GROWING OLD
"The moon has a few new wrinkles.
It shines a bit more silver now than gold.
I’m staying young! I’m staying young!
But ev’ryone around me’s growin’ old."
These words were sung in the 1959 musical Take Me Along, based on Ah Wilderness, the only comedy written by Eugene O’Neill. Words I’d like to live by.
But the song changes later in the play:
"everybody else is growing old –(PAUSE)Like me."
Words I have to live by.
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I finally must admit that I’m getting old. No surprise—everyone does. The signs have crept up on me. All of a sudden, I look in the mirror and see a wrinkle. All right, maybe three. A couple of grey hairs, too—but only a few. The coup de grace came from Avery. The last time we arrived to visit, Avery immediately wanted to work on a special project together. “Give me just one minute to pee,” I told her. Within a few seconds, I heard banging on the bathroom door. “Nana, you pee too slow.” I guess that clinched it.
I have a friend who says that getting old isn’t for the faint of heart. He’s right. On the other hand, my mother always said that it beats the alternative. She was right, too. And so, we trudge on, Howard and I. Some things can’t change, but we can try to fix others. Like Howard’s knees. They’re creaky and tired. Though less so when he puts his feet up. He used to prop them up on the coffee table. In an effort to rejuvenate the living room, we ditched that coffee table and bought another. The new one had a narrower edge, so Howard’s feet wouldn’t fit. The answer—buy an ottoman.
Finding the right furniture has always been a challenge. We don’t generally use a decorator. If we make choices that don’t work out, it’s our bad. But when we nail it, it’s our accomplishment. The only time that we had a decorator was when we bought living room furniture from Rubin’s, a terrific furniture store that went out of business years ago. They had the distinction of having a table in the elevator, though a good friend swears that she remembers a furniture store with a table in the elevator, but also insists that it wasn’t Rubin’s. Either way, we liked that quirkiness. Working with the configuration of our living room was difficult. Before we knew it, Yetta was on the case. She was the store’s resident “decorator”. After too much back and forth, the end of the story is that she measured one side of the room too short, and we had a long blank space on one wall. Our solution—we bought a long glass table, which led us to buy knick knacks to display. And so we took credit for designing the living room, thanking Yetta for her help, but leaving her in the dust.
In this era, anyone who’s had a shopping agenda lately knows that it’s not so easy to simply walk into a store and find what they want. That was the case with us for a while. We found cheaply made ottomans in home goods stores. And round ones online. The round ones would have worked for the space, but looked too commercial-- like we should be selling shoes in our living room. Finally, after making the rounds of the local department stores, we found the perfect ottoman—well made, nice looking, right size.
One minor problem. It was only in stock at the warehouse. Okay, we’d have it shipped to the store and pick it up. It was smallish, weighed about 15 pounds, and pickup would avoid the delivery charge. The salesman explained that it could only be shipped to an outside address, not to the store. Why? Because. Not my favorite reason. And, the delivery charge was $150. For a small ottoman??!! Seriously??!! We’d used the store’s delivery service for a mattress set, for the new coffee table—large bulky items that required more involved delivery and set up. For the small ottoman, there was no need for delivery and setup. But in this instance, protocol trumped logic.
I had what I thought were viable solutions. Let me escalate and try once more to have the ottoman delivered to the store for us to pick up. Or, the store could do their standard delivery and waive the charge, since it would take about 5 minutes for set up. I asked to speak with the Furniture Department manager. I offered these two reasonable options. The manager was all sweetness and light, but clueless. The gist of her response — in the words of Avery’s 18 month old sister, Emilia -- “No way”. Obviously, that didn’t work for me.
It wouldn’t be prudent to shoot myself in the foot (or, in this case, shoot Howard in the knee) by cancelling the ottoman. Better to go up the ladder on my shaky foot and his shaky knee. I already had a wonderful Executive level contact with this store. When I told him the story, he was incredulous. HIs solution—proceed with the standard delivery, and he’d credit the delivery charge on the back end. Problem solved!
GETTING OLD HAPPENS. BUT YOU CAN OFTEN MITIGATE THE PROBLEMS WITH A SIMPLE FIX. AND WHEN YOU RUN INTO A SNAFU WITH THE FIX, AS ALWAYS, GO UP THE LADDER AND SPEAK UP