Walking Old Roads: A Memoir of Kindness Rediscovered

By Tammy Hader

Humanity has fractured society, and I am to blame. My benevolent nature and I have had a falling out. This is what happens when the hands of neglect fail to nurture a relationship. Society is not an object I can point to in someone else's yard. I am society, and I have doom scrolled my way into a state of

• Language: English
• Publisher: WeBe Books Publishing
• Release date: Jun 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781955668590

Book preview

Allow Me to Introduce

My Midlife Crisis

A hiccup comes out of nowhere. The sudden spasmatic jolt in my abdomen surprises me. An involuntary hic enters my ears, grabs onto my thoughts, and tosses me into the past, landing me in a heap of memories at my mom’s feet. My mind hears her say what she always says. You’ve got the hiccups! You must be growing. The problem with my own hiccups is that I keep growing out instead of up. The corniness of her tired old joke rattles about in my brain and lifts the corners of my mouth. As her voice’s thoughtful residue fades, my smile descends into the realization that my growth is neither out nor up. I retreat inward, away from the complexities of us, toward the solitary confinement of self-preservation. I reach for my morning cup of tea and apply the 10 Sips Rule to end my contemplative bout of hiccups.

My daily ritual of pulling back the curtain to peer at the degradation of society has begun. A shrewd chirping travels with purpose along the early morning sunbeam that coats the back of my neck with the confident assurance of a new day’s arrival. I bow my head to the small electronic window cupped in my left hand, ignore the warm optimism resting on my skin, and delve into a chilly virtual world. The mechanical movement of my index finger against the glass screen triggers the zombie-like detachment symptomatic of doomscrolling through trending reports of violence and corresponding hateful opinions pouring in from couches across the country. A storm brews out there beyond the birds and right here in my own heart. Nestled in the corner of my modern sofa sectional in the tree-lined urban neighborhood called home, I cling to an imaginary bond with the worried minds of a scattered fellowship listening with me to the background noise of the morning anchor. Entering our ears are the disturbing details of the angry mob of insurgents forever inscribed into the history books for deciding the storming of the White House sounded like a clever idea.

I press the back arrow to move in the direction of longing for kinder times to ease the foreboding pulse racing through my soul and focus ten therapeutic minutes on #CatsOfTwitter. Call me crazy, but I remember the whole nostalgic world of the past as a nicer place than the real or virtual realities of the 21st century. Fast approaching my sixth decade of life, my complexities live in a churning atmosphere measured on a teetertottering scale from calm to primal. Longing for the deliberate simplicity of a bird’s life and admiring the passion of misguided followers fighting for a shared belief is both understandable and confusing to me. I fear my anxiety is boiling up like the darkening sky of a Kansas thunderstorm into a dramatic release of anger. Or is it desperation? On second thought, do not call me crazy. I wear many hats, but crazy is not one of them.

A squeak to the right of the top of the bell curve is a modest little dot. That is me — the minuscule spec of a flawed perfectionist dangling her feet over a midlife crisis. The date on my birth certificate just barely pronounces me as a baby boomer. The end of a generational classification. Not the very end. I was born in February, not on December 31, 1964, at 11:59 p.m. Somewhere out there in the universe, an interesting person holds the honor of being the very last boomer ever born. Not me. I am an average, run-of-the-mill baby boomer.

The summation of my life to date lands me and my contributions to the world somewhere in the land of average near the top of humanity’s bell curve. A retired accountant with meager career success, above-average intelligence, and basement-level athleticism, I possess much empathy for nonhuman animals and little patience for people who should know to be better. From my bird’s eye view of the past, present, and future, the fading light within me is obvious and alarming. The diminishment of my instinctual need to do the right thing, be likable, be smart, and be more than is possible for me to be, has progressed to an undeniable prominence.

My arm raises my plain white tea mug with mechanical precision to my lips, only to render a trance-breaking disappointment to my tongue. The mug is empty, and the meteorologist is signing off with an optimistic, Make it a great day! Time to move on. People would say time is running out for my generation. I do not believe this statement is accurate. The continuous, flat movement of time has no life span. Opportunity runs out. Opportunity to seize the moment, to speak, to act, to appreciate… to remember. Opportunity to meet my full potential before it is too late.

My travels along the perpetual stream of time have brought me to my half of a granite-topped dual vanity in an enviable place of comfortable teeth brushing. Here I experience the contented application of my public face, and the reassuring security of knowing the sink next to me belongs to more than just a wet toothbrush and a well-used mustache trimmer. My mind knows my cup is full, but my eyes see a plain, pale complexion of emptiness wearing the dark weight of guilt and doubt. I do not remember the last time the smile on my face meant the message it portrayed. The unassuming surface of me proclaims no statements of greatness. For half a century, I have strived to please the world around me to find, in the end, the one most disappointed is the wee bit overweight, graying woman in the mirror.

I stare through the vacant image and watch the reflections of my seasons play out like the flickering trailer for a movie. I jump from snippet to snippet of pivotal moments and corresponding consequences. The naïve squirming of a small red-headed, freckle-faced child focused on the wonders of the world, unaware of the mirror’s existence. A young woman driven by expectations she thought were her own, seeing only herself until that moment of adulthood when the people standing next to her become visible all around her reflection. My mature eyes drift through life as a spectator, trying to keep up as the next generation’s world speeds by without time for a caring glance—the proverbial circle of life.

I am not alone in front of the mirror. The future and the past are with me — always have been. I just was not in the season to notice, until now. Over half a century old, I am on the downhill side of this ride, looking back at my past. I wonder what happened to the lovely young woman who left her parents’ nest wearing the smile of a kind heart and the hopeful ambition of making a positive contribution to the world. My midlife crisis arrived in the form of a half-inch stripe of white traveling down the right side of my faded red hair and the unraveling of the mystery of my lost benevolence. I need to recharge my waning confidence and discover my value as I inch closer to becoming a senior citizen. Am I done becoming who I will be? Are my opportunities running out? How did I get here from there so fast?

My microscopic spec on the infinite road of time came about by way of the usual means. Like the genesis of your existence, I would guess. You and I are alike in as many ways as we are different. Out stories unfold this way and that way along the journey between our respective beginnings and endings, comparable at birth, intersecting here and there in the middle. If we are lucky, we will both leap across the generation gap to a new perspective before the inevitable crossing of the finish line. And we all know how life ends — the somber finale of an empty vessel lying six feet under in a field of faded remembrances.

My preferred finality will be in a drawer stacked inside a climate-controlled building. I will one day reside in a room of filing cabinets filled with unalphabetized endings resting in an organized framework. A personal cell of eternity in a three-dimensional spreadsheet with my exact coordinates logged into a database somewhere in the ethereal abyss of the cloud seems appropriate for a retired accountant. We are who we are, and that is part of who I am. It is no wonder an ending such as this appeals to me. For thirty years of my adult life, equations ran through my brain, resulting in the footing and cross-footing of a life that matched and defined my persona. I am the sum of people plus places multiplied by passion and divided by perception. I am the gains and losses recorded in an emotional balance sheet of life traveling toward death.

From the moment of conception, life creeps towards death, the speed of encroachment determined by a constant grapple between choice management and uncontrollable forces of fate. The landscape of life varies as society travels alongside me through the decades, changing with exponential rapidness. Will society leave me behind, or will there be a place for this aging baby boomer in our future world of growing distrust? A credible concern made more ominous by the realization it is my fault the world is now a meaner place. Somewhere along the way, I misplaced my own benevolence. I do not like people very much, and that feels wrong. My circle is shrinking. Of the billions of people in the world, there are only about six I wish to speak to in person; another five I reach out to via texting and a handful I prefer to keep within waving distance while my Google assistant screens the rest. Insincere conversations, intrusive encounters, and disrespectful experiences replay with randomness in my mind leaving no doubt as to how I lost my benevolence.

Chased by the urgency of knowing I can do nothing to repair society without first repairing myself, the real mystery lies in how I ever became kindhearted in the first place. How was my compassion sparked, and can I compel lightning to strike again? My quest begins with the family, friends, and community credited with molding me into the lovely kindhearted young woman who soared from the nest on the wings of hope, wearing a smile she meant. My hometown raised me to be a compassionate, thoughtful human being. So begins my journey back to the past to walk my old roads and examine the causality of me, influenced by a perspective born from a lifetime of flawed perfectionism.

Not long ago, someone asked me, Is your life interesting enough for this? Now look who is wearing the crazy hat. Of course, my life is not interesting enough for this. My position on the bell curve firmly entrenches me among the throngs of average people trying to make the most of time and opportunity. I am not extraordinary, but I am to blame for the degradation of society. I will say it again. It is my fault the world is a meaner place. To be honest, though, I have not wounded civility in an instant, and I have not wounded it alone. Journey with me in search of the creation of the benevolence I have lost. Let us begin with a story of discovering how the circle of my life started with my earliest influencers, two people walking arm in arm down a sidewalk in front of a little house on Fifth Street in a small, quiet Kansas town. Let us see where my story takes us.

PART I:

A Little House on

Fifth Street

I can feel the answer to my midlife crisis watching me, hidden behind the details of good and bad.

1

Clarity in Three Minutes

and Twelve Seconds

I sense a smile on the face of fate today, and I find the optimism distrustful. Well into my fifth decade of life, I wear cynicism on my face more often than a smile these days. The suspicious sunshine radiates through the atmosphere adding warmth to the crisp autumn air and balancing the brisk breeze to a perfect temperature. Despite my misgivings, the changing seasons carry a certain contentment as time moves forward with discipline and familiarity. I pull into the driveway of the cute little senior housing fourplex my mom calls home. The sidewalk strolls past a favorite diner for the local hummingbirds and onto a cozy two-seater-sized porch with a perimeter of traditional white railing.

She has never been sentimental about where she resides, a fact much appreciated by my brother and me when necessity dictated our parents make a move into a senior residence a few years ago. I suspect Dad knew his life was approaching the finish line before the rest of us could see the encroachment of inevitability. Establishing a new senior-friendly life with the sweetheart he married in 1958 was his final act to provide for her future. Walking up to the front door, I feel his presence despite his absence. Not long before this sunny, temperate day, we almost lost Mom, too. Thanks to plumbing and electrical repairs on her heart (a new aortic valve and a pacemaker, to be specific), her reunion with Dad will have to wait. Delayed beginnings are a scenario familiar to her.

Hello, kid! She rises from her favorite recliner, straightening her shirt as she greets my entrance through the door left unlocked for me.

I brought you some Italian meatball soup I fixed for supper last night. I am happy to see her back to her energetic self once again. Oh, that sounds good. Just put it in the fridge wherever you can find a space. The smile on her wrinkled face is one of the few weapons able to crack through my cynical temperament.

I do as she instructs without voicing my concern over the sugary drinks and pudding cups I see resting on the shelves inside a diabetic’s refrigerator. Mom and I are knee-deep in the inevitable swapping-of-roles segment of life, switching places as we reminisce about favorite memories, travel together to doctor appointments, and discuss how to operate modern technology. Unconditional love includes repeated tutorials on navigating the internet and accessing voicemail messages from a cell phone. Helping her while not stepping on the toes of her independence is tricky at times.

Laura and Elizabeth invited me to lunch yesterday. After that, we did a little grocery shopping. It about wore me out. Standing a good three inches taller than me, I look up to see her eyes filled with the joy of inclusion. Sounds like you had a wonderful day. Friendships are powerful medicine, especially here in her senior community. Laura is a woman of average stature with short gray hair, a practical strength of will, and a soft voice of honesty. Elizabeth, the eldest of the trio, has short, white hair resting above smiling eyes, and she carries herself with confident grace. Both ladies arrived in Kansas by way of Oklahoma, and I am happy their lives have crossed paths with Mom’s journey into the golden years.

And today, I get to spend time with you! What are we doing today? The sincerity of her enthusiastic inquiry sets an expectation I hope I can live up to. I was thinking we could start sorting through your boxes of photographs. I think it could help me find story topics for my writing projects. What do you think about the idea?

Oh my, those boxes are a mess. Are you sure you want to work that hard? She chuckles on the way to the closet to clear a path to the boxes. She has already answered the question.

A few minutes later, Mom and I sat down at her dining room table and began sifting through a deteriorated boot box overstuffed with old photos and faded newspaper clippings, removing each item with curious anticipation. We mentally erase duplicates, blurry pictures, and the I-don’t-know-who-this-is photos from further thought by the time the photo lands on the top of the trash pile that grows into a haphazard mess on the floor between us. Other items advance to the labeling-of-people phase and finally to the official sorting ceremony, culminating in a manila envelope of history for each family member, whether they want it or not. Dangling in my future are tedious hours of scanning photos into the computer and sharing access via the cloud, today’s version of the tattered boot box. The excavation of each layer of history reveals more of the same until the dining room light shines upon a small rectangular relic. My pulse quickens as my mind calculates the potential held within the discovery our expedition has unearthed as I lift the scuffed yellow Kodak box from the depths of its tomb. My hand holds an 8mm tape of Mom’s high school senior trip to St. Louis, MO, in 1958.

Two weeks and fifty dollars later, I drive home from the audio-visual store with three minutes and twelve seconds of salvageable history on a thumb drive. The picture quality is grainy and mostly black and white. A few flashes of color pop into the images here and there. Not bad considering the number of years spent in storage. The cars, the clothes, and the hairstyles are classic 1950s in action. Oxford-wearing girls in poodle skirts smile and wave excitedly at the camera. I anticipate Mom grinning and giggling when she recognizes her friends from long ago. Her smile will fade a bit when she struggles to recollect the memories long buried under a pile of discarded moments. The film is a reminder that a lifetime happens to all of us. The choppy blurred footage held nothing unexpected … at first.

At about the two-and-a-half-minute mark, the senior trip footage ended with abrupt finality, and the film cut without warning or introduction to a different scene. On the laptop screen in front of me, smiling as they loaded luggage into the back seat of their car, were young versions of my parents. They were not just images in a still photo but living, moving people who strolled arm in arm down the sidewalk parallel to Fifth Street, the sidewalk in front of what would become my first home.

Smartly attired in his pale brown uniform, Dad reached up to straighten his army-issue dress hat. There is no audio of Dad joking with his bride or Mom’s responding laughter, but I can hear the voices I know by heart without the need for sound. Mom reached up to bring Dad’s hand back down to her side as she beamed with happiness in her pretty pale pink summer dress. They climbed into their blue two-tone 1955 Pontiac and drove off in the direction of a new beginning. No glancing back in the rearview mirror. Their eyes and hearts focused on the road ahead.

As they drove into adulthood, I instinctively reached toward them as if they could see me 60 years in the future, fixated by the history unfolding on my laptop screen. Amid my life built by the consequences of many choices, I witness my architects lay the first twigs of the nest I call home. This is the beginning of everything. This is the moment leading to who, what, and where I am today. I have seen pictures of my parents from their younger days dozens of times, but it was this instant, sitting on my couch gazing at a blurred, grainy image on a computer screen, that the angle of my perception tilted. Coming into view underneath the dark, bold label of PARENTS were the faded remnants of the word PEOPLE.

Uncle Sam drafted your dad into the army, and he was on a two-week leave when we got married by a Justice of the Peace in July of 1958. Look how skinny I was! Mom’s eyes are amazed by the memory of the footsteps she shared in synchronized harmony with Dad so long ago.

Her thoughts take her back to a simple wedding ceremony when there was no time for excess and transformation into a bridezilla. The honeymoon would have to wait. The newlyweds journeyed to Fort Hood, Texas, for Dad’s basic training. Military housing meant living in a cockroach-infested apartment building. Not the ideal threshold to cross with his new bride, but the choice was not voluntary. Two and a half months passed, and Mom became an expert marksman at killing cockroaches. Dad departed Ft. Hood on a year-and-a-half deployment to Friedberg, Germany, and Mom returned to Kansas to live with her parents. The honeymoon would have to wait a bit longer.

They would not hear the other’s voice for the next eighteen months. When