I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50

by Gurwitch, Annabelle

  Maybe the weeping got to Dr. Nudgey, because he thrust some informational pamphlets at me, said he was going to write up his notes and hurriedly exited the examination room.

  The pamphlets highlighting gadgets specifically designed for osteoarthritis sufferers were even more depressing than Nudgey’s bedside manner. Jar openers, button and zipper pulls, playing-card holders and, yes, even walkers. Each item was offered in a variety of rainbow hues.

  I mark this day as my first experience with how the elderly are infantilized. The faces of the people in the pamphlets appeared vaguely distorted, their bodies rounded like Botero sculptures. Has this condition rendered them incapable of exercise, transforming them into sexless, shapeless blobs? These rotund couples were dressed in those same insipid pastel-colored sweaters as the AARP elders. The dreaded, neutering pleated khakis were boxy to boot. My son was right: khaki hadn’t murdered anyone, but it was almost as bad, and the pants were so high-waisted they looked like geriatric rompers. Each couple was depicted at home. Was it by accident or by design that their homes were isolated structures? Shunned by society, had they been cast out to dwell on the fringes of civilization? In one drawing, a woman is tossing a salad with gigantic pink tongs under a man’s watchful eye. Which one has the osteoarthritis? Is it the woman wielding the circus-clown utensils, or the man, so handicapped he’s unable to lift the massive tongs? It’s probably both of them. The disease has turned him into a mercurial taskmaster, and he’s overseeing the preparations, making sure she tosses the salad with flavored water to keep their weight down.

  I gazed expectantly toward the bank of windows located just above my head. They don’t open. Given Dr. Nudgey’s winning personality, it’s possible that the building’s management has sealed them as a precautionary measure.

  I’d worked myself into a total panic by the time Dr. Nudgey came back. He took in the sight of me still weeping, and said to make an appointment to see him again in six months. Why on earth would I do that? So I could come back and he could make me feel worse?

  “No, thank you, that won’t be necessary,” I said as I squeezed the door handle with my better hand, exited and didn’t look back.

  When I arrived home, my son was jumping on the tramp. The 2000 doesn’t much resemble the trampolines I grew up with. Those had menacingly large, exposed industrial-sized metal springs. The springs looked like sharks’ teeth to me. You could land on them and chip a tooth or fall through the gaping spaces between each one. At the summer camps I attended, we were made to stand shoulder to shoulder as safety watch whenever another kid was jumping. We were ordered to be vigilant. The extent of this danger was constantly drilled into our heads. “Don’t turn away for a second, not a second! Donna Rosenstock broke her collarbone last June! She’s still in a neck brace!”

  Now trampoline springs are covered by protective plastic sheeting, and ours even came with netting that encloses the tarp so the whole thing resembles a giant playpen. Should a bounce threaten to send you sailing over the edge, the net catches you and gently rights you. It’s not unlike the evolution of childhood itself. We keep our children corralled in our homes or backyards, and when we do let them venture out, we arm them with cell phones, yet another layer of netting.*

  “Come on with me, Mom.”

  “No, my hands hurt, I can’t,” I said as I watched him jump into the evening hours from the kitchen breakfast-nook window. My son was actually asking me to do something with him, but I was too defeated to join him.

  “Are your bones brittle because you’re soooooo old?”

  Art Linkletter was right. Kids do say the darnedest things. I headed straight to my closet and put on my darkest pair of jeans.

  We’re on the trampoline. We’ve brought a small beach ball inside the netting and we’re passing it back and forth while we’re jumping. It’s hard to time it right between bounces, so there’s a lot of careening around. Every few bounces, Ezra deliberately propels himself through the air into the net, which ricochets his slender frame back onto the tarp. He rubs his bony legs and then springs back up as if nothing has happened. I marvel at his flexibility. You’d never know that he was born with a tethered spinal cord. The memory of his reconstructive surgery, at age four, is inaccessible to him but in yet one more reminder of the effect of aging on the brain, that incident remains as vivid for me as if it had taken place yesterday, while I have no recollection of whether it was ibuprofen or acetaminophen that Nudgey advised me to take an hour earlier.

  He tells me he’s got a game he devised with his friends; he’s named it “Saves.”

  “So you have to keep the ball in the air,” he explains, “and to score a point you have to save it from falling by catching it,” but for some reason I can’t understand what he’s saying. What’s the point of the game? I’m wondering. Are we trying to keep a volley going, or prevent the other person from hitting it back by catching the ball? I suspect that somehow the rules conflict, but I know if I bring this up I’ll be accused of correcting him. So I just nod and try to make contact with the ball while he castigates me.

  “Why did you hit it like that?

  “Why don’t you catch it like this?

  “Why aren’t you trying, Mom? You’re not even trying, why aren’t you saving it, Mom?”

  He reiterates the rules and my brain fogs over as I try to comprehend, but there are new wrinkles. “If the ball bounces once, it’s a save, or if you hit it twice in the air and it touches the net, it’s a save, but if it’s too close to you and you catch it, it doesn’t count.” I’m alternating between hitting the ball and catching the ball and we’re bouncing in circles around and around and maybe the bouncing has loosened something in my brain, because that’s when I start to laugh.

  I start to giggle and I then can’t stop. I’m laughing so hard tears are streaming down my face. “Mom, stop it, stop it, Mom.” But I can’t. “Why are you laughing?” he demands. I can’t tell him that I know I’ll never ever win this game, that I can’t follow the rules he’s made up, that I will definitely need a massage, if not a Xanax, to correct the damage being caused right now, and that with every jump I am moving one step closer to those cartoon-sized kitchen utensils.

  I can’t tell him that I am trying and that sucking is the best I can do and that my inability to “save” is because I’m forty-nine years old and I’m on my way out of this life and he’s on his way in. You can’t tell children this. Children don’t want to know this, and even if you said it, they’d never believe it and they probably couldn’t hear it because it’s like a high-pitched dog whistle that only people over forty can hear. I’d be his Dr. Nudgey. I don’t want to be another person saying that youth is wasted on the young and that in its absence you will long for it, like someone you had great sex with but couldn’t wait to leave because you had nothing to talk about. Or that you knew you were on borrowed time and it was wrong to be using someone like that, but that thing he did when you rode him backward and he’d slide his thumb inside you was truly inspired. That you had to break it off, even if there were a few slips where you showed up in the middle of the night begging him to do that thing just one more time, because it was going nowhere and you felt guilty when you were with him, but even that didn’t stop you from missing him. No. I most definitely can’t put it like that. I’m laughing instead.

  “Why does it bother you that I’m laughing?” I ask between snorting giggles.

  “You’re making fun of me!”

  “Oh, I’m not making fun of you.” That stops my laughing cold. “That’s the last thing I’m doing,” I say with real compassion. But he’s still mad at me and when I stumble and fall, he throws the beach ball at me and I think of the Botox I had injected into my forehead the week before. “Not the face, it’s very expensive!”

  “You can still win, Mom; it’s only seven to minus one!”

  “I can’t win, Ezra, and it’s okay.”


  “Why can’t you just dive for the ball, Mom, why can’t you just dive?”

  That’s just it. Why can’t I dive? I repeat to myself as we bounce up and down, not daring to fling myself across the trampoline. It’s been years since I’ve flung myself at something, or someone. I don’t fling anymore. I’ve spent the last year, really the last few years, trying to feel safe, making safer choices; the last thing I want is to dive. Flinging is for the young, right? I flung myself into my career, waiting for hours in lines at cattle calls, leaving my picture and résumé under the door at casting offices up and down Seventh Avenue, dancing in the background of early MTV videos for fifty dollars cash in the hopes of being discovered. I dove into relationships for the most minimal reasons. Julian. His hair was dyed my favorite color of red in the eighties. I saw him riding a bike through a park in London during my study abroad summer. When I spotted him again riding through Washington Square Park in New York, that shock of stop-sign-red hair was enough to make me dive. Had I bothered to investigate a little more carefully, I would have discovered he was in high school the day we met, instead of three months into sleeping with him. That may not be the most flattering of examples, but still. I don’t dive for sex after fifteen years of marriage. If our son is asleep, if the door is locked, if I haven’t eaten too much for dinner, if I didn’t have cheese that day, if the vibrator next to the bed has new batteries in it, then maybe.

  Dive, Annabelle, dive, I tell myself. What good is it to still be here if you’re not going to dive in? As I bounce higher, I think about how much I hate Anna Quindlen, her early success, her Adirondack chairs, her backyard pond and her slow-cooked stews. I’ve never had the patience to make a cold soup. I’ve had to reinvent myself professionally several times, reinvention being the last resort of people who didn’t hit the jackpot in their twenties, thirties or even forties. I have an old wooden camp-style picnic table with rotting benches, and the only pond in my backyard is a green plastic ice tub that has filled with brackish water.

  I switch into gear. Getting a good hate going propels me into action. Thanks, Anna! I dive and I’m giddy, and it’s the best feeling in the world. I bounce harder and I feel like I’m drunk. I’m pacing the ring like a prizefighter that has gone too many rounds. My son says, “Mom, you look sore,” and because I know him so well, I know he means “sour.” He makes a face at me, but I’ve lost my facility of speech. I’m Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C., or Mike Tyson, and for a minute I think I could bite someone’s ear off right now.

  “Mom, you’ve got something hanging out of your nose.”

  “Uuurrrrrrrggggghh!!!” A guttural shriek comes out instead of words.

  “Mom, you’re like an athlete now.”

  I want to win. It starts to drizzle and the tarp becomes slippery. I dive. The score is now seven to three. My mascara is running and drool is forming in a line down the corner of my mouth. I bounce over and push a fart out in his direction. “Mom, what are you doing? You’re crazy!” My hair is matted with sweat. I’m stumbling, propelling myself across the tarp, and I’m in it to win it. But his thirteen-year-old body carries the day. It’s over, and it’s only when he taunts me with his win that I heave myself across the tarp and tackle him. We’re wrestling, something we haven’t done in years. I’m clinging to his back. I’ve wrapped my arms and legs tightly around him from behind.

  “I still have power over you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do—the power of the purse,” but that doesn’t make any sense to him. “I can still take you down,” I growl, gripping him with a ferociousness that seems wildly inappropriate.

  Even when he says, “Mom, my leg hurts,” I don’t believe it.

  “I’m not falling for that,” I say, squeezing tighter as he thrashes around on all fours.

  “Mom, I mean it, my leg hurts,” he whimpers.

  I ease up and in that brief moment he throws me off and springs to his feet. “Welcome to Loserville, loser.” He laughs, and with a bounce, he’s off the trampoline and heading across the lawn.

  “Those were some nice saves,” I hear him say as he pads inside.

  “Thanks, Ezra,” I yell after him.

  I’ve deliberately farted in front of my kid. My face is a mess and I feel every one of those fifty years, and it feels kind of satisfying. I have no idea what the future looks like but I can still dive in and I intend to keep doing it.

  So, fuck you, fifty, I own you. You’re my bitch.

  There is only one thing I know for sure. Everything is going to hurt like hell tomorrow morning.

  THE FOUR A.M. CLUB

  Dear God,

  This one’s for the ladies.

  JILL:

  It’s not enough.

  I’m not a good enough parent.

  Holocaust.

  I’m so sick of myself.

  I hope I can fall back to sleep.

  GIA:

  If I could just lose these ten pounds . . . would more people come to my funeral?

  MAUREEN:

  I hate this pillow. . . . I also hate this pillow. . . . Why don’t I have any good pillows?

  I will probably never be able to afford to go to Venice before it sinks forever into the water or I’ll be too old to enjoy it.

  As I lie here not sleeping, I’m getting fatter.

  Why didn’t I take some kind of computer programming class?

  Please let me live until my kid becomes a grown-up.

  My joints hurt—is that arthritis? Or cancer? Or menopause? Or because I spent hours walking up and down the aisles at Costco buying things I didn’t need?

  What’s the least amount of money I need to live on?

  MAGGIE:

  If I watch some porn, will my kids wake up and walk in on me?

  SUSAN:

  I dream that I am looking in the mirror and notice a couple of long chin hairs. As I look closer, it becomes dozens of really long hairs, so much so that I look like Fu Manchu. I am distressed thinking that I’d been walking around like this for who knows how long, and no one bothered to tell me. Then I come up with the idea that to spare the expense of having to get my face waxed, maybe I could just wrap it around my neck like a scarf. I wake up convinced it wasn’t a dream, but reality. I have to check the mirror several times to make sure I’m not wearing a hair scarf.

  CAROL:

  This would be the perfect time to go through my ex-husband’s phone and email.

  LESLIE:

  Why didn’t I answer the phone and go with Michael to D.C. that weekend in 1986? If I had just answered the phone, we would have fallen in love and married, and I would have a law degree and lots of money and a husband and a great job.

  Why did I have sex with John when I really didn’t want to? And because I didn’t really want to, does it count as cheating?

  Why did I tell my professor in college that we made hot cocoa and peppermint schnapps in our suite at 4 p.m. every day? I wanted to sound sophisticated, but I just sounded like an idiot.

  Why do I feel like I have to answer every question? Can’t I ever just say, I don’t know??? I try to come across as smart and I end up being an asshole!

  STEPHANIE:

  I look at the clock and then do a countdown to when I have to get up.

  4-5-6-7-8. Four hours. Good. Get to sleep.

  I get something to eat and feel horrible regret in the a.m. when I see the empty container of almonds out on the table.

  I think about my mortality and feel nothing but my existence and its finitude

  and talk to God.

  I imagine a world with no famine or mass prison incarceration. I seek out God for unity, prayer and divine company to bridge the solitude I feel as a singular human being.

  I am an amoeba floating through the vast, infinite inner space.

  I look at the clock and then
do a countdown to when I have to get up.

  5-6-7-8. Three hours. Still some time left. Get to sleep.

  AMY:

  I come home from work to my family, which consists of my husband, my teenage children and the dog. I get the most affection from the dog.

  CHRISTINE:

  I wake up sweating, thinking that I forgot to put a postage stamp on an envelope for my boss. . . . Panic sets in. I can’t sleep so I get dressed and go to the post office and rummage through bins of mail. I find the letter . . . with the stamp on it.

  In the morning I can’t remember whether this was a dream. I spend at least an hour tracking down the mail when I get to the office.

  CINDY:

  I can’t fall back to sleep. It’s the middle of staffing season for TV writers and I am trying to get a job. I am so worried about money that I turn on the TV to distract myself. I turn on an episode of The Waltons. What could be more comforting and conflict-free than a soft seventies family drama? The entire episode was about how John-Boy would not make it as a writer—how it was too hard and he should basically find a new dream job. It was worse than any horror movie. Those damn sincere mountain people scared the shite out of me.

  TINA:

  It’s too late to take an Ambien now. . . . I’ll be a mess in the morning. (I should have taken it with the two glasses of wine that helped me fall asleep in the first place.)

  I’m soooo hot. Get this blanket off me!

  Did I pay the water bill?

  Did I send an invoice to my clients in the Philippines? How much money would I need to retire in the Philippines?