I opened up my email last week to see a picture of my 16 year-old-grandson beginning his junior year in high school. As you can see, he is at his desk in his room, his computer open and ready. His school system is embracing distance learning, at least for the time being, cancelling all sports and extracurricular activities.

I am writing this blog in defense of a man I never met -------my father.

Does anyone remember the very old song which contained these lines, “The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be?” Those lines, or at least the sentiments from those lines, have had millions of women rushing for the bottle of hair dye the moment the first gray hair made its debut. (As a side note, I would observe that there is no comparable song for the old gray stallion, but that is for another day.)

Who knew you could learn from a whale? I certainly did not until I heard of Shachi, who kind of defines large and in charge. She is an orca whale with a distinguishing tall hooked dorsal fin. Scientists have been watching her and her pod a for number of years, and have come to realize she is the reason her pod of whales is doing so well.

As our current health crisis reaches 180,000 deaths from the virus, I am bothered by the fact that there are people that feel this virus is not serious because they do not know anyone who has died from it.

I have lived in too many houses to count. A peripatetic childhood followed by marriage to a Marine meant a great deal of moving from one house to the next. My memories are a kaleidoscope of scenes from all of these places.

Growing up I always thought that New Years was wasted on January 1. The real start to the year was always the first Tuesday after Labor Day with the beginning of the new school year. After all, what great things happened in January but cold weather and a long wait until spring? But in September there were all sorts of different, exciting and challenging things to look forward to.

I do not know whether advertising leads a society or whether it follows it. The answer may be that it does both. I look back on the advertising of my youth particularly that of the cigarette industry, and I cringe.

In the midst of the virus pandemonium, I just spent a week with my nine-year-old granddaughter. She had been very disappointed to find her first year at sleep-away camp this summer cancelled, so I stepped in with Grammy Camp which was to be held at our place at a lake.

My mother and step-father were rather careless of me when I was growing up. And while I always had grandparents who loved and guided me, it is the constant kindness of strangers which I wish to remember here.

I am not in a nursing home, but at my age I can see one from here. That is a battle from which even I, in my advanced years, cannot send back a dispatch. But I have received a message from this front line in a Washington Post article, and I have a new hero.

This summer is quieter than any summer I can remember for a long time. I think it is a combination of having moved, and not being that embedded in our new community, as well as the fact that the virus has kept us all at home more.

Food has changed a great deal since my childhood, and some of the items we were served are not greatly missed.  Perhaps one of the least regretted food groups is the jello salad.  In my youth this concoction was guaranteed to be found at any potluck, any church supper, any family reunion or on any dinner table. 

Change seems all around us now as the coronavirus has affected so many aspects of our lives. Sometimes it seems as if the world is being turned upside down. But for those of us of a certain age, we have been through great changes and recognize how hard it is.

We all have it.  If we are pushing eighty we probably have lots of it.  Now, I know what we have is not merely stuff, but treasured objects which will, in due course, be enthusiastically embraced by our children who are just dying to own it.  And if you believe that, then there really is a fountain of youth, and your lottery ticket will win tomorrow. 

I was actually quarantined once in my life before, although not quite like what the world is facing today.  I was 13 years old, and my step-father has been assigned by the United States Information Agency to a post in Hiroshima, Japan.  This was in 1955, not that many years after the end of World War II.

As the debate rages over when or how to resume public life, The Los Angeles Times reports that older adults have increasingly seen behavior and rhetoric that implies their lives are not as valuable as reviving the economy. 

This current phrase has a different aura to someone of my age. Of course I am following the dictates of contemporary usage by wearing a face mask the few times I venture out of my home, while also trying to maintain a six foot space between myself and others as much as possible. But there is a subtle change going on here that is more than a reaction to a virus.

I thought I knew all about clouds, like the white fluffy ones that float above us on a sunny day or the dark stormy ones that come with thunder, rain and bolts of lightning.  I know about having one’s head in the clouds or having clouded vision.

The current crisis with Covid 19 has really made me feel my age.  This is not so much because the virus seems to be more dangerous for us older members of society, but because I can do nothing to help with what is turning into a national emergency.