Any Shiny Thing - Life after 50

Midlife Fiction

Bad Advice for Boomers from Author Susan Jacoby

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My greatest fear is sleepwalking through my life – finding out at the end of it that I’ve made some ridiculous miscalculation and wasted a great gift. So it seemed like a smart idea to read “Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age” by Susan Jacoby. Bill Moyers, who I respect, had vouched for her.

The premise of “Never…” is that we Boomers are in denial about the fact that we will get old and die. If we were more realistic, we’d enjoy our lives more, feel more empowered, and save a lot of money on snake oil. She says it’s cool to see portrayals of 90-year-olds mountain-biking and skydiving, but it’s not realistic, and if we accepted what is really going to happen to us, we might be better prepared.

I liked the idea. I want to be prepared and use every ounce of my life to the best of my ability, so I read the book. I finished the book. And I have never been so depressed.

If you ever thought you might age and die gracefully, expect Jacoby to bludgeon your expectations with fact, figures, historical stats and anecdotes. She even clucks away the idea of old people becoming “wise” in exchange for our old age, asking why we would suddenly become wise if we’ve been average to stupid all our lives?

I kept reading, thinking that Jacoby would eventually get to the part where she distills all her negative findings into some kind of wisdom, some guide for gleaning the most from our lives in spite of all the reasons not to. The most she can muster is this concession to her nonfiction-writing friends, who urged her to end the book on an up-note:

“And that just about sums up my ‘positive advice’: live in a place that forces you to stay on your feet, and look for work wherever and whenever you can find it.”

At the end of this book I felt like stockpiling Vicodin. Possibly motivated by the tragic loss of her longtime companion to Alzheimers’, Jacoby set out to prove to the rest of us that we have little reason to hope, and she did a good job of making her case.

However, I think the beauty of humanity is that, faced with the knowledge of insurmountable odds, we still fling ourselves heroically against the dark unknown, choosing to believe that somehow, in some small way, we might triumph. Even if, as in this case, we know we will lose the final battle, we nevertheless choose to find meaning in the prosecution of this very personal war.

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Life Rules

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Older peeps sometimes think they’re starting to figure out this thing called LIFE, and then they’re tempted to make lists of the things that work. Our rules help us feel more secure, as if the world has a bit of logic to it after all.

My former boss and mentor once told me he had developed a list of rules or guidelines he found useful throughout his life. At the time I thought it was amusing. Old people did stuff like that (he was maybe 45?) However, now that I’m older, I would love to see it. Recently I asked him if I could please get a copy, but he professed he never constructed such a list (see Rule #5, below.)

My husband invented the “90/10” rule. After thirty years of selling cars for a living, he’s studied every kind of human behavior. He says people tend to over-buy for emotional reasons, but if they knew what they needed their vehicle to do 90% of the time, they’d be happy and save a lot of money. Maybe you don’t need 4-wheel drive if you only go on an occasional picnic in the hills.

90/10 means Mom needs to live where she can have a lot of friends, because she is a social butterfly, as opposed to immediate proximity to her doctor, who she doesn’t see that often. 90/10 means it’s a good day if I accomplished 90% of my to-do list. 90/10 means we should spend more money on education than prisons.

I’m not the only one who thinks about life rules. Gail Brenner, a middle-aged psychologist, blogs about it. So do Marc and Angel, a smart young couple who are eager to share their view of the world.

Here are some of my life lessons or rules. I hope you’ll contribute yours:

  1. Ask. Listen.
  2. Don’t make eye contact with maniacs. They’re looking for somebody to torture, and it doesn’t have to be you.
  3. Before you blow your top, consider the price you’ll have to pay later, because there is always a price.
  4. She who cares the most, loses. Sick but true.
  5. Cool politeness is a useful form of cruelty.

Do you have rules for living?

Kindle readers can email me at LMSpreen@Yahoo.com.

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It’s Her Life

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I spent several hours at Mom’s house today. I alternate weekends with my SoCal sister. We get Mom’s mail, water her plants, check her phone messages, and just generally make sure all is well while the place is empty.

The sky really was that blue today

Yes, it’s inconvenient (it’s a 90-minute drive), but it’s short-term because she has agreed to sell her house, and this time I believe she will follow through. I’m glad, but also heartbroken. To think of them – them! but it isn’t “them” anymore, is it? It’s just her – not living up there ever again. Well, I’ve held off the tears all day but I guess I can’t forever. Time moves on, and we all get old and die.

I feel conflicted. I want her to move down (“up” and “down” in this post relate to land elevation) by me, for all the logical reasons, and then all of a sudden, like right now, I don’t want her to move at all. I want her to risk it, to inconvenience and vex and terrify us with her dogged determination to stay as long as she possibly can in that house that represents that good part of her life when Dad was still alive, and then the part where as a new widow she reaped the benefit of having cultivated friends and hobbies for the alone-time she knew was coming. For me to yank her away from that – and then add in the heartbreaking, elegiac, mind-numbing beauty of the high desert – I can hardly bear the thought.

Poppies grow wild in her yard

It’s an end. I’d like to think it’s a beginning, too, but who can say? Mom is healthy and vibrant for almost-86, there’s no reason she can’t have a great ten more years. But will she have the courage to start over, to walk away from that place?

It hurts to think of losing it, because for ten years, this town was my home, too. It was largely a difficult time, when I worked harder than any human should have to, and delayed my dreams, and saved everybody.

The memories are bad and good.

As a young single mother, I took my son Danny (now 33) on his paper route some weekend mornings when the snow made it impossible for him to ride his bike. One morning I ran over his foot, but the deep sand saved him and after we got over the shock, we laughed. And then newspapers stopped hiring kids and kids stopped getting up early and riding bikes and getting their first paychecks.

On the other end of the scale, my previous marriage ended there. And Dad died up there! I wouldn’t live there now. Couldn’t. But I miss it.

When Dad and Mom build the house in the ’80s, they preserved the native juniper trees

But I digress. Today I worked my ass off, getting Mom’s house all spiffed-up for Amber to look at next Saturday. Amber might buy it. That would be nice, to know it’s still in the family. Amber is a dear friend of my step-daughter. So we would know the house that Dad and Mom built in the ’80s would be well cared for.

It was so beautiful up there today! I swear, when you live in such a place as the high desert, and especially on a spring day like today, you feel a sense of hope and optimism about rearing kids, raising your own food, having quiet and privacy and clean air and astounding skyscapes…but you have to agree to be away from the grownups, those people with good cars and nice landscaping and HOA rules and recycling. You have to cut yourself off from fancy restaurants and advanced culture and decent shopping.

But you can pretend that you’re living life on your own terms.

This picture hints at the mountains they can see out the back AND the front of the house

I imagine this is what people seek when they move to Idaho or Montana or the Dakotas. It’s like joining a monastery. All magic and no movies.

But again, I digress.

Mom’s coming home to my house tomorrow. I started out being excited, and I still am, but we’ve had a couple of conversations since the hospital said they’d cut her loose, and I realize I’m a bloomin’ amateur. I see that Mom’s looking for ways (already) to cut corners and speed things up; and now I understand it’s not about reveling in the relative luxury of my house as compared to a rehab hospital. It’s about my house as stepping stone to – you guessed it – her house. I think she’s just biding her time until she can go home. It started out being a month, and now she’s only planning to stay for two and a half weeks. We both talk about the need for therapy, and the therapist will have to visit my house, and we should set that up ASAP, but I sense Mom’s beyond that already. And my other sister, the one who hasn’t yet adapted to her new home near Canada, would do almost anything, including promising to take care of Mom, to be able to come south and thaw out for a couple of months.

You get a feeling for the loveliness of her back yard with this short video:

So I rearrange furniture at my house to make Mom comfortable, to encourage her to stay, but like an inadequately compelling acquaintance, I know I don’t have much pull. Because I suspect she’s going home for good, even if she doesn’t yet say it. And the tears and frustration and anger of her children and grandchildren are nothing compared to the incense of creosote and sage calling to her from the high desert.

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Mom’s Coming Home

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Mom in North Dakota, Sept. 2010

Mom has been given the go-ahead to move out of the rehab hospital and take the next step toward her recovery.

On Sunday she will move in with Bill and I for about a month. I am so excited I can’t stand it. I can’t believe she will be right here in our house, having easy access to company if she wants it, or a quiet room if she just needs a nap (you know hospitals are noisy and bright, 24/7. I can’t imagine how good it will feel to her, to be able to sleep in quiet and darkness). I’m eager to see her sit out on the patio and watch the trees bud out on the fairway. She’ll get to eat “normal” food (her word.)  Bill wants to grill fillet mignon for Sunday dinner to celebrate her arrival. I asked her if it was too heavy after the “S.L.O.P.” she’s been eating (that’s what the lady calls it), and she grinned and said, “I can just have a small piece.”

[Read more…]

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Working Past Retirement – by Choice

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Barbara Manning, Senior-preneur

I loved this article in Slate.com: Retirement Entrepreneurs. The article features some of the folks for whom retirement isn’t enough, in this senior community of 8,500 residents. Whether they need the money or a means to be of service, they’ve invented small businesses that benefit themselves and the community. It’s a fun and inspiring read.

Have a nice weekend!

Kindle readers can email me at Lmspreen@yahoo.com.

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Too Much Time on My Hands

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Remember that old song, Boomers? Here it is on YouTube if you’re feeling nostalgic.

My big sister and I sometimes smile that refrain to each other when we see a particular example of self-indulgence or nit-pickiness. The subtext is, Who has time for such foolishness?

I write about this today because of a column by Lynn Casteel Harper, a goodhearted woman, a chaplain in fact, who lives a mindful life. Lynn writes of her friend who, each year, peruses his vocabulary in search of words to excise. What a luxurious life he must live, overflowing with time for excessive contemplation.

I live in a 55+ community with lots of retired peeps, so I have a front row seat for this phenomenon. Some of us, no longer running to jobs, have too much time on our hands and lose our perspective. We develop new bad habits of insularity, tribalism, and obsession with our own needs.

I don’t mean to be flip about folks who have worked hard for years and earned a chance to rest. God bless ’em. And who can say how a person should live his or her life? I guess what bugs me is the preoccupation with one’s own needs when there is so much good waiting to be done in our community. We’re so blessed, being retired, but it’s the way of the mind to get accustomed to any situation in which we spend a lot of time. So we nitpick the effectiveness or attitude of the housekeeper, or the degree of sparkling purity of the Olympic-sized pool.

Lately, I’m getting used to spending part of every day at the rehab hospital where my mom is laid up. At first it seemed like a place to avoid, but I’m getting to know the workers and patients, and where you can get coffee or fresh ice for a pack, and where the fresh towels are so I can wash Mom’s hair because the staff just can’t. I definitely do not have time to ponder which word I might next excise from my vocabulary.

I’ve been guilty from time to time of preoccupation with myself, but as soon as I have too much time on my hands, life tends to snap my head around and I end up chastened. The next time I start doing too much navel-gazing, I’ll go volunteer in a rest home or something.

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