Category: Aging

Minding My Mother: One Man’s Prison

~ Amy Lyles Wilson

Here’s the scene: I’m sitting next to my mother, who is 88 and lives in a “retirement community.” We’re watching a television show about Bernie Madoff, the disgraced/disgraceful financier who is now serving prison time for bilking investors out of millions of dollars. One of his fellow inmates says he thinks that life in the prison must be similar to living in an “old age home.” It’s one of the nicer joints, apparently, with holiday cookouts, flat screen tvs, and beautiful landscaping. Still, though, there are structured mealtimes, mandated check ins, and limited societal interactions that one associates with being locked up. This comparison is not lost on my precious mother, who winks at me and squeezes my hand.

Of Middle-Aged Dreams and the Demise of the Bookstore

~ Amy Lyles Wilson ~ 6 Comments

I am a middle-aged goober who still has dreams, even though I don’t have as much time to get them accomplished as I once did, seeing that I’m staring 50 in the face. To wit: I’d like to lose some weight, write a novel, and buy an old farmhouse where creative types can come to write and commune and hang out. And I wanted, as much as anything, really, to have a book signing at the Davis-Kidd bookstore in Nashville. On November 2, that dream came true for me. And this week came word that the store will close by the end of the year.

Back in 1993, my parents sat with me at the Davis-Kidd café as I signed the papers to buy my first home in Nashville. The store was at a different location then, one that felt like home. My father was still alive, and I was thinner, and single, and dreaming of being a writer. It was the place where I heard Mary Karr for the first time; where I discovered the work of Ann Hood, a writer I would later study with at Chautauqua; where I spent many an enjoyable Friday evening listening to music and having dinner; and where I could find those literary journals no one else carries.

When Davis-Kidd moved to the Green Hills Mall a while back, it didn’t “feel right” to me, but I like to think I understand progress, and commerce, and foot traffic. And it still seemed like home in many respects, just a bigger, less cozy one.

Thank you, Davis-Kidd, for the books, and the tuna melts, and the memories. And the dream come true.

I’ve Got Mail

~ Amy Lyles Wilson

 

Sunflowers by Pat Coakley, http://www.patcoakley.com

 

In my inbox I find an email from one of the precious young people I had the pleasure of studying with at Vanderbilt University Divinity School a few years back, when I decided that a college campus would be a good place to have a mid-life crisis. Surrounded by thoughtful twenty-somethings who were convinced they could change the world, I learned a lot about God, and myself, and the human condition.

She was thinking of me, she said in her email, and wanted me to know that on a bulletin board in her office rests a note I wrote her in the spring of 2007. Reading it never fails to cheer her up when she’s having a bad day. Words matter.

I don’t remember writing the note, as these days I’m often unsure as to whether I’ve brushed my teeth before leaving the house. And I haven’t a clue what I might have said to her. But I remember this lovely young woman, studying to become a preacher and dedicating herself to working for good. She gives me hope.

Mother Love: Respecting Our Elders

~ Amy Lyles Wilson

I’ve got aging on the brain these days. It’s all I can think about, mine and my mother’s. I’ll soon be 49, and she’s 88. I’m obsessed with her well-being and her happiness. I don’t have children, so maybe this is sort of what being a parent feels like. I spend most of my waking hours, and I dare say a few of my sleeping ones, wondering what I can do to make sure she is happy, and safe, and cared for. She is in good shape, you know, “for someone her age.” She lives in a nice retirement community, has access to good medical care, and my two sisters live close by. I’m about 400 miles away and visit every six weeks or so. But it’s not enough, for me at least.

I find that I am ultra-sensitive to anything involving Mother. If you are too slow to respond to a need of hers at the doctor’s office. you’re likely to get my glare, which I’ve been told can be quite unsettling. If you express frustration in the time it takes Mother to decide what she’d like for lunch in a restaurant, I will be less likely to over tip. I love this woman with all my being, and I will do what I can to make sure she lives out the remainder of her days knowing she is adored.

When I visit her at the Happy Trails Retirement Utopia–not its real name–I see lots of things I’d rather not: elderly people eating alone in the cafe, hungry for nourishment that cannot be supplied by chicken salad; frail women climbing on to shuttle buses for the weekly grocery store run; and rows upon rows of walkers lined up outside the dining room because you’re not allowed to take them in with you. On my most recent visit, I had an encounter with a man who needed help on a computer. That’s all he needed, and yet he had to turn to me, a stranger, to get it. I wrote about it for Her Nashville, and you can read it here if you like.