Birthday Countdown

 I really like birthday parties—especially my own If you’ve been reading Nick’s Bytes over the past seven or so years, I’m sure you remember that my birthday is on Saint Valentine’s Day, five days from now. This post is the beginning of my birthday countdown.

During my daily telephone conversation with my mother today, she talked a lot about my birth. I learned some things I hadn't know:

• the "due-date" of my birth was today, February 9
• I was born at 6:32 p.m. on February 14
• the doctor who delivered me delivered 5 baby boys one after another preceding my birth; he told my mother, "If you all wanted Valentine presents I would have given you candy."

Mom also pointed out that I have have already outlived my father, who died at age 64.

MY DAD HOLDING ME

Mom also pointed out that I am older than all of my grandparents when they died except for my Dad's father, Granddaddy Nick (Old TNT).

This is the beginning of my 2012 Birthday Countdown. I'll post more tomorrow.

NICK'S GLEANINGS: An Excellent Post on Aging

Occasionally I read a post that is so worthwhile that I am driven to share it. I did that today. It's at Soul Seeds and is entitled Why We Should Embrace Our Age by Loretta Laroche. No matter what your age, I recommend you read it. If you are my age, I strongly recommend that your read it.

I gleaned a lot from Ms. Laroche's words, not the least of which is the learnings she has had as she has aged:

• making each day feel like a new beginning
• reinventing yourself on some level so that you don’t become your own “Groundhog Day”
• spend time in community with others
• become more involved in the pursuit of altruism
• find the bless in the mess
• laugh as often as possible
• keep a positive outlook: “if you think the worst and get the worst, you suffer twice; if you think the best and get the worst, you only suffer once.”

I'll let you glean more as you read the article!

Contemplating Tomorrow: Turning 63

This is the oldest photo I have Daddy and me.

You may have noticed that I have been spending much more time referring to my birthday this year than I have had in any of my previous four years of blogging. When I began to realize how much I was writing about February 14^th, I asked mu self, Why? After contemplating that why, I finally came up with the very simple answer.

My father was 63 years old when he died.

That was twenty-five years ago. I had resigned from my position as a county social services supervisor for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, put my house up for sale, loaded what belongings we could fit in a five-room dormitory apartment, and moved to Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. (Actually Ed is in Webster Groves, but only someone who is from St. Louis would pay any attention to that).

In October, seminary students at Eden had a week free of classes dedicated to catching up on the massive amount of assigned readings that no normal person could otherwise complete. When my relatives learned of that, my father, mother, sister, and an aunt decided to visit us for the weekend that ended reading week. They rented a huge automobile—I don’t remember the brand—and drove from Louisville to St. Louis.

Since my father had had several strokes which left him partially paralyzed and had had his right leg amputated just below the knee due to complication caused by sugar diabetes, he was unable to make it up the steps into our apartment. While the others were inside, he sat alone in the car.

At times I went outside and sat with him. Since talking was difficult for Daddy, we didn’t converse much. We just spent time sitting with each other. Of course, we all were together when we drove around St. Louis, ate at restaurants, and when Daddy took my sons, Nick and Rob, shopping for special gifts. Daddy bought Nick III, then about eleven, his first computer—a Commodore—which set him on the track of his life-long profession.

I was sad when they returned to Louisville. As the others packed and checked out from their motel, I helped Daddy down a short hallway to a side door, outside of which their rental car was parked. While helping him into the car, Daddy said something to me that he had seldom expressed. He said I love you. Then he smiled and said, I am happy that you are here. You should have gone to seminary many years ago.

Those were the last words my father ever spoke to me. Forty-eight hours after he left St. Louis, he was dead.

As I enter the age at which my father died, I have been thinking about him and his life. I wish I had spent more time with Daddy. I wish that… Well, I think you understand.

Becoming sixty-three has led me to a time of contemplating my own life and mortality. And that is why I have been thinking and writing so much about tomorrow, the day I enter the age at which my father died.

Survivor of Benign Neglect

There are numerous bloggers, such as Squirl, who post magnificent photographs of flowers. I would not attempt to emulate the photographs of those artful bloggers; I'm not a skilled photographer nor a gardener. I know a bit about lawns because I spent the summers of my undergraduate college years working with grass (and sand traps) on Louisville golf courses.

I also learned about growing roses from my German uncle, Otto Weber. His rose garden was wonderful and he taught me about pruning, fertilizing, watering, and protecting rose from the numerous pests and diseases that can attack them. I learned the lessons well.

Through the years I come to ritually accept that where I live as "home" by planting roses. At the house I owned in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, I created a three tier rose garden and was a rose tester for the Jackson-Perkins company. I planted roses in the yard of the parsonage in Cannelton, Indiana. On the terrace of the apartment in which I lived when I first returned to Louisville, I had planters of miniature roses. On reflection, I find it strange that I have not been motivated to plant roses at the at the home I now own.

This post is not about the roses that I have planted and tended through the past thirty or so years. It is about a rose bush beside my mother's house that has survived about fifty years in spite of benign neglect:


The rose bush pictured above was purchased from a grocery store for about fifty cents in (I believe) the spring of 1957, about six months after my parents moved into the house. To the best of my knowledge, it has not been pruned, sprayed, or fertilized in many, many years. It has also not been dug up, which is the benign part of its continued existence.

I cannot explain why this bush continues to exist in spite of the neglect it has received. I am not a horticulturist. I do not know if this bush will bloom. Yet I have deep respect for a rose bush that has survived so long without being tended. Although I am tempted, I will not prune it or fertilize it. I will respect it, this survivor of benign neglect.

Aging Is Just; Microsoft Is Not Just

Joseph Campbell, in an interview a few years before his death, was asked what he had learned from his lifetime study of the legends and mythology. His response was that, as he grew older and lost abilities of his body and mind, he was informed by the great myths not to mourn or try to hold on to those abilities. Rather, he accepted the loss as part of the process of life, just as death is part of the process.

As I approach my 61st birthday, I accept that I have no real control on the aging process. I write this knowing that there are people of my own generation who desire to live for ever and actively fight growing old. I also know that they will not win their battle against aging and, eventually, death. That's the reality of life! And it is just.

Today I lost access to Microsoft Office, including Word, which I have used to write this blog from its outset. That loss has nothing to do with aging; it has to do with growing poorer.


I first purchased Office three computers ago, when I bought my first notebook computer to replace the desktop that my #1 son, Nick III, had built for me from a kit. When that first notebook was destroyed by the woman (I have called her "Candy" in this blog) who poured Mr. Clean over it, I purchased Office a second time with my second Notebook, which was destroyed when Alex knocked a bottle of Dr. Pepper on it three months ago. I am now financially unable to purchase Office a third time.

I don't believe this is just! How many times must one purchase the same program--each time one purchases a new computer?

Please excuse any typos and misspellings. I have composed this on Wordpad.

ADDENDUM

I discovered this afternoon that I no longer have email. I can receive it on MS Outlook but cannot send it. I also have Outlook Express but can't get it set up to work. I am beginning to truly dislike Microsoft!