When I first moved back home to live with my parents, AKA my octogenarian teenagers, Dad was especially happy to have me home that he’d start making breakfast. A few months later, he fell and broke his hip, ending those father-daughter breakfasts.
Over the course of four years, Dad has been in and out of the hospital and rehab due to various health conditions, each time returning home lessened in some aspect of his physical and mental vigor.
Initially, he’d clamor to return home weeks before his physical health had recovered. He insisted that Mom spend most of the day with him, even telling her that she could sleep in his room as well, which never happened.
For the last couple of stays, Dad neither clamored to return home nor demanded that Mom spend the night. He’d acclimated to being out of the house for stretches at a time as his new normal.
Once at home, I’d serve him breakfast in bed. After setting his plate down on the overbed table, I’d kiss Dad on the cheek and tell him to have a good day. If it was a holiday or someone’s birthday, I’d mention it to him. A small interaction, but now that he’s confined to his bedroom, it’s about only the time we interact with one another.
I’d tried reading to him and doing chair yoga when he was more mobile, but he wasn’t interested in being read to nor did yoga interest him. Yet breakfast, touted as the most important meal of the day, has never fallen out of favor.
Before breakfast is served, Mom will have prepped Dad by washing his hands and face and giving him his pre-breakfast meds. By the time I enter his bedroom with his food, Dad has usually fallen back asleep. For the briefest moment, I brace myself before gently saying good morning.
When Dad’s eyes open, I breathe again. Never has someone sleep that has mimicked death bothered me so much. It sounds so pleasant to pass in one’s sleep. We even say “rest in peace” as consolement to one who has transcended this life.
Every “good morning” is a self-fulfilling prophecy when I confirm that Dad is still with us. I’m not sure how much he’s getting out of life, but I know that there will be a flurry of changes once he’s moved on.
As I witness him becoming less vibrant and his world now confined to a single room at home, the most activity that occurs is when various clinicians and caregivers parade in and out.
Breakfast in bed often denotes a special occasion where it is the start of a celebration. For Dad, it is the only nourishment option while he’s at home. I hope there’s never a morning where the breakfast is returned uneaten.
Once a month, I’ve attended a Beginner’s Spanish event, mainly because the host chooses Latin American restaurants where, more than likely, the staff also speak Spanish. Besides, the social aspect of getting together with other people to eat good food and drinks, I like the idea of rebooting my Spanish-speaking ability.
Up until recently, I’ve relied on whatever smattering of Spanish I recall during these events. To “practice,” I’ve turned on the Latin American Spanish subtitles whenever I stream movies and series that have the option available. However, this last event has motivated me to level up my language acquisition.
We normally play a few games where we speak some Spanish. The rest of the time, we speak English. There’s always a range of Spanish-speaking ability among us, so English explanations are usually needed.
Despite my nonchalant approach to studying the language, I become amazingly competitive during these games. Especially for our version of the game Taboo. We are forbidden to say any part of the word or phrase we’re giving clues about in English, but the answer must be in Spanish.
During one round, my vocabulary escaped me. As one person gave the clue in English, I knew that she had described “ants.” I stated out loud that I couldn’t remember the word in Spanish. The guy beside me said, “hormigas.”
That wasn’t the only time that phenomenon occurred during the game. As a matter of fact, who knows if we would have tied if I could have recalled the words in Spanish. Perhaps he would have stepped up his game as well. Nonetheless, the next day, I started a free online Spanish course.
The daily lessons are up to 10 minutes long and designed to make the user feel like a winner by celebrating even the smallest wins. The nerd in me looks forward to these daily lessons. The enticement is baked into the cake. The real win is speaking more fluently at the next Beginner’s Spanish event.
I took a day trip to Pinehurst, NC to attend a 90-minute stretch and sip with one of my former instructors who’d taught chair, pole and stretch/flex classes. I’d brought one of my favorite chocolate candy bars to share. Turns out, the instructor had arranged a surprise birthday party for another instructor with plenty of chocolate choices.
This studio was less than a year old, shiny and new, and full of inspirational sayings, but none better than the aphorism that hung above the toilet.
Earlier, I’d attended a Beginner’s Spanish conversation lunch at an El Salvadoran restaurant. The host of that event joined me for this event. At one point, the instructor led us in a butterfly pose, where my friend burst out laughing and said, “¡Mariposa!”
I started laughing too because at a previous Beginner’s Spanish conversation lunch, she kept mistakenly saying “mariposa” for “seafood.” I told her to stop repeating the wrong word so I could say the correct word, “mariscos.”
At one point, the instructor gave the verbal cues to get into cow pose. Those of us who’d taken her stretch/flex class before mooed. The first timers laughed. Then, during the cat pose, the longtime students meowed.
Another fun moment was when Bell Biv DeVoe’s song, “Poison,” came on. The instructor and I hopped up from our mats to do the running man. As usual, no one else joined us. After half a minute, we returned to our mats as if nothing happened.
No day trip would be complete without a proper meal before hitting the road again. The instructor and a friend who I’d carpooled with went to a Thai restaurant. I didn’t realize how hungry I was, especially after eating a cupcake after class, but everything on the menu looked delicious.
Although my friend and I had gone out to eat many times before I’d never witness her ask so many questions prior to ordering food. Not as bad as Meg Ryan’s character in “When Harry Met Sally,” but a close second.
At one point during dinner, I had a sneezing fit. My instructor friend, leaned over and asked me in a low tone, “Are you allergic to white people?”
Doubly funny because she’s white herself.
Unlike going to the event, I was wide awake on the nearly hourlong drive back to Fayetteville. That energizing daytrip is how I want to live my happily ever after, which is how I now view my life since the richest people in the world have predicted AI is going to kill us all.
When Mom turned 55, she could have retired. Dad, on the other hand, retired from the Air Force, then retired from Civil Service, then bagged groceries for ten years because he’d worked all his life and needed something to do.
For my generation, the retirement age is at least 65, but even present-day 65 year olds are being enticed to work until they’re 67 or older. Or, they cannot afford to retire. At this rate, I figured I’d never retire or I’d die at my computer. Either way, I never dreamed my retirement would end with being taken out by technology.
Actually, I thought AI would replace me at work before retirement age. That may still come to fruition. As AI learns to do my job, I may be phased out prior to being “deactivated” from this world.
Until then, this is my happily ever after. I’ve carved out an interesting life for myself where I’ve balanced interesting work with invigorating exercise after work along with my ever-present juggle of creative projects.
In the background, the country continues to spin out of control and is increasingly more expensive. It’s a wonderful thing that with age, one becomes naturally less active as far as socializing is concerned. I can no longer afford that life.
Fortunately, I’ve never been the “need a new outfit/new pair of shoes” type of woman. Especially since I receive “hand-me up” clothes from my nieces. Some clothes still had the tags on them.
My goal, when the time arrives, is to move from living with my parents for the second time around to moving into a retirement community. I need to research what my financial target is. I’d briefly looked online at communities in Raleigh, but the people in the pictures looked much older. I’ll need a community that accepts adults in their mid-50s.
Homeownership may be unattainable for me, but I’m hoping I’ll find a suitable retirement community or perhaps I’ll need to explore places outside of the States. I’ve led my life like an adventure thus far. Why stop now?
I found a relatively inexpensive and easy way to create animated clips. Yet, the platform offered very limited character actions. Even with those movement limitations, I never mastered making the character walk from the foreground to the background and vice versa without them appearing to glide diagonally.
Another bothersome aspect was the lack of natural hair choices for Black people. Once again, I wanted program designers to offer choices about something they hardly knew anything about and probably weren’t aware that was missing. Except for all the feedback in the comment section from other people of color about the limited to nonexistent natural Blacks hair choices for different characters.
In the spirit of Edison discovering a thousand ways the light bulb didn’t work, I’m on a journey to find an accessible way to animate my stories. My nephew and sister have given me some avenues to explore. I just need to take the time to do so.
Time, not money, is the most precious commodity. I can always earn more money, but I’ll never earn more time. For my next round of animation research, I’m going to explore platforms that have an unlimited range of character actions as well as character customization to suit my preferences.
As usual, I’ll need to finish one of the creative projects I’m working on before researching and teaching myself another platform. I’m open to learning a new trick, but having a full-time job is a blessing for the benefits and pay, even though a large chunk of my time is not working toward my own personal/creative goals.
All things in due time…until AI destroys everything.
I mark every birthday as a celebration of being alive and having survived yet another year of embracing creativity and joy amidst all the chaos the world has to offer. Different cultures of people view the numbers seven and eight as lucky. The product of those two numbers rule my birthday this year.
Wonderful luck foreshadowed my 2026 birthday when I looked at the calendar and noticed that my born day landed on Labor Day this year. An automatic day off.
For years, one of my birthday gifts to myself has been a day off. So the quintessential Virgo in me loved not having to use any PTO this time around.
I’ve also co-opted Dad’s idea of celebrating a “birthday month.” Unlike Dad, I don’t actually label every fun thing I do in September as my birthday celebration, but I also don’t think everything needs to happen on the actual day. There’s wisdom in spreading out the celebration, especially across the weekend.
Back when I lived in Austin during pre-COVID, I’d send out a birthday itinerary to friends for every birthday that ended in a “0” or “5,” foolishly designating those years as being more significant than the others. But let’s face it, on some level, there’s a reason to celebrate all things good, no matter how small.
Case in point, this past Thursday, I found a quarter in the parking lot on my way to dance class. The joy with which I picked up that quarter, one would have thought that I’d found much more money. Yet, ever since the great state of NC had refunded me $1, I’ve been on a mission to find the equivalent of a dollar just going about life. I’m not sure if it’s a sign of how desperate the times are economically, but since I’ve been on this micro-quest, that quarter was the most I’d found in one score, which raised my total to 47 cents for the year. (To read about how I spent that refunded $1 from the great state of NC, please read Tip That Motherf*****!)
For the past year or so, I’ve mostly confined my alcohol consumption to just Saturday and Sunday. I made an exception this past Friday night. Since a little red wine helps with concentration, I used that logic as I took an open book yoga final exam.
On Saturday mornings, I do my laundry for the week and go grocery shopping. I did the same with the addition of selecting a free birthday cake from the grocery store that I frequent. It was just as moist and delicious as it looks.
Later on Saturday, I gifted myself a high-end nice mani-pedi, complete with a 20-minute foot massage. I topped it off with a sparkling blue color, which had my birthstone, sapphire, in its name. That color may become yet another birthday tradition.
On Sunday, after my usual 60-min hot yoga class, I enjoyed a 60-min full body massage. Once again, the Virgo in me absolutely loved that the receptionist honored an expired $20 off coupon in addition to the usual gift of a $15 enhancement.
When I returned home, Mom, my sister and a neighbor had maneuvered Dad into the house and were attempting to affix the bed rail to the side of his bed. I welcomed Dad back home after being hospitalized and in rehab for over two months.
By the time my actually birthday rolled around, I’d slept in, then made breakfast for Dad and me. When I served Dad breakfast, I said, “Happy Labor Day!”
Dad just smiled, probably happier because breakfast was served rather than the holiday. Then, I asked him, “Do you remember what happened on this day 56 years ago?”
His first guess was “Easter.” I reminded him that I’d just wished him a Happy Labor Day. Then he guessed that it was either his birthday or my birthday. I laughed, reminding him that he was long past age 56, but at least he got the correct answer in 1.5 answers.
After breakfast, my sister and I did a labor of love for Mom. She had a decorative, wooden accent piece that was awkward and time-consuming to clean. As a matter of fact, the best way to clean it would be to burn it. A one and done solution. However, the second best way to clean it, is to take it outside and apply a wooden cleaner to it with a paintbrush. I convinced Mom to wait for a sunny day, so we could clean it in the morning and it could thoroughly dry.
Another birthday tradition, which I think I started for my 40th birthday, was wearing a tiara. I thought I’d keep that costume accessory for the rest of my life, but after this birthday, it’s time to retire ol’ girl and get another for the upcoming birthday.
Back in August I’d cashed in $30 worth of reward points from work to buy a two-piece bathing suit and swim trunks. Not only is such attire good for swimming, but also pole dancing and yoga. So far, I’ve worn those trunks to both pole class and yoga, but not to swim in. Yet, I love the versatility in such clothing for all the physical activities that I enjoy doing.
I saved the two-piece black and gold swimwear for my actual birthday. And what better way to celebrate one’s birthday than with a pole dancing class? Granted, this was my usual Monday night class, but a lifelong dream of mine is to spend as much of my waking time doing what I enjoy. Mission accomplished.
The next day I received a gift of fresh spices and a pair of earrings from a friend. Mom surprised me by not immediately asking what I was going to cook with those spices. I sprinkled a little from each jar into Dad and my breakfast eggs.
Two days later, I took Mom out to breakfast at a family-owned restaurant where neither one of us had ever been to before. I informed everyone that we were celebrating Mom’s 86th birthday.
Normally, Mom drinks ginger tea along with a smoothie for breakfast. She joined me with a large cup of green tea. We both employed a different utensil to keep our tea bags from floating. Not that this was a scientific experiment, but my knife produced a better seeping result than Mom’s spoon.
Mom ordered a Western omelet with grits and a homemade biscuit on the side.
Since I normally make an omelet-styled eggs for Dad and me every morning, I ordered a sausage egg and cheese biscuit with a side of potato and parmesan casserole. That biscuit was so big that I had to hold it at an angle to bite it, completely missing the entire top biscuit half, which I eventually removed.
Eating an open-faced biscuit helped me save room for the small stack of birthday pancakes the the chef brought out to both Mom and me. He warned us to make a wish and blow out the candle quickly, so the heat of the pancakes won’t melt too much of the candle.
Afterwards, Mom took a picture with the chef, whose family owned the restaurant.
Mom fussed over how nobody had better mess with her biscuit that I wrote her name on the to-go box in big letters. Proving that one could take the girl out of Cascade, but not the Cascade out of the girl, no matter what age!
Two days later, fourteen of us got together to celebrate Mom’s, my nephew’s, my sister’s sister-in-law, and my birthday at a steakhouse. Although I had a wonderful time, complete with delicious food and entertaining conversation, the post meal activity made my day: axe throwing!
I counted on the fact that my nephew would join me to continue our birthday celebration at another location. My nephew was so much better than me, that his handicaps were trying trick shots and knife throwing.
We were surprised when the knife stuck at the hilt rather than the blade.
Next time around, the knife, stuck as we’d expected it to do.
Of course, I had a photo celebration of my first of two bullseyes.
All in all, I won one game out of three only because my nephew was trying out trick shots, kill shots (where one had to proclaim “killshot,” then hit one of the two blue dots on the board or make a zero if the implement hit anywhere else) and knife throws. What I learned during this experience was that my mind and arms only have three games in them.
After the last game, I reminded my nephew that he hadn’t tried the double-axe throw yet.
Starting a new project is always exciting even if the medium is the same. Unlike continuing a set mold, one can branch out and grow from past experiences.
Case in point, my third and newest podcast, “Discovering the ‘T,'” has motivated me to try new things with the very first episode. I wanted to add more texture to the audio by adding background music. I also wanted to see if the music would mask the abrupt edits. It didn’t, but I also didn’t re-edit the episode.
This is part of my “learn from errors instead of dwelling on them to attain perfection.” I like the addition of background music, but I have to continue using techniques, like crossfades, to reduce the popping/glitching sounds caused by editing.
Another new thing I’m doing with this new podcast is following a thread. One of my aunts intrigued me about the variation of how our surname is spelled. This has already produced one episode, which sent me researching through my parents’ file cabinet for clues/answers to more questions, especially my father’s birth certificate, where his father’s surname appears as “Roberson” and Dad’s first name is spelled “Karl.”
After that first episode dropped, one of my cousins texted me a picture of Dad when he was a junior in high school. Yet another spelling variation of his name appeared: Carl Robertson.
I then resumed my file cabinet search, mainly to pinpoint when my father switched from spelling his name “Carl Robertson” to “Karl Roberson.” The archaeological hunt through my parents’ lives via medical/home maintenance/insurance/military/funeral papers revealed how little I knew them as people.
Mom had done a fabulous job of squirreling away funeral programs, where one section gives a mini biography for the deceased. I took pictures along the way of all the interesting finds, not ever finding a copy of my parents’ marriage license.
I joked with Mom. “I think ya’ll have been lying to us for 65 years about being married.”
She assured me that she’d taken their marriage license with them back in 2019 when we vacationed on a family cruise. Plausible explanation since I hadn’t come across their recent passports either. Now, when I have another “researcher moment,” I’ll have to go through other drawers where Mom has squirreled away that information.
During this journey about both my aunt’s and father’s name variations, I uncovered not just a personal history of my relatives, but also the context of the times in which they lived.
For example, during the first episode, my aunt revealed that she was the last in our family to go to a one-room school. My father and all of his siblings were educated by dedicated teachers within a substandard system that deemed “separate but equal” was legal from 1896 until 1954, the year my youngest aunt was born.
That legal designation may have changed, but the attitude has persisted. Instead of the government separating citizens based on race, people segregated themselves. The proliferation of private religious schools provided the protective mask racial bigots with money sought to hide behind in order to separate their children from attending an integrated school.
When parents with the most resources withdrew their kids, public school was systematically left to languish with minimal funding. The one- or two-room school system may have ended, but not the disdain of educating Black students.
I marvel at how much people in my parents’ generation and earlier have achieved. That’s why it’s important to me to capture as much personal history from both sides of the family as possible. One thread at a time, weaving the fabric of our past together.
Whenever I juggle creative projects, inevitably, tech issues arise. The more ambitious I am, the more challenges rush in even faster. Over the years, I’ve learned that unless I have a firm deadline, I will embrace new technology in the mornings and set it aside in the evenings, so as not to interfere with a good night’s sleep. Unless it’s an emergency, which is not a button I push too often.
Whether the challenge isn’t having enough laptop storage because of too many videos or I can no longer update my blog because my version of WordPress is “outdated.” Surprising since the platform regularly updates automatically.
I am a continuing education student of YouTube videos and AI-generated solutions. As a last resort, I reach out to “customer service.” Speaking to a live human is almost a thing of the past. Not only are companies downsizing to shrink their overhead, but they are attempting a technological ol’ Jedi trick: you can empower yourself 24/7 with all the answers at your fingertips.
Once I’ve already tried virtual solutions, I don’t want yet another disembodied entity. At that point, I want to be connected with a person, so we can brainstorm together versus typing out my experience with an interweb bot.
I have spent many frustrating hours, spread over a few days, looping around the “advice” AI gave me. Finally, the planets aligned correctly and the voodoo worked, where I established an account that allowed me access to several commonly used professional office platforms.
When I couldn’t access my blog, which I’d been faithfully posting once a week since January 2011, I tried all of the options I understood before calling BlueHost. Shout out to BlueHost for still having live customer service people!
That rockstar agent resolved the issue within five glorious minutes. I didn’t have to wait on hold for a long time to be connected with her either. Usually I skip the “quick survey at the end,” but I gave her all fives as fast as my opposable thumbs could, then continued with the rest of my life.
Until the next tech issue that’s just waiting in the wings to jump out at me like a B-movie horror villian.
I started my first podcast in 2020, interviewing ten friends about their experience with CBD. Inspired by the conversation, I’d write a summary in the form of a poem. I called my inaugural podcast “CBD & Poetry.”
Although I only conducted ten interviews, the experience led me to launch a more meaningful podcast where I interviewed descendants of my maternal great grandfather, Jesse Strange. Unlike my first podcast, I didn’t plan to start “Strange Family Folklore.”
During my usual Saturday morning phone call with Mom, the conversation turned to family history. I felt energized by the information. Since I was driving at the time, I couldn’t jot down notes.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that I could have recorded the call. Instead, once I got home, I had a Zoom call with Mom and I recorded our conversation.
Those were the humble days where I thought in order to do a podcast that I needed two pricey microphones for in-person interviews. While it’s always a good thing to capture the best quality sound, I’ve not allowed the lack of the best equipment stop me from getting things done. More often than not, I conduct interviews via Zoom or simply recording an in-person conversation with my phone.
Fast forward six years and 30-odd episodes later, I had another intriguing, brief conversation with one of my aunts on Dad’s side of the family.
Unlike Mom’s extended family who’ve had 85 consecutive reunions, Dad’s extended family have rarely united, which is unfortunate because we always have a good time when we get together. As a matter of fact, we had such a good time on the first evening during our most recent reunion that some random guy at the hotel joined in with my male cousins, drinking and playing chess.
On the second evening during our hotel-catered dinner, my cousin invited a spokesperson from each table to introduce ourselves and answer a question or two. Of course, my table elected me as spokesperson.
Not only did I answer two questions, but I requested that people write down as much of our family tree as they knew. I received four family trees, which came from two-thirds of the tables. Not a bad start.
I immediately noticed that my aunt had spelled her son’s surname as R-O-B-E-R-T-S-O-N instead of the way the rest of us spelled our surnames: R-O-B-E-R-S-O-N. When I questioned if she’d inadvertently misspelled his last name, my aunt smiled and said there was a long story involved.
I decided on the spot that her explanation of that surname variation would be the subject of my first episode for Dad’s side of the family. Didn’t take long for me to come up with the podcast name either: “Discovering the T.”
People commonly say, “spill the tea,” to mean telling the truth about something, which I’m going to task Dad’s side of the family to do. I’m already in post production for my first episode with my aunt. My fondest wish is that other family members who hear that episode will be motivated to reach out to be interviewed. It’s long overdue for this side of the family to start recording our history for preservation purposes.
When Dad first broke his hip in April 2023, I optimistically thought that with recovery time and therapy, he’d walk again. Fast forward three and a half years and he’s further from that goal than before.
A myriad of factors come into play: advanced age, PTSD, Agent Orange exposure, Alzheimer’s, chronic fatigue.
Each time Dad re-enters rehab, the experience zaps his energy, resetting the mobility goal even further back. On the other hand, Mom’s energy and quality of life improves when Dad is out of the house.
Although Mom is loathe to admit it, she’s much better rested with Dad out of the house. Unlike before, she no longer spends long hours with Dad when he’s in the hospital or in rehab. She’s learned to balance her day better, prioritizing rest.
The last time Dad was home, Mom had made an effort to take a daily nap, which I’d advised her to do years ago. Previously, she made excuses as to why she had to work herself like a machine and not include rest/naps as part of her to-do list.
Now, with Dad in rehab, she sleeps later and is in much better spirits. Contrast her sheer unhappiness when she confessed to one of my friends who’d arrived to pick me up to attend an event. Mom declared with despair in her eyes that she thought her life would be much different if she was blessed to live this long.
My parents’ relationship has been a romantic saga, spanning 65 years of marriage. Mom reminisces about when they bought our present house, how they were both healthy and able to walk the three flights of stairs that now challenges Mom and defeats Dad without the help of an electric chair and assistance from someone else.
Even with a mostly reliable caregiver service, Dad’s home care is an all-consuming activity where we have to coordinate schedules to make sure that someone’s home with him at all times even though he mostly sleeps throughout the day.
The hardest transition to witness is Dad’s vibrancy slipping away in stages. Rehab keeps him alive, but his quality and participation in life have dwindled. He no longer pines to return home nor cares whether the TV is on at rehab.
When we say “rest in peace,” we imagine some place where both body and mind are at rest, the atmosphere is calm, the temperature is comfortable and one is virtually out of touch with the worldly grind. That’s where Dad is now.
Although I remain upbeat when I visit Dad, in my heart, I feel that many in that facility are humanely waiting to die. Isn’t that a dream come true? To live a full life and in the end to go peacefully in one’s sleep. At the end of my visits with Dad, I make sure to kiss him on the forehead or cheek and tell him I love him, never knowing if it’ll be the last time.
