Car ride to the city today! (Excited like a little dog!) But the result wasn’t so thrilling—it was time to say goodbye to my favorite little old lady in the whole world. I watched her wheel off through the airport doors and I walked away, but then I surprised myself a bit when I turned and headed back to wave one last time. And she was there waiting, waving too! I’d taken care of her a few times, shuffled her around, wiped her bum, absorbed her company. It made me feel useful for the first time in forever. Fucking fulfilling to be of service and yet not in the service industry. (My sacred vow NOT to be a 40-year-old waitress still underway.) With R., it was as if I was recooping some of the bad care-giver karma I’d earned over the years, taking care of my mother and my Uncle Ray. Where I was so torn and resentful with them, my own blood, I was all patience and understanding with this near stranger. I liked her and I liked serving her. I loved her, even, and we spoke only in French.
The other French-speaking old ladies that I’ve loved, the women who helped raise me, have all been dead since the early eighties. And this year will mark, just after I turn 40, the twentieth anniversary of my own mother’s death. Georgia never got to turn into one of those old ladies, gone at 46. She seemed so old to me at the time, but now that I’m nearing that same age, I can see the tragedy of it all, not just from the point of view of a resentful twenty-year-old forced to drop out of school to take care of her cancer-sick mother, but through the eyes of a strong and beautiful woman, mother, friend, worker, in terrible pain, having to say goodbye to it all, and worse yet, be cared for by that aforementioned, whiny, self-centered cunt of a daughter. What would Georgia think of me today? Would she have approved of San Marcos, of how and where I’ve chosen to live out these years? Or would she be disappointed by my lack of career, lack of family of my own, lack of all those things that most people my age have?
All this, and more, morbidly adult shit racking my mind as I approach (so quickly! just a few more days!) forty. FORTY! The age of an undenyable grown-up. And what have I got to show for myself? Not a hell of a lot. A bicycle, and a good sense of humour. I know it’s no excuse, but I really never thought I’d get this far—I truly never planned on ageing. When I was young, I didn’t think I’d live to 19. Then surviving that with flying colours, I upped the ante to 25. Then 30. On the eve of my 33rd birthday (the Jesus year), I actually thought I’d magically die in my sleep, avoiding the future entirely. But awaken I did, utterly unprepared for a life in the long term—I had a massive life insurance policy, but no health insurance; I had a legal will, but no plans of any kind. I knew more people that had died than I knew new-born babies and I could much more easily envision my own death than giving birth to my own child.
Today, almost seven years later, the Córdoba sun rises on me and my experience (all I’ve really got, besides the bike and the sense of humour). I cashed in my measly RRSP last week for meat money for my birthday barbecue and I’m still ignoring even the possibility that I’ll become one of those French-speaking old ladies who needs her bum wiped by a stranger.
Making me think.
Will I ever grow up?
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