Category Archives: Generations

Gratefulness

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Today is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States of America. It is a day when we remind ourselves of all the things we can be grateful for. As many of you know, my Mother passed away last month. She was 86 years old and married to my Father for 66 years. I am grateful to have been brought into this world by such a wonderful person. I am also grateful for the opportunity of staying with my Father, in the home in which I grew up, for much of the time since her passing. I know he is grateful for the 66 years of married life and is missing his life-long companion more than words can tell. For all of you who have lost loved ones, my hope is that, as you progress through these life transitions, you can feel and express your gratefulness for everything they brought into your lives.

At 2Young2Retire, gratefulness abounds. In addition to being grateful for all our family and friends we are grateful for the opportunity to serve those experiencing life’s transitions. I am also grateful for the kind thoughts, cards, and emails coming my way over the past few weeks and look forward to continuing our interactions. Happy Thanksgiving!

Paul G. Ward

Conversations on Aging

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At 2Young2Retire, we are all about conversations that matter in the second half of life. Changing the conversation around aging is one of Karen Sand’s missions and her recent post on the multiple conversations on aging is well worth a read. Karen talks about conversations with ourselves, with our own generation, and with multiple generations. Convening these conversations is the work of 2Young2Retire facilitators. To read Karen’s article, go to: http://bit.ly/15djyDd

Reflections on a Sobering Day

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We are visiting family in another part of the country and having a lively conversation about David Eagleman, the neuroscientist, and how a childhood accident left him with an insatiable curiosity about Time.  Eagleman had fallen off a roof and survived, sans most of the cartilege in his nose, but having experienced during the fall a slowing down of time that would shape who he was and would become.  Many accident victims report something similar, and the suggestion is that time is perhaps far more malleable than we suppose, or perhaps it is just our perception of time that is squishy, or possible there is no difference between time itself and how we perceive it.

Before long, the older people around our brunch table were inevitably drawn to memories of 9/11, the day we Americans got a horrific reminder we were not invulnerable from the violence that many other people around the world live with on a daily basis.   This conversation seemed oddly related to the previous one in my mind, because it has become almost cliche to note that time also stood still for many of us on that September morning.  We remember with astounding clarity where we were when we first learned of the attack.  Some were watching their favorite morning talk shows, others were at work, others were away from home (like us) on vacation.  We remember who we were with, who notified us, and when we got the news, exactly the moment we became fused into one nation, watching the horror unfold — like exceptionally well-done special effects, noted someone — then repeated and repeated throughout the morning in what has since become a media tic.

What I recalled of that time, with something of a sinking feeling, was how quickly the event itself — once we became exhausted by those awful first images — got lost in translation as we attempted to got understand how this could possibly have happened to us.   Why do They hate us?  we wanted to know.  Who could have foreseen the macabre celebrity many indulged in, claiming a relation or friend or friend of a friend among those who perished.  Six degrees of separation bringing us all together first in a sense of national unity rarely seen since, then swiftly dissipating into something less admirable.

I wonder how many of the families of 9/11 really want this annual reliving of their terrible losses, culminating in this anniversary?  Are they eager to revisit the moment when, like for victims of an accident, time literally stood still.  And after which, they would feel themselves permanently changed.  There are a few among the families of those who died willing to say they are exhausted by the annual rituals of mourning.  How courageous they are to declare what many of us are thinking: Enough.

There were children at our table today, listening quietly.  After awhile, a 13 year old echoed this:  Wasn’t it time to move on, he asked us, his elders.  If we keep on reliving this every year, the terrorists will have won.  Something to ponder on this sobering anniversary.

AD(H)D World

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As grandparents and elders, we should be troubled by the startling rise in developmental disorders among children today.  Autism and ADHD have become commonplace — one in every 110 children for autism; nearly one in 10 children in the United States aged 4 to 17 years for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) — and so are kids on meds and in special education.  Some experts point to better diagnostics for learning disorders (LD) in general, but I’ve wondered what role our speedy, information-saturated culture plays.  What might be the effect of  food additives, dyes, artificial sweeteners, or just too much sugar in everything we eat?

Yesterday, I had two experiences — a film called Bag It! and an NPR program (Our Toxic Love Hate Relationship with Plastics) — that make a strong case that the epidemic of learning disorders we are seeing in our young is due to exposure to chemicals, in utero and in infancy.  The chemicals in plastics, that is, specifically phthalates or plasticizers, ubiquitous in toys, food packaging, hoses, raincoats, shower curtains, vinyl flooring, wall coverings, lubricants, adhesives, detergents, nail polish, hair spray and shampoo, baby care products and, until recently, baby bottles.

We are from birth to death, literally saturated in plastics: see Five Gyres, if you still believe that when our plastic bagged garbage is picked up from our curb or dumpster, it goes ‘away.’ As one interviewee in the film said, There is no away.

As grandparents, we need to be concerned, very concerned, and we need to decide what we personally are going to do about it.  You might start by watching Bag It! , now part of the Whole Food Film Festival, Do Something Reel, showing this month in celebration of Earth Day, April 22, nationwide.

In another lifetime, I helped promote plastics professionally. You could say this is by way of a small mea culpa.

‘Tis the Day After Christmas…

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and through our abode,

there lingers a fragrance of cinnamon and cloves.

No stockings were hung here —

the children all grown,

gone to in-laws and ski slopes

with children of their own.

We’re done with the shopping

and decorating trees,

over the holiday stress

that once brought us to our knees.

But one habit remains

though many have flown,

the baking of bread

with the warm taste of home.

So bring on the butter, brew a fresh pot of tea,

’tis the Day After Christmas for you and for me.

One of my favorite memories of this year was a short period of teaching creative writing to elders at a retirement community.  The day I got the assignment, I also found a copy of Judith Viorst‘s wonderful Unexpectedly Eighty: And Other Adaptations at the library.  So I brought it in with me to a session and read the last poem in the collection: After Giving the Matter A Great Deal of Thought. Then, I asked the participants to write that line on the top of a piece of paper and continue on for about ten minutes.  We had such a good time with this exercise, no one wanted the session to end, and I have all kinds of new ideas about doing more of this work.  Creativity bubbles up wherever it can.  You just have to give it space and make it welcome.  Try this exercise for yourself.  It’s a great year-ender.

Here’s a post-Christmas gift for you lovers of poetry who have yet to subscribe to Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac:  click here.   I couldn’t live without this daily reminder that, as William Carlos Williams puts it: “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

The Striking French

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Driving to the first of two yoga teaching gigs yesterday, I listened to a report on NPR that Paris was all but shut down by unions striking against the proposed rise of retirement age from — get this — 60 to 62.   Flights were disrupted and even the Eiffel Tower was closed to tourists.  A few weeks ago, when the movement (if one can call it that) for status quo was just heating up, I heard a couple who had just turned 60, offer an argument you won’t hear on this side of the Atlantic so much these days, that they some how deserve to retire.  They felt they had paid into the pension funds and were fortunate that their pensions would not be threatened by the new law, if indeed it is passed.  In the background, one could hear the voices of their grandchildren for whom they offer care one afternoon a week because they enjoy it.

Contrast this to the desire of most Americans — I’m one of them –to continue to work and not only out of financial necessity, although that is certainly a factor given the sorry rate of saving and investments of many older adults.  The new MetLife Mature Market Institute Study finds “startling” the news that many Early Boomers plan to remain in the labor market.  But if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know that we believe that money is not the only driver for the choice to continue to work.  We happen to think we will remain healthier for it — that alone is a good way to give back.  And unlike our French cohorts, we take a certain pride in continuing to contribute actively to society and to the well-being of future generations, including our own grandchildren, if we have them.   I admire many things about French culture — the food, the art, the joie de vivre, and the fact that the welfare of children is a national priority.  How they will reconcile childcare costs with an aging population that wants to be supported for 25 or more years is the question.  Send in the grownups.

Generational Warfare

Sweating the Big Stuff

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Sound familiar?  You are (blissfully) unaware of the aging process until one morning, you are standing at the bathroom mirror brushing your teeth as usual, and whoa! this strange person stares back at you.  Your eyes may be as sharp as ever, the expression in them the same, but your features seem to be slouching in a Southerly direction.  (French women seem to enjoy special dispensation from these facts of life.)

For some folks, women mostly but not exclusively, this new old face is enough to send ripples of panic through the whole body.  Before you know it, you’re Googling anti-wrinkle creams, Botox treatments, and/or face lifts.  (Yes, I admit I went as far as to check out the non-surgical options, see The Perricone Prescription.  The good news: it is based on an anti-inflammatory diet and boosts one’s general health and well-being.)   If you are past your fifth decade, you may personally know women (and maybe a few men) of a certain age who have submitted their tissues to the surgeon’s knife.  While I respect the right to make this choice, ‘nip-and-tuck’  isn’t in my future.

Of course, I’m not in the entertainment business where my wrinkles could directly affect my livelihood.  And I don’t plan to run for political office, ditto.  If Sarah Palin looked like Golda Meir, goes one recent joke, would we even be having this conversation?  The truth is, whatever we do cosmetically, we will all end up looking something like Golda Meir (or Mike Wallace) if we’re lucky enough to live that long.   But honestly, would you choose youth and beauty over a reputation for doing good work; passionate support of worthwhile causes; spreading joy; being trustworthy; being a good parent/grandparent/friend or any number of other qualities you value?

In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a baby is born old and grows younger each year until he ceases to exist.  The tragedy was that he was moving through life in the opposite direction from everyone else, including the love of his life.  It wasn’t so much an compelling story-into-film as a cautionary tale.   In the world of the imagination, maybe we can fool Mother Nature.  In real life, not so much.  The aging face that looks back at you by dawn’s early light is a reminder that it’s time.  Time to cultivate a sense of self deeper than your skin.  If we — especially we women, weren’t so caught up in how the world sees and judges us (our faces, our clothes, our homes), we might be putting more attention on things like, let’s see, the epidemic of violence against women; the threats to our basic rights to clean water, air, education, health care; what kind of world we appear to be leaving to our grandchildren.  We could be sweating the Big Stuff.

V-Day: A Movement to End Violence Against Women and Girls

The Center for Public Integrity

Hands Across the Sands

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Maybe you don’t think of yourself as someone who joins a rally in the street brandishing a hand-lettered sign and shouting  slogans.  Me either.  Whenever I get an email alerting me to a social action that requires me to actually show up, I find myself wondering if my physical presence really matters, say, at a rally with members of my congregation in support of affordable housing in my community.  I question whether I really need to drive down to Senator Bill Nelson’s office when I could sign a petition on line or fax or call him.  Not that those things aren’t important, too.  Then I remember what Gandhi and Martin Luther King accomplished by being willing to put themselves at risk, and I feel ashamed of myself for even hesitating.

There are some things that cry out for organized, apolitical action and the BP spill and all that it represents — corporate greed and malfeasance, hubris, folly — is one.  If you live anywhere near a beach, particularly in Florida, you can take a stand.  Chances are excellent that someone is organizing a  local Hands Across the Sands event on June 26.  As the name suggests, it will be a human chain lining the beaches at noon for 15 minutes, to express opposition to offshore drilling and support of clean, renewable energy.

The movement actually started in Florida on Saturday, February 13, when thousands of Floridians representing 60 towns and cities and over 90 beaches joined hands to protest the efforts by the Florida Legislature and the US Congress to lift the ban on oil drilling in Florida’s waters.  Florida’s Hands Across the Sands event was the largest gathering in the history of Florida united against oil drilling.  Thousands joined hands from Jacksonville to Miami Beach and Key West to Pensacola Beach.  On June 26, we’ll be at Juno Beach, wearing this DYI T-shirt.

If you’re landlocked, you can organize or get involved in a different kind of action.  Here is a list of other volunteer opportunities connected with the BP spill.

Other ways to get involved in saving the world.  If our generation doesn’t, who will?

Faith-based activism

The Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers

The Elders

Grandparents and the Generativity Revolution

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As an involved grandparent blessed with good health,  I’m frequently asked to provide childcare.  Beside the fact that I love being with my grandchildren, this allows me to see the daily lives of young families up close.  And what I observe gives me cause for concern.  Children seem to have far more on their plates today than they did a generation ago.  They bring home much more homework and projects.  There are music lessons, competitive sports, dance classes, scouting, church activities.  All good.  Just not all the time.  When they are home, children need to ‘chill’ with video or computer games, or to watch TV.   Clearly, so much time spent interacting with electronic devices means less time for human relationships.  And they are deteriorating.  What you notice in many children in a ‘good’ neighborhood, e.g. the increase of verbal bullying and physical aggression, is a microcosm of what is happening in society.

Of course, children are just mimicking the ‘wired’ adults in their own family.  Mom and Dad are ultra-busy, too, heads constantly bent to the screens of iPhones or Blackberries for work updates or their own extracurricular activities.  I know from my own experience that checking email constantly is an easy habit to get into and hard to break.  In a world of 24/7 communication, we might miss something!  My question is: what could be more important than what and who is right here, under their noses.

I’ve been wondering lately whether we grandparents are not enabling this kind of packed, too-many-balls-in-the-air lifestyle by being so available.   I’m not suggesting we cut back on helping our children and theirs, but perhaps we might insert a quid pro quo into the deal.  Let’s not be afraid of ‘interfering’ and express our values.  When we are the available grownup in the home, let’s take opportunity to teach our young how to not only play well with others, but how to really see them, respect them, and communicate well with them.   We can draw children into old-fashioned games like battleships or checkers or Scrabble; we can teach skills like cooking and baking; we can encourage the making of art or get them outdoors for a hike or sport.  We teach, and by our students we may be taught.

We grandparents who are engaged with our young can and must raise the bar on respectful relationships and civility in our society.  And that, like so many things, begins in the home.  So if you are providing childcare, show respect, but speak your truth.  Take part in what New York Times columnist, David Brooks calls a “generativity revolution.”  If we don’t, who will?

Hell No, We Won’t Go!!

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Is assisted living, or its even less appealing twin, housing for the elderly once known as the nursing home, in your future?  I am amazed at how many people, even those who seem to be doing everything to stay healthy and engaged in life, see this as inevitable.  It is as if they have absorbed the rhetoric of the long-term care industry, so the only question is whether they can afford the premiums now to safeguard their future.  My question is, what kind of future are we talking about? 

My 92 year old mother has been in a nursing home (she prefers ‘hospital’) for three years.  It is in Canada and therefore the costs are affordable — about $2500/month for everything, including her complex assortment of meds.    The staff is excellent but overworked.  There are programs like painting class and baking, a hair and nail salon, various religious activities including a Catholic mass twice a month (the Zetter Center is Lutheran-affiliated), and every so often, pub night with a cash bar and entertainment.  Yet, for all that, you cannot escape the reality that it is a kind of incarceration where you don’t get to decide when to eat or bathe and dress or undress, or even when to use the toilet.  Hardly a day goes by when I  don’t wish I had the ability to care for my mother myself.  And I am in awe of those of us, who aren’t exactly spring chickens ourselves, who do just that — care for our elders in our own homes.   It’s one of those mixed blessings of longevity that we haven’t quite figured out yet.  A good subject to bring up with our own children while we can make such decisions (another topic for another post).

Visiting my mother has firmed my resolve to resist such a fate at all costs.  So I was excited to come across the story about a bunch of feisty women, Canadians, too, as it happens, who have a very different vision of how to house ourselves better as we age.  Here is a brief excerpt:

Control of Our Lives

We don’t want just to be taken care of, we want to participate.We are baby boomers who moved from watching TV shows like Father Knows Best to reading Betty Freidan and Germaine Greer. We took to heart Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying. We fought to change the society we were living in then because we believed in having more control over our own lives as women. And we’re not about to give up the control we’ve worked so hard for. We want to run the place, not have our decisions made by a board of directors made up of guys in suits.  Herizons magazine’s cover story, Raise the Roof.

More mind-openers for you: