"Aunt Carol" by Mista Cookie Jar

I've got kids, so I've got kid CDs, and they're not really so bad as you might think--I came late to the game, never had Barney or Raffi, straight into Ralph's World and Laurie Berkner. And there are definitely songs that make me happy from a disability perspective. But this one just came across my desk, by a friend-of-friends, and it's not like anything else I've run into:



Visual description: Mista Cookie Jar, the singer, is a young Asian-American man with long hair and a mustache; he's wearing a hat and floral shirt. The video shows a birthday party for Carol Ware, an older white woman who uses a power chair. There are a lot of children and other older folks too, and there are scenes of the singer doing Carol's nails, marveling at her sunshine tattoo, and generally having a grand time.

The singer has posted all his lyrics online at his website (yeah!); find "Aunt Carol" in the lyrics menu (I can't seem to link to them directly, but they're there). (UPDATE: Katja put the direct link in comments.)

What I like here: Carol Ware is a real person, and the YouTube video label explains this. The singer has known her for years and this song is a genuine, specific tribute. He shares in the lyrics that she was a kindergarten teacher, that she likes Elvis, that she likes her coffee with Splenda, that she smokes (deal with it, she's an adult), that "we call her Aunt Carol, you can call her Ms. Ware," and that "she's a masterpiece from head to toe." All with a fun celebratory tone, and with Carol's participation and the participation of her fellow nursing-home residents. When so many kids live far from their older relatives and may not feel drawn to seniors, this song has a chance to change minds, and will definitely spark some smiles.

ETA: There's also a "making of the video" slideshow.

Byatt on aging as "noticing one's body more"

One of the books I read on vacation was AS Byatt's Sugar and Other Stories (Vintage International 1992), in part because I find there's great luxury in reading a book of short stories one after the other, like eating a whole can of Pringles (without the crumbs). Byatt's a bit chilly and grim for the heart of summer, for the Bay of Naples, but it's a slim volume and it's been on my TBR shelf for a while.

Quite a number of these stories are about women and aging--a theme found elsewhere in Byatt's short stories (see, for example, "A Stone Woman" and "The Pink Ribbon," in Little Black Book of Stories Vintage International 2003). Here, perhaps the most haunting portrayal of aging women's bodies is "In the Air," where we find this description of the main character:

Mrs. Sugden had become a walking barometer. Her hip joints knew when the temperature or the pressure was about to drop. Her sinuses ached was the clouds closed, before the clouds closed. A kind of lightning-conductor ran down her thickened neck into the pads of her shoulders and down her upper arms. I have my health, that's the main thing, she told people[...]. But having one's health didn't mean that one didn't daily notice one's body more, as a nuisance, that was, as an impediment, not as the springing thing it had once been. There were things between it and the outer world, like the horny doors she had observed in childhood on hibernating snails. She didn't see so far or focus so fast. She noticed her hips, on the Common, and had to make a real moral effort to see the hooded crow, or the hovering kestrel. (162)

Mrs. Sugden feels vulnerable in her aging body as she takes daily walks with her dog--she thinks through the various scenarios of a possible (inevitable, she supposes) attack upon her. One day, she walks with a blind woman who has a guide dog, and briefly feels the safety in that companionship, but only briefly. (The blind character, Mrs. Tillotson, explains about the "terrible, very frightening" adjustment period when she gets a new guide dog, and the way she uses routine to manage independently. She chides a character who says he "admires her." Still, her character seems to function mainly as confirmation that Mrs. Sugden's media-hyped fears about a lone woman's safety are justified, whether or not a woman can see the warning signs.)

The taut sense of fear in this story has been noted elsewhere, but it's the detailed description of Mrs. Sugden's physical experience of aging that I found most striking. (This story is also discussed in Jane Campbell, AS Byatt and the Heliotropic Imagination [Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2004]: 95-96. Gotta love Google Books some days.)

Cloud Atlas

Been reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (Random House 2004), a novel that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year. This passage (pp. 360-361) caught my eye, as a commentary on disability (on ageism particularly, but the observation works more generally). Timothy Cavendish has been tricked into surrendering himself to the care of a nursing home, and is looking for a way to escape, while longtime residents Ernie and Veronica try to discourage his solo effort as futile:

"Scouting," Ernie answered, "for his one-man escape committee."
"Oh, once you've been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn't want you back." Veronica settled herself into a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. "We--by whom I mean anyone over sixty--commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman's memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight."
...
She smiled fondly. "Just look at the people who come here during visiting hours! They need treatment for shock. Why else do they spout that 'You're only as old as you feel!' claptrap? Really, who are they hoping to fool? Not us--themselves!"
Ernie concluded, "Us elderly are the modern lepers. That's the truth of it."