Neil T. Jacobs's Blog

A bit of an unexpected family reunion last week. We headed to Virginia to visit the oldest and her husband, and the younger daughter ended up there for a few days, on the run from the latest Florida hurricane. Thankfully, she and her cats were safe, and we all spent some overdue time together.

Not surprising for a family of bibliophiles, one common topic during our lengthy chats was books–what we’ve read recently, picked up somewhere, etc. My oldest mentioned in passing an older Irish cookbook now sitting on her shelf, courtesy of her mother. I scampered (yes, I still do that, albeit with some creaking noises these days) to her dedicated cookbook bookcase (I did mention we like books) and knew immediately which one it was. I had picked it up in Ireland back in the 80s when first bopping around Europe with her mother.

The pages are stained, the cover worn, and it falls naturally open to one particular recipe, Cottage Chicken, a dish I made when first learning to cook.

I spent the next hour or so curled up in a chair, flipping through it, chuckling at times as memories mixed with recipes. It was like meeting up with an old friend.

Once or twice a year I revisit stories from my youth and later years, and it’s like sliding into an old comfortable sweater (I have one of those too). I don’t reread every book, less than a dozen, one or two a year. Some of them are considered classics in general, but some are simply ones that I first came across at a specific time in my life and, for various reasons, they touched me in a special way. Comfort food for the mind, as well as the soul.

Friends change, as we all do, and while static words on a page may at first seem immutable, I’ve found that as my perspective changes, so too do the books. The actions or words of a minor character that once struck me as annoying now make sense and I can empathize with their perspective. Or, as is the case in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, my understanding of how the young protagonist sees and experiences the world versus how her parents do and how they handle life, shifts as I inch closer to needing a robot body to get around.

Like listening to a loved one tell the same story for the twentieth time, but this time you pick up on a minor detail you’ve somehow missed in the past. Suddenly, you have a different perspective on them, or events, or people in general. And sometimes, you end up appreciating them even more. They and the story are the same. It’s you that’s changed.

My list of rereads has changed over the years as well. But there are some that I always seem

to pull down from a shelf, particularly as frost descends upon our home, I light a fire in my office, and start simmering a batch of sauce.

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith

Tai Pan and Noble House – James Clavell

Basilisk Station – David Weber

Little Fuzzy – H. Beam Piper

Chicago Poems – Carl Sandburg

All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriot

Time Enough for Love – Robert Heinlein

Letters from Earth – Mark Twain

Beard on Bread – James Beard (yes, a cookbook)

What are your old (or new) favorites?

There is a lot to be said for puddle jumping. Refreshes the body, spirit, let’s you put aside your grownup-sized worries for a little bit. The only downside is a lingering chill if it's nippy outside, but that's easily remedied by a good dose of hot chocolate.

Mind you, I’m normally jumping, hopping, and dancing in the company of a kid, so I have an excuse, although I’m not against going solo. It is more fun, though, when you have someone with you that isn’t carrying around the embarrassment baggage many older folks do. I haven’t asked my oldest two children, both now in their thirties, if they still do it. I hope so. I’d hate to think they have truly grown up. And I’m doing my best to make sure my youngest, now a teen, gods help me, doesn’t take life, or himself, too seriously either. But you never know.

For reference, I find that going barefoot is best, although you need to make sure your puddle path is relatively clear of any sharp objects. Wrapping your toes around a bit of squishy mud is quite satisfying on a primal level. I think it’s an evolutionary thing from when we had prehensile toes and could use them to throw poop at jerks and enemies. There are days I would give a lot to be able to do that. On the flip side, if you just can’t wait and go out to splash in shoes and socks, you get the fun of throwing your socks in the dryer afterwards and either sticking them to yourself (static electricity is cool) or, my preference, hanging them from your ears and pretending to be a dog.

Besides a dearth of adult puddle jumping, I’ve also noticed some other things lacking in the grownup world. Tree climbing for one, although I’ve read there are a few tree climbing clubs around. None near me, sadly. There is also a distinct absence of ice butt sliding. There’s nothing like turning yourself into a human bowling ball and hurtling across a frozen pond. Fair warning, though. If you are using people for pins, make sure they are on the small side. The bigger ones tend to get annoyed.

I get that digging for buried treasure in the backyard or skipping from puddle to puddle while doing a (terrible) impression of Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain may not be your thing. But I’m in favor of any type of silliness to keep from taking ourselves too seriously. You have to avoid going full adult. When that happens, the last little pieces of magic and wonder inside you get vacuum sealed and put on a high shelf in a dark closet. Very sad since from what I’ve seen, it’s almost impossible to take them down again and let them out.

Granted, I do get the occasional stink-eye from other large humans, but I just wave and smile and feel bad for them.

So here is to hanging upside down from monkey bars, and keeping the magic alive. Grab some pillows and blankets, take down a favorite book, and break out the crackers.

I’ll meet you there.

Memes come and go, but some seem to have a half-life akin to uranium-238. One that I see regularly proudly proclaims the person posting being of the last generation to drink out of a hose, play outside until dark, respecting their parents, etc. Another related one talks about the current batch of up-and-coming humans being soft, lazy, selfish, frivolous, not able to communicate properly...on and on.

Really?

First, let the record show my first kid was born back in the dark ages of the 1980s, followed by another in the early 90s. My most recent offspring was born in 2011. Do I know what I’m doing as a parent? Hell, no, are you freaking kidding me? I’ve been making it up and getting away with it for well over thirty years. I’m not an expert on anything and certainly not on parenting. But I am a reasonably keen observer of people and the world, something I’ve worked at since I was knee-high to the mastodons my generation had to hunt down with sticks as we made our way across the frozen tundra running from the last of the dinosaurs (hush, I’m on a roll).

So I’m going to share a few observations.

Putting aside the generalizations being painted with such big brush strokes that a single swipe could wipe out the Sistine Chapel ceiling, kids are kids are kids, just as adults are adults are adults. Now and forevermore.

My grandmother was born in 1907 and lived with us during her twilight time. I was fortunate enough to have many chats with her over the years, although I wish I had taken the time to have more. One of the frequent stories was about her riding around on the back of an Indian

motorcycle in the late nineteen twenties and how she was roundly criticized for her ‘loose’ ways as well as how her generation was accused of losing god (pick your flavor) and allowing themselves to get too caught up with the latest fads that were bound to pass. You know, things like radio and women voting.

That tale and other similar ones didn't stop her, though, from roundly criticizing kids that came to our house as being slovenly for not wearing socks with sneakers. Nor from lamenting that my mother’s generation didn't have the gumption or work ethic of her own generation.

When I was coming up, as the saying goes, in the 1970s, adults were all about the evils of marijuana and how the generation currently in and just out of high school was useless, didn't appreciate how easy they had it, and had no respect for anything or anyone.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sensing a theme.

Let’s add to that the following quote:

“We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.”

That’s from a newspaper article in 1925.

Another, from 1936:

“...alluding to the problem of young people and their English he said his experience was that many did not seem able to express or convey to other people what they meant. They could not put their meaning into words,and found the same difficulty when it came to writing.”

And here’s an oldy but a goody:

“The beardless youth... does not foresee what is useful, squandering his money.”

Horace, 1st Century BC

Good old Horace. He probably yelled at neighborhood kids to get off his villa’s lawn and to get a job hawking figs down at the Circus Maximus.

There is a long tradition of adults slamming the new generations for their myriad of supposed faults. The same faults those adults were criticized for. Sure, some are lazy, willfully ignorant, spendthrifts...but so were some of our generation. And our parents’. All the way back to Horace and those damn kids who were wasting denarii on quince and fig lattes.

Look, I get it. There was nothing like the years when you were growing up. Or when Horace was. I won’t even get into (right now) the bigotry, racism, sexism, and narrow boxes everyone was expected to squeeze into, spanning umpteen generations across multiple cultures. Your generation was mighty, the epitome of western civilization, its like never to be seen again.

Until the next one came along, thinking the same thing about themselves. And the one after that.

Maybe all us getting-to-be-oldsters should put those rose-colored glasses in a drawer and remember what it’s like to be just starting out. Different environment in many ways compared to a generation ago, sure. But it always is and, as always, kids are kids are kids.

And they’re doing the best they can.

Same as we did. And are.

While Christmas is my favorite holiday, fall is my favorite season. When the days shorten in my small northeastern (U.S.) town, the leaves shed their summer green and transform into a kaleidoscope of reds, oranges, and yellows, and the air gains a crispness that signals the world is slowing down and preparing for a winter nap. Best of all, our house fills with the aromas of simmering stock, sauce, and baking bread, at times hitting the trifecta of smells in a single day.

But there is one more sign that summer has ended, and fall has begun. One I unabashedly take pleasure in sharing with you: Hallmark Cider Festival/Fall Harvest/Woman Returning Home to Help Granddad Save the Pumpkin Farm movies.

Of course, these will be soon followed by the non-stop rotation of Holiday Lighting Festival/Christmas Tree Harvest/Woman Returning Home to Help Granddad Save the Reindeer Farm movies. It might be a Hanukkah Gathering or helping save a family deli, but the same idea.

Trite? Yep. Totally predictable? Absolutely. I mean, when is the last time a Hallmark movie ended with the two main characters not getting together?

But I'm ok with that. The movies can be and are criticized on many levels, but one thing is certain. You know what you're getting when you sit down to watch one. The best ones (yes, there are levels of quality even in Hallmark movies) are like being wrapped in an oversized furry blanket while hugging puppies and kittens, and having someone read your favorite children's story to you for the eleventeenth time. It's the predictability that makes them so popular in this crazy, ever-changing world. Fact is, even when the changes are good (granted, that's subjective), change unto itself can knock you a bit off kilter for at least a little while.

There's a comfort in knowing that the county bake-off/Halloween festival/charity barn raising is going to end with the prickly partnership between former rivals morphing into romance. Or that the big city lawyer is going to realize what they really want is to open up that interior design/book store/flower shop and settle down with the rancher/handyman-woman/bakery owner.

The best part is you can swap in and out pretty much any of those jobs and activities for different ones, and you have a brand-new Hallmark movie. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's what they do. But either way, they are perfect for a crisp autumn day as you settle down with a cat, a cup of tea, and homemade cookies.

Mind you, I don't want to lose the craziness and spontaneity in life. It’s what keeps things interesting. But I do enjoy taking a break from it, now and again.

I think it's time to update the old saying.

The only things certain in life are death, taxes…and Hallmark movies.

To start the season off, here's a recipe for one of my favorite soups

Mushroom Bisque

 Optional: Top each served portion with paprika flavored whipped cream

The sky was a particularly deep shade of blue. I thought to share that observation with my wife, but figured she wouldn’t be able to hear me over the clunking-whir of the blades. Besides, she seemed to be a bit distracted trying to lift the riding mower off me without getting cut to pieces.

It’s a good life overall. Better, I think, than I’ve earned. When things get a bit boring, I remind myself that I have it a lot better than most other hairless apes on the planet. Hell, my dogs and cat have it better than most people. Helps keep things in perspective. But I do get bored with the humdrum at times. It’s what prompted me to traipse around the country and various parts of the world in my overspent youth.

These days, there is a lot less traipsing and a lot more laundry, pre-teen shuttling, and other related activities. All good overall, but there is definitely more than a tad of humdrum involved in some activities. So I’m regularly looking for ways to entertain myself. Sometimes that works out, sometimes not so much.

Like ending up pinned upside down under a riding mower.

Our old house had a big yard. Big enough that I proclaimed a ride-along mower was mandatory. My wife, on the other hand, thought a push mower and possibly a goat (she is a bit odd) would be more than sufficient for lawn care.

Full confession: I could have gotten away with that push mower, but visions of sipping cider as I casually gunned a mighty cutting beast would not be denied.

It was great. At first. But then a monotony set in. You know those nice straight lines you see on people’s lawns? Sure, they look classy in someone else’s yard, but driving in straight lines….back and forth…back and forth…humdrumminess out the yin-yang. I moved on to shapes and swirls and even took a go at making pictures, swooping around, grass faces (sort of) appearing as I went. That caused some consternation at home and probably with the neighbors. My blushing bride’s initial reaction was to compare the work to the “whacking by a blind, drunk person”. My reassurances that the images would fade quickly once the grass popped back up were met with continuous mutterings, but fortunately for me, she understands I have a creative soul that will not be denied.

And all was well. For a few weeks. A Swirl here, a swoop there. But one thing bugged. A minor thing, to be sure, but it poked at me, metaphorically, every time I got ready to mow. Before starting on my grass-art, I had to plod to the backyard and throw the play set swings up onto the top of the set and out of the way.

Every. Single. Time.

One mowing day I forgot, and as I made the turn from the front yard to the back, I saw the swings hanging down. Cursing, I put the mower in park, planning to jump down and deal with them.

That’s when the creative juices went into overdrive, and an alternate solution came to me. I’m sure it had nothing to do with it being an extra hot day and at that moment working my way through my third or sixth Strongbow cider to keep hydrated.

I leaned over to the mower floor and grabbed the wiffle ball bat I had picked up from the front yard. Preparing myself for battle, I slid the gearshift into high, shouted ‘Hi-Ho Silver’ and floored it.

The thrill! Flying across the yard at what must have been at least three miles an hour, wind whipping through my hair, I approached what I had mistaken for a play set but now could see was actually an evil knight, bent on destroying my homestead – He would not succeed!

I love the movie “A Knight’s Tale”. Love, treachery, battles… jousting. The pounding of the hooves as the two opponents near each other. The precision of the lance as the hero takes aim and knocks the bejesus out of the bad guy who flies through the air in slow-motion.

It looks a lot easier than it really is.

Or maybe my problem was trying to use a wiffle ball bat to push a slender swing chain up and out of the way just seconds before the front of the mower reached the swing.

It’s a question for the ages. What isn’t in question is what actually happened. Not only did I miss with my carefully aimed yet ultimately unsuccessful wiffle-lance blow, but the front of my steed fit precisely between the two swing chains with the seat itself forming a sling under the mower. Before I could react, the front end started lifting off the ground while the rear-drive wheels kept moving forward.

Newer mowers have an automatic shut-off. It’s to prevent accidents, of course, in case something causes the mower to not be perfectly horizontal or if it hits something. Rocks, I reckon, or maybe mowing on the side of a hill. I doubt the manufacturers test for swing sets.

Irrelevant in this case, anyway. My mighty mount was an ancient, eleventeen-times-rebuilt beast that had no time for safety features.

That lack popped into my head as the top of the swing set and that lovely blue sky came into view. Quicker than you can say “Riveted Rocinante” the mower was horizontal again. Unfortunately, it was as inverted as was I. And my hands, along with the rest of me, were pinned, the ignition key out of reach.

Luckily, Sancho, otherwise known as my spouse, was in the yard doing some trimming. I need

to reread Cervantes’s classic since I don’t remember the knight’s sidekick being quite so colorful in his language, but her never-ending stream of verbal concern warmed me. In hindsight, the warmth I felt might have been blood backing up in my crushed legs, but I’ll go with concern at this point. She managed to lift one side up just enough for me to get an arm free and turn the engine off.

 As the blood flowed back into my limbs, Sancho counted her fingers then, I believe in an effort to reassure me they were all there, showed me both of her middle ones.

I’m not sure who broke first, but as we finished turning the beast back over, one of us began chuckling. Within seconds we both were, then we were on the ground, tears running down our faces and laughing about as hard as I, at least, have ever laughed. I suspect she has laughed at least as hard on a few other occasions since marrying me.

I really need to remind her how lucky she is to have such an entertaining husband.

A valid question a reader might ask at this point is: Did I ever do it again? After almost losing life and limb (times two), did I dare mount the steel stallion and do further battle against evildoers, real and otherwise?

If you know me in real life, there is no need to even ask.

Now excuse me, there’s a windmill with my name on it that I need to take care of.

*This piece was published a number of years ago in substantially the same form on a different site

I was recently reminded by an old neighbor of something that became a bit of a running joke in our neighborhood when we were kids. I would be off gallivanting with friends, sometimes close to half a mile from home, and my mother’s bellow would waft through the air like the cry of a Valkyrie.

“Michael!”

“What?” I didn’t have the lung capacity she did (surprising, considering she smoked over a pack a day), but she always seemed to hear my response.

“Come home now!”

“5 more minutes?”

“No!”

The joke was that it was such a standard pattern of back and forth, my responses became a joint effort with whatever friends I was with that day. There were also times I was simply out of even her bellowing range, but I learned I could rely on any kids closer to my house to answer on my behalf. To this day, I’m not sure my mother knew it was sometimes not me on the other end of the shouting.

Of course, regardless of whether I heard her and personally responded, I generally took more than five minutes to go home. Sometimes, much more. But hell, I was a kid, knee deep in kid shenanigans. And my mother was a patient woman.

But I’ve been thinking about that ‘five more minutes’ as I approach the seventh cycle around the sun since Mom moved to Florida. I think of her, my stepsister who died last year much too young, and all the other folks that have moved on over the years. I’m not alone or unique in experiencing loss, obviously. It’s part of life. But it brings to mind something I heard a minister say last week.

Grief is the tax on love.

What a beautiful, and poignant statement.

No one enjoys paying taxes. And when the tax is for something you don’t get or no longer have, it could be viewed as exemplifying the unfairness of life.

I’m taking a different approach. I’m thinking about…

A chorus of kids shouting and laughing, ‘Five more minutes?’

A sister’s painstaking creation of a handmade stained glass lazy susan to give my wife and me as a wedding present.

A very old, in every sense of the word, friend who started as the scourge of neighborhood kids, washing our baseballs down the sewer or keeping them if they came in front of his house and who ultimately became my oldest child’s godfather.

…And so many other memories. It’s a heavy tax, to be sure. And it also isn’t a one and done, unfortunately, but over time, hopefully, it stops taking emotional center stage.

So the memories, they remain. As does the love.

Given the two choices, I’ll pay the tax, and keep paying every time it comes due. Not happily but knowing at least that it is a tax worth paying.

Last time out, I wrote about the letters and messages I’ve left around for my kids for when I’ve moved on. Those letters represent a conscious decision on my part to communicate with various folks posthumously. Writing about them brought to mind something from my late teens and early twenties.

Back then, I had limited funds for entertainment and an inexpensive way to spend a Friday night was to go to the local auction house. If I recall correctly, you paid a couple of dollars to get a paddle to take part in any and all of the auctions that evening. If you wanted to simply watch, there was no charge and there were snacks and drinks available to purchase. Things started slow, with empty chairs outnumbering butts in seats early on, but as the evening progressed, the place filled up, with many folks lining the walls, not wanting to miss out on the excitement.

You can be forgiven if, upon reading the phrase auction house, images of elegant antique furniture and fine works of art with a documented provenance going back hundreds of years, popped into your head. Those types of things were sold, but the vast majority of them were offered directly, at fixed prices, and didn’t make an appearance at the Friday night extravaganzas.

Auction offerings were largely made up of mid-to-low end items - used recliners, chipped Formica dining tables, a piano missing some keys, but the thing that I and, I suspect, many others, went for was the opportunity to get a life in a box.

That isn’t what they were officially called, but that was what I always considered them. The left-behinds of someone’s life in one or more cardboard boxes, with bidding generally starting at one dollar. To work up the crowd’s enthusiasm, the auctioneer would pull an item out, hold it up to give at least a vague glimpse of it to those at the back edges of the room, make up a description on the fly if it wasn’t self-evident as to what the item was, then rattle off the names or descriptions of a couple of other things also tucked in that same box  - a lunchbox, a small glass vase, a poster, etc. They were supposed to be representative of what you would get, but it was always a crap shoot, with much of the contents being a mystery and not necessarily remotely similar to the announced items. You made your bid based on the one or two items and hoped for the best. At times, bidding got as high as ten or twenty dollars, depending on the suspected value of the box’s contents. More often than not, though, the selling price would not be much more than that starting buck bid.

And yes, I did indeed purchase a few at various times. Back then, it was a combination of hoping to find something to stretch my non-existent budget (a working toaster, fry pan, a book) and, no question, a bit of morbid curiosity about the obviously non-utilitarian things that someone thought important enough to keep right to the end. Tchotchkes, postcards, an occasional letter. You get the idea.

The stories those items might have told. About the life of the person who clung to them through thick and thin, their experiences, and the people that were part of their lives. Sad in a way, if you focused too much on a person’s entire existence being distilled into a handful of random pieces, shoved into a disposable box. I always hoped that the really important stuff never made its way to the Friday night auctions but had been gathered up by family and friends and, even if tucked away in their own boxes and attics after a time, helped keep the memory of the one that was gone alive.

It’s the sharing of stories of those who go before us that make up the most tangible intangibles at the end of our time.

When my mother moved on, there were many boxes of things to go through, although thankfully we had sorted through much of it together ahead of time. Granted, there were some things that even she couldn’t remember why she had, but for most of them, she had a story. Late 1800s photos that prompted her to start rattling off branches of the family I didn’t know existed. A decades-old letter from the Bureau of Indian Affairs that got her to admit that

admit that when I, just out of high school, announced I was moving to Meditante, a Nevada commune run by Rolling Thunder, a self-described medicine man, she had dug in to it to see if it was on the up and up (spoiler, it wasn’t, but I never made it there anyway). A card from a Greenwich Village coffeehouse circa 1950s/1960s that reminded her of seeing both Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix in the Village during their formative years.

Some of what she had tucked away I kept, some I didn’t. But I have hung on to all the stories and memories she shared.

And yes, I have my own boxes (more than my ever-patient wife would prefer) which include items from my mother, some of which, in turn, came down to her through the generations. Will my left-behinds end up at a Friday night fire-sale auction? Damned if I know. But I will, and have already started, passing along memories and stories to my kids while I still can.

Because while the boxes might only be worth a buck, there is no price to be put on the history.

I had a notebook many years ago, just as I was entering my teen years. I remember it in detail - standard school style, black and white mottled cardboard cover, my name written in careful (for me) cursive on the inside. Over time, I filled it with a running commentary on pretty much every opinion I had at the time - worries about potential animal extinctions, girls (are weird), politics, music, girls (are great), hopes for my life. On and on. But the very first entry was a note written to my grown-up self. It was a reminder that I had once been young, had viewed the world a certain way, that grown-ups sometimes (often) forget that kids are, in many ways, a different species of human, but just as important as old folks, and that I (the kid version) wanted to try to make sure I (the adult version) didn't grow up 'too much' and become 'one of those' grown-ups.

Safe to say I have avoided growing up 'too much', but whether my kid-self would agree, I'll never know.

Nor will I ever know exactly what those opinions were. Not really. I can only try to remember, since that notebook disappeared when I moved out on my own and my mother sold the family home.

When my two oldest children were young, I had the idea to make videos (yes, VHS) of myself talking about life as I saw it at that moment in time, about them at their then-current ages, the world, etc. But, following a divorce and multiple moves, those too disappeared.

Following the birth of my youngest, who is now about the age I was when I started that first set of notes, I went back to basics and started writing letters to each of the three kids, one here and there for each of them, penned at different points in time over the course of more than a decade. For the older kids, now in their thirties, the letters are intended to be opened when, as we euphemistically say in the family, I move to Florida; for the youngest, I've marked them to be opened when he hits various ages, or when I make that big move to warmer climes, although I do hope wherever I go isn't too warm.

Why bother with all this?

Because that original notebook, and my twelve-year-old thinking behind it, has never left me. Young me, trying to reach out over the years and decades to a version of me he could only vaguely envision, to remind me that he existed, with his own concerns, joys, fears...

Grown-ups have a sometimes-maddening tendency to forget or to whitewash what it was like to be a kid. We often view our own personal time in the youth-barrel as though looking at a single frame in a movie, missing the flavor and nuances of that time and life. But it works the other way too. Kids, regardless of age, often have a mental and emotional snapshot of their parents tied to a specific point in time, that doesn’t give them a chance to experience their parents’ full selves, warts and all, and to see how their parents change and evolve over time, just like they have and continue to do. Seems a shame, in both directions.

Not having that original notebook or those early videos means my kids will only get thoughts starting with me as a youngish middle-aged guy. But I’ll keep writing the letters, now and again, and tucking them away, right up until my robot body is ready to fly.

And of course it will fly, don’t be ridiculous.

By Jaya Mehta

I looked down at my shoe and saw a long trail of toilet paper clinging to the sole. I had used the mall bathroom earlier, and I must have been trailing it after me for the last couple of hours as I shopped. Matter-of-factly, I detached it using the other shoe. I must have looked quite ridiculous as I drifted from store to store with my toilet-paper streamer. Probably many pointed at me and giggled. And yet I was not mortified, or even embarrassed. What did it matter if people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me ridiculed me?

            And that is one of the beauties of growing older. You don’t care about what other people think of you as much as you once did.

            Being now in my sixties, I will say I am oldish. I don’t feel old—unconsciously, I think of myself as middle-aged. Is that because I am in denial, immature, or youthful at heart? I don’t know. I remember when I was maybe in my twenties, my mother saying she didn’t feel old, and I remember looking at her and thinking, really? But now I’d say, yes, really!

            So, being oldish. We all dread old age—but how bad is it really? Many studies have shown, counter-intuitively, that old people are happier than middle-aged or young people. I found this profoundly surprising the first time I read about it. And yet now that I am at the door of old age, I will say this is true for me. I feel more at peace with myself—my flaws, my virtues, my gifts, my deficits—than ever before. And I feel more tolerant (maybe not very tolerant, but more tolerant, at least) of others’ flaws and deficits. More forgiving of hurt. More willing to put anger behind me. And more appreciative of virtues. I care less about what other people think of me because I am more sure of what I think of myself. I feel more comfortable in my skin.

            Age can enhance not only happiness, but creativity. Writing is one of the human endeavors where youth is not an asset. Young people feel things keenly, it is true, but they cannot distill as well as their elders. The range and depth of experience we accumulate throughout a long and bumpy life gives us a broader palate, more confident brush strokes, and more saturated hues. Furthermore, over decades, we have read more, and we are inspired by the novels, poems, and plays that we have read. We draw more from the writing we admire. We have a symphony of voices in our heads.

            In literature, there are no child prodigies, as there are in music, mathematics, and chess, for example. Most writers write their best work in their later years. Shakespeare’s early plays are downright silly. Northanger Abbey, though delightful, is a lighter novel than Jane Austen’s five ensuing ones, whereas Persuasion, her last completed novel, is has the most depth of feeling. George Eliot’s Adam Bede has little of the moral searching, complexity of characters, and variety of people and plots, all brilliantly woven together, that Middlemarch has. Of course, one could say that naturally writers learn their craft as they age, but I think that is not the only reason .they become better. They become wiser, more versed in nuance and complexity, more acquainted with diversity of experience, more capable of emotional depth.

            In literature, age is ripeness, and “ripeness is all.”

Jaya Mehta is the co-author, with Susan Lynn Meyer, of a forthcoming picture book titled ,Nisha and the Just-Right Christmas Tree (Beaming Books). She won a ,LitUp Fellowship from Reese's Book Club for a YA novel manuscript in 2022. She lives outside Boston, among all the animals left behind by her college-age twins.

The title is part of a quote from writer Vivian Greene -

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

The obvious reading of it, and the one Greene meant, is to suggest the importance of finding joy in all situations, however bad those situations might be. I like that quite a bit. But for me, the rain doesn’t just represent a bad time. It’s the tears we shed, even if they are sometimes only inside.

Too, we shed those tears not just when things go wrong, but when we feel a surge of emotions - happiness, excitement, anger, on and on across the spectrum of feelings. Of course, emotions rarely go solo. They like to travel in clumps, like big ol’ tangled balls of twine, impossible to know where one strand ends, and another begins.

That’s us. Big tangled balls of string. But the world tends to be like that, so it only makes sense.

And just as the tears can be a reaction to both happy and sad times, the dances we do both help get us through some things and are a celebration of other things. Either way, they help us cope and keep moving down life’s path. Of course, it may not be actual dancing (and in my case, that’s a good thing for all involved). It could be sewing, cooking, music…

Or writing.

Now, I don’t write specifically as a coping mechanism, any more than anyone else with a creative streak necessarily does. Although it is probably in everyone’s best interest to not dig too deep into the psyche of creative folks.

But I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that while writing, emotions bubble up and make their way to the page at times.

As with any fiction writer, the stories I share are intended to engage and entertain readers in various ways. But I also hope they manage to evoke emotions in the reader. Not not necessarily the same ones as someone else reading the book, or even the same ones I felt writing it. Unique to them, as are all our experiences and memories.

My upcoming novel, A Parade in Every Town, has been called a quirky 'slice of life' by an early reader. Fair description, but it's more than that. At its heart, Parade is a story about living. Living with and through joy, pain, loss, and love in a world very much like our own ten-degrees-off-center one. And the people who populate Parade, and its primary setting at the Sun Market and Trailer Park, each have their own way of dancing, through good times and bad. As we all do.

So keep dancing, my friends, through sun showers and thunderstorms. I’ll be there beside you, doing my own shuffling two-step.