Running... To Savannah?

Not the athletic kind or the sports kind or any kind requiring physical exertion on any level.  1K?  5K?  Marathon?  Not unless someone is chasing me and even then it better be a Yeti or something big and bad enough to scare me.  What I mean here by "running" is metaphoric for some kind of exploration I'm about to begin either by running "away" for a bit or running "to" for awhile.  I won't know which it will be until I get there.

I've decided to spend three weeks somewhere away from home and alone later this January.  It's going to be MY time to think, to write, to paint, to sip wine and look at a sunset or two, to walk, to wonder and to wander.  Surprisingly to me, I've planned it so I can be as careful with money and time as I can. Usually I leave all that to my husband (how unfair and sexist of me).   But this being MY adventure I decided to own it!  And so far so good (with the planning anyway).

First it had to be somewhere with milder weather than winter in New Jersey.  Second it had to be a place I would consider living in for the rest of my life.  Third it had to be somewhere where I wasn't imposing on anyone I knew either by staying some nights, borrowing cars, or needing rides.  And fourth it had to be at a price I thought of as affordable (including the air fare).

I narrowed it down to two destinations I thought were most accomodating for my circumstances.  I began to think only one was do-able... Savannah, Georgia!  I've never been there but know I would love so much about it.  The achitecture, the squares, the history, the music, the people, the food, the sweet slow pace and the way they talk --- it's like one word leaning onto another in an easy lazy way til they all alight gently onto the floor.  This is not the high season so prices are almost reasonable for vacation rentals (with a kitchenette so I don't spend all my money dining out).  I wouldn't need to rent a car since it is an ideal walking city.  It's relatively safe for a smart women traveling alone (I've done quite a bit of research).  Museums, house tours, the very first Black Baptist church, a city surprisingly little scathed by the destructions of the Civil War.  And Tybee island not to far for another adventure within an adventure.

Now I am not one of the idle rich.  I should be working again soon but since I fractured my back badly in early August I haven't been able to.  I expect to get a call sometime soon from a manager that I used to work for now that I can begin to get back into that routine.  But until then I am using this time BIG TIME !

So I was about to seriously consider one of those VBRO responses I received from beautiful Savannah and was about to begin negotiations and itinerary planning and serendipity floated before me (well really it showed up in my inbox).

A Christmas Bounty

Christmas.  On my way home now and thinking of Christmas.  On a crowded plane, packed with everyone from the truly ancient (have to be nearing ninety) folks and lots of babies --- LOTS  of babies crying.  This is certainly not a business flight telling from this population.  Family members on their way somewhere to join together for the season.  Though not yet in the spirit, looking at the expressions.  Then again there's nothing jolly about this flight.  I swear they make the seats smaller and smaller!  And Americans are getting bigger and bigger --- something going to give soon.  And it seems no matter where I'm sitting the attendants run out of the good food by the time they get to me!

I digress.  I'm about to celebrate my 59th Christmas holiday !  Wow!  I think I can remember Christmas as far back as about 5 years old, maybe younger but I don't think so.  Our trees then always had lots of tinsel shimmering and shedding.  I'd love to get my hands on some now.  That stuff really was magical (not to mention messy - but that wasn't my care then).  And I'm still waxing in my amazement at what these past few days have been.  In a future essay I will attempt to explain why seeing my aunt who has not long to live was actually healing for me.  And re-igniting a relationship with my nephew and his mom is a gift I will treasure for the rest of my days.  Of course watching my daughter be the 27 year old empowered, confident, professional young woman well on her way to her own great future fills me with a satisfaction only parents of grown children can know.

I can handle Christmas without her home now.  This is the way it's supposed to be.  Of course when she has children I'll be hoping to be on this  flight going the other way.  My step-son and his wife and our grandson (is he eight or nine now - wow) are beginning their own tradition of celebrating Christmas Eve and Day in their own home.  Our Christmas Day will be home as well with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and my stepdaughter and her husband sharing a standing rib roast and I hope lots of wine ( for me).

So, the sweet memories of my daughter running down the hallway to see if Santa came are to be savored.  The year she got irritated with every Santa she saw because she couldn't understand why he kept on forgetting her name is something I love to remind her of.  Really Santa, busy or not -- this is your job.  I remember my brother's expression running back down the stairs after he put his eyes on what Santa gave him --- a full set of drums we all listened to for years after that.  My favorite Christmas gift when I was a child was my Barbie Kitchen - so very cool with its turkey on a rotisserie!  That was the year I confirmed for myself that Santa wasn't real since I found the kitchen weeks before playing hide and seek in the basement boiler room.  I wasn't too disappointed --- Santa or mom --- the gift was still mine.

And the first Christmas my husband and I all spent together as a blended family... The kids made out like bandits.  I think we would have bought each of them a car of their own if they weren't -- what 7 or 8 or 9 years old at the time.  My husband and I wanted to be so careful that not one of them felt slighted so we made a list and it grew and grew and grew!  At that time their concept in the value of gifts wasn't in dollars as we knew it.  So even if we spent a LOT of money on one gift in one box  but the corresponding child's value in gifts equalled 4 boxes we made up for it by adding more, and more, and more... Until we felt we spent an equal number in dollars and had an equal number of boxes for each.   That Christmas was insane!   We made sure they understood that that Christmas would never be repeated.  I don't know how we explained Santa's generosity to them that year.

And Christmas now will be relatively quiet until the 26th when our Grandson is here.  He is the light of my husband's life!  And we can reflect on this year as well as Christmas Past.  This is the year my husband became very ill twice.  This was the year I injured my back quite seriously.  This was the year one of our beloved dogs almost died.  But it is also the same year my stepson was recruited into a wonderful new job (boy did he pay his dues).  This was also the year my stepdaughter was granted a very prestigious two year fellowship (and she used to think she wasn't as smart as her brother).  And this is the year my own daughter moved to THE place she's dreamed of living in for the past few years AND found the first job of her professional career (just as she was burning out being a server no matter how much money she made in tips).  And this is the Christmas I begin to know my brother's son MY NEPHEW and my brothers widow after 15 or so years gone buy.

So, cheesy as it may sound, I'm coming home with a bounty of gifts I wouldn't exchange for anything in this world!

New beginnings?  Isn't that an oxymoron?  Every "beginning" is "new" isn't it?  Unless of course you're just starting over...  I'm really over-thinking this.  Let's just say instead that  "it's never too late."  I will be returning from my little trip to San Diego with a basket full of appreciation.  They say (whomever "they" are) that appreciation is the real key to happiness!  Like the saying "The richest person I know doesn't have a dime."

Aren't I chock full of cliches this evening?   Or just good meds!

Apologies won't be enough but...

With this entry I apologize for the pain I have caused for my stepdaughter and her husband by including a paragraph referring to them in my "Christmas" writing (to be posted next).  That writing was meant to be humorous and, I admit I included some sarcasm --- but that was written for an audience of my own peers to whom I thought would appreciate "an old lady being offended by the perceived callous words of some young whippersnapper."  It will now be posted with the offending paragraph redacted).

I have many explanations but there is no excuse.  I meant no harm - I truly didn't.  What I did was be thoughtless and with that I deeply hurt someone I truly love and offended someone I have come to respect.  My step son in law is a good man!  He is a smart man!  And I know him to be a caring man.  And I could wax on about the beauty of both the heart and mind of my step daughter.  The paragraph I wrote however does not show any of that and has wrought an  emotional explosion of unbelievable proportions that I have been told is irreparable.  

What a Difference the Years and Years Make

Interesting... I'm on my way to San Diego early this morning for reasons that are very sad.  That, I am prepared for.  What I wasn't prepared for was the really rude, nasty, woman I had the unfortunate luck to encounter.  As I ponder how much mellower I have become with age I will use this vehicle here and in private to express what I probably would have said out loud and very publicly to this unfortunate soul if the same had happened years back.

I don't need to tell her how nasty she was but were I younger I would have and believe me I would have done it in such a way  that her mousy husband would have cowered in embarrassment because I would be publicly calling her out for what she is - an ugly, nasty, creature who's been given the face she deserves while obviously living a life without a semblance of joy (in which it seems she also deserves).

Let me describe the encounter.  While seating had started for my flight I heard the announcement that anyone with any disability may board.  Now I am a Silver Member (big deal) so I know I am somehow squeezed in BEFORE less frequent fliers but AFTER travelers with kids and service members.  Because I have a brace on my back which (thankfully) I don't have to wear all of the time I thought I might take advantage of this special extension for disabilities.  So....I got up slowly and waddled with all the elegance I could muster to the "grouping" standing at the silver entrance poles.

Apparently among this amorphous grouping this lovely gracious woman (I say with dripping sarcasm) decided that I stepped out of turn and in front of HER -- NOT something she could allow without comment!  At first she muttered (loudly) about it not being a"bus stop."  It took me a few seconds to realize her repeated (now louder) muttering was directed at me.  No one was moving yet and, I must point out, this was not a crowded flight.  I thought if I smiled politely while pointing to my brace and explained I was having some difficulty with it she might understand.

Nope.  The next sneer from her down turned sunken mouth was "we all don't wear our scars outside!"  We then proceeded forward to board.  The attendant checking my boarding pass  had no problem allowing me on in the sequence BEFORE this brittle dried up woman.  As I walked slowly down the corridor I thought about how miserable her life must be (worse for her husband or whomever the male lackey was with her).

And I thought about my reasons for flying West today.  I'm on my way to see an aunt I haven't seen in over twenty years (or talked with at all during them --- I remind you the family I grew up in defines dysfunction).  I just found out (yesterday) that she is dying a terrible way with a disease resulting from her decades of drinking.  Although she also smoked (a lot) it is the alcohol that has brought her to these final days of agony.  And I do remember her drinking a lot and often and anything that was available.  She drank because she was sad and hurting and angry and rueful and all of those emotions that sap time, strength and joy from a life.  And now there are only four people left who are alive and willing to say good bye to her of which I am one.

It gives me no solace to realize I almost predicted this years ago.  Actually it's pretty easy to foretell the preceding generations' unhappy endings in my family.  What did surprise me though was my own immediate and visceral reaction to hearing the news.  I can't stop crying.  I can't stop thinking of the sadness of her life.  And what compounds this is that it is so clear to me now that she was never malicious or vindictive or poisoned with envy as most of my family was.  That is not to say I would have spent any more time with her as an adult.  I never snubbed her but I carefully discouraged an ongoing relationship with her years back.  Spending any time with her was awful.... She would drink through predictable stages of self pity, anger, and hostility until she passed out -- literally and without fail.  And all conversations with her were dominated with the regrets of her life and the wounds inflicted upon her.

Now I just want to see her and somehow love her (I know it's there inside of me somewhere) and say good bye.  I want to tell her how sorry I am (not for anything I've done but just for the all she has endured in her life (whether real, imagined or self inflicted).  I want to say goodbye to her and I want to say good bye to that long lineage of relatives who made life intolerable (their own and those closest to them).

These realizations help remind me how I was successful in choosing a different path.  I really did make a conscious decision twenty odd years back that I didn't want to grow old being bitter or sad or angry like ALL in my family have or the few that are left will. That different path was not easy to stay on in the beginning but I made it.  And in making it it means that that gene of dark destiny in my family ends with my generation!  My daughter and her cousin (my deceased brother's son) don't carry it and it will never go on.  If I were a religious person this would be the appropriate time to sing hallelujah!

Which brings me back to the woman who's day I have obviously affected so negatively....  Really?  Now really!  I say to her (in my mind only):  "Why are you wasting such energy?  Get a life!  I pity you poor empty woman..."

Better is that I won't say it, don't need to, have no care to and less reason to because I love my life, who's in it, where I've been and where I'm going with it !


Sent from my iPad

When Newsmen Cry

... or newswomen...

I've witnessed, watched and heard about many catastrophes both natural and by man in my lifetime.  There were few times I've seen professionals (e.g., reporters) react personally.  Actually, I can only think of three right now and one is too far back for me to remember personally (JFK's assassination).  But I do remember watching television during 9/11 and seeing one newswomen almost fall to her knees and cry while describing the events behind her.  And now there is the unthinkable that happened - children being shot.  Children being killed.  Babies being murdered.

The idea is so incomprehensible.  But... when my mind gets close enough to even imagine the events I can break down.  And I saw the impact of having to report on that on the faces of the people trying to do it.  I can't remember the names now but they are all so familiar to me on TV.  They have always been "talking heads" or Muppets with microphones... but yesterday they were people who couldn't (and who could?) remove themselves from the common humanity of the situation.

Wars, natural disasters, political uprisings --- we are all bombarded by all of this everyday.  We do become desensitized.  That TV screen insulates most of us from the realities.  But something about yesterday's events reached through the glass and came into our actual experiences... reminded us all powerfully of what can happen and what does happen in our world.

How can something like this though?  How can it have happened to the most innocent among us?  How could it have been perpetrated by any human being (a child himself from the picture I saw)?   What could have been going on in that family to have either produced or ignored someone who could do the unimaginable?  And, is there something someone somehow should have done to stop this?

All the cages will be rattled now (NRA, Gun Control, Mental Health, Schools' responsibility, police procedure).  We will each and all try to rationally explain what happened and how to avoid it in the future.  I am afraid there is no explanation and worse,  I'm afraid there is no answer.  No single answer anyway.

And back to the theme of all of these writings, I have lived long enough to know there aren't always answers or explanations to this life we all share.  But... I have found that in my own way, albeit a small way, I can (to some degree) make my own life have meaning and direction and comfort but --- for all those same reasons I know too that but for the grace of God (or whatever there is that is bigger than all of us) I have not experienced something like this.

I wish my hugs, my thoughts, my will could help all of the people experiencing this unbelievable pain. I know well of the feelings of helplessness BUT, and this is important, I have not experienced the feelings of hopelessness.  But I have not been tested like the people yesterday were.  And I pray that I never will.

True Story

61 year old husband texts to wife:

"My colonoscopy is on New Year's Eve at 10 am at Valley!  Love u"



59 year old wife texts back:

"How exciting!  What other plans do we have to celebrate?"





.... And this why I think it's worth my time to write my musings about turning sixty.

Day 271... Retirement

So this is the time to think of retirement and if you are not financially prepared you are terrified and if you have what you think you needed financially you are still terrified.  I've never seen the economy this bad in my lifetime.  I expect the Great Plains to start rolling in the dust soon.  And, I had my first taste of unexpected medical bills this year - what an eyeopener that was.

Of course the timing (and the choice) of retirement depends on a number of things.  My brother-in-law retired from working for one of the utilities.  He's never been happier.  He knew when he was going to retire.  He knew what he was going to get (monetarily) when he retired.  He has a health plan as part of his retirement.  I'm sure he counted off the days until he retired.  Because he was part of a union all of that was established for years.  And he couldn't wait for the day!

My husband on the other hand, worked his entire career in the corporate world.  As an executive his retirement planning (in dollars) was his to make.  The when however he had no choice in and that is a tragedy happening across this wonderful country of ours.  He is one of the sad statistics of putting an energetic, intelligent, experienced talented person out.  And then what?  How does a man change his mindset from a lifetime's "career" to finding a "job?"

(Special Note:  I am speaking regarding men here because as liberated as all of us women hoped to be by now - it is just not the same for so many reasons, the least of which is if some corporation gently nudged an older woman executive out - they would have some lawsuit on their hands!  And, it just isn't the same psychology for a woman vs. a man... which I will get into with a future essay).

I see so many different scenarios of retirement now.  Duh?  Perhaps it is because of my own age and the people around me.  Another example would be my step-daughter's husband (hmmm or should he be called my step-son in law?).  Anyway he has been prepped at home and in schools (MBA) to take over his father's business.  I wonder what challenges his father may have with what he created from scratch now being directed by new blood (his own but the nonetheless new).  Financially he probably has little to worry about but psychologically I'd imagine the transition to be revealing to him.

And then there is my husband's very good friend.  A college professor, a published poet, having had his career in the academic world since he graduated from college.  His salary was wanting as are most teachers of any kind but his pension has to be comforting... however, he lives in California and in this day at this time I would be more than concerned about the state of the state's economy and what I might lose in my pension simply because the money just isn't there.