Fifty-Two Years

I have no recollection of what I did on the day before I married Muriel Steingard, the woman that is the best thing that ever happened to me. I am told that the day of the wedding I nervously talked everyone’s ear off on the way to Temple Sinai for the ceremony. I don’t remember being nervous, but that probably means I was nervous the day before, too.

This year on the day before our 52nd Wedding Anniversary, I accompanied her to the Jordan Valley Cancer Center for her second chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. It has been that kind of year. On her birthday last month she had the chemo port surgically implanted in her shoulder. In years past, we’d have planned a mini-vacation or special date to celebrate but even if there were not cancer treatments, COVID-19 has put the kibosh on any real celebration in this strangest year of our 52 together. Since it is uncertain how she will feel on the 11th … and because we need to be especially careful about exposure during treatment … I made dinner at home on Sunday night; filet Mignon, baked potato and creamed corn. We ate in the dining room and put flowers on the table. It was nice. Tomorrow we will take it easy and, as they say, play it by ear.

The thing about this star-crossed anniversary is that it puts everything in perspective. There is no place on earth I would rather be than by my wife’s side as she goes through this. And there is no better anniversary present than the positive prognosis for her complete recovery. The way we care for each other during her treatment … and make no mistake, I need special care, too … is what love and fifty-two years of marriage is all about. There will be other years and anniversary celebrations to come, but this one will always be memorable, the year we walked through the unthinkable together. I love you, Muri, more than ever. Happy Anniversary.

The Glass Man

I have never liked to use the phone. Conversations and transactions, whether personal or business, that I easily conduct in person become loathesome by phone.   I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is because I come from a family of phonophobes.  I don’t think I have ever had a conversation of more than five minutes with either my father or my brother, and while my mother and sister were more that willing to converse on the on the phone, neither seemed to know that it was a device that could both place and receive calls.   On the other hand, perhaps it is a characteristic of most men. In my Thursday Night Men’s Group, calling the guys, whether it is for help with a problem or just to talk, is part of the program.   Whether it is the dislike of using of the phone or of asking for help, most of the men refer to the phone as too heavy to pick up.  Having lots of company doesn’t make being a phonophobe any more acceptable at home.

Grow Old with Me …

You probably know the rest … the Best is Yet to Be.  You may even know that the phrase is the first line of a poem by Robert Browning with the unlikely title of Rabbi Ben Ezra, a poem that is more philosophical and less romantic than the opening line suggests. You may know that a song of the same name … loosely based on Browning’s poem … was one of John Lennon’s last compositions.  Does it seem possible that the man who wrote Imagine wrote these lyrics?

Grow old along with me
The best is yet to be
When our time has come
We will be as one
God bless our love
God bless our love

Friendly Furnishings

Fifteen years ago, with my business doing well and our neighborhood of 30 years declining, we decided to buy a new, larger house across the freeway in Anaheim Hills.  Much of our furniture was as old as our old house, so we decided to completely furnish our new home from scratch.   I had always liked the idea of a recliner but didn’t care for the looks of most of them and my wife, Muri, liked them a lot less.   But in a corner of our favorite furniture store, Hector’s Fine Furniture, where we were picking out a Mission-style entertainment unit and tables for our family room, was a Mission-style leather chair.  I tried it out.   It was not only comfortable, it was a recliner that both Muri and I liked.  It came home with us and found its place in the corner across from the TV.

Forty-Eight Years

As of today, Mr. and Mrs. Eyes (aka Muri and Bud) have been married for forty-eight years.   In case you were wondering, this is what a forty-eight year marriage looks like.   Yes, there were a few tough times but who takes pictures of those?   Besides, they were few and far between.

Happy Anniversary, Muri

Throwback Thursday – Decades

It has been 3 weeks since I’ve posted.  Does anyone care?  Yes. I do.  My life feels fuller when I post.   But it is an unfortunate characteristic of my personality (what 12-Steppers would call a Defect of Character) that I don’t always do what is good for me.   In the interest of making this a better day … and at the risk of feeling like a social media trend follower … I thought I’d do a Throwback Thursday post with a picture of me from each decade of my life.  It was not as easy as I thought.  In my first two decades, the 40s and 50s, I was so darn cute it was hard to choose one photo.   And beyond the 50s, as the primary photographer in the family, I don’t appear in most of the photos on my computer.  But I was determined.   Is it a bit narcissistic to post pictures of yourself?   Sure, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do to post.  Here are seven decades of Older Eyes:

The Office

For the first 33 years of my career as an engineer, I worked for what I like to call Big Industry … large defense-based corporations like Raytheon, Honeywell and Hughes Aircraft.   That portion of my career took place before the term tele-commute was invented, mainly because the technology of the time did not support working at home.  Consequently, I traveled each morning to an office which provided the assets I needed to do my job … computers so large they filled a room, and secretaries and typing pools and art departments.  Sometimes during my early years, my office was a cubicle, most often shared with another junior engineer.   As the years went by and I was promoted, my offices became nicer, evolving to shared offices instead of cubicles to a private office … occasionally even an office with a window, although it usually overlooked a parking lot.   My furniture got newer and eventually was made of real wood, not slime-green metal.   By the nineties I was content in my private wood-furnitured office and I probably would have been content to continue that way until retirement.  Fate and Big Industry had other plans.   Hughes Aircraft was purchased by Raytheon and decided to close the California facility.   Ironically, the work I was involved in was transferred to Portsmouth, RI, where I began my career many year earlier.  I even knew many of the senior engineers there.

Throw Back Thursday – Schweater?

Thursday is now the day to repost my favorites from six years of posting here on Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog.  While I have always liked my philosophical posts best, readers prefer my humorous ones.  Go figure.  This one, originally posted in 2010, is appropriately about the sometimes peculiar communication between seniors whose hearing … and inclination to listen … are fading.

Next month we will be traveling to Virginia to attend the Bat Mitzvah of the grand daughter of two of our oldest friends, Rita and Barry.    While I have only one friend from my side of the family that predates our move to California in 1971, my wife has a number of friends from grammar school, making them friendships with more years under the bridge than we generally mention in public.    Rita and Barry used to live nearby in Irvine, California but the call of grandchildren in the Washington, D.C., area took them from us, something I understand completely.   We love them just as much as when they were here so we try to get together once or twice a year.

Throwback Thursday – Falling or Climbing

Would you believe I have over 1800 posts here on Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog?   Maybe that’s why new post topics seem hard to come by.  At any rate, I’ve decided to repost my favorites on Throw Back Thursday.   This post, Falling and Climbing, was originally posted in 2009 then again in 2011.   It is about the true meaning of love, at least as I see it.  It is about what it really means to have a soulmate who challenges you to be the best person you can be, not one who is a reason to leave the relationship you are in.

My wife and I are friends with a couple who are about ten years older than we are … and who have been married ten years longer.    When they’re out together, they get those aren’t they a cute old couple looks.   People often ask them, “How can we have a marriage like yours?”    The answer is this –  “If you want to have what we have, you have to go through what we went through,” a response I liked enough to use in my toast at my daughter’s wedding.

Cleaning the Garage

My wife, Muri, likes things clean and tidy.   She likes shining floors and counters, organized shelves and refrigerators, table tops neatly arranged and dusted, and clean carpets.  She likes people’s stuff put away.  I would tell you that I like those things, too, just not as intensely or as often.  She would tell you differently.  In forty seven years together, we’ve trained each other.  I try to be neater and she tries to overlook my sometimes messy habits.  Sometimes, we succeed.  This difference in our neatness standards has led to a division of labor that seems to work.  Muri takes care of the inside of the house and I take care of the outside.  She’s never come out and told me this, but I assume she sees the outside as a hopeless project because there’s all that dirt out there.  Not to mention bugs.