# 146 LUKEWARM TEA

This week, the artificially induced pregnancy of a 63-year-old woman in Britain has society debating if such a situation should be allowed? If parents at that age can do the job? The debate has me thinking that in order to explore the questions, maybe all I have to do is explore my own history.

Now I realize I’m not a poster child for this particular situation but with my mother being three months past her 50th birthday when I was born, there may be some similar applications. After all, depending on an individual’s particular state of health, there are OLD 70-year-olds and there are YOUNG 70-year-olds. The difference being that the former are frail sickly individuals, the latter active and healthy. And in light of this, the truth is that my parents were older than their years. My dad, because he had stomach ulcers and crippled legs. My mother, because she was a diabetic whose health rapidly declined due to a saturated diet of affordable starches. Bread, rice, potatoes, and pasta.

Now the paramount thing I need to tell you is that my parents, though old, were kind, loving, and unbelievably patient. My parents had a gaggle of kids. I am the youngest. So a large part of their patience had to do with how worn they were from struggling to get the older ones to do chores. So worn out that they eliminated chores from my list. The outcome of that decision was that decreased expectations radically increased tolerance and patience. But from my own standpoint, as easy as I had it then, today I am guilt-ridden and red-faced-ashamed at how little I did to help. Mom, my dear old Mom, made my bed and washed and ironed my clothes until I moved out. I could probably count on two hands how often I swept a rug, mopped a floor, or dried a dish.

And so, in my youth, there was no big push for me to do the many chores the older ones had to do. But at the same time, home-life before I was born was quite different. It was a busy lifestyle. There were farm animals to care for, fields to plant and harvest, endless household chores of cleaning, baking, canning, etc. All things critical to sustaining life in the midst of abject poverty. The motto back then was mandatory. If you don’t work, you don’t eat!

But in my years all that is a blurred memory. Probably ended when I was around 10 years old. Now life became existence in a kind of barren wasteland. Older siblings had moved out. There were now no farm animals, no field-work, and little social interaction. With older parents in forced retirement due to failing health, there was little physical activity. More often than not, there were just two old people at the kitchen table drinking tea and reading scripture to prepare for the next stage of life. Meanwhile my friends’ parents were out and about. Taking their children to the city, to card games, sports events, Bingo games, even dances. All wondrous amusements that had no context in my life.

So by the time I was born life was a calm quietude. And although the older kids said when they were young my Mom and Dad had loud and long arguments that once or twice came mighty close to the disastrous brink of separation, I saw no such thing. The testiest situation I remember is the insensitivity of my Dad as he snapped at tea time, “Woman, can’t you just leave the water long enough to come to a boil before you make tea?”

And my Mother would respond with an equal lack of diplomacy by whistling merrily, ‘I’m a Little Teapot’, and sometimes doing the actions to match. But nothing changed. Next pot of tea was also made with lukewarm water. She was just too tired to argue, too tired to care, too tired to wait for the water to boil. And so, for me, as a child, there was an ongoing embarrassment that my parents were too old, the house was too cluttered, and the tea was lukewarm. An embarrassment that I am mighty ashamed of now.

But what most impacted on my life because of the age separation was the affliction of my Mother’s fashion sense that was so separate from mine. My mother was rooted in Victorian-Principled modesty. Long-sleeves, dark colors, well-below-the-knee hem lines and close collars. And I, on the other hand, was rooted in ‘Victoria Principal’ fashions – short skirts, pointy bras, plunging necklines, etc. Surprisingly, this was one of my biggest difficulties that left me so scarred that even now clothes are far more important to me than they should be.

But at the same time, the rules that younger parents normally prioritize about chores, personal care and responsibility fell by the wayside. My parents having passed the competitive stage of life were now in the reflective stage. And so for them practical and material stuff were unimportant. More important – the soul-saving stuff.

And so that meant that instead of cleaning my room, doing dishes, washing floors, I was dogged about going to church and not wearing slacks, make-up, or earrings. I couldn’t go to dances, shave my legs or armpits, or even cut my hair. Of course, I still did a lot of these things in secret. I even managed, with the help of the minister’s wife, to break down the rule of ‘no slacks’. Unfortunately, what my parents didn’t realize, was that regardless of all their endeavors, one fact remains. ‘Kids will do what kids will do’, so the encumbrance of their spiritual rigidity led me (or should I say ‘forced me’) to tell more lies than I preferred to tell or would have told in a more tolerant clime.

And so the downside of their parenting philosophy was the lies, the limited socializing and lukewarm tea. I still find no easy comfort in crowds. And although there was encouragement to do my schoolwork, there was no discussion of where these efforts would lead me. No discussion about after-grad plans, money-making careers or money-making anything. The be-all and end-all was to sustain a strong core of spirituality and the rest was just supposed to magically happen by chance or through God’s blessing with no planning on my part. I guess with my parents fast approaching their sunset years, life was in the present day, the present time, with a real possibility that tomorrow might not come. And that adage was solidly passed on to me. Even now, ‘Plan’ remains a dirty four-letter-word that I never use.

But now I come to the upside. The pride I have in that which my elderly parents bequeathed to me. In retrospect, it is surprising that even without envisioning the future in a practical sense, they had a bigger global picture than most. One that encompassed, albeit by default, not only earth life, but all life. And for that I am grateful because it works far more efficiently than anything else I know of to surmount insurmountable obstacles and to encourage rather harsh auditing of self-serving determinations.

So despite the flaws, I credit my parents for some hidden thing in my subconscious mind that has always made me think that Hub and I could make it even when we were as separate in our thinking as the Arctic is from the Antarctic. And I credit them with giving me a deeper level of contemplation that goes beyond what society terms “success”. I credit them for my imagination. I credit my Mother, despite her biased way of thinking, with my ability to question other’s views enough to understand them and find acceptance in them. I even credit her with giving me the ability to give up long held beliefs (after all, she did eventually grant me permission to wear slacks).

And to those that would ask, “Can elderly parents be there for a child when he/she needs them?” Yes, they can. Mine were not there to drive me to extra-curricular activities when I was in school. I had to figure out a way to do that myself. But I never once came home from school to an empty house – ever! And always I had more than my share of emotional support. The sad part of it is that my own children were too young when my parents passed away to know them or remember them.

So in conclusion, let me assure you that this rant is not to suggest that children of younger parents are not fully encouraged to be humble, modest, and spiritual. But at the same time, we know that each life has a fixed portion of earth time. And the more of that earth time that is dedicated to scrambling to the top of the ant pile, competing, making money, finding ‘success’, material comforts, the less of that fixed time is dedicated to modesty, humility, and spiritual reflection. It’s not a foregone conclusion. It’s just something elusive that comes from serving lukewarm tea.