The Menorah-Mobile & Other Seasonal Adventures

This is the time of year when I am most isolated.

In fact, my isolation almost rises to the level of those cautionary newspaper stories that only exist as editorial filler for Christmas sales ads to wrap themselves around: Twenty-four percent of community-dwelling Americans aged 65 and older experience social isolation, the objective state of having few social relationships or infrequent social contact with others…

There are exactly three people in my social circle that I feel like I can be my true self around here. For everyone else, I must lapse into other-people-ese patois. That feels like an impossible burden this time of year.

I’m between my two big community involvements: TaxBwana (winter & early spring), Community Garden & Food Bank (late spring, summer, & fall.)

I won’t drive after dark. Even with GPS, I find myself getting disoriented—even on familiar roads. Could be my eyesight.

I don’t like telephone chatting.

I know L’s unpleasantness of a few months back was related to a disease process. Nevertheless, I can’t bring myself to forgive her, so my communications with her are as perfunctory as possible while still remaining polite. She seems to have snapped back out of fulminating dementia (at least the rapidly escalating kind), but, of course, she could flip right back into it at any moment, which imbues my living situation with an anxiety-provoking uncertainty.

What a failure you are not to have been better prepared for this part of your life! I think to myself.

But, of course, on the upside, my health is generally good, my mobility is generally good, and I can think. Many people who own their own homes score zero on those indicators. In fact, many people who own their own homes are dead! Plus added bonus: I don't live in Ukraine; I don't live in Gaza!

If all goes according to plan, next year at this time, I will be living in a house with Lois Lane & Billy, friends, and planning dinner parties.

Though, of course, even though the Universe has been very kind to me—at least for the past 10 years—I don’t trust that it will go on being kind to me.

###

Part of the isolation is that it’s become hard for me to seek sanctuary in my own imagination.

I’m not writing.

Could be writer's block, I suppose. I’ve gone through periods of writer's block before.

But I’m thinking it’s more than writer's block.

I’m thinking that when you get to a certain age, it becomes increasingly difficult to organize thoughts in your head into a high-pressure spray that looks good on a page.

I can’t think of one writer who got better when they entered their seventies.

###

Anyway.

I Remunerated. I tromped. In the evening, I went to a thing at the local library Neighbor Ed had sent me a poster for, billed as a Chabad Chanukah celebration.

The chess players were out at the library:



Menorah lighting! Latkes! Doughnuts! Gelt! the poster had promised.

But the menorah lighting had taken place outside in the below-freezing dark, and I didn’t see any sign of potatoes or chocolate:



I do like Chabad’s menorah-mobile:



The kiskas are coming out of the closet more, swaggering around the Patrizia-torium as though they own it.

They still hate me, & hiss if I get within three feet of them.

It’s a bit like sharing the Patrizia-torium with recruits from Pol Pot’s child army.

Here’s the elusive Mabel: