10 June 1951
I am sixty-two this morning. I thank Big Mama for that: it was Sunday in Detroit, and early, and as was the case in those days, they shooed Raven away and told him to go get a cup of coffee and a slice of pie.
Raven told me many years later it was apple pie, with a slice of cheese, the way he liked it, and he did not get to finish it since I shouted out my first breath in this world just as he was sitting down.
I was a home-project that she and Raven had been working on for three years, with some anxiety to have their first child, and succeeded with mixed results on June 10, 1951.
I wandered out on the deck this morning to see what the day might bring. The roar of the cicadas has died down as they complete their mass spawning and burrow back into the earth. Their noise is supplanted by the roar of the run-off in the two streams that border the fence line of Refuge Farm. The physical impact of the run-off from what is left of the tropical storm is palpable, and the new awning stayed up even in the gale that soaked me last night as I sat out, pensively accepting the lighting and thunder and ultimately the sideway pummeling of the rain.
Seems a long time ago this particular story began- a little sepia toned, like an ancient postcard. When I came inside, soaked to the skin, I realized I am eligible for reduced Federal benefits as of this morning, though why they call this an “entitlement” program, I don’t know. Uncle Sugar has been razoring a slice of every paycheck I ever earned since the first one, back in 1966.
He has been slicing with abandon ever since. I know what he is taking at the moment, and if I add it up through the 40-odd years I have been paid for my presence at a wildy varying number of places doing an astonishing number of things, it amounts to a pretty penny.
I would like those pretty pennies to be mine again, selfish, I know, but had I known I was going to last this long I might have been in better shape to deal with it. I don’t mind- the safety net has to be maintained, after all, and it is part of the social contract, whether I would have supported it or not. It is like Kilamanjaro: it is just there.
And of course it is not as simple as that, since the famous “lock box” of Social Security is a fantasy spun periodically from the Congress, and my pennies went to pay others, as we in turn hope to be paid from those who are entering the diminished workforce.
In that regard, I will have to rely on the kindness of my children and yours, and their ability (or willingness) to continue working. I am going to think about whether to grab what I can before the system fails, or is reformed to something rational. We live a lot longer these days, after all, and there will be fewer people ‘contributing’ to the Trust.
‘Contributing.” Hahaha.
I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation on what I have contributed to my share of the social contract; based on the latest communication from the Social Security Administration, and not counting for constant dollars and the ravages of inflation, if I filed for benefits today, I would be working on my share of the contributions for about twenty years before I get to the Red column in Uncle Sugar’s leger.
That would be 82, by my calculations, about the time Raven started to check out of rational thought, and a sort of indication of genetic shelf-life. I wonder if I will hear the cicadas again? They will be back, regular as clockwork, after their seventeen year nap.
That is for sure- like death and FICA taxes, but of course, nothing else is.
Nothing whatsoever.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com