Birthdays, Memory and Rock and Roll

Maybe It's not Better to Burnout than to Rust?

I just celebrated a non-milestone birthday. I suppose at my age, reaching each new year is something of a milestone. I don’t usually tout a number, but if you want to figure it out, I was born one year after the nation of Israel was formed, an important backdrop of my life that I’m not pondering today.

We boomers grew up before the word “playlist” was invented… and still, had the best rock and roll in history. We listened to it on record players, a needle on revolving vinyl LP’s we bought for $4.99. Or we went to rock festivals and shows where you didn’t have to mortgage the house to get a ticket. I even once saw the Youngbloods (“Come On People Now, Smile on Your Brother”) totally free on an outdoor stage at the Seattle Center. (Jesse Colin Young, with the beautiful mournful voice, just died in March.) It was a little awkward when a naked young woman joined them on stage and spontaneously started dancing, but it was the sixties. Perhaps some experiences are worth forgetting.

Anyway, in honor of my age, I just had my annual Medicare doctor’s appointment, the one where they check to make sure you’re still standing up and somewhat alert. In the car ride there, I was listening to a Sirius radio station, when the Allman Brothers song, “It’s Not My Cross to Bear” started playing.

I was blown away—the blues guitar, the singing, the drumming, everything—it’s a great song. But, here’s the thing, I don’t remember ever hearing it before. It came out in 1969, the midst of my hippie heyday, and I don’t remember ever hearing it before.

If you’re not old enough to have had a Medicare evaluation visit, I will tell you it’s totally painless. The health care provider checks your vital signs, asks a bunch of questions, like “Have you fallen down in the past year?”, and makes sure you’re up to date on tests and vaccines. They check your memory, which involves having you repeat three random words like “book, table, banana.” Don’t forget them! Then you are given a piece of paper with a circle on it, asked to write the numbers of a clock face, and put the little hand and big hand in position to indicate a certain time. Every time I’m asked to do this, I try to explain to the provider that I haven’t looked at an analog clock for years, but I guess I still draw them correctly enough because I always pass the test. I think I learned to tell time in about kindergarten, so I suppose that is some kind of test of long-term memory. I can also remember the special words for the requisite five minutes, and spit out “book, table, banana” when asked, so I that’s my short term. I’m pretty sure my brain is intact, but I have more test anxiety during this five-minute evaluation that I had when I took my SAT’s (though, of course, I don’t remember that experience at all.)

Back to the music. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that my memory is infallible, and I really never heard that Allman Brothers song before. That raises the question: what else have I missed in my life? Not a bucket list thing – events I hope still to happen. It’s more a “what-passed-me-by when I wasn’t looking” question.

Obviously, no one can have experienced everything. I mean, my husband can still tell you the starting lineup from certain 1962 San Francisco Giant games. I obviously missed sitting by the radio with a pencil and scorebook as Jim did in his early teens, recording each game. Me, I even have to Google to see that the New York Yankees, won the World Series that year, beating Jim’s team in seven. Don’t get him started talking about Bobby Richardson’s catch in the bottom of the 9th. That’s okay; we each have our passions and interests.

The great writer, Brian Doyle, who tragically died of a brain tumor when he was only sixty wrote: "There is a story in everything, and every being, and every moment, were we alert to catch it, were we ready with our tender nets; indeed there are a hundred, a thousand stories, uncountable stories, could they only be lured out and appreciated; and more and more now I realize that what I thought was a skill only for authors and pastors and doctors and dream-diviners is the greatest of all human skills, the one that allows us into the heart and soul and deepest layers of our companions on the brief sunlit road between great dark wildernesses."^[i]

I just finished reading Doyle’s: A Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary about everything from the sacred to the seemingly mundane. He has a prayer for possums, a prayer for soccer dads. He also has a prayer shouting his anger at the despicable actions of his church, the Catholic church, in perpetrating and covering up the sexual abuse of children.

Doyle references music in many of his books. He was in bands. I imagine he heard that Allman Brothers song, maybe not when it came out because he would only have been 14, but sometime. And he would have really listened, noticed it, I’m sure.

Each of us fears the loss of memory, dementia, if we are lucky enough to reach old age. They tell us to exercise, eat healthy, keep using our brains to avoid that, but no one has total control.

The best I can do is vow now to pay attention, miss as little as possible. The joy for me of writing is that I’ve learned to be a better observer as I record what I see and hear and think. I hope I’ll keep growing, keep on rockin’, and hopefully keep my mind intact until I move on to the next world.

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[i] https://www.oregonlive.com/books/2017/05/brian_doyle.html#:~:text=Oregon%2C%20the%20adopted%20home%20he,say%20thank%20you%20to%20Oregon.%22