Counting cars.....

I’m back!

One thing I’ve come to understand as I age to perfection is this: It’s my blog. It can take a vacation any time I want.

Used to be that I was compulsive about showing up. If I said I’d be there at 8:30, I was there at 8:25. If I committed to helping take tickets at the gate, I was going to be there. If I decided to write a blog about aging and post at least once a week, then it shall be done. Period. There was no wiggle room. Ever.

Not even for the freight train that insisted on blocking my way at 8:20. You know the one that has two locomotives pulling 1000 cars stacked with automobiles and tanks and other heavy things. Slow things.

My breathing would get heavy and my palms would become slick with sweat as I sat in agony waiting and counting cars, my anxiety level rising as the count clicked along the rails. The world was going to come to a screeching halt if I was not THERE at 8:30.

Or if the world began to spin and tilt a little crazily for me as the holidays approached and my blog posts got farther and farther apart, the blog police were going to reach out through cyberspace and slap me silly. Or take my blog space away from me.

Right?

Not so much. I know better these days.

The train stopped everyone else in their tracks, too. Including some of those who were supposed to be at the same meeting at 8:30. Plus, I have also learned that the one who gets anywhere on time usually stands there alone for about ten minutes until everyone else starts to wander in. Clocks don’t seem to mean as much as they used to. What was I so harried about?

Or as much as I like to believe you all are waiting for my next blog post with great anticipation, I know from six decades of experience—plus a few extra years tacked on now—that you are just as busy and frazzled as I am. And you don’t need me telling you how to get from one end of your day to another, anyway. Our time together is happy, I hope, but we each set our own course through life.

Oh, I can put things in a new, sometimes quirky, light for you and we can chuckle together on this mysterious journey, but in the scheme of things, you’re doing OK on your own.

So, about a month ago I realized I hadn’t had anything to say for a while. My first reaction, as happens to most of us, was to revert to familiar behavioral patterns. For an instant I was back at that railroad crossing and couldn’t get by all those cars.

 I caught myself, though.

So, here I am, just like that little paper clip guy that taps on the inside of your computer screen to help you out when you need it. Life has calmed down and it’s time to get across those tracks as we head into 2013. I hope we all have a good one.

“It's my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they're going. For them it's the journey itself and the people they meet along the way."

David Baldacci

Just a quick question......

One thing that growing older--aging to perfection, in other words--has done for me is that I allow myself the luxury of questioning. Everything.

I wasn't one of those kids who asked dozens of questions. Where does the blue come from in the sky? Why can't dogs talk? Where does God hang out when He's not busy?

I tended to accept everything around me, and to be honest, I don't think it was that I was afraid to ask. I don't think it even occured to me to question things that everyone else seemed comfortable with. My dad was the one who put on the Navy uniform in the morning, but all of us were in the military, too. That's how it works and if I recall, that whole system doesn't like being questioned by its masses.

One day the light bulb clicked on in my head, though (or maybe it went off and I was suddenly in the dark about everything), and the sacred was no longer safe with me. I can never quite put my finger on when this happened to me. When I think back, all I can come up with is that age 35 was a demarcation for me. I became a mother and shortly after that, I was no longer a wife. Multiple jobs (simultaneously) and caring for an infant alone don't translate to leading a quiet, tidy existance.

Around that same time, I had a professor who looked at the world through a lens that was angled the slightest degree away from the rest of the world's. I was amazed at how much that tiny angle could change life's entire viewpoint. It intrigued me. 

Whatever the impetus was, I began to question everything. Why? Who? How? When? And once you start, nothing is safe. I have questioned rules, laws, religious tenets.

And people are intimidated by this. To say the least. Maybe it's that they wish they had asked those questions themselves, though. Now they're resentful that I am the one who is having fun doing the asking instead.

But now I know how that professor must feel, almost as if the world has been knocked off its axis. Questions are one thing, but the answers are quite another.

God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back.
Gloria Steinem

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Unlocking the closet.....

I’m a writer. It only took me 45 years to speak the truth out loud. I don't know what I thought people would do when those words were floated out there for everyone to hear. Run for the exits?

I’ve been writing since I was ten. I wrote an article about the Blue Angels that was published in the base newspaper wherever my dad was stationed at the time. It all runs together after a while when you live the life of a nomad. But I do remember the feeling of pride in my gut as I saw my words --MY words--there in print for everyone to read. 

But I never took myself seriously as a writer, so no one else did, either. My emotions have always poured out on the page, giving a voice to my heart, but to think of myself in those terms was so foreign. Writers were reclusive hermits who couldn't support themselves. Weren't they? 

So, I followed the path of least resistance in college and became a teacher. For fifteen years I taught middle school social studies (not English, though....I even shied away from teaching about words), passing our country's lessons on to a generation that seemed not to care. Later, I dabbled in this and that, putting my strengths in organizational skills and training in the business world for another 15 years, but my heart wasn’t invested there. I was still scribbling behind closed doors, a closet scribe afraid of being outed.

It wasn’t until I attended a meeting of women active in business in my city that I finally accepted--admitted--my calling. During the requisite introductions, I repeated my normal job description like an automaton,  complete with awards and acknowledgments for work accomplished well. For some reason, though, all the years of denying myself, the person in hiding, demanded to be loosed, and my soul as a writer scrabbled at the closed door, sniffing along the crack near the floor. As the last woman finished, I took a deep breath and asked if I could amend my resume. 

All eyes turned and looked at me expectantly. And for the first time, I accepted my role in life: “Good evening, my name is Deborah and I’m a writer.”

Today I tell young people to hold tight to the seams of that one thing that they love to do. Clutch it to their hearts and don't let anyone steal it from them. And the world will try, that's for certain.  But we often lock the door to the closet ourselves.

It took me far too long to give voice to my passion, my very reason for being. Wasted years? I haven't worked that one out yet, because I also believe our paths shape us every step of the way. But it shouldn't take decades to break down the door. 

Chase down your passion like it's the last bus of the night. 

~Terri Guillemets

Room service, please!

The experience didn't quite match my expectations.

There is much in life like that, isn't there? I remember the first (and last) time I rode a ferris wheel. Never mind that I was in my 30s. Leaving the ground seems like such a foolish thing for people to do. I finally got up the nerve and climbed into that basket that insisted on rocking wildly no matter how still I sat, and then I was facing a lot of empty sky as the wheel turned and carried me upward. It was even worse when I was going backwards. At least I did it once.

Early this month I took a cruise to the Bahamas. I used to live in the Islands so that part wasn't new at all. Being on a cruise ship, though....all of that is relatively new to me. And this time I did "my thing I've never done before" by ordering room service for breakfast one morning.

I've never had enough money to do  things like that, so just the idea was extravagent to me. Have someone bring my meal to me in my room, and I can stay in my pink fluffy robe to eat breakfast? Unthinkable. But on a cruise, your food is included in the price of your ticket. As much of it as you want. Whenever or wherever you want it. Heaven.

So, we put the hanging order form on the door knob before going to bed the night before. We even specified what time we wanted it delivered in the morning. And, sure enough, a knock on the cabin door woke us, along with hot coffee and a plate of eggs and bacon. And pancakes. Plus orange juice and fresh fruit. There may even have been a bowl of cereal with milk. Don't you love it?

I took the food-laden tray from the perky young woman who delivered it, turned around, and stopped. There was no place to put it except on the bed. These cabins are tight. Doors open and one of us has to flatten against the wall. Forget getting any privacy while you're in the bathroom. There must be about 50 square feet in the entire space you get along with all the food you want. Of course, you don't spend a lot of time in your cabin on a cruise, but even still, I needed a place to lay that tray down before I dropped the whole thing on the floor.

The only flat surface available was the bed. Have you ever eaten a whole meal in bed before? Two people trying desperately not to tip the edges of the cups and bowls far enough to slosh all over the sheets, the ones we needed to sleep in later that night. Not the experience I had envisioned, that's for sure. 

There is a first time for everything, and I'm having fun seeking new adventures out each month. Aging to perfection means being willing to step outside my personal comfort zone, stretching that zone far beyond what I thought was even possible for me.

Some I have repeated. Some have become part of my life.

Room service won't be one of them.

Room service? Send up a larger room.

Groucho Marx

 

Just kidding.....

Life is such a kidder. 

A year ago, my life was filled with unexpected magic, marked with a new-found love of ballroom dancing and I had work that met both my creative needs and my "making a living and paying the bills" needs. And although I wasn't looking for it, romance tracked me down, sat on me long enough to get my attention, and convinced me that I could have a relationship without giving up my independence. The moon and stars had aligned perfectly in my world.

Aging to perfection has taught me many things. This lesson has been a tough one, although I should not have been taken aback.  I've been through it before. We all have. Just when you think you have everything under control, the car needs new brakes (or some other tricky mechanical part that always costs the rent money for the next two months) or the dentist looks at your X-rays and sighs way too loud. A call from your child's school brings bad news that needs to be addressed before things really spin out of control for the whole family. We sigh and forge ahead, doing the best we can, as we can.

For me, it all started to unravel around March. My dance lessons were taken away from me (along with a couple of thousand dollars that would have paid for those lessons through the end of this year), as well as a huge void where trust in someone else had resided. My work (the one that pays the bills) got so busy that my creative work was put on the back burner, along with some of my sanity. And the one who enticed me out of my single-hood fell ill last week with life-threatening issues, too soon, way too soon.

The low-grade depression is back, the one that I have lived with much of my life, the one that is now dancing with glee instead of me. The smile that had taken up center stage, not only on my face but within my soul, is pretty much gone. I can pull it out when people expect to see it, when the social occasion demands it, but it's a sad replacement for the real thing. How can it be otherwise when all that is left is sadness?

And then I remind myself: Now I CAN dance when before I was so intimidated and awkward that I wouldn't even try. I HAVE work that I love, at a time when so many have none at all. And love found me when I wasn't even looking. Nothing is promised to any of us, and I have so much.

Robert Frost said, "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” And it is up to us how it goes on. 

So, I choose to keep on dancing on my own terms, whenever I can. I choose to scratch my words onto the paper as best I can, whenever I can. And I choose to love as long as I can, however I can.

And I'm not kidding.

Disguises.......

Once you embark on the road to “things you’ve never done before,” you find yourself skipping faster and faster from one new experience to the next. Kind of like Dorothy, minus the red shoes. Unless the shoes are new, too.

My journey into the realm of unique experiences began nearly two years ago, after I realized I was stuck in the mundane. And scared witless about turning 60. Since then, my life has been transformed as I learned to dance, cruised to various ports, surfed the Atlantic, and rode a motorcycle, to name just a few  once-a-month adventures.

One surprising aspect of all of this has been that I initially started out struggling to think of activities I had never tried, but once my mind (and body) finally realized I was serious, my world opened itself to the possibilities.

Last month ended with Halloween, a “holiday” I have never been particularly fond of. As a kid, it seemed my first major cold of every winter showed up around this time of year, and I had to stay home while everyone else went out begging for candy. Any costumes I had were assembled from items on hand around the house. I remember dressing like a “hobo” a few times, complete with dirty face and tattered clothes. A stick with clothes hanging on the end completed the outfit.

My all-time favorite costume was the year I transformed myself into a Boston fern, but that was hand-made, too. A store-bought outfit had always been out of the realm of my experience.

Until this year.

Halloween happened to fall on the same night a friend of mine sings in a hole in the wall bar each week, so a costume party was planned and the hobo thing is no longer politically correct, right? Without even plotting and planning a “new thing” for October, I stopped in at the costume store that popped up in a vacant store- front near my house.

For the first time in my life, I bought a Halloween costume. I transformed myself into Guinevere, complete with draping sleeves and flowing velvet train. Not only was the costume a first for me, but my escort became Lancelot for the evening. I was half of a couple, something that hasn’t been my experience often, either.

As I share this story with you, I’m cruising along the coast of Florida, with yet another new experience in the record book. They just keep coming faster and faster. But you’ll have to wait a while to hear that one.

Happy Halloween!

Hope and a lot of change.....

Let’s talk about change. Not necessarily hope. Just change.

The kind that collects in the bottom of a woman’s purse or a man’s pockets.

Periodically I empty all of the coins from my wallet into a smaller change purse I carry so that my wallet doesn’t look like a chipmunk preparing for a bad winter. I’m not sure what I’ve gained, though, since all that metal is still weighing my shoulder down. It does seem to help for some reason that I can’t explain, though.

Pennies have their own repository in a ceramic dish in my kitchen. When they start falling out of the dish onto the counter, I gather them up and make a trip to that noisy machine inside the door of my local grocery store that whirs and sorts and counts and then spits out bills at me. Who said a penny has no value?

Here’s the thing I’ve been pondering, though. I’ve noticed that “older” shoppers (certainly older than me) must really hate change. There are many levels to this statement—many don’t react well to new ideas or ways of doing things or they haven’t taken the plastic off their furniture in decades—but let’s focus here on the coins that are the inevitable result of buying things. That kind of change. It’s just going to happen.  You give someone a $5 bill for an item that rings up at $4.27 and boom—there it is. Seventy-three cents to add to the collection in your wallet or pocket.

But seniors must hate the stuff beyond all reason, because the next time they step up to the counter to pay, here’s how it goes. Their purchases total $16.63, but rather than hand over the $10, the $5, and 2 one dollar bills, they start digging in their wallets or pants to come up with exactly sixty-three cents to add to the $16 they have begrudgingly pulled out. (We won’t even discuss the oft-seen option of attempting to ferret out the $1.63 entirely in change. My heart won’t take it.) And heaven forbid they use the $20 bill they have hidden in there. Not going to happen.

In the meantime, we all stand patiently (or not so much) behind them, watching this archaeological dig, as the clock tick-tick-ticks away our perpetually disappearing time. And maddeningly, all this searching sometimes ends with, “Oh, here!” as they toss bills on the counter anyway. They give up the quest, and we all sigh in relief.

Maybe legal tender for those over a certain age should ONLY be paper money. No change allowed at all for them. I’m sure merchants wouldn’t mind, especially if they round up to the next dollar when they see white hair approaching. None of us would mind, either.

That would be a welcome change, wouldn’t it?

We can always hope.

 What I like most about change is that it's a synonym for 'hope.' 

Linda Ellerbee