Dave Williams, Author at The Aging of Aquarius : Page 9 of 30

Cough drops

by Dave Williams

I’ve had a chronic cough since just before Thanksgiving, 14 weeks to be exact. That’s a long time for a cough to linger and I’ve not ignored it. After two visits to my doctor, a chest x-ray (turned out clear) and a passel of expensive steroidal and antibiotic prescriptions and inhalers, to say nothing of a hundred bucks worth of over the counter cough syrups, suppressants and antihistamines, I’m still coughing. My doctor is a learned and experienced man but he’s stumped. He’s talking about sending me to a pulmonologist. (I had to look it up: that’s a specialist in respiratory matters.)

I’m not writing this because I’m worried about my cough. I’m just taking note of this moment in my life. At 67 I’m experiencing something totally new: the unexpected idea that I may be entering an age of increasing infirmity, of nagging pains and niggling problems that I might have to drag around to the end of my days.

I rarely get sick, not even a cold, but suddenly I’m starting to feel a bit frail for the first time. Coughing wears you out and makes you think.

Roughly 40 years ago I suddenly realized that I would never play baseball again. Real baseball, I mean. Unwillingly I made the transition from hard-breaking fastballs to the high arcing lobs of a bigger, softer target. Slow-pitch softball is fun but it’s not baseball. Now, a couple of decades later I miss them both.

About 20 years ago I was suddenly relieved of the daily responsibility of parenting. Our oldest son was married and our youngest son had just moved out. CarolAnn and I celebrated our freedom as new empty-nesters. We loved it yet we missed having children in the house. Family time became the two of us time, which is wonderful though still bittersweet. We will always miss our boys.

There have been other life transitions of course, less notable and too numerous to mention. The thing is, after nearly 70 years of living I’m starting to see a pattern, a constant ending and renewal of a single life’s experiences and perspectives. In 1984 author Gail Sheehy kicked off her enormously successful series of books about the subject she called Passages.

From toddler hood to old age we who are lucky enough to live long lives are constantly saying goodbye to one time of life and entering the next with some trepidation. That’s the excitement of the journey. With great luck, or by design if you prefer, life is a very long road of wondrous yet worrisome discovery.

I feel like a slow student, coming to this realization as recently as I have but I’ve been too busy living to take notice of passages. I’m just now beginning to understand something that should have been obvious:

Lives are lived as chapters of precious stories belonging to the world and yet as unique as ourselves.

I don’t miss baseball as much as I did 40 years ago. And frankly, though I will always enjoy memories of having our boys at home, I’ve gotten over wistful nostalgia pretty well and cherish my daily solitude with CarolAnn more than ever.

This cough is forcing me to hire a younger man to do my yard work. I hope that’s just temporary but the fact is I may never mow a lawn again. That seems trivial but I’m starting to miss trivial things as well as the big, profound stuff. At the same time I’m learning to shrug off the life I’ve known for whatever surprises come next. We all are.

Life is a kaleidoscope. Every slight turn brings a shift in perspective and a dazzling new view of the world we’ve always held.

If this all sounds a little loopy, just blame the meds.

Mornings

Amarillo by morning
Copyright Dave Williams 2012

I’m a morning person. Always have been.

Oh, but I’m not one of those chirpy, can’t-stop-chattering morning people.

I wake up quickly but quietly. I love my sunrise alone time.

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.
– Walt Whitman

Science has proven that there really are morning people and night people. They’ve done a lot of research to assure us of what we’ve always known:

Some of us are energized when the sun goes down. We morning people go down with it.

Everything will look better in the morning, you’ll see.
– Nancy Williams, my mom

The days of my life have nearly always started in the dark. I was never late to school, I was early.

I’ve begun my work mornings long before dawn for the best 40 of my 50 years in radio. On those rare occasions that I’ve slept in until after sunrise I feel like I’ve cheated myself of a whole day.

Some people function better at night, they just do. I’ve never pitied or envied them, not out loud, anyway.

They are always horrified to think of awakening before the crack of 10 a.m.

We laugh at each other but neither of us would change our ways.

—————————

My friend and blogging partner, Anita, is a morning person, too. Here are her thoughts: http://theagingofaquarius.com/ag_blog/morning-people-versus-the-world/

Father’s Day in Judgment City

by Dave Williams

Jeremy and me, the early 80s, Fairytale Town at Land Park, Sacramento..

One of my favorite movies is Defending Your Life starring, written, and directed by Albert Brooks. It’s about a man who dies on his birthday and wakes up in Judgment City, a purgatory-like waiting area where he must justify his life in order to proceed to the next phase of existence. It’s warm and funny and will keep you examining your own life for a very long time.

My son Jeremy loves this movie as much as I do and today is his birthday.

On my birthday 17 years ago, shortly before he died, my dad told me he couldn’t believe he had a son who was 50. I know the feeling.

Jeremy was born 42 years ago today. Like all loving parents at this age I understand that he’s an adult with a family of his own and our relationship has grown with us. But like all parents, in my heart he will always be my little boy.

You have to be careful about that when you talk to a middle-aged child. Occasionally I still have to stop myself from calling him, “Kiddo”.

I’m not going to wax poetic about Jeremy and me. Many fine words have been written about ideal father-son relationships and the bonds of love that can’t be described. I have nothing to add. We know how we feel and how we’ve enriched and informed each other’s lives.

I will say this, however:

I am a far better person for his existence than I would be without his love, influence and instruction.

Parenting is a two-way street. You get as much as you give; you learn at least as much as you teach, probably more.

If you’re happy with who you are today you can thank your children in large measure.

When I arrive in Judgment City I will point fearlessly to my boy down on Earth and testify, “This man is my justification for everything.”

Aging is easy, changing is hard

by Dave Williams

I learned nothing from my upbringing about aging gracefully. Mother’s only advice about the passing years was to encourage the use of more moisturizer so boys will like you.

– Anita Garner

My friend Anita wrote those words in her blog earlier this week and it made me think about my own upbringing.

My parents taught me small things about washing dishes and how to work a slingshot. Mom taught me to scrub my face with Phisohex to wipe away teenaged pimples. Dad taught me to stand up straight and look a man in the eyes when I shook his hand.

Neither of them talked to me about girls or careers and retirement. I didn’t even get the birds and the bees talk.

There was no talk, not one speck of advice about fulfillment, about health, about work, about relationships, about how all of that changes through the years. – Anita

My parents, like Anita’s, left me to learn the deep, quiet lessons of life in my own good time. They taught me to be honest and respectful and that was pretty much it. Matters of my future and relationships were not theirs to teach.

These days parents seem to be much more hands-on. They plan their kids’ lives from sunup to sundown, from birth to college and beyond.

For all the stuff we read about helicopter parents and everyone-gets-a-trophy I don’t think parents today are doing anything wrong. It’s not mine to judge. The world seems much more complicated now than it was 60 years ago, though I don’t understand why.

I do wish my grandsons could spend their free afternoons building forts in open fields with no grownups around. I wish they could ride their bikes home at sundown dirty, sweaty and wearing a freshly scabbed knee and simply be told to go wash up for dinner.

Their world isn’t mine, I get that.

But sometimes I still wish it was.

That’s entertainment?

by Dave Williams

Today I somehow wound up Internet surfing upcoming concerts and live theater events in Dallas-Ft. Worth. Here’s a short list of shows I would enjoy seeing but will not:

Elton is retiring from touring, not being canonized.

1. ELTON JOHN’S FAREWELL TOUR – Cheap seats, $282 each. (In a basketball arena that seats 21,000.)

2. PAUL MCCARTNEY – Cheap seats, $82 each. (Third deck of a 50,000 seat MLB stadium.)

3, The Broadway tour of HAMILTON – Cheap seats, $345 each. (For that price CarolAnn and I can fly round-trip to California and spend a week with our kids.)

As a self-conscious old fart I figured that I’m just way out of touch with the cost of living these days. So, I did some quick Google work on cost of living comparisons and here’s what I found:

Presumably $2.50 to see The Stones and 25 cents for the Homecoming Queen Contest

— When I was a teenager in the late 1960s the Rolling Stones played the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. Ticket prices were $2.75 (including a Homecoming Queen Contest). In today’s dollars that’s just shy of $16.00, not the $282 and up for nosebleed seats to see Elton John.

— In 1966 The Beatles played their last-ever live concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Tickets were $4.50 – $6.50. Paying $82 next year to see McCartney in a baseball stadium is a price increase of 551.77% and that’s just for one Beatle, not all four.

— Broadway tickets prices for Orchestra seats were $15 in 1970. That would be roughly $94 now, not the $345 they want for a seat that would require me to carry a telescope to see Hamilton.

A founding “father” at age 19, Hamilton was a lousy shot, killed in a duel by Aaron Burr who still has no musical to honor him.

Look, I believe in capitalism. If people are willing to pay these prices for two or three hours of big show entertainment who am I to protest?

I’m just kicking myself for skipping that Stones show.

The common cold

by Dave Williams

I have a lousy cold. It’s a terrible cold.

You ever notice that people who have a cold almost always beef it up a bit with paralyzing adjectives that make it sound like an exceptionally bad cold, not just a “common” cold?

This cold of mine is the worst cold in the history of colds!

Thirty years ago when I was still young, eternal and bullet proof I just ignored any illness that didn’t force me into a hospital. A cold? Flu? Please. It will go away no matter what I do or don’t do. That was my attitude then and it was proven correct time and again.

I spent a lot of my 1980s evenings in a Northern California honky tonk wearing boots and hat and sucking on beer bottles, smoking Marlboros, chatting up the ladies and laughing with my friends.

Don’t go getting all judgmental on me, it was a different time and socially acceptable. To say nothing of hella fun.

In those days I learned that if I caught a wicked cold I could stay home, get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids and I would gradually recover within a week or two. On the other hand, if I went out and smoked, drank, danced and laughed as usual it would take seven to 14 days for me to regain normal health, such as it was.

I don’t live like that anymore, I’m too old, and I don’t recommend it because it’s not socially acceptable these days. But I’ll tell you one thing for sure:

Dancing and drinking and smoking cigarettes with a cold made the time pass much more quickly than shivering on the couch alone and feeling sorry for myself.

We didn’t have Facebook or Snap Chat or Twitter in those days. Whining about a cold had to be done in person and your real life friends helped you get over yourself.

The Happiest Place on Earth

She must have been about ten, maybe a little younger. Holding her daddy’s hand she walked solemnly down Main Street next to me, surrounded by hundreds of other people, all headed toward the exit.

Snowfall on Main Street, Magic Kingdom, Disney World

Bright colors fired both sides of the street; joyous music came from nowhere and yet everywhere. Imagineered snow flakes floated in the air all around us.

We all wore silly grins for no reason at all except that we were together, ageless and happy.

The little girl’s daddy leaned over and said, “Isn’t it pretty? It looks just like real snow, doesn’t it?”

Her reply was succinct, matter-of-fact and grown up:

“I think I’ve had enough.”

“The important thing is the family. If you can keep the family together — that’s what we hope to do.” – Walt Disney

I told Mickey, “I’ve loved you for more than 60 years.”

CarolAnn and I celebrated our 30th anniversary at Disney World in Orlando this past week. For all the technological magic and excitement we found everywhere we looked our greatest pleasure was watching young families and remembering our own.

The small moments that bring families closer together work their magic on everyone nearby. We love being collateral beneficiaries of joy and sharing with each other the children we still are at heart.

“A dream is a wish your heart makes…”

Hang the expense, it’s worth every penny and more.

Voting at the fire station

by Dave Williams
November 6, 2018

Half the registered voters in Texas voted early this year. When I got to my polling place on time today, Election Day, I felt ashamed for being late.

I’m just kidding about that. Everybody in the place was all smiles: poll volunteers, voters, kids tagging along to get a whiff of democracy.

I still like voting on election day. This morning it was in the neighborhood fire station. Last time I went into a school cafeteria. Often I’ve met my neighbors voting in a garage down the street. Garage voting is neat. It smells a little like bicycle tires and sometimes they have a dog I can pet while I’m waiting in line. Sometimes they have free coffee and if you get there early enough, maybe even some doughnuts.

That seems like real grass roots American democracy to me.

Voting early and by mail is convenient but I don’t want to vote from home. It makes me sad to think that before long we’ll all be voting with our smartphones. We will, you’ll see.

I think we should spend more time with our neighbors, shaking hands and introducing ourselves, smiling and feeling good about being there.

Happy election day, everyone.

Unpredictable autumn

by Dave Williams
November 3, 2018

In Texas fall teases you like a puppy. It yaps at you, snaps playfully at your fingers and then darts away to plan another surprise attack.

I wore a sweatshirt last week. Today it will be 80. Tomorrow could bring snow. It’s the wonder of Texas weather that I love because I don’t like predictability.

Life itself is unpredictable and that’s how it should be, even and maybe especially life’s tragedies.

A man arises before dawn, showers, shaves, kisses his slumbering wife and kids goodbye and then he leaves home and dies.

I don’t mean to be morose. It’s just the unpredictable nature of life.

On my early morning radio news shows I’ve told these stories daily for decades. We get used to them, both in the telling and the hearing because the stories are framed in frigid cop talk, in matter-of-fact terms detached from emotion and personal reality.

“Dallas police responded to a fatal head-on crash early this morning. Officials say a wrong-way driver slammed into a late model Toyota southbound on I-75 near Walnut Hill. The driver of the Toyota died at the scene.

We don’t even learn his name.

Let’s see how that’s affecting traffic: live with Traffic on the Fives, here’s Bill Jackson…”

Bill explains that emergency vehicles have the wreck confined to the divider with officers directing a ten minute slowdown into the right two lanes.

“Meanwhile, inbound on the Dallas North Tollway there’s a slowdown at Northwest Highway…”

The Toyota driver’s wife and kids are still sleeping as a hundred thousand commuters deal with a traffic jam.

The family will probably be wolfing down breakfast on hurried schedules when the knock comes at the door.

But, I digress. I was talking about unpredictable fall weather and the unexpected turns in our daily lives.

Most people seem to live their lives focused on annoyance, oblivious to the small joys of the moment. We worry about trivial things and bitch about each day for trivial reasons.

We wish it was summer, we wish it was Friday.

We wish away the unpredictably wonderful moments of our lives.

We’re constantly told to live for today, in the here and now, and to stop and smell the roses. I don’t know anyone who has figured out how to do that but I’m working on it.

I thank God each morning for another day of life.

I don’t wonder if He exists. I’m just happy to be grateful.

Before I go to sleep at night I conjure images of my wife and children, my grandchildren, the friends I’ve made and the handful of very special people I’ve known and loved in my life. I give thanks for them all. Then I drift off to sleep without a care in the world.

Tomorrow will be another unpredictable day and though the possibilities include everything, glorious and tragic, I’m looking forward to it.

I’m going outside to mow the lawn now. It might snow tomorrow or I could die tonight.

Music that hurts too good

by Dave Williams

I was just trying to organize my iTunes files. It’s a maddening process that forces me to access the gnat sized portion of my brain that insufficiently understands digital stuff so that I can preserve the memories of my heart.

I rarely listen to music and until just now I didn’t understand why.

I grew up in the sixties loving the Beatles, the Stones, Janis and Jimi. I was a radio rock jock at 17. I used to crank up the music LOUD when I was behind the mic in the KROY studio on Arden Way.

That time of my life passed quickly. I remember it fondly but I don’t live in the past. For some reason I’m not overly sentimental.

Once in a blue moon though I stumble across a song that brings a memory from my heart to the surface; it pulls my younger self out of the past and paints a moment with goodness and glory that can only be imagined.

This is a performance of a particular song by a group of musicians I knew during a very special time in my life. Like memories themselves it’s a grainy piece of film with a somewhat ethereal soundtrack that can’t do justice to reality as I have held it.

In my heart, I’m still there with the boys in the band as you see them. We have not aged. I’m on my feet under a freeway with hundreds of other fans shouting with joy, frozen in time on a Saturday night in a Sacramento spring.

Sharmayne is with me. This is our song. The trombone player is her man and I’m her best friend.

34 years later Sharmayne is gone and I can’t find Fritz. Rainer, Dieter, Charlie and the other boys have taken their lives elsewhere.

This is probably why I don’t listen to music much anymore.

It hurts too good.

NOTE: This is the Allotria Jazz Band from Munich in 1984. This particular performance was filmed in Germany, not Sacramento. That’s obvious by the narration. Still, Sharmayne and I thrilled to their music and this particular song many times over the years they appeared at the Sacramento (Dixieland) Jazz Jubilee.

You had to be there.