dad elmaz and anthony

IN the last two weeks, I have gone into my retirement plan and moved around funds--Some poor performers over to real estate, more into the one fund showing a profit. My first dime went into that fund in 1981, the first year of my Ph.D. program and through four universities, I felt assured that, although I live like a perpetual graduate student, the realization of years of working "in the system" would pay off. I'd retire, write the remaining books and travel the world to the end of my days.

I had it better than my parents, who had a peddling business, then a series of stores--clothes and shoes--"style without extravagance," was their pitch to the customers. They were following the Immigrant dream.  After being the anchor store in a small Pennsylvania town that served the surrounding coal villages,  the malls hit, and among other icky political circumstances and down went the business. My father's income the year I entered college was $4000 annum.  So my stable life was going to put me in a better position.  I was first-generation and needed to realize for myself and for them, the resonance of their hard work-. On the other hand, -they did paid off their house, the building the store was in, managed to put money away and move to a retirement town near their grandchildren. In a way, happy ending with some exceptions.

My retirement is not going to be so clear cut. Like everyone I realize that I may have to work more years than I had planned, that even the upside is a not-enough side. The house won't probably be paid off in my lifetime; the dream of doing my writing full-time, a dream to be continued.  Partially because that's the way it is, and a little because the daily lattes, the closet full of shoes, more technology than NASA in my house than one writer and one consultant need. The new circumstances in the economy, the bail-out, the rip-off by the major financial institutions of the US has make it a daily drama. We wait for the stock-market numbers at the end of the market day like the latest episode of a soap opera. Who's going down, who's hitching up; who is conquering whom...not my idea of a good story.

This weekend Anthony and I flew to Maryland to celebrate my father's ninety-eighth birthday. His townhouse in Leisure World is a stockpile of memorabilia and tributes to my mother and our family. The plastic covers are still on the lamps but the side board is a beautiful finished cherry. Ninety-eight years creates a collision of country, family, love, business, loyalties and loads of junk. A picture of Our Lady of Lebanon on black velvet, a snapshot of Jimmy Carter and the pope. Birthday cards from children, cousins, neices, grandchildren, great grandchildren. Boxes of address labels sent by charities: his name and address with a flag, with crayon flowers, with small mammals, with the pink cancer ribbon. Unread AARP magazines, Good Housekeeping (he kept Mother's subscriptions going), a dish of stale peanuts.

Our reunions are joyful and short. He's a pencil, after 98 years, he has less scope but he is very sharp. As soon as we sit at the dining room table the box of memories open up and he talks continuously--this time about his life in Brazil from 1922-1932. He was young, energetic, working the rubber trade with his dad--they had a large boat to transport the rubber to Manous and a small batalon that took them up the obscure rivers in the west side near Bolivia and Peru. At times business was good and they might have returned to Lebanon wealthy men, but other times, coups, insurgencies, depressions, every cent they had was worthless. After the 1929 crash, the rubber market caved in. My father bought two francs off the black market and headed home.

I let him talk, encourage him with questions, watch him reel himself backward in time and feel each moment with tears or a heavy laugh and sometimes we forget that our time is just too limited.

Two requirements of the visit--one is a walk. My mother and father walked every night of their marriage while they were able. It was a tradition from their courtship that flowed into their marriage, and a moment away from six children, a sick mother, and a business. My father loves to walk, he has a stride that puts younger men to shame. When we left the hosue, he was creaky; after about fifteen minutes of the senior pace, his legs picked up, his size thirteen feet strode up the hill to local strip mall. His commentary on nature, sweet; on people a little rough, almost 100 years into life, some things make no sense to him (m'neither) like sags and dreds. But mostly he's sweet to everyone and I stand by watching and learning what becomes the value of life when you aren't working, when you're kids are grown, when the goals are to get from this day to the next and hope for a call, a piece of mail or an occassionally email to remind you of your value.

The second must-do is playing cards and rummycube. That wicked old man has his wits about him and beats everyone at everything and runs commentary on how everyone is playing their game. I throw a card, "That's your mistake," he says with real disappointment. If nothing else, he wants to win a good game. I am astonished at how keen his sensibiltites and strategies are. In my almost 24 hour visit, we played 15 games --he won 12 and he declares he let me have at least two.

Lots of his time is cleaning up the house, sorting stuff, watching catholic television (yes, really). He is not at the end of his days, but he's running out of things to do but remember and let it unroll into my skin.

Dad's life as our elder doesn't make me worry about old age or my retirement  but I do worry about loneliness and the life among ghosts, as it has been said. It's hard to imagine with all the people around me now: my brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, close friends, fellow writer, vona people, students and gym rats that I'd be alone in a town house with books as the final architecture of my existence.

How does one prepare for that ? Life has no guarantees, not the finances, not the survival of the folks I love. The longer I live, the loneliner I may become, unless I go first, of course. So I promise now, to write my stories and dad's. And dream more stories so I won't run out when the time comes to share.