By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

November seems like an orphan month, stuck between the festivities of Halloween and the extravagance of Christmas. It’s that month when we wave goodbye to moderate weather, and say hello to furnaces and fireplaces. We watch leaves fall helplessly, their spectacular colors melting to a dull compost brown. November has a way of confirming our suspicions that nothing lasts forever. We get the tires checked or replaced, knowing they’ll soon be slipping and sliding in winter weather. We twiddle our thumbs, waiting for sleigh bells and gift ideas. November is just there, like a stretch of time spent in a waiting room. Eventually the door will open and we’ll be invited to the party, but in the meantime we’ll be reading a magazine on dental hygiene and hoping for the best.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I’m reprinting this column as an annual tradition. The pandemic changed things dramatically last year, but Halloween is back. Nothing can keep a good witch down!

October has always been my favorite month. It’s the month when autumn really makes its presence felt, especially if you live where the seasons are discernible. (It recently went from air conditioner weather at the tail end of a relentlessly hot summer, to a sudden and unexpected freeze with a 30-degree drop). It’s flu season, which is always good for a sick day or two spent lying on the couch taking over-the-counter cold remedies that do nothing to stop you from feeling like death is close by. Honey, is the healthcare directive in place? You’re sure you’ve still got your copy? And how about the will? Can I change it by tomorrow? My sister forgot my birthday, I’m not sure she deserves the belt buckles.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice.

I’m not a summer person, and when my time comes to buckle up and speed away from this crazy planet on whatever form of transportation the afterlife provides, I will depart having never liked the hot season. I tell myself it’s my Viking blood, although I can’t say I have any. Ancestry holds no interest for me whatsoever—and I’m adopted, so whose ancestors would I research anyway?

I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice. For me it’s when we’re closest to the sun and farthest from a parka. When June arrives in earnest I know the humidity can’t be far behind, and with it the heat that amplifies its discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered what meteorologists mean when they offer the ‘feels like’ temperature, it’s the moisture, the dew point, that awful stickiness only a powerful air conditioner can neutralize, and only when you stay inside. Walk out the door on a hot, humid summer day, and that refreshing coolness is forgotten in an instant. Ovens are dryer, and at least you can make dinner with them. Speaking of ovens … don’t. When summer is blazing, my rule at  home is no cooking that requires heat of any kind. It’s possibly the best thing about those record-setting hot temperature days.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.

What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.

I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I took the gestures we make with our faces for granted. I failed to understand how crucial a form of communication our faces are, and how strange it would become when we no longer exposed them to each other.

For fourteen months I did the right thing for myself and my community. I wore a mask despite finding it uncomfortable and inconvenient. It was required at my job, but I also wanted to be part of a solution when no one was sure what the solution was. This pandemic was a new experience for me, my country and the world. At least it was new insofar as it had been a hundred years since the last significant one.

Then the vaccines arrived, like the calvary showing up in a syringe. Most people I know managed to get appointments after sharing among ourselves how difficult it was, a form of pandemic gossip and communal anxiety. We sat in chairs, we rolled up our sleeves and offered our fleshy arms, and we walked away amazed at how anticlimactic it was. I went through this for months and all I got was this lousy vaccination card.