Being Old Now

Phrases and designations that barely existed when we who are old now were young then. 

• Autism
• Asperger’s
• Dyslexia
• ADHD
• Differently abled
• Challenged. They were called handicapped by polite people and much worse by casual folks talking fast. 
• Feminism
• Alcoholism
• Eating disorders
• Black, person of color, Hispanic, Latinx, Asian American, Asian (not oriental)
• White privilege
• Breast, vagina, cervix, penis, sex, intercourse, etc. We knew these words but we also knew one could never say them aloud because they were dirty. Women generally suffered and died from “female problems.” 
• Racism – Those cops with dogs and KKK lynchers in the south were racist. The rest of us weren’t.
• Women’s literature. There was only literature and it was mostly written by men. There were romance novels that featured women, were written by women, were about relationships and therefore were “trash.” If we read romances we didn’t tell important people. 
• Dysfunction and dysfunctional
• Domestic violence. I didn’t know it existed even though that one woman in our church sometimes had bruises and always seemed nervous and apologetic. We had to pray for her husband all the time so that he would get saved by Jesus. (He never did.) Never knew why we all prayed for that guy so much.
• Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans. There were only married couples, old maids, and perverts - though no one ever talked about what the last was about. 
• Sexual assault. There was only rape and it was women’s responsibility to steer clear of it. 
• Anything besides Protestant or Catholic

Lately I’ve been reading pieces where the writer is angry at Boomers because our lives were so much “easier” economically. I agree with them. My college loan repayment amount was the same per month as my baseline phone bill. I shared a three-bedroom apartment on the near west side of Chicago with two other women (Hi, Hedy!) when I was making (how do I remember this?) $2.63/hour. 

I was often so broke I did my laundry in the bathtub but I HAD an apartment and it had a tub. I was never ‘moneyed’ but it was possible to work one fulltime job and also have a life. When I finished two years of grad school I owed $7000. Payable over time. 

Back then personal and family finances were more-or-less workable. Then Reagan was elected, political candidates began campaigning on “lowering taxes” while they privatized the health insurance industry, incentivized agribusiness farms, changed tax brackets for corporations and rich people. And then when we felt the squeeze they told us it was because poor people were scamming the systems.

And here we are. Gilding and empowering the already rich. Scraping away healthcare and education, protections, and options for the rest of us. 

We now this. The “good old days” were not that good. We have our stories of how hard it was to become ourselves. I don’t need to micro-explain it, you were probably there yourself. We more or less had enough money to live our lives yet it was so much work to create a big enough worldview to thrive. Many of the best among us never made it this far. 

So here I am, half way through an essay telling you nothing you don’t already know. Yeah, yeah, yeah – our government has yanked human rights and empowered guys we wouldn’t even have dated in junior high. Some of us are looking at those guys wondering what the hell went wrong in their babyhoods. Do they even know what human happiness feels like? 

I’m just here to remind myself and maybe you that right now is important. Pay attention to that whole list of our fellow humans who were dismissed or worse when we were kids – and that list includes pretty much each and every one of us at some point. I’ll take female, a bit of ADHD, romance reading and sometimes writing, sexual assault survivor so far in the weeds it took me twenty years to realize that is what that was. Smitten with deep grandma love to kids of color. Waffly Unitarian Universalist. Where are you on the Designations List that the unhappy powerful guys want to wipe from the Slate of Human Life possibilities?

We know the things we have to do. Give money to good candidates. Make calls or knock on doors. I do not like to do this either but Len assures me from his years on the board with local Dems, that statistics prove nothing is more effective than door knocking. So we will find a friend and do this, right? Make calls to the Reps. Give more money. Delete the onerous texts instead of going crazy. 

I just reread I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger. OMG the man can write – it’s enough to depress a normal writer (what is that?). Poetic, humorous, but driving writing. Awesomely improbable plots that end up feeling more normal than normal life. I went to his author talk at Boswell Book store in Milwaukee a few years ago. Enger is a Minnesotan, most of his writing is about stalwart Midwestern types who try to do the right thing against improbable odds. 

I Cheerfully Refuse is set along Minnesota’s South Shore along Lake Superior. The book is set decades into a dystopian future where the infrastructure of the world has become shabby and sometimes obsolete. Super powerful moguls are far away but their heavy influence is felt close to home. Things happen. Characters have to flee town on a raggedy sailboat. (If you like to sail, the middle of this novel happens a sailboat that needs a lot of work.) People live; people die. Like I said, the title of this book is I Cheerfully Refuse which is, in the end, how to face dystopia. 

 “Our job is always and forever to refuse apocalypse and work cheerfully against it.” Pg 237

The photo is from Loon Lake just inside the entrance to Copper Falls State park in Mellen, WI. I chose it because mirror images between sky and lake confuse and dazzle me.