Personal Maintenance and a few more things

Something happens to you at 50 that’s all I can say.  All the stuff you took for granted and didn’t think twice about can become quite a chore: take personal maintenance, for example.  That’s a phrase I take from Tom Robbins, one of my favorite living authors, and he mentions the chore in some of his books…of course Robbins is over fifty.

Things like showering and washing your hair, shaving your legs (if you’re a woman…or whoever you are, if you do that) and shaving your face if your a man.  Putting on the creams and jells and fixing your hair just right – I’m pretty lucky on that front cause I have long hair and I have never done anything with it; Beaha, I know you got those dreads and I know you’ve said how hard they are to wash, but as to everyday maintenance, they’re not too bad, are they?  I must be right or you wouldn’t have them. But feel free to correct me, because I certainly don’t know anything about having dreads. Though I have — if it meant even easier maintenance, considered having my locks dreaded up.

And then along with all these chores, the chore of work becomes a chore somewhere right around 50. I don’t mean that working itself is a chore, but things stir up in us and we no longer want to do what we’ve been doing for the last 10, 20 or 30 years.  We get fed up. We women start going through our changes, if we haven’t started already (I started all that at 47 and I wasn’t through until 51 and sometimes I still think I’m not through). And men, too, at least some men, get tired and fed up with what they’re doing with the majority of their time every day at work.

I mean maybe it’s because we realize time is running out and if we’re going to put some meaning into our lives, give back, and feel like each day we are making some kind of contribution to correct this mess we’ve created, then the time is now. 

Beaha and I just quit…sort of.  Beaha quit her job and I was “let go.”  But I was let go because I was making so much money that I just couldn’t walk out and I didn’t want another corporate job like that, so I created, whether consciously or not at the time, one of those, “Watch out or you might get what you wish for” kind of scenarios, and there was no more commuting 3 hours a day to cooperate with the corporate world. 

Yes, Beaha and I were (and still are) too through with all that, and we’ve taken our tumbles and had our troubles and have been holding on by the seat of our pants.  But we’re starting to find our way. Beaha is taking in foster kids who couldn’t find a better foster mom in the whole wide world. And me, well, I’m doing my Jiffy Livery, I’ve got a steady freelance writing gig going, and I am, for real this time, starting up pet sitting and SAT tutoring.  I started my volunteer teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) yesterday, and it was SO wonderful. 

I’m working with a 60-70 something year old man from China, Taiwan — who was a physics professor in China (my dad was a physics professor in the U.S.), and he is SO smart, but he doesn’t know the language much at all, and he is very hard to understand.  He started learning English a year ago at “The Connection” where I am teaching, and he comes twice a week, but tells me that he speaks Chinese at home.  His wife comes too; she is a little further along in her English speaking skills. 

He is taking his U.S. citizenship test in December, so we’re going to do some work on that as well.  Just so happens I have study materials, some of which I wrote, from my freelance job that I’ll be bringing in next Wednesday when we meet.

As I was leaving the teaching session, it’s from 9a to 11a; Mr. Lee and his wife were walking in front of me.  I passed them on the way to my car.  I stopped and turned around and pointed at them both as they were busy speaking in Chinese: “English.  You must speak English.  Stop that Chinese!”  We all laughed, and then I got in my car and drove home.

So long all.  So long Beaha.