spawned in a jeff hat

I want to be an old man when I grow up.

I want to be generous and creaky and the gala apple of small children who laugh and clap at my funny bald head.

I gotta be Opa gross-vater. I gotta have Pop-Pop's paw-paws. I gotta be a jeff hat mafioso in box-toe oxford shoes.

(I don't want the white Hanes socks and the puffy New Balance sneakers, but I guess I'll take those too.)

I want endearments to fall out of me like so much loose change, raining comfort and peace and security into the soft-eyed streets of the younger future world. I want a jar of change heavy as a bank truck on my kitchen counter, just waiting for the day.

I don't want my car keys to dangle out of my pocket, poked into my padded behind, but I'm sure they will. Let my infinite and articulate keys to the world jangle my arrival like a sharpness faded no longer can, as the rest of me rounds out, out, out.

I guess I want to be balding, no more worries of a summer shearing, and stop so smartly at a crew cut along the graying way.

I guess I want to be fading. I guess I don't want to remember, so much, anymore, except that I still do remember everything, because how could I ever forget everyone so precious to me, so diminutive below my bespectacled gaze? Every story, long-winded and otherwise, that makes me, shaking, double over the steering wheel or the young person standing next to me.

But I want to be a hip grandpa. I want to have clear polycarbonate frames and shades, not bifocals in wire. I want to be age-spotted, but hopefully not veiny. I want to have nice teeth, or if not nice at least a cute set of crooked ones that flash when I grin. I want to keep my posture as long as possible - who doesn't?

I want to take my little granddaughter to every particular part of the mall, because I know how to work a day-trip and still get home to my grandpa chair. I want to be a not-so-cranky regular at the diner. I want to tip well, well, well. I want to hold up the suspenders, instead of the suspenders holding up me.

I want to learn carpentry and electrical and plumbing and car mechanics, not because someone made me or because someone made me feel shame, but because it's only natural. Old men love Home Depot. Mostly, I love Hobby Lobby, but I could get there, too.

Here's the crucial kicker - I gotta be able to cook for myself. I do NOT want to be a helpless old man who orders his wife around because he never found out how to do any better. Let shame be a motivator, but I swear I will become even more than just master of the proteins sizzling on the grill.

(Buuut...right now I'm a young person with an eating disorder about the supermarket, sooo...the senior discount's not lying in wait for me juuust yet.)

Today, I lift people up. What I dream: becoming someone who's picked souls up, and set them back down again.

Someday, I'll be at the end of the arc; settled, but still rolling along, along, along.