Driving My Golf Cart to the Early Bird Specials

It’s 5AM on a Tuesday. The dogs are fed and quiet. The sun isn’t up yet. Job or no job, I’m pretty sure I’ll always be an early riser. 

Not me. Also, not Tai Chi. 

I have Tai Chi class this morning, and I’m hoping Dmitry shows me the next moves in the form. I’ve been practicing what I know every day, and I’m struck by how much it feels like I’m coming home to something. The body remembers. There were parts of martial arts I really loved, even if I’m no fighter. Tai Chi captures everything I loved about the sport, and leaves the fighting outside. 

It also calms my mind, the way the beads do. It reaches something in my deeper brain and resets the timer on my mood-clock. And it feels good physically, the way riding my bike feels good. I like the act of doing the form, it’s like a dance, and a trance, and I can actually feel my circulation moving through my arms and hands and feet. For someone like me, with a family history of diabetes, my own history with gout flares, and a lifetime’s worth of less than pristine habits? There’s some good in it.  

I’m happily surprised at how much I’m liking the piano lessons. I had my second go yesterday after the AA meeting. Teresa, my teacher, is a character. I was just sitting at her piano when she came sauntering out of her kitchen wearing these rather fabulous beads and holding a large guzzler of some fruity concoction she’s selling. It’s apparently the latest probiotic miracle drink that cures whatever ails ya, and it’s almost certainly a pyramid scheme.

Middle C has to be here somewhere...

 Listen honey, I grew up in a Shacklee household. For awhile there my  Dad was a Shacklee Ambassador, dutifully hawking vitamin products to all our friends — whom, it happened, were also selling Shacklee vitamins. Somehow, our family remained un-rich despite Dad’s fool proof pitch and winning pitch. I sat looking at this same smile now. I listened politely as Teresa finished her spiel, and then pointed the conversation elsewhere. 

“That necklace is fabulous,” I told her. “What is it, if you don’t mind my asking.” 

She explained that she and her family have done a lot of missionary work in Africa over the years and she has quite a collection of trade beads. At one point she left me to practice “Hot Cross Buns” and disappeared for a minute. When she came back she was holding two really gorgeous strands of these big, juicy African beads, perfectly round and smooth, about 15mm, and a lovely bright matte green. Nice weight to them, obviously authentic. They were a gift from her daughter, who’d brought them back from one of her own trips to Africa. 

Throw away those eggs and liver!

I’ll admit, the Bead-o-phile in me was impressed. I showed her the necklace I was wearing yesterday, the ~2500 year old amazonite vignette framed by ancient islamic glass up the sides — also a nice piece, if I say so. It was fun bonding over beads with her. Anyway, she was happy with my progress (piano lesson? What piano lesson…?) and told me to keep practicing my finger work with the new material — which I’ll just point is Bach and Beethoven because I’m a prodigy, bitchez. 

* * *

I’m finding all the cliches of retirement to be both true, and comforting. If I like doing my grocery shopping at 10 AM on a weekday now, what of it? The sea of golf carts in the parking lot may seem like a punchline in search of an “old fart” joke, but so be it. It turns out, despite all of our wildest expectations, that I survived to “old age.” I’ve achieved Senior Citizen status, I’ve been issued the membership card, and here in Florida that’s no small thing. 

I like my senior citizen discounts, thank you very much, and the early bird special at Rita’s Beachside Cafe will get me home in time for another episode of “Matolock” reruns, or “Murder She Wrote.” And, while I’m not a big fan of the modern movie-going experience these days (srsly, $9 for a medium Coke!?), there’s something appealing and vaguely subversive about going to a Wednesday matinee of some obscure movie that bombed at the box office for being too interesting.

Mostly, I’m enjoying this feeling of coming home to things I’d once known, and forgotten. I had music once, for a minute. There was a time when my body knew how to move with strength and grace. I had a love of other languages, and wrote only words that mattered to me. There was an interesting person in there once, before all this careering nonsense started.   

It's "Meatloaf Tuesday." 

So. Fine. If it’s unsurprising — okay, predictable okay fine, if y’all find it so got damn amuuuuusing that I’m doing all the things — taking piano lessons, going to Tai Chi, writing the book, going to meetings, and trying to do all the stuff I’ve always wanted to do someday, then so be it. Laugh, bitchez, because I’m here for all that shit now. 

There’s a watercolor class I want to check out, and I’ve been thinking about taking up Spanish from where I left off after high school. Is it too early to start pricing golf carts…

King'o the road, BABY.