You Don't Have To Be Old to Appreciate This

Take a look at the wonderful website, Time Goes By; What it's Really Like to Get Older. It's a peek into a good future for those of you who are young, and an affirming and lively place for those of us who are a bit older. Among its features:

• A list of links to a collection of blogs by older people, which is something I'm slowly exploring
• A link to The Elder Storytelling Place
• This great quote from Jay Rosen: Blogs are little First Amendment machines
• An article on Age and John McCain, parts 1 and 2, that I hope you will read

Pharm Poultry

The other day Erikka mentioned her memories of our Drug Ducky in a comment on the post, Life in a Small New Hampshire Town, Remembered with Fondness . I thought I’d best clarify our connections with pharmacological fowl before anyone gets the wrong idea about the Zees.

Back when my mother was my current age and I was much younger and smarter, I expressed my concern to her about the number of pills she took every day. She more or less told me to mind my own business because without those pills she wouldn’t be alive and kicking, and then she shot out the door for another golf game.

As time went by, my doctor prescribed some pills for me, and Beez got a little prescription of his own. We kept them on the table in a little duck basket that became known as Drug Ducky. DD would “fly” over the table at suppertime, dispensing pills to each of us. The children (and their friends, including Erikka) were mildly amused at first, then patiently tolerant of our little ducky games.

Sadly enough, we slowly accumulated more prescriptions and outgrew the duck, so to speak, graduating to a much larger birdy basket called Goose Turk. The goose bore up well over the years under her ever-increasing burdens.

Fast forward to now, when both Beez and I have fallen victim to genetically pre-ordained cases of arthritis, in addition to our various other old people diagnoses. We are glad to take our pills and if my mother were still around I would certainly apologize for criticizing her drug regime. Having once again outgrown our fowl pill dispenser, we've devoted an entire cupboard shelf to our pill containers. The goose is retired and now we have opted for those grampy-style Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday dispensers, which have the added advantage of assisting with sometimes lapsing memories. (Did I take my morning pills? Did I remember to dust Drug Ducky?)

So, there you have it, the true story of the Drug Ducky connection in the Zee Family. My thanks to Beez for the title of this post and for all the other naming that goes on in our family.