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.
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.
