“A year?” I echo. “Do I look like someone who has a year to wait?” I point to my jowls. She doesn’t budge. I point to the black up-to-my-knee boot I’ve been wearing since I fell after a bicyclist sideswiped me in the street.
Her dark eyes peruse my body. Unfazed, she replies, “You will have to wait as long as you have to wait.” Nice.
Undaunted, I forge on. “But look, I have slides, awards, reviews, newspaper and magazine articles about my work. I was the sole artist whose work was displayed at Lincoln Center’s twentieth anniversary.” I expect her eyes to light up.
“When was that?” she asks, disinterested, taking a bite out of her sandwich.
“Nineteen seventy-nine,” I reply.
She takes another bite. “Anything since then?”
I can’t decide whether she’s being sarcastic, snide, or is just plain dumb. And I’m having a difficult time taking my eyes off the lettuce dangling from the side of her mouth that seems stuck in the silver hoop on her lip.
It seems clear that we are not communicating well. But I am persistent, a benefit of age.
“I have work, but I haven’t written a résumé in a long time,” I say in a more conciliatory tone.
“Well then, I’m afraid you will have to write one, won’t you?”
Definitely snide.
“I’ve been involved with other things.” Oh, my God, I’m apologizing! “I have four beautiful grandsons. Would you like to see their pictures?”
No reply. She’s examining the myriad of tattoos on her right arm.
“And by the way, we no longer accept slides; it’s been years and years. We only accept digital.” She rolls her eyes.
“Digital what?” I ask.
She sighs, flips her crimson-and-orange hair and points a black fingernail at the computer. “Digital pictures can be sent through the internet; put them all on a disc.”
“A disc? How do I do that?” I’m now in a panic.
“Don’t you own a computer?” she asks, aghast, as if I’d just told her I was twenty-five and an alien.
“Yes, I have a computer, an old one, but I’m not too technologically adept.” I was hoping for some compassion. There was none.
“Well, it seems you will have to find someone to help you do these things.”
I didn’t get the feeling that she was planning to offer herself.
I thought about my grown children, their busy schedules—and the last phone call, during which I heard in the distance, “Oh God, not my mother, again, with the computer.”
I had to find a better plan. I turned to “Dracuella,” the receptionist, who was now asking, “Madam, do you have any other questions, because I really have to get back to work.”
What work? And “Madam?” It wasn’t that long ago that I was referred to as Mademoiselle. Or was it?
I reply, “It’s wonderful to be young, isn’t it? . . .Just wait.” I leave, chin up: this doyenne has left the building.
The game has changed. Even though I’ve had a successful art career, now, in my “golden years,” I must proceed with renewed vigor, reinvent myself, or get left behind.
That afternoon, I went to the Apple store and bought a brand new, updated, silver shining computer (something I had postponed doing for months) and signed up for Apple Help, which enabled me to receive unlimited instruction. I started that day, feeling invigorated, fresh, new.
I am now able to send photos to galleries, keep in touch with the happenings in the art world, order supplies, and transfer digital information; I feel rejuvenated. I have taken control of my work and my life.
Who knows, maybe I will be the new Grandma Moses! I think the golden years for me can be more accurately called “The Platinum Years,” precious and polished.
Author's Comment
Honestly, my ten-year-old grandson still helps me navigate the computer world. But I never give up trying!
Poems from Linda Hogan explore new and old ways of experiencing the vagaries of the body and existing in harmony with earth's living beings. Throughout this clear-eyed collection, Hogan tenderly excavates how history instructs the present, and envisions a future alive with hope for a healthy and sustainable world that now wavers between loss and survival.
“Hogan remains awed and humble in this sweetly embracing, plangent book of grateful, sorrowful, tender poems wed to the scarred body and ravaged Earth.”
—BOOKLIST
"In an age as acrimonious as ours, Linda Hogan’s new poetry collection, A History of Kindness, sounds especially poignant."
—THE WASHINGTON POST
"There is no one like Linda Hogan. I read her poetry to both calm and ignite my heart. A History of Kindness is a series of oracles rising from the page born out of a life of listening, feeling, responding."
—TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS, author of Erosion
Available from Torrey House Press and Bookshop.org
Linda Rathkopf has been a cabaret performer, an award winning artist, an illustrator, and a playwright whose plays have been produced in New York, Vermont, Kentucky, California, Florida, and Colorado. Her writing has been published in numerous anthologies. She's a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Love it. Congrats. Love the photo too!