The Buddy System

     I lost my iPod yesterday.  I can't clean a room, or cook a meal,  or tackle the biomass without it.  I can't walk more than a mile without listening to someone with a great voice read someone else's great work to me. Patrick Tull, reading Patrick O'Brian, has lofted me over the horns of many a charging dilemma.  Losing the iPod was more than a Senior Moment; it was a Senior Half-Hour complete with controlling my breathing, walking logically back through my steps since I last saw it, and feeling like a fool.  I was home alone and, therefore, spared the embarrassment of being observed.  Somehow, that made it even scarier.  There was just me watching me be completely baffled.   I KNEW I'd done something careful with it...it is truly one of my favorite things in the world...but what?!
  
     Moments like these come more frequently, now.  Nouns fail to show up to claim perfectly-pictured objects and the universe dances heedlessly on the tip of my tongue. My husband notices my lapses and I notice his.  His policy is kindness toward these things and mine is to produce a self-deprecating joke no matter who's lapsing.  Losing things, losing words, losing focus...it's unavoidably true: we're losing it.

     I've noticed that couples (mates, close friends, parent & adult-child pairs) tend toward one of these responses to cognitive waning: 1) deny and blame; 2) admit reluctantly and resent; 3) volunteer information and marvel together, with empathy, at the way the world turns.  Only the third option bodes well for the future emotional health of the relationship or of the "declinee."  We're both declining, just about in sync. Having sampled options one and two, we are attempting  #3, and it has led to a mutual pact to assist each other and protect each other from the world's judgment.

     We call our pact The Buddy System.  I offer it up as an honorable and necessary adaptation for the senior years in a long-term relationship.  If we were just starting out together, as my friend Stan and his lady are doing at 65, we'd surely ignore each other's lapses or cast them in the best possible light as part of the ritual of courtship;  how much better to do so now, when we know each other so well?  Besides, he'd better not blow my cover with the kids!  They already treat me like I'm a little off.  I can't remember why.

      Nobody wants to be thought dim; we all want to appear witty, intelligent, and savvy.   We haven't the fondest hope anymore!  It's just getting tougher and tougher to pull that off in our sixties.  And nobody knows better how it irks me to look stupid than my husband.  I've known a wife get furious with her husband for becoming more forgetful; I've known a man dismiss his wife altogether for growing vague.  You'll already understand that these are fear-based behaviors, sad and unattractive.  And not for the likes of us, Dear Reader, ...if we can help it.  This is a tough undertaking.  It dawns on us that we'd better get busy perfecting our act, 'cause the gaffes are just rolling in!

     So, let the Buddy System commence...starting with the very next time I say something in public like, "That reminds me of that movie...um, which one was it?  You know, the one that starred Whatsherface, who was in that one with the guy that made the TV series about emergency medicine before he hit it big.  What was his name?  Oh, you know who I mean...!" At this point, following The Dummy Clause, my husband is to guess, "Betty Davis!," which is so ridiculous, it draws the attention  entirely onto him and off of me.  What a gentleman.

     If you guessed Julia Roberts, you need your own Buddy System.  By the way, isn't she starring in the new "Eat, Pray, Love" movie?  I'm dying to watch her be in love with buffalo mozzarella.  Oh, and the iPod was nestled down in the brass Tibetan bowl where it always lives, but its charger cord was dangling limp and unattached, so who knew?  I've just got bigger things to think about, like how to work out this whole health care reform business.

Reliable Pasta e Fagioli

This recipe is my go-to for when there's nothing in the house to eat and/or I don't want to cook.  I make it with whole wheat pasta, but suit yourself.  The ingredients are always in my pantry.  It just gets better and better, left over.


2 Tablespoons olive oil

4 large garlic cloves, minced or sliced thin

2 teaspoons dried or minced fresh rosemary leaves

One large or two small cans diced tomatoes, drained

Two 14 oz cans of Cannellini or Great Northern beans, drained

8 oz. (half box) small pasta (elbows, shells, whole wheat or durum)

2 8 oz. cans Vegetable Broth or Stock (or water)

Salt and Pepper

Optional: parmesan cheese, shaved or shredded

Heat oil in large soup pot, add garlic and rosemary, saute over medium heat for about two minutes or until garlic is browning slightly.  Add tomatoes, salt, and pepper, simmer for 3-4 minutes.  Add broth or water and bring to boil.  Lower heat and simmer for 5 minutes.  Add pasta and cook until almost tender, 7-10 minutes.  Add cooked beans and simmer 2-3 minutes.   Top with shaved parmesan.  Pretend you're Whatshername. Thank your lucky stars for Italian food.