Spare me These Senior Moments

So one Facebook friend Rita recommends a show about the death penalty she saw in California called “Dying While Black and Brown” when she finds out that their tour is coming to Boston. Or rather Cambridge, Harvard University to be exact. I “share” it on FB and ask if anyone wants to join me. My writer friend Yleana does and we make a plan to meet early (5:30) to get good seats for the 6:00 show.

I carefully copy out the address from my datebook onto a card, pack a small bottle of tea – I think one of my pills gives me dry mouth, and decide to take the bus instead of struggling with parking among the 10 foot tall snow banks in crowded Harvard Square. I check my bus app and there’s one coming in 3 minutes – at 4:58. I rush out, lock the door, buzz for the elevator and remember that my note with the address is sitting on my desk. I retrace my steps back down the long hall, unlock, relock, and hustle like crazy to make the bus and I do.

I get bus sick as always and am not sure where to get off although I’ll know the building when I see it. The bus driver, a young woman, answers my question by saying that its right in the middle of two bus stops, but not to worry. She stops quite literally on the pedestrian cross-walk, blocking both lanes, and tells me to cross in front of her. I realize how old I must look to warrant such sweetness.

It’s the Harvard Law School building – quite huge – but I have the details on my note and I’m never afraid to ask directions (one of the few perks of not having an attached dick), but something else is going on in that hall. I wander, can’t figure it out. I call Yleana, who is supposed to be arriving about now. “Oh dear,” she says. “It’s not tonight. It’s next Friday.”

I had, of course, quite carefully written all the details into my datebook – only a week too early.

There are big delays with all public transportation this winter. Eventually the bus comes to take me back home. I open my door at 6:30. Ninety minutes of a shortening life have just been wasted on this brain blip, this schedule hiccup, this Fail. I don’t have 90 minutes to squander. I won’t be able to go next week because I’ve promised to speak to Boston University social work graduate students about the challenges of LGBTQ aging.