glad that I was finished.

Then we got our diplomas, tossed our caps in the air, and life started.

For me, radio started long before that.

More to come…

Planning to die

by Dave Williams

Man, I’ve written a lot of philosophical tripe recently about aging, retiring, and now, dying. I suppose it’s only natural but I’m getting tired of it. Life is for living, not preparing to die.

The targeted ads are getting annoying.

So, listen up – I’m only going to say this once:

Whatever becomes of my “remains” when I die is not my concern. That may sound like I’m just kicking the can (along with the bucket) down to my survivors but look, it’s a pass. Don’t worry about it. I don’t. I’ll try to leave behind enough money to pay for the, ahem, cremation procedure (which is something I really don’t want to think about) but after that, do whatever you will with the ashes.

The ashes. Not my ashes.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep…
— Mary Elizabeth Frye

I used to have a grand plan that I told my family: to scatter the ashes in my beloved hometown of Sacramento. Specifically, I told them, sprinkle my earthly remains into the water where the Sacramento and American Rivers meet, just off Discovery Point. My grandpa Webster used to take us fishing there and it’s just upstream from Old Sacramento, where I spent many happy jazz festival days and nights as a young adult.

I told my wife and kids that it would be fitting if a four-piece traditional jazz ensemble played on the shore, perhaps a lively, Dixiesque rendition of the traditional Christian hymn, “A Closer Walk With Thee”.

Or maybe, “Another One Bites the Dust.”

Whatever. I’ll leave that up to you and the band.

That was my thinking years ago when I was still alive in my hometown and a regular, semi-celebrity fixture at the annual Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee.

Imagining the picture of my grieving family huddled together in a small boat under the cover of darkness (scattering ashes in a river is illegal in California, as are most innocuous things) brought a happy tear to my eye. But then life its ownself (copyright, the late, great Dan Jenkins) moved us to L.A. and eventually Texas. Meanwhile, the world’s greatest traditional jazz festival was crushed by cultural and political forces that trashed its glorious tradition after first removing the word Dixieland from the title. Thanks to the annual Sacramento Bee shocking photos of old people having fun, traditional jazz was run out of town.

Don’t get me started.

The point is, I don’t want my wife and kids to have to spend time and money fulfilling a silly idea I had years before I was old enough to think about dying in a reasonable way, which I now am.

I respect and admire people whose final wishes are detailed and specific.

Though he never expressed his desires to me, we took my father’s ashes to Green River in southwestern Wyoming, where he fished as a boy. It was a moving experience for us all. And if my family wants to do something similar to celebrate my life, by all means, they should do it.

But don’t do it for me. Do it for you.

CarolAnn, I’m leaving this decision to you. You’re really good at making decisions. Don’t feel compelled to have me in a jar in your bedroom but if that’s what you want, do it.

Hey, if you still have our cat, Corabelle, dump me in the litter box. I think it’s funny! You’ll get a giggle each day when you scoop it.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Live and love your life knowing that I loved mine thanks to you all.

This is not yet…

The End

November is Norway

Today is November 1, 2023.

I went searching for a pithy quote about November and this is where I stopped looking:

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
– Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson has always cracked me up. I know I know — she is widely considered to be America’s greatest poet. I’m a troglodyte when it comes to poetry. I’ve spent 25 years ridiculing the “Belle of Amherst” since I wrote a play making fun of her work on nearly every page. After I finished writing it I was shocked to learn that Harvard University Press still held the copyright on most of her creations and they insisted on reading my two-act mockery before granting permission for me to quote her.

Even more shockingly, they decided it was fine, go ahead and perform it!

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul…
– Emmy again

You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, I get it, in this famous piece, a bird is implied as a metaphor for hope. I just find most metaphors to be unnecessary and often unintentionally funny abstractions.

And yet, when I went looking for a pithy quote about November I was hoping to find a touching metaphor of life approaching its final days.

Since I turned 70 more than two years ago I’ve made an effort to think philosophically about aging. Songs and stories are always referring to May to December romances and such.

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you

– “September Song”, lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill

I retired from radio yesterday and I’m very happy about it. I have no second thoughts and no regrets.

I just wanted to say something pithy that would express my complex sense of aging and, quite coincidentally, of leaving one’s lifelong career in the past.

Norway would have never occurred to me.

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

-You gotta love her, Emily Dickinson

I have wondered if it was sheer bravado whenever I heard retired people praise their retirement as the “new chapter” in their lives. Maybe it is for some, but I’m all in.

I’ve had a wonderful life and I still do. I’m more aware than ever of how fast my life has gone because I cherish every moment. I wouldn’t change a thing. I mean that literally.

I also know that I’m relatively close to the end of my life, but I’m not there yet.

Happily, I’m finally old enough to get it. These really are my golden years.

You’ll get it when you get here.

Transitions, part 2: Passages

by Dave Williams

The greatest joy of living is learning. It leads to loving life without needing to understand it all.

Big Tree Park, half a block from our home in Glendora, California.

My recent medical adventure is progressing nicely. I’ve finally been approved for disability checks, and as my cardiologist and neurologist continue to poke, prod, and scan the parts of me that interest their specialties, they’re still unable to find anything at all wrong.

The cardio doc just told me, “Your heart is fine.”

I can’t imagine a more glorious and yet understated diagnosis. Meanwhile, the neurologist says, “Well, you didn’t have a stroke, you don’t have a brain tumor…” and I didn’t hear anything she said after that.

I’m not religiously trained, but neither am I opposed to it. I do have a sense that something greater than my worldly self has guided me through life and nudged me toward major transitions.

Take my marriage proposals, for example. The first one sorta slipped out at a drive-in movie when we were both still in our teens.

“Someday, I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

I actually said that: “Someday…”

My high school girlfriend blinked.

“Is that a proposal?”

I don’t remember how I answered her question because by then I had realized how stupid it sounded and I didn’t know what to say next.

We did marry and ten years later we divorced, very amicably. We’re still close friends.

Seven years after that I was having a beer at a popup bar in a hotel ballroom in Santa Rosa, California. Without provocation or warning, the little voice inside my head ordered me, “Do it now.”

I put down my beer and walked directly to CarolAnn Conley-King, who was laughing and chattering with a group of our friends. I took her by the hand and led her straight through the first door I saw. It led outside to the stinking dumpsters. That’s where I popped the question, properly, this time.

“Will you marry me?”

The day I proposed to CarolAnn, March 1988.

I should explain we were in that hotel ballroom for a country swing dance team competition and we were wearing matching costumes that made us look like extras in the Robert Redford film, The Electric Horseman.

“What?”

She was apparently surprised by the question, as was I.

After making me repeat it CarolAnn simply replied, “Of course I will.”

Thirty-five years later we are still, as Paul Harvey used to say, happily-ever-aftering.

My point is, whether you credit God or some internal self-guidance system, I believe we are propelled by circumstances we create.

In her landmark 1974 book, Passages, Gail Sheehy explained the stages of life that define how we change and grow. Each stage is fraught with worry but we move on because we have no choice, it’s time. This is always a necessary and good thing.

As I often reflect on my countless blessings I accept a certain amount of credit. I brought myself to and through each of life’s transitions, partly by luck but mostly from having the good sense to recognize and attach myself to good people, and to learn from them.

Most importantly, when you fall in love.

When I blacked out in the parking lot of Mooyah Burgers July 31, I entered another passage. Now, eight weeks later, I’ve given up worry. I’m loving my new life of daily opportunities.

My blessings are countless.

Technically, I’m still not retired. But, I have stopped largely defining myself by my job.

I’ve stopped making plans beyond the next hour or two.

And yes, uncertain as I am of the big stuff, I do say a quiet prayer each night.

“Thank you for everything. Please give me another day.”

Transitions

by Dave Williams

For the past six weeks, I’ve been off work and stuck at home because of a blackout I suffered in the parking lot at Mooyah Burgers. Two MRIs and various other medical tests are inconclusive. I feel fine. I could have gone back to work after my one night hospital stay except that Texas law won’t allow me to drive for three months after blacking out and the company that employs me won’t allow me to do my radio show from home. So, essentially, I’ve been visiting retirement.

I sleep later than I do when I go to the job; I wake up to feed the dogs and fix coffee. Then, I chat with CarolAnn before kissing her goodbye as she heads to work. The day that follows is pretty slow. I deal with medical and insurance-related paperwork, do some writing, and take a nap. That’s pretty much it until later in the afternoon when I can anticipate my wife’s return home.

As much as I have insisted over the years on my need for time alone, my life right now feels kind of lonely and confusing. I’m not retired, I’m on disability leave with tentative plans to return to work. But really, I am retired in the sense that I’m completely cut off from my career of 54 years. It’s all in the rearview mirror, for now, at least. That’s not necessarily a sad thing. It’s a mixed bag, really.

And, confusing.

In recent years I’ve asked retired friends how they fill their days. I get as many different answers as there are friends. Some have undertaken new, second careers, others find things around the house to keep them busy, yard work and home improvement, for example. A couple of guys I know admitted to being bored a lot. One of my oldest friends and colleagues told me he’s learned how to make shopping for an avocado fill up most of an afternoon.

Sometimes I think the idea of “keeping busy” is a misguided insistence. I might be happy doing nothing. What’s wrong with that?

The problem with transition is the uncertainty of it all. Should I retire now or wait? Can I even go back to my old career or is that just snuggling under a familiar but old, worn-out blanket when there might be more I can do?

What would that be? What can I do?

And, why do I insist on doing more?

I know all of the suggested answers from writing to volunteer work and just deepening my budding interest (please pardon the pun) in gardening. Maybe there is no single answer. Maybe what I’m doing now, a little bit of this and that, will settle into a comfortable pattern. I don’t know.

I suspect this is a transition that will fulfill itself in time. It’s confusing right now.

If you’ve “been there, done that” or are asking yourself the same questions please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

I may not be looking for answers as much as I’m looking for company.

Golden Years

by Dave Williams

May be an image of 4 people — CarolAnn and I in Northern Ireland, last month: Giants Causeway.

Three weeks ago I celebrated my 72nd birthday and then blacked out in the parking lot of a burger joint after lunch. I woke up some minutes later in the back of an ambulance, was taken to a nearby hospital, poked and prodded just a bit, and sent home the next day with no diagnosis.

The hospital people were very nice. They wheeled me out and wished me luck.

Since then I’ve seen a neurologist and a cardiologist. Both have run tests, neither has provided me with any insights. I like and trust them. The problem is, I’m not their only patient and they have their personal lives to lead. I don’t begrudge them a moment, I just await their educated assessments.

Except for the second-degree burns I suffered from lying in the parking lot during a Texas summer, I feel fine. Oh, maybe a tad dizzy at times. The neurologist did say I suffered a concussion. It should go away. She’ll let me know.

Meanwhile, my wife of 35 years, the Lovely-and-Feisty CarolAnn Conley-Williams, is having trouble sleeping. She looks at me with a mixture of adoration and anger; her experience in that parking lot was the shocking belief that I was dying. I didn’t but in her mind, I still could. Understandably, that scares her and pisses her off.

The company I work for has just learned that Texas law doesn’t allow me to drive to work after suffering a seizure. They also understand that while I could work from home, their own recently enacted policy forbids it. So, they’re paying me to sleep in and, no doubt, counting the expense. I’m grateful for the time I’ve been welcome there, however and whenever it ends.

For a long time, I’ve understood that my career will come to an end eventually and that the glorious achievement of living to my golden years would bring some medical challenges.

I just didn’t expect it all to happen on my birthday.

Things can almost always be worse. We carry on in gratitude.

A selfie

by Dave WilliamsMe in a pensive pose, Bushmills, Northern Ireland, July 6, 2023

I like this picture, but my God I look old.

I’ll turn 72 in a handful of days. I know there are a lot of people older than me who don’t seem to give age a thought but I’m sure they do. How could they not?

Twenty years ago I began to wonder if old people think about dying. I never had the nerve to ask an old person, but now I am one and I’ve got the answer: You bet we do, but not in the way I expected.

The past is a great place and I don’t want to erase it or regret it, but I don’t want to be its prisoner either. – Mick Jagger, just turned 80

I think about dying just as I think about being born — I know nothing about either. I only know everything that has happened in-between. That’s where I live and always have. I wouldn’t change a second of it.

And, I’m not done yet.