Monday, February 22, 2010

My Cat

In my very first post I mention being owned by a cat, the world's most unsatisfactory cat to be exact. George (whose original name was Giorgio, after a rather flamboyant entertainer in Mazatlan) is now 17 years old and a marvel of perseverance. This cat is the Original Scaredy Cat. My sister has only seen him a handful of times. The second anyone comes through the front door, this cat is downstairs in the basement in some hidey-hole I've never found, where he stays until the All Clear. He is difficult to love. We make fun of him and what a stupid pet he has been all these years.

For some reason we have switched from dry food to canned, and he has gone crazy-in-love with the canned food. He eats non-stop, and fills his litter box with the results. However, he is skinny as can be -- petting him is like petting a cat skeleton wearing an old toupee -- so I think he isn't long for this world. He has become very affectionate with me in the past couple of years, but still jumps off my lap and runs if I sneeze or move quickly. And now, well, now we are leaving for three weeks and I am worried about him! We used to have a neighbor kid come in to feed him. She has never actually seen him of course, but knew he existed because the food would go down and the litter box would fill up. But she doesn't want to be responsible for him anymore; he really could croak any time now. And now, I'm worried about him being alone for three weeks. Funny, after all these years of him being such a dumb pet, so detached, now I feel a great deal of affection for him. He is very good at being alone, but since becoming so attached to me lately, maybe he won't do as well this time. Poor Georgie.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Senior Tennis

I have been playing tennis for a couple of years with the senior breakfast league (mixed doubles). Although you have to belong to the USTA to join, they don't count your wins/losses towards your ranking. I have made two friends on the league who are really neat people, and the rest are quite nice, mostly. To join senior tennis you can be as young as 49. Most of these guys are in their 60's, I'd say. Every season the captains get new teams; no one really wants to captain so once you are sucked into that, you're basically stuck. My captain last summer was really out to win, so once she asked me not to play in order to bring in a ringer. That tells you a couple things; I'm not the best player of the bunch, and it can all get pretty cutthroat.

My captain usually figures out early on that I need to be paired with someone who actually moves; my feet have been glued to the court since I started playing back when I was 42. My partner has to cover about 80% of the court, and then s/he has to be able to actually DO something with the ball once he/she gets to it. I tell my partners I am just the eye candy. Last Tuesday I was paired with the 88 year old (we all take turns). Our opponents were both 79. Since I am such a crappy player, I have developed a nasty drop shot that my 40 year old friends can get to, but the seniors sitting on the baseline cannot. You could call it the original "cheap shot." I feel bad using it against older opponents, but hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. We won our match, and my partner put his arm around my shoulder and said "that's the first match I've won in three years!" Then he said something that, after I laughed out loud, I contemplated for a long time. He said, "You run like the wind!" (Cracks me up just typing that line!!) But you see, it's all in our perception. To an 88 year old, I run like the wind. To others, I am a slug. So, will the real Holly please stand up?

Friday, February 12, 2010

More About Change

I wrote this essay a couple years ago for a writing class. The assignment was to write about changes. Some of it I've already told in this blog; thanks for your patience with me.

I went to Spain when I was 18. I was going to college in Pamplona, it was 1970 and Franco was still alive. Spain in 1970 was like America in the fifties, and Pamplona even more so. After a couple of years there, I decided it was time to run with the bulls during their fiesta. Of course women weren’t allowed to run, so I disguised myself as best I could and popped out in front of the bulls at the last minute. After it was over, I let my long hair out of my cap and a guy said to me “you’ve got balls” and I said, “more than you, kiddo, more than you.”

I tell this story a lot. Boomers my age usually say something like “wow, you are so cool!” and the kids my kids’ age say “wow, you were so cool!” and it is that were that scratches against my psyche like an old wool sweater. ‘Whaddaya mean, were?’ I silently demand.

I have a lot of stories like that one. In my twenties I led a life of adventure, though you wouldn’t know it to look at me. And there’s the rub. Who is this person who has taken over Holly? What happened when I wasn’t looking? I keep the light kind of dim in my bathroom, but occasionally I see myself in good lighting and really, I am always surprised at who is looking back at me. Why, it’s my great Aunt Genevieve! When did my skin stop fitting me?

We baby boomers are a self-centered bunch. How could we not be? The media and advertising have catered to us for the past 40 years. Suddenly we are no longer the darlings, and it is no longer a surprise when we see the toys we grew up with on display in a museum. My original Barbie doll, they say, is worth a thousand bucks, but there she sits, tossed on a shelf in my closet, just as she was five decades ago, as if I were going to pull her down and play with her any minute.

I visited a historic building in my hometown last year. It houses the original Spirit of ’76 painting, the one with the two drummers and the fife player, marching to war. There are a lot of seafaring objects from when Marblehead was dependent upon fishermen and whalers for its livelihood. There, in one of the cases was a photograph of a Girl Scout troop visiting Washington, DC, and it was a picture of MY troop, and there I was. I am now officially a Museum Artifact.

There are moments when I do not see the humor in any of this. Almost mourning the loss of the young woman who was Holly, I am stunned to realize I have friends who have never seen me without glasses, or without these thighs! I remember turning heads as I strutted down the street in a miniskirt, as if I owned the world. I was tall and thin and young; I did.

A young friend saw the movie Titanic and we talked about it. I asked him if he can now look at old ladies in a different light, with stories and the possibility that maybe, long ago, they were beautiful. He looked at me quizzically for a second, but then said “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can.” Looking at people we so easily judge, pass them off as middle aged or old, and see only age, nothing more. As if that person were born the age they are as we are looking at them. The charm of people is the history they have, but more than that, it is the person they see within themselves.

I went back to Pamplona again; met up with my daughter there, the one who looks like me, the one who loves my stories. She had spent the month of June backpacking through Europe. She is following in her mom’s path, only better. There in the plaza we met up with a dear friend, one of the most well-respected and well-known runners, who threw his arms around me in a giant hug, looked over my shoulder and saw my daughter. “I was SO in love with your mother!” he said. He had never met her, but there she was, standing in my town, with my face, which he knew and loved, at twenty.