Turning mirrors to the wall......

Here's a question for you: If you hang a mirror with the glass toward the wall, will it reflect backwards, too?

Oh, stop laughing. I'm serious. I'm asking because some parts of my life today look so much like a very long time ago.

Remember when we were teenagers and we had finally made contact with that hot new crush from school? Maybe a few dates later the two of us needed a more private place to go, because....well, you know why, right? Holding hands and a quick kiss on the front porch after a movie just wasn't going to satisfy us any more. We needed some ALONE time.

But mom and dad simply insisted on being home, and things like closed bedroom doors with a non-family member of the opposite gender or staying out all night weren't even part of the cultural conversation at the time.

So, we made out in cars, both front and back seat, or went to a friend's house after school where maybe there was less supervision. Sometimes we really pushed the envelope of the era (and believability) and lied about spending the night at that friend's house and never went near the place at all.

Such was the life of a teenager in heat.

Well, deja vu just sauntered into the party! Those of us who have worked our way through marriages in a variety of ways--divorce or death (the widow/widower kind, not murder, although it might have been merited)--find ourselves single after 60 again. And if you younger readers out there think that all that hand holding/kissing/making out stuff is over after 60, you are in for a lot of fun when you finally get here.

But there's a strange little crack in the mirror. If you recall from previous columns here, many of us are also taking care of elderly parents. Or returning adult children. So, many of us are cramming our clothes--and selves-- into smaller and smaller spaces in our own homes to make way for all these people.Which has snatched our privacy away, as surely as if we were......teenagers!

We can't throw these people out. We don't WANT to throw them out. We just need some privacy again.

Somewhere. Anywhere. It's like that mirror turned to the wall is seeing the past and bringing it forward into the present.

I really don't know what to do with that mirror, but I do know that hotels get really expensive. And people still want to know where we went when we get home.





It's hard to just kinda get some privacy and do your own thing.

Shaun White





Mirror, mirror on the wall......

I wake up sometimes and simply don't recognize my landscape any longer. Just when I had learned who peers back at me from the mirror every morning, strange happenings began obscuring that image and then started to make silly faces behind my back, startling me out of my new-found complacency.  Who would have believed we still have so much to learn at this stage of life?

I guess that's my purpose here, though. To alert all of you, especially my younger readers and friends, about what might lie ahead for you, too. All these surprises have been  a huge shock to my system, so I'm passing the lessons on to you. No charge, of course.

A few years ago I finally looked into that mirror, square on, and admitted that daily face-to-face contact with a partner doesn't work for me. It just doesn't. And I had embraced that reality, at first with some trepidation, and then I threw my arms around it with joy. I was free!

I had my work, my dance lessons, and my friends. A life lived with fullness and gratitude, one that fit me exquisitely. The quiet aloneness that once oppressed me enveloped me instead, hugging me with comfort and beauty, my time my own to fill or not, no questions to answer about timetables or destinations.

It worked for me and I loved it.

But many of us, whether paired or not, are facing a new challenge, one that didn't penetrate our awareness with any reality until it was our reality. Human that we are, we think it will never happen to us. Until it does.

My parents were inseparable. And then my dad's mind slowly fractured, piece by piece, until his essence was simply.....gone. His body continued to occupy the recliner in their living room, but he truly was not there. Finally, his body gave up, too, and my mother--his partner for nearly 70 years--was alone for the first time in her life. Ever.

What to do?

But you know, don't you? Doing the right thing in life tests us, challenges our comfortable reality, forces us to straighten our spine and then adjust that mirror to a new angle.

Maybe the lesson is to enjoy that reflection every morning of our lives. Accept where we are and be grateful that we are anywhere at all. And then be ready to tilt that mirror at a moment's notice.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”

Maria Robinson



Oh, sleep, knits up the ravell’d sleave of care.....

The little things we enjoy in life transform themselves into epic events when we lose them.

            Like sleep. I understand all about hormone imbalances that occur as we age, along with increased levels of stress over getting older in a society that offers no honor or value to the “elderly.” None of that matters, though, when my eyes pop open at 1 AM and I realize at 2 that I’m going to struggle with regaining that elusive state of sleep I fell out of without warning. Falling asleep is normal. Falling awake, and staying awake, when your eyes are still gritty and sore with exhaustion….that’s something else indeed.

            At 3 I decide to read for a half hour and then try again. Nope. At 4 I decide I might as well get something done so I fold laundry or empty the dishwasher or some other mundane task that makes me sleepy during the day….but not in the tiny hours of the morning when I want that to be so. At 5, it’s almost time to get up anyway, so I just drop into my day and off I go. Of course, at 6 my eyes won’t stay open, and that’s the joke my body is playing on me. Not funny.

            I’ve slept in my recliner, at the other end of the bed, on the floor, even outside on my patio. I’ve sampled enough herbal tea to float an ocean liner. I have tried over the counter sleep concoctions that make my heart pound and my body go on overdrive. I've soaked in my hot tub until sleep is just there within my reach, my consciousness drifting a bit in the heat....until I climb back into bed.

            I started experiencing insomnia to various degrees in my 40s when I was still teaching. Try managing, much less teaching, a roomful of 13 year olds on 2 hours of sleep. Add to that the fact that my own child was born when I was 35 years old, so I was chasing a toddler around……as a divorced single parent. I get tired thinking about it now, coming up on 20 years later.

            One would think that I would have fallen into bed at night and pass out. And some nights I did, I’m sure. But there were more and more occasions when I would wake up for no apparent reason and stay awake until it was time to start all over again. Talk about stress.

            Today, my life has become purposefully less stressful. Some of the changes were the results of the natural progression of things: My daughter is an adult and on her own. Other changes were made to reconfigure my life into something more workable for me: I made the difficult decision to walk away from a tenured position as a teacher with benefits. I started my own business, still educating others in topics I think are critical. Most importantly, though, I am doing what I should have been doing since I was a young adult: I’m writing. The stresses (and there will always be some) are manageable and of my own choosing. That’s important. We can handle the difficulties in our lives when we feel we have control over them.

            Physically, I’m probably in the best shape of my life. (Well, maybe not when I was 25, but I can hardly remember that far back so it doesn’t count.) I exercise often and strenuously, and I’m adding some new types of movement to my repertoire. Emotionally, I think I’m healthy, too. I love my life the way it is and I am better at expressing myself honestly to those who matter around me.

           

My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can. (Cary Grant)

            The trick is in occupying yourself the BEST you can, no matter your age. Perhaps, then, sleep can return as a "simple" thing in our lives.

Do you need a writer? You need ME! Visit http://www.deborahhansen.com/ for more information.

Trains running us down.....

Remember when we were in school and we had to learn to read timelines in some really interesting class, like history or geography? Time meanders along that line from left to right, the years and centuries passing easily, no bloodshed or angst along the way. Just like real life, right?

Oh, I don't think so. Hold up there a minute, OK? Our perspective changes daily anyway, but as we age we find that we're viewing our personal timelines from right to left, looking back along that line of bad decisions, joyous occasions, and just plain stupidity that have played out in our lives. The individual events on our personal timelines are different, of course, but I bet most of us over the age of 50 can look back along our histories and pinpoint places where we wish we had exercised a bit of good judgment or intelligence instead of...well, what we did.

I've become so aware of this, especially as my daughter matures and makes her own way. We see our kids headed like trains toward a stop on their timeline that looks a lot like ours did, and we want to throw ourselves on the tracks, stopping that engine any way we can in order to save them the heartbreak and trouble we experienced. We might have even tried once or twice, and sometimes they listen. More often not, though.

There is this human learning curve that seems to dictate that we tote around our own timelines, absolutely sure that WE won't fall into that trap, you know, the one that older people warned us about? Get out of the way, Mom, I love you but you didn't know what you were doing. THAT won't happen to ME, so thanks, but I'm staying on this track and I'll call you when I get there.

Unfortunately, THERE usually ends up looking exactly like a station I got stuck in once, too. And when they call, they need help to get the heck out of there. The locomotive ran them over and chugged on ahead without them.

In our culture, older people are not seen as having anything worthwhile to add to our lives. They're used up and worn out, sitting in corners, tolerated, or worse yet, ignored. When they talk, we nod and smile and discount them.

You notice I'm suddenly including myself in the WE. Because we were no different, were we? We refused to accept that someone else, and certainly not an aging parent or mentor, might have been able to save us from hurt and pain and expense. Intelligence skipped your generation, Dad, so thanks but I'll be on my way.

Until our perspective shifts to viewing that timeline from the far end of the darn thing, backwards through time already passed. Then, we find ourselves beginning a lot of sentences with, "If only I'd listened........" And the train moves on down the tracks.

I never expected that. I didn't aim for that. All I wanted was to get some nice pictures of trains at night.

O. Winston Link