Time to Look Back. Time for Updates

This is Fred lounging on my bed when he was younger

My imaginary shrink – did I ever tell you that his name is Carl Gustav Steinfeld – he tells me that it is time to look back.

“If you are a writer obsessed with images and phrases, with movies playing in your brain all day, you sometimes bore people with repetition. Just because you still dwell on a scene doesn’t mean others are equally as interested in it after hearing about it a couple of times. You might want to go over your blog entries and make sure you are not repeating rants. On the other hand there are facts that need updating. If you have written about something in progress you eventually have to bring it to a conclusion or at least keep us current. For instance, what happened to Fred the cat?”

“Fred is quite happy with his new parents,” I answer. “But one never knows, I still might become his foster mother if they get tired of taking care of him. I bought a carrier and a couple of cans of tuna, just in case. But I won’t take my curtains down and hide my plants unless he sits at my doorstep again and gets ready to inspect my house.”

“What else?” Dr. Steinfeld wants to know.

“I looked back over my blog entries and saw that I had mentioned Lorna’s pink sock yarn on February 27 without assigning a project to it. The yarn appears just recently, again, in a picture about finishing Tyana’s wardrobe for our Alaska trip. I finished the white shirt, but maybe I should be realistic and put away some of these projects until fall.”

“Good idea.”

“Oh, and by the way, I mentioned the TV Converter Box Coupon Program. I received a coupon for $40.00 in April along with a list of participating retailers in my area. But it doesn’t always pay to be an early bird. The coupon has an expiration date; it is only valid for three months. And they say it cannot be replaced. The signal conversion doesn’t start until next year.”

“Anything that might be of interest to potential readers?”

“On Tuesday, March 11, I quoted from the Mother Bear Project website that 25,900 Bears had been sent out so far. Yesterday, May 22, the counter said: To date 28,500 bears have been sent to children affected by HIV/AIDS.”

“Two-thousand-six-hundred more bears. Wonderful!!”

“I also saw that my first story about Bears didn’t come until March 29, when I wrote “Magic Happens,” about the five Blues Brothers. It confirms my theory that writing takes a lot of time and that most of that time is spent staring at the alder tree on the lawn across the street.

“Any other thoughts?”

“Yes. One. I probably wrote about it before – sorry if this is a repeat – I can’t remember, and I’m too much in a hurry to check. Every morning when I walk the trail I see mothers jogging, pushing baby strollers ahead of them. I put myself in the children’s position, mentally; once I even crouched down to get the physical effect of low-to- the-ground exposure, except I can’t compare my observations with the impact on children who have no database to draw from. Are small children trusting? Are they easily scared? Does landscape impress them? Do they miss their mothers because they can’t see them? And I wonder, how do they feel when a walker passes with a large dog on a leash? Or when a cyclist races downhill toward them? Or when they lose their pacifiers while Mama’s eyes are fixed on the distant image of her once girlish figure? Or when the sun makes them sneeze? Or when the cover over the stroller disorients them? Wouldn’t it be better if strollers pointed toward the parent? They did when my children were small. I think they were adjustable so you could use them either way, forward or back. I remember taking my son to the park, chatting with him while he giggled and pounded his “dashboard” with a toy.

Anyway, I am obsessed with this shortcoming of modern strollers. I want to write to manufacturers. I want to talk to mothers about it. But I think I am the only one who complains and I am almost seventy years old. What do I know of modern life? I wouldn’t even talk on a cell phone if I had a child with me while I’m walking the trail.”

Dr. Steinfeld gives me ‘the end’ signal, cutting his imaginary throat with an imaginary finger. “Yes, we all know, you become an old person when it suits you. It’s your cover when you cry over the news, because you see children enduring adult wars or other kinds of adult abuse. You push your “I’m too old for this” idea when you know you are right but think that nobody listens to you. I call it self-pity and I like you a lot more when you go out there and “talk sense” into the subject of your disapproval. When you ignore your age and jump over a ditch. Well, that was a bad example. You hurt your knee then, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. But it wasn’t because I am old or pretend to be old. I was stupid and miscalculated the distance. And now that you have agitated me, I have to go and knit a Rainbow Nation Bear. It calms me, because it makes me feel that I am participating in an anti-war, anti-abuse, anti-ignorance project. Shrinks can be so annoying.”