Aug. 26, 2004 - 17:30 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Guess It's Time

They say a watched pot never boils. Maybe so, but I am watching this pot boil, toil, trouble and bubble, bubble, bubble.

Our children who live across the metro-Denver area have been after Heather and I to move across town closer to them. Guess they have seen us feebling around more than we used to, must be apparent. I have managed to put it off as long as possible.

Heather and the girls have been looking around and found a comfortable place that seems affordable, so it will be, she put a deposit on it. Details to be worked out as we go.

Told the ladies that place after we move in will be one giant blivet - and then had to explain just what a blivet is. Ten pounds of excrement in a one pound bag. Obviously there will be much stuff we will have to give up, just to be able to walk around in there. C'est la guerre and c'est la vie ? ? ? ? ? If you don't have anything to say ya know, say it in French, I guess -- confuse the enemy (myself).

Now comes my angst. I was born east of the Platte River and when we have been in Denver have lived east of it. There is nothing wrong with the west side of town, but psychologically I am an East Sider.

Will be necessary to learn new places, stores and all, but none of them will be familiar and comfortable like the places we have always been accustomed to. When we were young it would have been a thrilling adventure, but at 83 it doesn't seem to be so fun. I hope we can come this side of town to our doctor, hate to give up seeing a good doctor and she is the best, however we will be able to pick up our prescriptions on the west side.

It boggles my mind to think about the move. The progeny will do the biggest part of the lift and carry at both ends, but the uproar and feeling of being in a blender going at full speed is all too familiar to me. Makes me want to disappear for the time of the move until everything is in place at the new quarters. If I am a sissy, so be it, but that is the way it is for me.

It probably stems from my first aware move. I was 16 and had been going to school with kids who were my friends from first grade. Going to a new house, but away from friends. I hated to leave the old two room house where I had been raised as much as possible for this boy to be raised, the raising was good but I wasn't really mature yet.

Learning new geography, trying to make new friends and feel comfortable there came hard to me. I guess that is where hating, despising to move started. I didn't fit in too well there, strange school, strange kids, new territory and all that.

Along about the middle of the eleventh grade I bailed out of school and went to work. Gradually things became familiar and comfortable then.

There has been talk among the family about moving Grandpa and Grandma closer. We came back to Denver in 1960 - put the oldest in high school along with his sister, her sister into junior high and the youngest then, put him in elementary school. At a recent family gathering I was able to talk with them and asked them how the move to Denver affected them, and was given the straight skinny on how they fared. So it is more or less with a certain amount of dread that I think of moving. Of course I won't have the hubris of school, but will have the feeling a stranger in a stranger land.

Trying to look at things in a rational manner, Heather faces surgery on one shoulder, a knee and a wrist. So if we move reasonably soon it will be better for her. At 83 years of age with a wonky ticker, a spiral spine and needing oxygen I would expect that no matter how hard I try, my course will be downward, hopefully there will be a few more years of good life for Heather and I but it makes sense to be across town near family.

But, I don't want to give up and admit that I need to be that close to family, we were close when we were raising them, and have been close through out our lives. But I don't want them feeling they have to spend a lot of time tending us. Guess it will be up to me to see that they feel no need to hover, yet giving them the feeling that we are near enough that they can render help quickly, if needed.

So I am not feeling like a Fiddler On The Roof, but more like Fiddler On The Coffin. Considering the facts though, Guess It's Time . . . . . . . . . . .

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