woobiquity

cxix. Of birthday cards that are all wrong

Chances are you’ve never noticed, but trying to find a birthday card for someone who is turning 104, as my great-grandmother does today, is basically hopeless.

The greeting card industry’s idea of “touching”, “inspired” and “funny” is depressing at the best of times, but when the intended recipient is chair-bound, still recovering from congestive heart failure and is well past the age at which every day becomes icing on the cake none of the options on the grocery store card rack seems remotely appropriate.

“Get up and celebrate!”
“Every birthday is a new beginning”
“You’re still young enough to learn some new tricks”
“May all your dreams for the future come true”
“Hope your birthday makes you happy all over”

The only way that last one might work is if one of the nurses added a birthday treat to her oxygen supply. I give it a pass.

On the phone later, my Dad says it’s not that surprising the card companies don’t make “Enjoy it, it could be your last!” cards, but I reckon with the right picture (close-up of a couple of laughing, wrinkly faces splattered with birthday cake?) it might work. Particularly if the recipient’s dementia is bad enough that the insult will be forgotten by the time the lunch tray arrives.

Centenarians and super-centenarians are among the fastest growing demographics, and since all of them lived through the Great Depression they’re clinically proven to appreciate a colorful piece of printed material far more than the average whippersnapper. Wake up card companies. It’s a captive audience!

And one we’re fascinated by, apparently. Nearly every news article on the 100+ set speculates on why some people get to live so long. Studies abound. People really want to know. Distill that wisdom into a humorous line of greeting cards, and you’d be onto a winner for almost any demographic. You could even start with a quote from today’s celebrant, who puts her own long life largely down to a vegetable-based diet and said “It’s no fun after 95.” Discuss!

On a related note, maybe Hallmark should extend a quick Latter Days line commission to Art Buckwald, who by all accounts has made dying a truly joyful, laughing matter.

cxxviii. Of bijou sidewalk tiles

Actually, these are certainly not ubiquitous, at least not here. But they should be. On Front Street in Wilmington, NC, Saturday.

cxxvii. Scenes from Sealevel

Scenes from Sealevel, a fishing community in the extreme east of North Carolina. The new (a beautiful boatbuilding building -- proof that good design is possible even where trailers, shacks and ranch-style houses are the norm), the old (an abandoned general store) and the blue. Photos taken last week.

cxxvi. Of views that are really for the birds

Let’s bring the tempo right down. How you do it is you hop on a plane at Gatwick, wave bye-bye to London and about a day or so later you’re sitting on a screened-in back porch on an island in North Carolina, looking out over a lot that may as well be called a bird sanctuary. Or anyway that’s how did it.

In this environment, forgetting about dirty streets, cramped trains and the rudeness of crowds comes as naturally as guiding the swing forward and back. After just one week, City life feels like something you read about in books.

Meanwhile bird life takes on previously unappreciated depths, from the morning rush hour of back and forth traffic - flocks of gulls, egrets, cranes and pelicans in no great rush, truth be told - that ends as soon as the sun burns away the clouds, to the way a mockingbird claims the territory thereafter by swooshing around it sounding a police-like siren.

At times the collective noise is almost too much, what with the katydids giving up their constant, bagpiper’s baseline. I am beginning to understand why some actually would want to kill a mockingbird. And my suspicion is growing that the quacking noise that occasionally joins the cacophony may not be a bird’s at all, but the work of a tank-top wearing redneck a few houses down, rifle in one hand, duck call and cigarette balanced delicately in the fingers of the other, a life-like decoy floating star-eyed happy in a little carp pond in the yard.

I bought a book to help me know more about the birds. It’s called Birds of the Carolinas (University of North Carolina Press, 1980), and it has a delightfully old-school cover, with a cardinal caught in the harsh light of a flash bulb and fonts that haven’t been seen since the 80s.

At times the book’s authors – Eloise F. Potter, James F. Parnell and Robert P. Teulings – betray perhaps too great a love for their subject, ascribing the kind of significance to rare bird sightings that non-birdwatchers might reserve for recalling geopolitical events.

Of the Glaucous Gull, the book says, “one lingered at Roanoke Rapids Lake in North Carolina for about a week in late May of 1972.”

Maybe one day someone will write a book about career breaks, noting that one would-be fiction writer lingered on a porch on Harkers Island for more than two months in the summer of 2006.

cxxv. Of people who are at a loss

As observed in Greenwich, London, a few weeks ago:

Boy of eight or nine gets out of car and lolls for a moment. Boy walks into cafe and straight back out again. Boy skips back up to car and speaks to someone in the driver’s seat. Boy lolls some more, gets in the car and out again.

Another car pulls up. Same shape and color as the first car but older, beat up. If cars had body language these would be exchanging a chill - backs to one another.

Boy dashes over to second car. Man gets out. “D’you want a tea or coffee?” man asks. Boy shakes head no, almost imperceptibly, gets into second car. Man lifts mobile phone to ear, walks down pavement, around a rubbish bin, veers toward first car but doesn’t turn head toward it. Walks to corner and stands for long time, talking. Faces both cars and looks at neither.

First car backs up a bit, its reverse lights illuminating nothing in the sunny morning. A biker wants to park. For minutes, nobody moves, until man on phone disappears around the corner.

First car pulls slowly away and up street. Dog in back of second car watches, its tail not wagging.