Grumpy Old Man

Maybe I'm getting old.  I guess it's not even maybe anymore; now that I've begun the fifth decade of life, I've got gray in my beard, hair in my ears and every morning it feels like I'm walking on tacks.  My back hurts and pretty soon the only thing I'll be talking about is my monthly trip to the doctor's office where I can then list the prescriptions I'm taking as if I'm reciting my lines for the school play.  Basically, I'm turning into a 'grumpy old man.'

It's not about the aches and pains, really; I think it's more about the sense of nostalgia that keeps washing over me like a tidal wave.  I begin more and more sentences with, "I remember when..." or "When I was growing up..." as if somehow the memories I have stored up in the treasure chest in my own head are worth more than the ones I am adding now.  Just this last week I had a discussion with my daughters about how Christine and I got engaged.  I'm going to attempt to recapture, verbatim,  how the conversation went down.

Sitting at the dinner table, we had placed our forks and knives on the plates, sat back with hands on bellies when Elsa asked (it was Mother's Day), "How did it happen with you and Mom?"

"Your mother couldn't live without me so she made me marry her."

"No, really, Dad, how did it happen?  How did you ask Mom to marry you?"  I took a deep breath.  The girls had heard the story before, but I suppose young girls don't get tired of fairy tales.

"After our Youth Encounter team, your mother came to stay with me at my parent's house in the United States for a few days.  It was right before Christmas and because Grandpa and Grandma live in a colder section, well away from any kind of shopping center, when we went shopping, we made sure we got everything we needed all at once.  Christine didn't want to go shopping, so I went to Forest City, which was about half an hour away.  Grandma gave me a shopping list and your mother asked me to pick up just one thing."

"What was it?" Elsa asked.

I looked nervously at my two youngest daughters who were sitting in rapt attention, chin in hands on the table, smiles perched waiting for the rest of the story.  Fortunately, we'd already had 'the talk.'  I swallowed hard.  "Your mother wanted me to pick up some, ummm, delicate, ummm, products..."

Christine laughed, "Pads, Dear, feminine products.  You can say it with me, 'pads.'"

You know how some words are harder to say than others?  That's the one for me.  "Yes, well, because your mother and I knew each other well by that point as we'd spent the last seventeen months traveling together, she had no difficulty in asking me to purchase, ummmm, said product. During our travels the 3 fellas often had to buy for the 4 ladies on our team if we were the ones going shopping!"

 I didn't have any problems actually buying them, only saying them.  That day when I went to purchase the pads (it's much easier to write), I brought them to the check out line and the lady who was running the cash register didn't know the price so over the intercom she asked for a 'Price check on Tampax.  Can I get a price check on Tampax?"  No one did it immediately, so she yelled across the aisle, "HEY JENNY, CAN YOU GO LOOK AT THE PRICE OF A TWENTY PACK OF TAMPAX PADS?"

I'm positive she did it on purpose and why not?  I'm a twenty something young man in small town Iowa buying feminine products.

"So," I continued my story, "I finished shopping and brought all the groceries home.  It was just a few days before Christmas so before your mother returned home to Australia, we decided to have our own Christmas celebration at my parents' house.  My parents had bought her a few presents and I had a few things of my own for her.  I spent the afternoon wrapping them and getting everything ready for the unveiling under the Christmas tree."

"What happened next, Daddy?" Greta asked.

"We all sat around the colored lights, Christmas music blaring in the background, full bellies and high spirits.  After opening all the presents, I had one present left for Christine.  It was a special gift."

Josephine clapped her hands and giggled with glee.  She proceeded to put her fingernails in her mouth while smiling broadly.  "The rest of my family was busily putting away wrapping paper and bits of tape that were stuck to things when I announced, 'Just a second, everyone.  I have one more present for Christine."

"My mother gasped, I think, and my father was speechless.  From inside the tree I took the tiny package and approached your mother.  She told me later that every cell inside her head was screaming, 'NOT HERE!  NOT LIKE THIS!' but I couldn't be held back.  Before I handed her the gift I said, 'Christine, after spending all this time with you, the last seventeen months, I've grown to care about you very deeply.  In fact, I feel as if I know everything about you and you know everything about me.  So tonight, because of all that we have shared, because we trust each other with all things, I want to give you this." 

I got down on a knee to give her the gift.  My mother was already wiping a tear from her eye; my dad looked flabbergasted.  With shaking hands, your mother received her gift and began to open it.  When she saw what it was, she began to laugh. 

It was the small box of pads she had asked me to buy.

To this day, I'm still not sure if my mother has overcome the horror of that moment.  Instead of a ring and instead of thinking about planning for a wedding in Australia, she saw her son give his girlfriend ummmm, feminine products.

My daughters laughed with delight. That's their dad they have come to love, I guess. 

"So how did you really get engaged, Dad?"  Elsa asked.

"Your mother left for Australia two days later.  I called her very early in the morning - it must have been about 4:30.  She had not yet recovered from jet lag so she was awake.  My parents had a telephone in their kitchen, but back then, all telephones, basically, were attached with a curly cord to the wall."

"Ooooooh," the girls were awed by the fact that a telephone was connected to anything else.

"So, in an attempt to escape the prying ears of my parents, I pulled the cord to it's maximum distance, all the way to the bathroom.  It was there that I talked to your mother for the first time since our separation, one in which she cried heavily and I stayed strong, stoic, ready to move on to the next day."

"Daaaaad," Elsa rolled her eyes.

"Well," I continued, "That's the way I remember it.  I went into the bathroom, talked to your mother and with kind of this stuttering, muttering moment, I spit out that I didn't think I could live without her.  She said the same thing and wanted to know what I wanted to do about it.  She does like to get to the point.  I asked her to marry her, while I was in the bathroom of my parents' house, 10,000 miles away.  She said yes."

Greta asked, "Were you down on one knee?"  That's all that matters for little girls who have grown up watching every Disney princess movie available. 

"Yes, Greta, I was on one knee."

"That's so romantic, Daddy," my eleven-year-old daughter said.  Everything is romantic to an almost pre-teen, isn't it?

Re-telling the stories of life are important.  Even if they aren't 100 percent entirely accurate, the truth remained in the story telling allows us to dream the dreams of life.  Telling stories requires patience and trust and relationship.  It's the kind of thing that is almost completely absent in todays wireless world. 

So the grumpy old man comes out while thinking about that $30 twenty minute telephone call to Australia.  I was walking at school the other day chatting with a couple of young men and I asked them what they were going to do for the weekend.  One of the boys said that he was going get some friends to come over to his house.

"So you're going to call them up?  Make the arrangements?" I asked still caught somewhere in the 20th century of communication, imagining that the young men would spend a little time organizing the details of the night.

The boy rolled his eyes.  "No, I'm not going to call them.  I'll just text them and see what happens.?"

"Don't you want to talk to them?" 

"Yes, but..." and this blew this grumpy old mind, "It's a waste of credit."

"What?  Talking to your friends is a waste of credit?"  The boys walked away from me laughing. 

So, I'm left pondering anew the wired world in which we live.  For this beginning old man, there is nothing so frustrating or even disheartening than to walk down the street, ride on the train - whatever it is publicly that I do - and see seventy percent of the population staring at the small rectangular screen in front of them.  Ignoring the rest of the world, they are so wrapped in the games, or moving pictures, or thumb exercises that they can't even begin to realize the beauty of what interacting verbally does for a human.  Someday, when they really need someone in their lives, just need to hear someone's voice telling them that they care, they might not even be able to understand that kind of communication.  How do we attempt to restore relationship and the gift of story when we aren't even able to sit still and talk for more than thirty-seven seconds?

Ah, what do I know?  I'm just a grumpy old man.