Annice

For the last month, my Saturday night entertainment has been Animal Planet’s Pit bulls and Parolees. I am a devotee of this show that brings together an amazing cast of tattooed characters and critters. For starters, there is Tia Torres, a tough red-headed super hero mom over 50, who founded Villalobos Rescue Center(VRC) to save abused and abandoned pit bulls. With her on this journey are her family and a crew of ex-cons who work tirelessly caring for almost 200 pit bulls at their 10-acre facility.  It’s a story of wounded souls to the rescue, and I love it. No job is too difficult for this dedicated and tattooed team. I’ve seen them spend days out in the scorching desert waiting to capture and rescue one scared dog.

Tia and friend

This past week, I witnessed Tia and her crew trek out to Alabama (from CA) to help rebuild a dog rescue center that was destroyed by the tornado there. They conducted a memorial service for the twenty some dogs that were killed and at the very moment during the service when the name of each dog that perished during the tornado was being called out, the other dogs on the premise were howling as if they, too, heard the names and were saying good-bye. And don’t forget to keep a box of Kleenex close by…

The drama is gripping. Not only does this amazing super hero, Tia, run the rescue for these four-legged friends but a rehabilitation program called Underdawgz for the parolees.  Tia believes both pit bull and parolee have been maligned and feared and both are in need of training and rehab, and Tia is committed to that — no matter how long it takes! I love her.

Showing the Love

But if you’re thinking about adopting one of these doggies, Tia doesn’t make it easy. She is is very strict about who adopts these animals because they are not for the bleeding hearts, and she wants everyone to know what they’re getting into. It takes commitment and hard work to own one of these rescues, but from what I’ve seen on the show, the reward is great.

JANE

So, I’m back from Africa and settled back into my life (after considerable jet lag).  It’s hard now even to believe that just a week ago, I was driving around the wilds of Botswana in a safari vehicle, looking at rhinos and giraffes and elephants.  It all seems like a movie that I went to see, and now I’m out of the theater, dazed by the  bright outside light and realizing that I ate a little too much popcorn (or, in this case, one too many ‘fat cakes,’ a Botswana staple consisting of a big ball of friend dough dripping with grease).

This trip to Africa made me feel both younger than usual and older.  I felt younger to realize that I still had the nerve to go exploring and camping in remote places, with my 2 girls and some camping equipment.  It also made me feel younger to try new foods, meet new people, and to see new things.  However, the trip also made me feel older, in that I had more anxiety about things than I had ever had in the past.  Part of this is probably due to the fact that it was Africa I was visiting and not Wales (where I ventured when I was 19 and traveling by myself for the first time).

Part of my anxiety was also due, I’m sure,  to the fact that I didn’t have my husband with me—for the first time in about 28 years!  After all, Tom is always so on guard against every possible hazard to our kids that it makes it easy for me to relax and be laid back.

But the biggest part was probably just due to the fact that I’m 58 years old and a little too aware of the bad things that can happen to good people.  While Becky was excited to see the very interesting lizard on the roof of our camping tent, I couldn’t help but imagine that lizard dropping down on us in the night to give us a fatal, poisonous bite.  While Becky and Josie both enjoyed steering the rental car through the sandy roads into Khama Rhino Sanctuary, I kept imagining us stuck in the sand on a backwoods trail, with no one to come and rescue us or bring us water.  It made me feel old to be conscious of every mosquito bite, fearing dengue fever or malaria.

JANE ON SAFARI

I have to admit it:  when our plane touched down in Philadelphia, and I knew, for the first time, that I had gotten at least one of my girls safely back on this side of the ocean, part of me breathed a huge sigh of relief.

But then, I have to remember that there was also another part of me that was ready to pack up and go again.

I guess there’s still some life in the old girl.

Annice

I was inspired to cook a hardy meal for a friend who spent six weeks in the hospital after suffering from a perforated colon.  She left the hospital weighing 90 lbs having lost 20, and when I asked her what she’d like to eat, she said, “meat – red meat.”

I immediately thought of one of my Dad’s favorite dishes, Hungarian Goulash.  Being Hungarian, it was a dish he often made in the winter and one that that I love but rarely make.  Of course goulash doesn’t have the same mystique of Proust’s madelaines, but it still conjures up childhood memories.  And while I wasn’t able to deliver my goulash with fresh crusty rye bread, it was every bit as delicious and authentic as my Dad’s.

As you might have guessed, my Dad never used a recipe, so neither do I.  I’ve tried my best to construct one for you.  The key, I might add, is to use good quality paprika.  After all, you want to be sure to get the vitamin C found in paprika.  And, did you know, it was Hungarian Nobel Laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi who is credited with discovering vitamin C in paprika?

Serves 6-8 people

DAD's GOULASH

Ingredients

• Oil
• 3 ½ – 4 lbs beef chuck cut into cubes (my Dad liked beef shank or shoulder)
• 3 large yellow onions, chopped (my dad always picked the largest onions)
• 4 large potatoes, cubed
• 4-6 carrots, cut in circles
• Garlic, crushed   (not too much)
• 2 tablespoons Hungarian paprika
• Salt and pepper
• Water

1. Sauté the chopped onions in oil until they are a nice golden brown.

2.  Sprinkle the onions with the paprika, stirring to prevent the paprika from burning.

3.  Add the beef and sauté until they are a bit brownish in color

4.  Let the beef simmer in its juice and add the crushed garlic, some salt and pepper, pour water enough to cover the content of the pan and let it simmer on low heat for a while, stirring occasionally.

5.  When the meat is half-cooked (approx. 1.5 hrs) add the carrots and potatoes, and more salt if necessary.  You might have to add some more (2-3 cups) water too.  ENJOY.

Oops, I was supposed to post this for Jane as she was flying off to Botswana with Josie to visit her daughter, but I had too many things on my list this past week.  So, here is Jane’s post -  just a little late!  Annice

Tell me again, whose idea was it to schedule a surprise birthday party for her husband’s 60^thbirthday one week before Christmas?  It was worth it—I’ll say that.  The party was a blast.  Tom was surprised beyond my wildest hopes.  Our friends and relatives came from far away places.  My wonderful niece and her husband came from Virginia with their two baby girls to complete our workforce made up of Lizzie and Janson (her fiance), Josie, and my wonderful friends Heather, and Nora, her daughter.  Together they decorated, cooked food, took pictures, arranged the room, welcomed guests–and generally made it all possible.  And Sadhvi gets an Oscar for her acting job that led Tom into the room “to borrow chairs for the weekend.”  Josie made an incredible 4-tier cake with the theme of “A Man For All Seasons” (with a season on each tier).  I got so wound up from seeing so many people  I love in one place that I’m still having trouble unwinding!  It made turning 60 seem like a great thing, and I’ll let you know about that in a few years.

Tom, Josie, and the Birthday Cake!

But whose idea was it to schedule a trip to Africa 3 days after Christmas?  This trip promises to be an adventure, and, most importantly, I’ll get to see my baby girl instead of missing her for another six months!  But, needless to say, I’m not ready for Christmas, and I’m not ready for Africa.  I’m guessing it will all come together, “one way or t’other,” as my mother used to say.

Here is what remains to be done today:

1) Shop for about five things that are still missing for Christmas

2) Find a plug that can convert to African power, so that I can plug in my C-PAP machine and sleep at night while I’m traveling around Botswana

3) Buy wrapping paper and wrap presents

4) Get international texting put on my daughter’s phone so that we can let my husband know that we arrived safely in Botswana

5) Call my credit card company to let them know I will, in fact, be in Botswana, so that they don’t kick out every transaction I try to do

6) Find the passports that I stored in a safe place for the trip

7) Get one of those passport holders you can wear around your neck

Go to the evening service at our church for Christmas Eve

Jane and Josie

9) Breathe deeply

10) Pack for Africa

11) Clean the house

12) Bake Christmas cookies.

I have a feeling that numbers 11 and 12 are probably going to go down the tubes!

Happy Belated New Year to all of our readers!  Off to Botswana!

Annice

This is one of my favorite recipe’s from my dear friend Va at Sheville.org.  I tried to make this Tequila Christmas Cake recipe for Chanukah again this year, but it didn’t work out so well.  So, I’m trying again for New Year’s Day.  Here goes:

 Ingredients 

.

.

Sample the tequila to check quality.  Take a large bowl; check the tequila again to be  sure it is of the highest quality.  Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer.

Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.  Add 1 teaspoon of sugar.  Beat again.  At this point, it is best to make sure the tequila is still OK.  Try another cup just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy.  Break 2 eegs and add to the bowl and chuck iin the cup of dried fruit. Pick the fruit up off the floor.  Mix on the turner.  If the fried druit getas stuck in the beaterers, just pry it loose with a drewscriver.

Sample the tequila to test for tonsisticity.  Next, sift 2 cups of salt, or something.  Check the tequila. Now shift the lemon ice strain your nuts.  Add one table.  Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find.

Greash the oven.  Turn the cake tin 360s and try not to fall over.  Don’t forget to beat off the turner.  Finally, throw the bowl through the window.  Finish the tequila and wipe the counter with the cat.

Too Much Tequila

Pahhpy New Gears!

FATIMAH'

I offer my heartfelt congratulations to each of you—to each of us—for at some point on your journey, you may become a Proud & Gratified Parent of a Parent.  Ladies 50-plus, you are my sistah’s in many an unknown way.  Thus the subject and title of my first sharing with Oops 50!

Yes, indeed, one of my highlights in life is having the honor of caring for my parent(s).  For those whose parents are still with us, I say again, “Congratulations!”  And, for the parents gone on, “Thank you!”  Some of my friends say that I have a lot to share regarding the honorable role of care-taking for a parent.  And I just might agree.  Here is my first 50cents on the subject.

Over the years, I have had, and am still having, powerful transformative experiences through caring for both of my parents.  My mom (R.I.P) was challenged with dementia, but this little, yet extremely powerful lady was with us until she was 98.

MY MOTHER

My pape’ is still with me at the tender age of 105.  One thing that’s for sure – the role of parent is not an easy one.
I have come to realize (considering my parents’ ways, ideas, beliefs, habits & histories) they did absolutely the very best they could for me.  From the time I was a little girl until high school, my mom and I had some moments, mainly to remind me that she was the boss, the goddess, the doer, the artist, the one who stuggled.  I now know that within those ‘who’s boss’ experiences, she was empowering me—by standing in her own power.  Little did I know then that her ground rules were roots for my survival – her creative gifts, food for my soul.  Her fierceness was my foundation for growth and empowerment.

MY PAPE'

My pape’, a gentle man indeed, has his ways, beliefs, history and experiences too.  Pape’ and I flow 97% of the time with ease.  The few confrontations we’ve had only began as he got older and realized that his physical self and gentlemanly ways were changing. His man-ness, too, was shifting.

So, from then to now, what have I gained through the honorable role of being ‘A Proud & Gratified Parent of a Parent’ –that makes me congratulate myself…in gratitude?  I’ll start with some critical words for me:

Allow, Trust, Remember, Stand,

Give Choice, Be Responsible, Respect, Create Authenticity,

Let go!

From these engaging and transformative words and ways of being, creative and wondrous experiences happen.  They are mandatory for me within the dynamics of any relationship.  Telling a full-grown adult what they should or should not do is a no-win situation, and when it is your parent, forget it.  It creates separation, mini wars, challenges, heartbreak, sadness and a host of unhealthy energies and experiences…experiences that, in all honesty, we really do not want.
At any given moment, my Mom or Dad makes a choice to do something or say something that I might think will not be good for their overall well being or for their mental & spiritual wellness.  Once I have remembered to say, “It is your choice, and you are responsible for the results,” I have experienced each of them shifting, maybe not right there in the moment, but afterwards. It is an amazing gift to give another.  To be reminded of the freedom of choice, the result, the responsibility, has been an invaluable gift for my parents and for myself.

It is also good to remind them of the responsibilities that come along with choice.  This is my truth, from my experiences.  Learning this through my interactions with my parents has been an invaluable gift to me.
Once the choice is handed back to them, freedom is offered.  Once they get to remember “My Choice, My Results, My Responsibility,” an amazing shift happens.

I have experienced this shift many, many times—both with my parents and within myself.  Freedom for them and for me!  When I am no longer responsible for their choices, I am free to handle other, less challenging aspects of caretaking.

This is where those words above come into play: it is important to allow them to make choices and to give them the responsibility for those choices, and then I get to let go!  Parents are grown.  They have paid their dues.  They all have earned an invaluable place on this planet: to be acknowledged as the gift they are.  And NO, it is not an easy journey for any of us…but PROFOUND experiences, BLESSED moments and more come of it.
My choice has been to be authentic and respectful, stand in my truth, trust, while allowing & letting go, getting creative, be authentic to myself & to them—and I can testify it truly created a meaningful, loving, nurturing bond between my parents and me: a most whole, wholly holy experience.

Part Two of this session will follow.  In the meantime, I thank you for your readership & feedback!

Fatimah’　

SADHVI

I’ve started to get into the Holiday spirit.

It started with the first snowflakes last week, the Christmas songs I’ve been playing while baking the things that I love to send to my family, and the tangible joy I feel when I roast chestnuts as a street vendor with my husband.

This year there are more and more people who are trying chestnuts for the first time.  And loving them.

Knowing that they aren’t nuts, that they are a complete protein (you can live on them), that they’re alkaline, and they contain very little fat might be the reason.  Or could it be that they’ve been growing all summer in Italy, so that you are, in fact, eating “Italian Sunshine”?

HOT ROASTED CHESTNUTS!

Without chestnuts, I don’t know if I could handle winter.  I’ve made a simple Chestnut soup for dinner tonight.  I like easy, simple, and satisfying.

For my family who are far from me every year, I used the recipe that I have for making my Swiss Linzer Torte.  But instead of rolling out the dough for the torte, I just pinch off some pieces and roll it in a ball, press down in the middle with my thumb, and fill with raspberry jam, if I have it.  And some other kind if I don’t.  I bake them for about 15 minutes, and then sprinkle with some of the ground almonds.  Everyone loves them.  You will too!

“Swiss Linzer Thumbprint Cookies”.

SWISS LINZER COOKIES & ST. NICK

It’s not that I’m not happy about the news—or that we think it’s happening too fast.  Lizzie met Janson last summer, and he’s a wonderful guy—with a great sense of humor—who has found his way easily right into our hearts.  She met him through a friend of hers—at a time when she was not expecting to meet anyone.  Isn’t that how it always happens?  And they hit it off instantly.  He seems perfect for Liz:  their temperaments are compatible; they love each other; they share many of the same values.  What more could we ask for?

It’s just that, once all this happened—and after I’d come down from the cloud of excitement—I realized that maybe I wasn’t prepared for our baby girl to be taking this next step.  First of all, it seems impossible that she could be old enough.  After all, just a minute ago,  she was only four years old!  I keep thinking of “Fiddler on the Roof” and Tevye’s song: “Is this the little girl I carried?  Is this the little boy at play?  I don’t remember growing older.  When did they?”  How in the world did she get to be 24 so quickly?  And how in the universe could I be old enough to have a daughter old enough to get married? 

How quickly these big, momentous things happen! I guess that’s the terrifying thing:  life is always faster-moving and less predictable than you think it is when you’re stuck down in the weeds, dealing with the day-to-day mess. In any case, it’s great.  They are great!  And I’m going to have a share a picture of the cute couple, so people can see how darling they are! 

 I’m sure I’ll get used to this soon.  I know one thing:  no matter how long it takes me, I’ll adjust sooner than Tom (my husband), who has been laid flat out on the floor!!

 Here are 10 things I’m thankful for this year:

1)  We have wonderful friends who make us feel thankful to be alive and sharing this planet with them.

2)  Our daughter Becky in Africa is feeling better, so maybe she doesn’t actually have dengue fever or some other horrible tropical disease (what I immediately assumed upon hearing that she had a fever and muscle pains). And our daughter Josie does not have a stress fracture on her leg—just shin splints!  Yaay!  And she’s going with me to see Becky soon.

3)  Our daughter Lizzie has Janson in her life—a thoughtful, loving guy—and Janson may even have a job soon, thanks to some great folks who read about him in the paper and decided they wanted to go out of their way to help a Marine veteran!

4)  Our son, Parker, is very happy at Bard College—and, even though he won’t be home for Thanksgiving, he gets to have turkey dinner with Janet and Jerry, our wonderful friends in New York.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM OOPS50!!!!

5)  I have three powerful and loving sisters (and a host of wonderful blood kin) and terrific, loving in-laws (how lucky is that?).

6)  Tom can still, after 28 years (is that possible?), make me laugh so hard that I risk embarrassing him in public (but I never really do).

7)  Obama is still in the White House.

  Even though I’ve gained some pounds and need to get rid of them, I’ve managed to keep off most of my weight loss.

9)  Our dog Tater loves to chase a laser around our floor—over and over again—without ever getting bored or tired.

10)  Ultimate Ice Cream (in Asheville, NC), especially the Coffee Heath Bar (perhaps this last one should be avoided). 

I didn’t think it would be possible.  I could not imagine how I could ever get there.  I had resigned myself (sorrowfully) to the idea that my daughter would be in Botswana for a year, and I would not get to see her—or to get any glimpse of her amazing new world.  We knew we couldn’t afford to bring her home for Christmas; and we didn’t see any way that we could get over there.  I was just going to have to stop worrying about her and accept the fact that I would not see her for nearly 10 months.

Then, the miraculous happened.  First of all, I had a visit with my wonderful sisters at the beach, who all encouraged me to think creatively about getting there to see Becky.  My sister, Katie, told me about how people can donate frequent flyer miles to other people.  My other sisters talked about ways to raise money for the trip.  My youngest daughter, Josie, said she was determined to go, and, since she suspected I would not let her go by herself, she offered to pay for herself and for part of my trip out of her hard-earned babysitting money. 

Africa, here we come!

After I got back from the beach, my sister, Sheppie, sent me a donation in the mail, “for your trip.” That was just the beginning of a string of incredibly wonderful, generous acts by friends and family.  Here’s a summary:  my wonderful roommate from college, Cindy, donated her frequent flyer miles to me; my incredible mother-in-law, Henny, gave hers to Josie. 

So, we knew we could get to Africa—and that we could even stop in Holland on the way to visit with family!  But we still had no idea how we could afford to do anything once we got there.  And then, the miraculous happened:  a friend of a friend of my husband’s, a wonderfully generous man who will remain nameless (in case he doesn’t want the publicity), offered us the use of his house and his car, for an extremely moderate fee, during our visit.  And, he told us how to see all the things we wanted to see—the elephants, the lions, the rhinos, etc.—without breaking the bank.  He told us about the out-of-the-way nature parks that tourists don’t usually visit.  He gave us tips about how to camp and cook your own food, instead of staying in luxury safari lodges.  As things turned out, he even designed a 9-page itinerary for us, with tips on all the little things we should know, such as which line to stand in for Customs, how much a taxi ride from the airport should cost, what to bring with us from the States, etc.  I consider him our Fairy Godfather for this trip—and this is a man that we will not even get the chance to meet in person, since he and his wife will be away on a cruise when we are in Botswana!!!!

Beautiful Beach in Capetown, South Africa

In any case, this post is the first in a series about our trip to Africa.  I thought our readers might find it interesting to share in the adventures of a 57-year-old woman and her 15 and 19 year old daughters, as they take on Africa!  I hope you will, anyway, since I know I’m going to feel like writing about it.  As my Fairy Godfather said in a recent email, “This will probably turn out to the be the adventure of a lifetime for you.” 

Rhino

P.S. The pictures in this post were taken by our daughter in Africa!!!

Annice

What a year – so many friends and family with serious health problems, starting with my husband’s fall last February, the loss of my Dad, and then both my dogs.  There has been no reprieve.  I am shocked about all the friends that have had serious to critical health problems accompanied by extended stays in the hospital as well as long recuperation’s at home.  If I made a list of all the sick people (and animals) I’ve known this year, it would add up to more than a dozen, and that’s way too much in one year.

Just a few weeks ago, I made a huge pot of matzo ball soup and delivered it to four sick friends.

Matzo Ball Soup

It’s depressing and stressful worrying about them.

So, I created a way to cope with the year of sick friends.  I built an imaginary wishing well in my heart and when I’m about to do a yoga practice, (whether in class at One Center Yoga or in my home), I dedicate my practice to all those who need well wishes.  I sit in Sukasana and take five long breaths and say their names in my head and breathe them out and down my wishing well.

Sukasana

Today, another friend just told me about her Mother who suffered a major heart attack after falling and breaking her hip and knee.  Tonight, I will add her to my ever growing list of well wishes.  I hope it helps because I don’t know what else to do.  Like chicken soup, it can’t hurt, right?

JULIA

My thoughts on learning that I am going to be a Grandmother are as follows:

Okay, so I had more than 10 thoughts in a row.  This doesn’t happen every day.  I just had to write them all!

Julia Coward lives in Asheville, NC with her husband, in a house made entirely of dog hair.  She has held many varied and interesting  jobs in her career as a person, but her favorite has always been raising and caring for people and pets in all different ages and stages of life.  Plants have to fend for themselves.

Dee Charlton

I’m grateful to be one of the lucky, reunion re-connections that formed over the past 18 months with Annice, one of the co-founders of this wonderful blog Oops50.com.  Our friendship goes back to 6^th grade summer camp, and if my math is right, that’s 47 years ago.  The camp was devised by the school district to facilitate kids from several grade-schools to meet and spend time together prior to the major transition into the adult world of 7^th grade!  We became fast friends.  We were 12 years old.

October 23, 2011 – I turned 59.  How strange it feels to be writing for this blog and and saying, I’m almost 60 !!   How did that happen? The Bonnie Raitt song; “Nick of Time” keeps playing over and over in my head, especially the lyric; “… no matter how I tell myself – it’s what we all go through,  those lines are pretty hard to take when they’re staring back at you..”   In the Nick of Time  You ain’t never lied sister Bonnie!

My husband, Scott and I have been traveling the country in our motor coach since April.  We just returned to beautiful Sarasota, Florida Nov. 1^st, and I’m sitting in front of the computer looking at our wedding photo taken in Italy.

Dee's wedding in Italy

Next to that is the photo we had taken last month in Las Vegas, it was our 5^th anniversary – wow.  What a life, what a journey this has been!  I can’t say I remember what I wanted my life to be when I was younger except that I wanted to be independent and travel, and now I can say yes to both of those goals.

I’m also feeling how fortunate I’ve been to experience the wonder of this country – the canyons, the mountains, the Bad Lands, Death Valley, White Sands, Alaska and hot air balloon festivals.  I’ve even jumped out of an airplane and para-glided off a mountain.  I’m grateful for it all, and for Scott.

Next - Pilot's license

Back to my birthday – it was harder than I expected it to be.  All day, I was fighting back tears.  I know I’m not afraid of death, I’ve been faced with it on more than one occasion.  So what was tearing me up?  Aging?  Vanity?  Am I that vain?  I guess I am, but is that worse than death??

I think it finally hit me when I texted Fran (my wonderful step-daughter) something my mother said to me on my birthday: “Welcome to the last year of your 50s!”  Thanks Mom.  Her stand-up routine could use a little refining, but I love her anyway.  And thank you Fran for letting me cry on your long distance shoulder.  For every year that passes me by, I come one more year closer to losing my Mom, and that hurts a lot.

Dee with Mom

Honestly, I’ve just gotten to know my mother well about seven years ago, and I cherish her as my real best friend.  I am a lucky 59 year old woman in so many ways!

Born in Collinwood (Cleveland) OH, Dee’s family followed what she likes to refer to as the Italian Migratory Route from Little Italy in Cleveland to the ‘burbs where her mother still resides. 

After graduating from high school, she struck out on her own in her first apartment, later to be hired by the same people who built, owned and managed the complex.  

Her career in Property Management took her to New York, New Hampshire, and finally Florida, a place she wanted to stay.  In the early 90’s, Dee was hired by a national company and traveled the country promoting motivational speakers to help people get rich quick – just like they did.  It wasn’t unusual for her to come home with half a million dollars in her briefcase.  Eventually, Dee settled down in Sarasota.where she met her husband, Scott, and married in Santa Maria di Castellabati, Italy, just south of the Amalfi coast.  Today, they live in Sarasota during the winter months and travel the rest of the year in their motor coach.

Bob Miller

One of the things I love about blogging is the ability to meet people anywhere – anytime.  When Sue Counts (guest blogger) wrote about co-housing a few weeks ago, we got tons of emails and comments from readers everywhere.  One such person was Bob Miller, and the next thing I knew, I was inviting him to be a guest blogger – our first male blogger on Oops50!  Thank you, Bob. 

Annice

My wife and I became members of a co-housing community called Wolf Creek Lodge earlier this year.  The lodge is currently under construction in Grass Valley, California.  We expect to move in sometime late in 2012.  We have chosen Wolf Creek Lodge as an appealing environment for our senior life style.

Future Wolf Creek Lodge

The conventional American living environment can be hostile to the senior species.  They want community, walking access to stores, entertainment and recreation.  They want low maintenance, sustainable housing.

Community is important to me and my wife.  Earlier in our lives we found this at our workplace, through our children’s activities, our extended family, our church and sporting activities.  We no longer go out to work and our children are living their own lives and our older family members have passed away.

We watched our parents become isolated in their later years.  We believe we can do better by taking action now before change becomes challenging.

Who's Slowing Down?

At Wolf Creek Lodge we will have our own condominium-style apartment, one of 30.  However, we will also use the common room, living room, patio and gardens.  We will invite friends to stay in one of several guest apartments.  We will stroll on the adjoining trails, walk to the nearby shops and enjoy the cultural activities of Grass Valley.

Community will be at our front door.  Most evenings we will dine in the common room sharing cooking and clean up activities.  We will join others over coffee and relax on the patio.  We will continue to ski, bike and hike in the northern Sierra, which are only an hour away.

What a Ride

We realize that as the years pass we may become unable to drive and our physical capabilities may become more limited.  The Wolf Creek Lodge environment will continue to work for us.  The lodge even includes an apartment for a care-giver, should we need extra help.

Wolf Creek Lodge is a creation of its evolving community.  The community worked with the architect on the design to oversee the construction and formulate the processes which will guide the members’ common activities.

Already, months before moving in, we are enjoying the community.  We are in constant electronic communication with all the other members and attend the General Meeting in Grass Valley once a month.  My wife has a key role on the landscape committee reviewing the planting plans and identifying members who want to work in the gardens.  I help on the marketing and technical committees.

Under Construction

On the marketing committee I am working to find people to join us and fill the remaining 6 apartments.  It’s fascinating to talk to potential members as they try to understand this co-housing concept.  They pay us repeated visits to decide if they want to spend the rest of their lives with us.  They finally take the decision and pitch in.

We do not really know what it will be like to live at Wolf Creek Lodge.  We are working hard with our new friends to make it happen and having both fun and challenges along the way.

Bob Miller is currently a ski bum in Truckee, California.  Born in England of an English mother and a Scottish father, he moved to Scotland at the age of 11.  After graduating from Glasgow University with a degree in Physics he married Claire, started a family, and moved to the Boston area in 1978.  Bob’s career was in the computer industry.  Since his retirement, he moved with Claire to Truckee.  Besides skiing, he rides his road bike and hikes in the Sierras.

Betsy

Originally from Canada, Betsy lives in upstate New York in the Catskill Mountains, with her cocker spaniel and two domestic long-haired cats.  She is very close to her two sons, both in their 20s.  Her family, 3 older brothers, their wives, children and grandchildren, still live in Nova Scotia.  An aspiring writer and stained glass artist who loves nature and the quiet rural life, Betsy currently teaches composition at the State College in Delhi, NY. 

Before I sat down to write this blog, I was totally stymied by where to begin.  It’s a long convoluted story that began more than 5 years ago, when my now 23-year-old son, Alexander, was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  And it hasn’t ended yet.  Perhaps I should begin at the end, which is to say, when it comes to mental health care in this country, beware!  Trust your gut about the quality of ‘subsidized’ treatments and if at all possible, pay for private care.

Alex has been hospitalized numerous times.  Each time was a crisis situation – delusions, psychoses, panic attacks – and each time he was patched up and sent home into my care, with minimal follow-up care at the county mental health clinic.  By minimal, I mean only once every two weeks or so.

The county mental health professionals were clearly operating on their own agenda and enjoying the self-imposed power they possess by being the only gig in town (we live in a very rural area).  I can’t even add up the number of hours Alex spent meeting with counselors, with the ONE AND ONLY psychiatrist (who wielded his prescription capabilities like any good autocratic dictator) and with psychiatric nurses, only to be told that he should practice deep breathing during a panic attack, or take Benadryl for insomnia–all the while denying him a medication that was helpful because they didn’t think it was needed.  It was their way or the highway.

Alex, being more intelligent than any of them, had his own ideas.  He began self-medicating himself with alcohol,  in order to get relief.  So here I was dealing with erratic behavior in my son, who was unable to find any relief for his very painful mental health issues.  At one point, out of sheer desperation, I reached out to the county people for help.  I felt Alex needed medical attention, but I couldn’t convince him to come with me to the hospital.  The county people told me they could arrange a “pick up”.  I thought this would be a good idea, as I envisioned a county nurse or some other sympathetic person who would come and, with professional care and sensitivity, convince Alex to go with her.  Instead, two burly policemen came to the door and insisted that Alex be cuffed and placed in the back of their unmarked (oh how sensitive of them) cruiser.  I was horrified.  They had no patience with him, and they threatened him into compliance.  This episode eroded Alex’s faith in the helpful nature of these ‘systems’ in place and shook his trust in me.

When he was admitted to the ER at the nearest trauma center, they had no beds.  According to rules, he had to stay in the ER until a bed could be found somewhere – anywhere – in New York State.  Finally, close to midnight, about 5 hours after he was admitted, they found a bed in Saratoga Springs– about two and a half hours away.  He was transported by ambulance there, where he stayed for the minimum of 4 days, while a doctor who didn’t know him from Adam, diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia and sent him back to be followed up with our illustrious county mental health people.

The best thing we ever did was to finally give up on the freebies and hire private care.  This has not been easy.  But it was worth the effort.  Alex is currently stable and improving.  He has a long road ahead of him, managing this kind of illness, but there’s no accounting for feeling well.  As for me?  I’m taking it one day at a time.  Hope springs eternal.

If anyone else should find themselves in this situation, I would say listen to your instincts!  I think we knew early on that the county people were not going to be able to help him, but somehow it just seemed easier and cheaper–at the time–to continue.

Sue Counts

My friend, Sue Counts, retired three years ago as the Director of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension in Watauga County after more than 40 years in government.  During her tenure, Sue initiated educational programs in the areas of sustainable tourism, sustainable energy, Hispanic outreach, and women in agriculture.  Sue says, “At this point in my life, I’m seeking a better life for the Baby Boomers who are entering that stage of their lives known as ‘the senior years’.”  So, when Dene Peterson, the founder of ElderSpirit Community came to Boone a few weeks ago to talk about her life’s work, Sue was there attending meetings about the possibility of creating such a community in Watauga County, NC.  She graciously shares important information on “Retirement Housing.”

IT’S OFFICIAL!  We are now in the “ERA OF THE GOLDEN BOOMERS!”.  On January 1, 2011 the very first Baby Boomer turned 65, and 10,000 boomers will turn 65 every day for the next 19 years.  This gigantic generation has transformed America as they have passed through every stage of life…..and housing for the elderly will not be any exception.

It's Official

Co-housing communities if you will!  These communities bring together the value of private homes with the benefits of more sustainable living.  That means common facilities and good connections with neighbors.  All in all, they stand as innovative answers to today’s environmental and social problems.

According to Charles Durrett, author of Senior Cohousing Handbook — 2nd Edition, A Community Approach to Independent Living, “No matter how rich life is in youth and middle age, the elder years can bring on increasing isolation and loneliness as social connections lessen, especially if friends and family members move away.  Senior co-housing fills a niche for this demographic — the healthy, educated and proactive adults who want to live in a social and environmentally vibrant community.  These seniors are already wanting to ward off the aging process, so they are unlikely to want to live in assisted housing.  Senior co-housing revolves around custom-built neighborhoods organized by the seniors themselves in order to fit in with their real needs, wants, and aspirations for health, longevity and quality of life.”

Elderspirit Community

The ElderSpirit Community at Trailview in Abingdon, Virginia is the living example of a community of mutual support and late life spirituality.  It is the first mixed-income, mixed ownership Elder Co-Housing Community in the United States and in this capacity it is making its way as it “walks the talk.”  The founder of ElderSpirit Community is Geraldine “Dene” Peterson, a “spry” woman in her 80’s who recently received the “Lifetime Achievement Award” at the 2011 National Cohousing Conference in Washington, DC.

Dene Peterson

At eighteen, Dene  Peterson left her parents and ten siblings to join a convent. She ultimately chose to leave the religious order, but her spirituality remained deeply rooted. In 1995, at age 65, she created the ElderSpirit Community in Abingdon, Virginia. Inspired by a Danish model, Peterson wanted to form a co-housing retirement community that would allow friends to live together in a collaborative and supportive setting while also offering some of the autonomy of private dwellings.  Peterson also envisioned an alternative to institutional long-term care, a place where community members would have the emotional support of their peers as well as the necessary medical assistance to live out their lives at home.  Using a creative patchwork of funding from public and private resources, Peterson raised $3.5 million, and her vision materialized.  Construction of the 29 residences, common community building, and a prayer room was completed in late spring of 2006 and houses both the moderate and low-income.  The model has gained national attention, and an ElderSpirit outreach extension program in now helping to plan similar communities in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Kansas, and Virginia.

The ElderSpirit Community is dedicated to making possible new opportunities for Elders in the 21st Century.  The ElderSpirit Community values are: To live in a community of diverse spiritual paths; To give and receive support in relationship with neighbors in community; To belong to a community who make the decisions on how they will live together; and To encourage each other to live simply and care for the earth.

JANE

My baby girl (Becky, who is 19) is now southern Africa.  And she’s there for the next 10 months.  I’m still trying to take in that information, so I thought it would help to write about it!

We took her to the plane last Sunday morning (6 a.m.!), and I swore I was going to be brave just long enough to get her on the plane.  I almost made it.  My eyes started tearing up when I saw her being friendly and cute with the other passengers in line to go through security with her.  She was starting conversations with at least three different people.  That’s just how she is.

After putting her on the plane at the Charlotte airport, our sadly diminished family group went to the local IHOP for breakfast and cried into our pancakes.  It was a bleak morning.  My spirits rose when I got a text message: “I’ll call you when I get to Africa.”  How ridiculous is that?

So she’s gone for a year of study and I’m trying to adjust.  I’m adjusting to the fact that I won’t see her for the next long ten months.  I have to keep from thinking about that one.  I’m adjusting to the fact that if she gets sick or needs help in some way (she loses her passport/her debit card/the key to her dorm room/her computer/her camera/whatever), I can’t do a damn thing about it.  I can’t get to her quickly—no matter what.  The shortest I could get there would be 19 hours of travel—and that’s assuming that my passport is up-to-date!

BECKY

So, I’m  adjusting…  I have to say that I don’t know how all those mothers survived who shipped their children off to cross a lone ocean back in the days before airplanes or computers, not knowing when they would even hear from them to know they were safe on the other side.  I feel incredibly lucky to be in the generation that has Skype, so that I can talk to her at night and see her face and hear about her eating her first fried grub or seeing her first baboon.  How cool is that?

We’ll all get through it, and I’m sure she’ll have a fabulous year.

And here I thought it was hard raising teenagers, but this makes it look like a piece of cake!

Monica Devine

Monica Devine is an author, photographer, therapist, and baby boomer who lives in Eagle River, Alaska. She also studies and practices yoga – one of the most beneficial practices (spiritual and physical) for women over 50. Today, Monica reminds us of what yoga teaches us about Ahimsa.

Ahimsa means to do no harm; to practice non-violence. When non-violence in speech, thought and action is established, one’s aggressive nature is relinquished, and others abandon hostility in one’s presence.

This is one of the teachings in the Yoga Sutras that I’ve given a great deal of thought to lately. Have you ever noticed how angry speech begets defensive behavior? How violent behavior begets retaliation? We see this on the world stage, between nations and cultures at war with one another. And we also see it on a smaller scale at home with the people we love most.

Explosive anger and negative speech towards another creates a climate of defensiveness and hurt that can last for years. Sticks and stones may break your bones? Sure, but violent and aggressive speech toward another is just as damaging. I remember my sons resorting to shouting matches and highly charged fighting when they were younger, the days when sibling rivalry was intense. This was a highly stressful time for me as a parent; I’d immediately get sucked into their disagreements and feel I had to diffuse the argument with an even louder voice; I had to take control, offer a quick solution, make everything okay again. But in doing so, I was trying to bring about peace in a way that wasn’t, in and of itself, peaceful. So I began to examine these behaviors by practicing staying in the midst of an argument and remaining peaceful inside. By pulling myself aside mentally, breathing deep and slow, and staying consciously aware of the encounter, a neutral ground was established where emotions were not allowed to run amok. Over time, I learned to shape the encounter, rather than control it, and to calmly shift the responsibility for a resolution back on them rather than carry it myself. When I spoke softer, so did they. When I offered and modeled an alternative way to communicate, they responded. This was a huge accomplishment for all of us and took years to hone.

Monica & Mt. Drum

Kind speech begets kind speech. Carrying the thought of peace in our hearts naturally invites a more loving and clearer expression from others. We would do well to remember that families are microcosms of nations. The knowledge and courage required to lay down our sticks and stones and practice daily the essential and vital energy of peace, starts at home, with ourselves.

If you want to hear more about Monica and her life in Alaska where she writes about about art, nature, travel, and more, visit her at her very own blog.

Multi-media piece of my Mom by Monica Devine

ARJUNA

Our friend, Arjuna da Silva, lives at Earthaven, an aspiring ecovillage in a mountain forest setting near Asheville, North Carolina. Everyone living there is dedicated to caring for people and the Earth by learning, living, and demonstrating a holistic, sustainable culture.  Arjuna helped start Earthaven in 1994, where she’s lived for the past twelve years.  She just moved into her earth & straw temple of a house there. Everyone who knows this beautiful woman over 50, celebrates her spirit.  Here is what she has to share…

ARJUNA'S HOME

Originally, I wanted to write a piece about what a joke it is to work my way through a day of living on the land, off the grid, learning to grow food, and recycling my waste into valuable (fertilizer) resources.  But after several tries, I realized those choices deserve much more credit and that my inner voice is the one who’d rather let someone else do all the hard stuff.

So, yes, I do start my day by (sometimes anxiously) checking the meter to see how my batteries held up overnight storing solar-accessed electric power; and I do pay attention to the weather report regarding the day’s anticipated power access.  I even pay attention to the calendar that tells me if the stars would treat my tomato seedlings better today than if I waited to plant them on Friday.

When I first started to write this piece, I called my draft, A Drop in the Bucket, intending to convey the double meaning of the “sustainable” life I choose to live.

• Meaning 1: peeing and pooping in containers so those resources can be utilized as soil amendments (instead of depending on fertilizers that have to be bought and shipped, possibly scraped off another part of the earth).
• Meaning 2: then there’s the more cynical reference being the effort us folk (who live in this valley) put into recycling, preserving, using renewables, etc., which is just a drop in the regional (let alone global) bucket.

ARJUNA ON THE LAND

But, today I’d rather tell you I’ve found ways to minimize the things I don’t like (carrying what’s too heavy, smelling what’s too foul, etc.), and feel pretty happy refining my rugged life into something that even fussy people might be able to handle.  In fact, I’m thinking others might choose this path if they could feel the inner rewards that come from paying attention to what we do and what we use to do it.

The  choice to take risks (as if anyone lives without them) and move in what looks like “the right direction” for oneself, one’s neighborhood or the planet, is such an uplifting choice!  The experience of following through on the nitty-gritty details of trial and error with new systems and organic self-reliance is exhilarating at times and is mostly just deeply satisfying.  Maybe you’d like to try it?

Please post your questions and comments here so we can have an open discussion.  Arjuna’s workshop, “Your Enneagram and Your Sub-Personalities” airs August 10-21 at Earthaven.  For more information, please email: arjuna@earthaven.org.  All power to the people!  Make your own, grow your own, and use your own!

THE ROAD TO EARTHAVEN

Annice

I wanted to write about my dad on Father’s Day and now it’s too late.  You’re probably thinking who cares about Father’s Day now?  But I do.  You see, my dad, Sanford Brown, died April 28^th, barely two months ago, and I’m still grieving.

Me and my Dad only 2 years ago

It feels like I always will grieve, and maybe that’s why I haven’t been able write about him.  If it were any other topic, I’d just call it procrastination, but here, now, it’s more poignant.

I want to write about how close I was to my dad–tell you how I miss our telephone conversations about politics, books, current events, my work, and family, especially his grandchildren and great grandchildren.  At times, I find myself reaching for the phone to call, and then I realize that I will never hear his voice again.  Yes, it’s very sad.

My dad was 85, and one week before he died, I traveled to Cleveland to celebrate his 85^th birthday and Passover with our family.  He was especially proud to witness his nine-year-old great grandson, Jacob, conduct the entire Seder not only in English but Hebrew, too.  It was truly a spectacular day.

His great-grandson Jacob wanted to see the company my dad founded

Days after I got home, my sister called to say Dad was in the hospital, and it didn’t look good.  Back I went, hoping it would all work out.  Like many of you with aging parents, I always knew that dreaded call would come one day, but somehow, I still wasn’t prepared.  Despite the fact that my dad was 85 and had lived a good long life, it still seems too short.  And, despite the fact that he was not really sick and lived in the same house for the last 56 years surrounded by family and friends, it’s still too short.

Dad and grandsons Alexander & Mason in DC

If anyone were to ask me what I learned from my dad, I would tell them: how to love unconditionally, the importance of family, loyalty, forgiveness, charity, to travel and see the world; maintain a strong work ethic, and make sure there is laughter in your life.

While I haven’t perfected all of these qualities, I am forever grateful to have my dad’s teachings to guide me through my life’s journey.

Dad's 83rd birthday with a rare glass of cognac

Annice

.

It seems like the media is never short on scandals about married men behaving badly.  Even Marlo Thomas has written about it.  I admit, I am fascinated by scandals about men in positions of power or men who put themselves up as role models and then get caught with their pants down.  (Check out our archives about other stories I’ve written abut men behaving badly).   And, isn’t it great that wives today (many are women over 50) can decide for themselves whether to stay or go?  But, I am waiting for one of these wives to stand up at a press conference and call her husband a big jerk.

I played a little game with myself to see how many of these jerks I could remember, with little effort, I came up with this list:

• Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) for sexting
• Strauss-Kahn (Director of the IMF) accused of rape
• Schwarzenegger (no explanation needed)
• John Edwards (former Senator and Presidential contender) for having an affair and love child while his wife was dying of cancer
• Newt Gingrich – ditto (minus the love child)
• Governor Sanford (South Carolina) for having an affair who he claimed was his “soul mate”
• Elliot Spitzer former Governor of NY caught in a high-priced prostitution ring
• Tiger Woods professional golfer and admitted sex addict
• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (sexual harassment scandal)

Seems like the cure-all for all these boys behaving badly is simply to hold a press conference, tell us they are seeking professional treatment to focus on becoming a better person, and then they’re all better.  Really, Rehab for Jerks?

Rehab for Jerks

Where are they?  I’d like to refer a few.

Jane

My sister Pattie

Happy this day to accept
Problems beyond comprehension,
Beyond solving,
Beyond changing,
To sit home at night,
Because they’re out and might
Have to call,
Though they don’t call as promised
When they get there,
If they get there.
Most likely they did,
Chances are they’re there,
Concerned with their own unsolvable problems,
The ones you just guess at,
Of which you are one–
You hope the biggest one,
Happy if you’re the only one.

SADHVI

These days I seem to be running into people who are either dropping out of Facebook, etc., or they are trying to keep up, and are feeling overwhelmed.  And then there are folks like my husband, who never wanted any part of it and thinks it is a complete waste of time! Someone sent me the following email; I don’t know who wrote it, and I hope no one is offended. No matter where you are in the spectrum, I do hope you enjoy reading it like I did.

“When I bought a Blackberry cell phone recently, I thought about the business I ran for 30 years with 1800 employees, all without a cell phone that plays music, takes videos, pictures and communicates with Facebook and Twitter.

I only signed up for Facebook and Twitter because of the pressure from my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grand-kids and 2 great-grand-kids who told me they would be able communicate with me in the “modern way” if I did.

Not wanting to be left behind, I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grand-kids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie, Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world.

My phone started beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation.

I was not ready to live like that.

So now I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids then bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library.  I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth headset (it’s red, by the way).

Which I was supposed to use when I drive.  I wore that Blue tooth while standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife and everyone within 50 yards started glaring at me.  Maybe it was because I had to take my hearing aid out to use it, and I think I got a little too loud.

As far as the GPS goes, it did look pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside that gadget was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time.

Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, “Re-calc-u-lating.”  You would think that she could be nicer.

It was like she could barely tolerate me.  She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then if I made a right turn by mistake, well, let’s just say it was not a good relationship.

Now when I get lost, I just call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house.

We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven’t figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have to run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings!

The world is just getting too complex for me.

They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store.  You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden “Paper or Plastic?” question every time I check out just knocks me for a loop.

I bought some of those cloth, reusable bags to avoid looking confused, but I never remember to take them in with me.

Now I toss it back to them.

When they ask me, “Paper or Plastic?”,  I just say, “Doesn’t matter to me.  I am bi-sacksual.”

Then it’s their turn to stare at me with a blank look.

It’s only fair.

I was recently asked if I Tweet?

I answered, “No, but I do toot a lot.”

I just want to end by saying that I really don’t need any more gadgets to connect.

The TV and the garage door remote are about all I want to handle!”

I want to enjoy life…how about you?

Annice

If you recall, we rescued him nine years ago, complete with a bullet underneath his belly.  And since that time, he’s blessed us with so much love and affection, charming anyone who’s ever been to my house.  He was my boy.  I’m so sad to say that he died suddenly of liver cancer (at least that’s what the doctor thinks) three weeks ago.  It happened so fast, I still can’t believe it.  I was in Cleveland coping with the sudden death of my father when my husband called to tell me Gus was sick.  I wish I could have been there to say good-bye, but since that was not meant to be, indulge me in a few photos as I say my sweet good-bye to my sweet Gus.

Gus with Stick

Gus taking it easy

Gus Sleeping

Jane

My mother always said she hated Mother’s Day.  Like a few other women over 50, members of the baby boomer generation, I grew up in a household where Mother’s Day was looked down upon as something artificial, created by marketers in order to sell products.  So, I believed that when/if I had kids, I would probably continue to look down my nose at Mother’s Day—and would say to my kids the kind of thing my mother used to say to me: “Please don’t give me anything on Mother’s Day.  Every day of the year is Mother’s Day for me.  You certainly don’t have to prove your love for me on some artificially-selected day!”

When our first child was born, and my first official Mother’s Day rolled around,  I was surprised to see how happy I was to get flowers from my husband.  But my real change of heart didn’t happen until those years when my children’s pre-school teachers (bless their wonderful hearts) started helping my children to create little Mother’s Day presents.  I remember when my oldest daughter brought home her first creation: a big flower made out of paper that opened up to reveal all kinds of nice words about mothers.  (The poems were furnished by the teacher, but the flower itself was cut out by my daughter.)  I found myself having to sit down—because I was crying!  I couldn’t believe it: I was a complete sap!  The marketers had won!

Give Mom the gift of love with a photo book filled with loved ones and cherished memories.

But what’s a girl to do?  Just consider these: the Mother’s Day in 1992 when our third child, Becky, was born—right on the very day!  Or the time when my son drew me a heart, that was signed, “I love you, Mama, Love, Parker Hatley.”  Or the Mother’s Day when my youngest, Josie, brought me a bouquet of paper flowers attached to straws (that are still sitting on my desk at work).  Or the more recent time when my adult daughter, Lizzie, brought me a little sign for my desk:  “I smile because you’re my mother.  I laugh because there is nothing you can do about it.”

Or this year:  when all four of them put their hard-earned money together to buy me flowers, a gift certificate for Ultimate Ice Cream (how well they know me!) and a locket with their pictures in it.

So, I’m in:  I love Mother’s Day.  Every year, I am caught, again—not by the sappy ads on t.v. (although I have to admit that when I was pregnant, I even cried over these)—but by the loving actions of my kids.  I’m a complete convert to Mother’s Day.  I say: Hurray for Mother’s Day!  Down with disbelievers!  I guess every good thing has to also have some accompanying hype.  Just consider Christmas!

A follow-up:  I’m happy to say that I stopped doing everything my mother told me to do when I was a teenager—and one of my rebellious acts was to bring her flowers on Mother’s Day.  Although she still pooh-poohed the day, she admitted she liked the flowers.

I wish I’d rebelled sooner.

I used to like to travel by myself for work.  I remember a time, when our 4 kids were little, that I looked forward with huge excitement to the occasional business trip, knowing that I would get to watch a movie on the hotel TV, or stay up all night reading if  I felt like it–or even take a midnight dip in the pool!

I’ve been doing a lot of traveling for work lately, and, although I still enjoy watching a movie in my hotel room, I’m pretty much over the rest of it.  I dread packing and unpacking.  I don’t like forgetting to bring toothpaste and having to go downstairs to buy some.

I don’t mind listening to good speakers or participating in helpful workshops, but I can really do without the “networking.”  I’ve never really enjoyed talking to strange people about whatever mess we can think up to talk about, but I’ve about gotten to the point where I can’t even fake it any more.  And I hate hotel breakfast buffets, full of cold cereal, fake waffles, and tasteless bagels.

Even the hotel lobbies depress me–with their aging carpets and their late-night bars full of conventioneers yukking it up and drinking too much. 

They remind me of airports, with their crowds of people walking around, passing each other, all of them unfamiliar, except that I like people-watching in airports, and it’s no fun in the lobby of a Sheraton.  There’s something about staying in a big hotel that gives me the same kind of limbo feeling I felt entering John F. Kennedy High School in the tenth grade–the new kid on the block, newly home to the States from our last tour of duty in Germany.

I’m a fish out of water.

I miss my husband.  I miss my kids.  I miss my friends. I miss my dogs.

I want to be back home, in my own bed, with my own pillow, and with my clock radio scheduled to wake me up to the sound of NPR, instead of a automated wake-up call.

I guess I’m just too damn old for this!

Jane

But it’s heaven.

Here’s my schedule: I wake up with the sunrise in the morning and go out and sit on the deck, watching the ocean, maybe sipping a cup of decaf coffee.  A little bit later, after the family wakes up, I have some breakfast, lovingly prepared by someone other than myself (beach vacations include freedom from cooking!).  Then, I take a morning walk on the beach, stopping every now and then to pick up a shell or pat a passing dog.  When I get back to the cottage, I might read a book for a while or do an acrostic puzzle from the book my husband gave me for Valentine’s Day.  Then, what do you know, it’s time for lunch!  One of the kids is on lunch duty, so I wait to eat what they prepare.  Later in the day, I might sit on the deck for a little longer–or take another walk–depending on my energy.

Josie in the Water

Sometimes, I take a nap in the afternoon, listening to the sounds of the waves breaking on the beach and the seagulls flying around, calling to each other.  I’m often hungry here–something about the ocean air!  So I have to be careful about not eating, eating, eating, every spare minute.  I’ve been good so far.

Double Rainbow at the Beach

Later in the afternoon, I read my book again–or write–or have another walk.  It’s difficult sometimes to choose!  There are no phones ringing.  No emails to be answered, since I don’t look at them.  No places to go or people to see.

Then, before you know it, it’s time for dinner, once again prepared by someone else, followed by a board game with everyone or, perhaps, a rented movie on the t.v., with popcorn.  Then, time to go out on the deck and look at the stars before climbing into bed.

There are ways to spend lots of money down here.  We could go go-carting or eat at fancy seafood restaurants or take a ferry over to Ocracoke Island for the day.  But why bother?  We’ve got the ocean out our front door, carrying away months and months of stress each morning and lulling us to sleep each night.  Oh, and did I mention the moon over the ocean at night?

I recommend it to all women over 50!

Annice

Is it just me or is it because I live in NC where basketball is king that I’m overwhelmed with March Madness?  To be honest, I really don’t care about it.  There it is.  I’ve said it.  I’ve got enough madness in my life, thank you very much.

Another truth, I never even heard about it until I met my husband 16 years ago.  He loves college basketball, and all sports except NASCAR (thank God).  Come mid-March, Madness lives in our living room because we are not a home with multiple televisions, something I insisted on long ago.  That means whenever there is any kind of tournament  (World Series, Super Bowl, PGA Golf, Wimbledon, etc.) the T.V. is on and on and on until I try to convince my husband to go downstairs to his office to watch this Madness on his laptop.  Needless to say, he doesn’t enjoy that AT ALL.

When I can no longer endure the basketball game in our house, I politely hand over the Sennheiser wireless headphones (which I highly recommend)  to  my husband before muting the T.V.

Sennheiser Headphones

When I question him about all this basketball, he thinks I’m crazy.  “Everyone watches college basketball this time of the year,” he assures me.  Really?  I’m pretty sure most of my friends don’t watch it.  I’m sure if I had sons who played basketball I’d be more interested.  Don’t get me wrong, I admire, even envy the talents of super athletes and their victories.  Who doesn’t like to see their team triumph?  But two weeks of basketball?  So, I’m asking, how many of you are really into all that March Madness?

Annice

Okay, I said I wasn’t going to write about Len’s hip replacement anymore, and I’m not.  But, as a result of our wretched winter, I believe I see a Caribbean Cruise in the very near future for one deserving woman over 50.

I see a Cruise in your future

I’ve never been on a cruise, and honestly, as someone who prided herself in being adventurous, I poo pooed them.  Len, too, felt cruises were rather beneath him.  We both cringed at the idea of being stuck at sea with thousands of strangers trying hard to vacation on an ocean liner.  How appealing could that be, I asked.  Well, now that I’ve had the life force sucked out of me, I’m thinking about being stuck at sea with a boatload of strangers basking  in the sun with Margaritas, lobster salad, spa treatments, yoga classes, trashy magazines, and no email, facebook or cell phones unless I want them.  Even Len is thinking cruise.

Admittedly, watching too much daytime T.V. (while taking care of Len) made me very susceptible to compelling commercials about Carnival Cruises to the Caribbean. In a flash, I saw myself sliding down a giant water slide on the   ship’s pool, and laughing all the way.

Oh yeah!

The seed of desire was planted, and for the past few days I’ve been searching the internet for affordable cruises.  And guess what?  There are so many to choose from.   The one that is calling me leaves from Miami, and then sails  to Belize, Honduras, and Mexico.  I’m certain Len will be ready by May, and as for me, I was ready yesterday.

P.S.  Do you think I could bring Gus?  He could use a vacation, too and he loves to swim.

Annice

I hope this is the last post I write about taking care of my husband and all my tsores (yiddish for troubles).  As expected, Len turned the corner from being in pain all the time and taking lots of drugs to moving about more, going up and down the stairs, and reducing his pain meds.

Better Days

Like him, Gus  also turned the corner so we are all doing better.   I’m even back at work part-time.  Being home-bound with Len has been a true learning experience, and, as a woman over 50, I feel liberated enough to say, I didn’t like it.  It made me feel isolated and anxious, and considering I am a 7 (Enthusiast) on the Enneagram that was tough.  By the way,  if you’re not familiar with the Enneagram personality profiles, check it out!  Seven’s are extroverted, optimistic, versatile, and spontaneous.  At their best, they focus their talents on worthwhile goals, becoming appreciative, joyous, and satisfied.  At their worst, well, let’s just say that nursing would not be good for a 7, as being patient often feels like being stuck.  Needless to say, I have work to do on that one.

.

Being home-bound has made me realize how much I like my work.  I’m not a workaholic, but I like my work and love the interaction with people.  Friends and family asked me what I did all day during the downtime.   Well, what kept me from going over the edge emotionally was getting on the yoga mat, reading wonderful novels, facebook, and re-visiting cookbooks.  I’ve been preparing 3 square meals daily for almost 6 weeks, and I’ve never done that before.  I’m pretty much cooked out!  Last night I made an “Indian Samosa Casserole” and a Green Bean Salad with Miso dressing, compliments of the  January issue of the Vegetarian Times. You can be sure with me back at to work part-time, the food fest is over.  Let the diet begin!

Last night's dinner

Ingredient List

Serves 6

Crust

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 Tbs. vegetable oil

Filling

• 1 Tbs. black or yellow mustard seeds
• 1 tsp. curry powder
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1/8 tsp. red pepper flakes, optional
• 5 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered (1 1/4 lb.)
• 1 1/2 tsp. vegetable oil
• 1 medium onion, diced (1 cup)
• 1 medium carrot, diced (1/2 cup)
• 3 cloves garlic, minced (1 Tbs.)
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 cup low-sodium vegetable broth
• 2 tsp. agave nectar or sugar
• 2 Tbs. soy milk

To make Crust:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.  Whisk together flours and salt in bowl.  Stir in oil until clumps form.  Add 6 to 10 Tbs. cold water, 1 Tbs. at a time, until dough holds together.  Shape into ball, cover with damp towel, and set aside.

To make Filling:

2. Stir together mustard seeds, curry, ginger, cumin, and red pepper flakes (if using) in bowl; set aside.

3. Cook potatoes in boiling salted water 15 minutes, or until tender.  Drain, return to pot, and mash, leaving small chunks.

4. Heat oil in skillet over medium heat.  Add onion, carrot, and garlic, and sauté 5 minutes, or until carrot is tender.  Move onion mixture to side of pan, and add mustard seed mixture in center.  Toast 30 seconds.  Stir in peas and broth.  Fold onion mixture into potato mixture; stir in agave nectar.  Season with salt and pepper, if desired.

Spread Filling in 9-inch pie pan. Set aside.

5. Roll out Crust dough to 11-inch circle on floured work surface.  Cover Filling with dough, pressing down to make sure no air pockets remain.  Trim away excess dough, and crimp edges with fingers.  Cut X in center to vent steam; brush with soy milk just before baking.  Place pie on baking sheet, and bake 40 to 50 minutes, or until crust is golden. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

6. Frozen cooking instructions:  Preheat oven to 375°F. Place casserole on baking sheet, and bake 75 to 90 minutes, or until Filling bubbles and Crust is golden. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Nutritional Information

Per slice: Calories: 299, Protein: 7g, Total fat: 7g, Saturated fat: <1g, Carbs: 54g, Cholesterol: mg, Sodium: 469mg, Fiber: 7g, Sugars: 7g

Annice

Just when I thought my care-taking days and nights were diminishing, life decided otherwise.  For starters, my husband’s surgery to pin his hip back in place failed, and ten days later he was back in the hospital for a full-blown hip replacement.  While I know this is a very common procedure, it doesn’t mean it’s easy or pain-free, not to mention what it’s been like for moi.  This time, the doctor recommended home health care, and thank god for Care Partners (and drugs).

Care Partners is providing quality nurses, physical therapists and even an occupational therapist who come to our house for support and care which is not only needed but greatly appreciated.   But, it’s a slow recovery, and my husband hates being dependent on anyone, even me.  And he won’t let me insert a photo of him doing his physical therapy, claiming he has privacy issues.

And for those of you who asked about my sweet rescue, Gus, I’m happy to report that his anal infection is practically gone and he’s doing much better thanks to the very expensive auto-immune drug treatment he was on for thirty days.  Now, he/we have a new problem.  Well, it’s not entirely new as he already had a bad knee (ACL) so, you can imagine the beating his knee took while being severely constipated and forced to squat to do his business.  This all happened while Len was in the hospital, and I had to actually help Gus (all 85 lbs. of him) get up and down despite the customized dog bed I had made for him and Carli.  Thank you Kathleen for making such cool looking beds for both my dogs.     

In between Len’s surgery, I found myself scurrying home to help Gus go out and then finally taking him to the vet – very difficult getting him into the car.  The doc gave him a stronger anti-inflammatory (short term because it could damage the liver) and after 2 days he was improving.  Now he is back to himself and Len is home and I’m exhausted.

And just when I was feeling sorry for myself, I turned on Dr. Oz (daytime T.V. is quite an experience), and  on that particular day I saw a short piece about a young mother who has three (NOT 1 but 3!) autistic children.  That certainly put it all in perspective for me.

Jane

Now that all 4 of my kids are either adults or within spitting distance of adulthood, I have moments where I  actually get a glimpse of the things—good and bad—we did in raising them, and the things I wish someone had told me when I was starting out.  (“Oh, so that’s how it works!”)

I’m never going to write a book on the subject, since I still feel pretty clueless on the whole subject. (Being a parent offers you such a host of ways to feel like a failure at your job.) But I do have some off-the-top-of-my-head suggestions for young parents (not in any logical order, since raising 4 kids has destroyed any logical sense I may have ever had before):

1) No matter how bad things seem when your children are infants and toddlers (and you are a) sleep deprived b) at your rope’s end with frustration over ‘potty training’—I put that in quotes because I no longer believe in it—or c) ready to blow up at your child’s pediatrician/teacher/fill in the blank because they don’t “get” your kid, keep in mind that some day you’re going to look back on these days as the glorious time when you still had control over their physical location!

At the beginning: my husband, Tom, with Lizzie

2) When a toddler is defiant, try to keep your sense of humor.  Try to avoid letting their defiance go deep down into your gut where it can threaten your whole psyche—or at least your confidence in yourself as a parent.   Remember:  even if you are in the middle of a grocery store and a really patient mother of toddler triplets is watching you with mild condescension or a highly professional and important-looking person is trying to step over the massive pile of cereal boxes your child has created by emptying a shelf, and even if it is all being broadcast over the store’s tv monitor, it doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things.  Think of it this way:  keeping a sense of humor now will be good practice for later, when your child is a teenager.

3) When a teenager is defiant and insists on doing something that you know is bad/dangerous/unhealthy for him/her, don’t back down!  No matter what!  Try to remember the 2-year-old inside that teenager body, when he/she says something like, “You are completely psycho, Mom.  Why in the world should I do that?” and answer proudly the words you should have learned at your mother’s knee: “Because I’m your mother, and I said so!”

4) On the other hand, when a teenager really wants you to let them try something new, even if you know they will struggle at it and even possibly fail, hold your breath and let go.

Teenage Years: the 3 Girls

5) Grades aren’t everything, but they also aren’t unimportant.  No one wants to be the parent who is obsessed with grades, but you also don’t want to end up watching kids who are dumber than your kid delivering the high school valedictory address just because they had parents who gave them $10 for every A!

6) Sometimes your children will get a) physically injured or b) mentally or emotionally pained or c) both, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it, except to avoid falling down the rabbit hole with them.  When they are going through terrible times, your job is not to empathize, it is to sympathize and help pick up the pieces.  If you empathize too much, you either make them think things are worse than they are or you make them feel responsible for your happiness—and that’s no fun, especially not to a teenager.

7) Enjoy the time you have with them at home and try to make it about something more than chores or homework or responsibility.  Even if the house is a pigpen, play with them every now and then—and even if they get to choose the game—and even if it’s Monopoly!

Pat yourself on the back occasionally.  It’s okay, as long as you don’t overdo it and become Ms. or Mr. “ Perfect Parent,” which is really obnoxious to all the other poor schmucks struggling through.  But remember to do it when you know you’ve done something right—or at least that you haven’t botched things too badly—because those moments are few and far between and you need to grab hold of them.  They give you strength for the moments when you really screw up.

9) Remember to take time for yourself every now and then and take good care of your health.  Nobody needs/wants/or likes a martyr! Besides, if you’re just starting down the parenting highway, you’ve got years ahead of you of getting up in the night to a) change a diaper b) help Santa Claus deliver his presents c) hold a sick child’s head while he/she throws up oatmeal and blueberries d) make a screaming kid get up out of bed and walk out the cramp in his/her leg e) deal with a child’s “night terrors” without giving them a heart attack f) talk them down from whatever ledge they are on.  Conserve your strength. You’ll need it.

10) Remember that love is everything—and the best guide you have.  I seriously do not believe that you can love a child too much.  You might do stupid little things because you love them.  You probably will say the wrong thing, over and over (“I’m sorry” is a handy phrase, even for a parent.)  But if you really love them the way you probably can’t help and the way you’ve probably done since you first saw their little monkey face in the delivery room or at the adoption,  you won’t mess up the big things.

Now

Annice

It’s not supposed to snow a lot in Asheville, but this winter (like the rest of the country) we were covered up.  During the last snow storm, my husband decided to shovel his car out of the driveway even though I told him there was a huge sheet of black ice and it was too dangerous, and in fact stupid.  However, my dear husband was determined to get his car out of our driveway no matter what.  Did I say I live on a mountain 2200 ft. high and our driveway is one hell of a steep slope?

I won’t bore you with all the details about our driveway and the fact that a standard 8 ft. plow is too wide to go down it.  So, on that particular day, two weeks ago, my husband slipped and fell.  He said he didn’t hurt himself and proceeded to walk around for almost a week with pain that eventually got so bad he had to go to the doctor.  The next day, he was in surgery for a broken hip and 3 pins.

broken hip with pins

When accidents happen and you’re forced to get out of your daily routine and take care of someone, you get to look at how compassionate you are (or not) and how you react to change.  For me, it began even before the accident.  Unlike my husband, I just accepted the blizzard and the fact that I was stuck in the house and would be for a while.  We had food, heat, books, music, T.V., computers, telephone, beer, wine, chocolate, bread machine, flour, etc. so why was he so anxious about getting off the mountain?  Well, I asked him that question.  And here’s what he said:  “I just don’t like the idea of not being able to get out!”

The infamous driveway

I probed further.  “What do you mean?  What’s the big deal if you have to stay home for a few days?”

Husband: “I want to be able to get down the mountain in case of an emergency.”

Me: “What kind of emergency?”, I wondered.

Husband: “You never know.  An E-M-E-R-G-E-N-C-Y.  It could be anything.”

Me: “Oh, I get it.  We have to be ready for an E-M-E-R-G-E-N-C-Y.”

So, here I am, being a caregiver to someone who is stuck on pre-emptive emergency planning who happens to be an impatient, cranky and frustrated patient relegated to a walker for maybe 6 weeks.  So, thanks to my husband, I get to practice patience and compassion every day.  Sometimes, I make his favorite comfort foods, and bring him éclairs when I am running errands.  Sometimes, I want to punch him.  This past Sunday, I even dropped him off at a Super Bowl party, very eager to do it, I admit.  Of course,  I had an ulterior motive.  I wanted to do a two hour yoga class.  Thank you very much Cindy Dollar One Center Yoga, Asheville for that opportunity for harmony and balance in my life this week.  

guest writer Kathryn Wilson

Following Kathryn’s story on Monday, we’re continuing with Part II of E., One Intrepid Senior

E. worked as a model in post-war Manhattan for the Elizabeth Arden Salon and lived in the famous Barbizon Hotel in the mid 1940’s. This glamorous part of her life led her to meet Gloria Vanderbilt, Marlene Dietrich, and her first husband, D.      

After marrying D. and living in New York and Cincinnati, E. returned to her hometown of Louisville after the death of D. to start Louisville’s first finishing school. Once the charm school was successful, E. moved on to pursue her true love—art.  She and two friends started Talents Unlimited, a company that sold art supplies, taught classes, and specialized in unique Christmas dioramas that E. designed and crafted.  These wreaths were hot ticket items, frequently requested and often selling for more than $300 a piece.  Each wreath was highly specialized, electric, and musical, and featured detailed Christmas scenes.  E. even had one of her more elaborate wreaths, modeled after the Kennedys’ last Christmas in the Blue Room, accepted by the Kennedy Memorial Library.  The wreaths have been showcased in museums and craft shows across the country, winning many awards.

Eloise's wreath

E. has traveled to many exotic locales, including Paris, Hong Kong, Haiti, and Thailand.  She has had many adventures abroad, including meeting Maria von Trapp and, in a separate instance, nearly being kidnapped.  E. and I spent an entire day viewing slides of these beautiful trips to near and far.  She will soon be leaving for her yearly sojourn to her condo in Highland Beach, where she will wait out the icy Kentucky winter in the peaceful warmth and light of Florida.

In short, E. has had an amazing life, one worthy of transcribing and well-deserving of the title she’s chosen: Yes, I’ve Had a Life.  She is an admirable woman who has made the most of her life.  I have found myself inspired continuously throughout the process.  Yes, I hope my life will be just as exciting as E.’s, but I also hope to never forget the importance of each person’s life story.  I know now that these small anecdotes are always worth observing more closely, no matter how high the pile of surrounding souvenirs may be.

I know this is a blog about smart and beautiful women over 50, but I could not, in good conscience let this day pass without honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Junior.   And, in an odd way, it reminds me of how much I like writing for   us women over 50, because Dr. King (like so many other great people of our era) is etched in our memory, and I       don’t  have to explain a thing.  All of us come to this blog with similar reference points in life which means so much   between us does not have to be explained.

Every year, I make it a point to listen to MLK’s 17 minute I have a dream speech delivered on April 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  It’s hard to believe I’ve been listening to this speech for over 40 years, and every year when I hear it, I’m amazed at how relevant and prophetic Dr.King’s words remain, especially given the recent I have a dream tragedy in Tucson.  So, without having to say more to my fellow sisters, I hope you’ll to listen to MLK’s great speech before the day is over, and I encourage you to share it with your children, and grandchildren who might  need some explaining about what this great man stood for.

To quote MLK, “Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics –  will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Diane Puckett

Time really does go faster as we age. It has been a year since we moved to the mountains of Western North Carolina, but it seems like we just got here. The year has been quite a whirlwind of change.

Full Moon in DC

The biggest change – leaving the Washington, DC area, a place I had lived over half a century, (did I really say that?).  It’s my entire life. Though we had planned to move to Asheville for years, it was still a big deal, and happened far more quickly than anticipated. With a beautiful full moon and all the planets apparently in alignment, our house sold in two days.

Thus began the whirlwind. Three full moons later, we would move to the mountains, and there was much to do.

There were many people to say goodbye to, knowing I would never see most of them again. I closed the psychotherapy practice I had worked years to establish, bidding farewell to clients and colleagues. The local pottery studio, my hangout of kindred spirits was toughest to leave. Well, other than my sister, but that’s too tender to write about now.

We headed South on a cold December day, cars crammed full of stuff and our two beagles along for the ride. Not long after we arrived, a snowstorm followed, leaving us with no electricity and lots of tree damage. It was a tough winter, especially since we knew almost no one. Our holidays were non-existent, as we were busy moving.  The day I found myself strolling through Walmart for entertainment, I knew something had to change. Facebook provides an illusion of a social life, but it’s not reality. The North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement at UNCA was my lifeline during that long winter, feeding my brain and giving me a connection with other people.

Molly

Molly Beagle, my best bud for thirteen years, slowly wound down and passed on to the Rainbow Bridge. Our last day together was a sacred time – we cuddled up, and I talked to her about the good times we shared together.  At the end, I sang the Golden Girls theme song to her. I’m grateful Molly had some time here in our beautiful new place. We buried her next to my studio where she will have her own garden of the flowers she loved.

Diane's studio

Living here feels like I’ve finally come home. I love the spirit of this place, the creativity, the energy.  It’s been a year now, and I feel like I’m finding my niche. I’ve made good friends and know many of our neighbors.  I have an almost-finished pottery studio, a dream-come-true.

I’ve given in to my craving for a hammered dulcimer and have begun music lessons again after a 45-year hiatus. Maybe this time around I’ll practice.

Most of all, I love the magnificent mountains. I cannot even think of adequate words to describe them. May I never take them for granted or stop seeing them.

Being a woman over 50, I find myself starting to reminisce about food from my childhood.  It was bound to happen, right?  Nut rolls and Poppy Seed rolls, along with Kolachi’s filled with apricot, cherry, or plum jam, were a part of the Holiday season for me growing up.  My Mom and Dad used to make them just about every year, and it was a BIG project.  I can remember that my 3 brother’s and I stayed clear of the kitchen when this was going on, because it was just so intense!  They had to be made just right; the dough had to be rolled out thin (which was not easy), and there was no scrimping on the filling.  Sticking with the basic recipe was important: no raisins in the poppy seed filling!  Once my Mom put coconut in the nut filling, and well, let me just say that Christmas was not very special that year.  

I spent months trying to get the perfect recipe; from my old boyfriend’s Mom, to hours online researching all the many and complicated recipes that are out there, watching YouTube videos of these rolls being made, studying old cookbooks on my shelves, until finally, my Mom came through and gave me a recipe that she used which was given to her by her best friend’s cousin’s Mom, who made my Mom swear not to give it to anyone until she died.  This is the recipe I want to share.  

POPPY SEED ROLLS GO GOOD WITH COFFEE!

I hesitated for many months.  I thought they would be so time-consuming and difficult.  Being the baker that I am though, I decided it was high time to try.  And besides, my Dad really wanted me to make them, and even bought me a grinder online that cost a lot of money.  It didn’t work at all, so please don’t order it!   They emailed the company, Otto’s Import Store and Deli, asking for a refund and are still waiting to hear back from them, so don’t use them!  I ended up grinding the poppy seeds with a small amount of the sugar in my inexpensive Black and Decker blender and guess what?  It turned out fine.  

SPREADING THE POPPY SEED FILLING

Oh, before I forget, I also ordered bulk poppy seeds online from a company and they were rancid.  The company is called NutsOnline and they were not very nice when I called them to ask about their return policy.  I hate returning things, and of course, I had to pay the postage.  I am happy to recommend Mountain Rose Herbs though, which is an online source of many quality herbal products, teas, and oils.  What a pleasant experience ordering from them!  I did put the poppy seeds in the freezer when I got them, which I think is a good thing, since they do tend to go bad quickly.  

MIXING THE FLOUR

So here is the recipe:  Good luck!  Have fun because they are so good and they are not really difficult!  

Sally’s Poppy Seed or Nut Roll Recipe   

(6 rolls)  

In a big bowl, whisk the following together:  

7 cups Flour    

 1 t. Salt  

 ¼ cup Sugar  

Then cut up 8 ounces Butter and with your hands, incorporate the butter into the flour mixture until it is mixed in.  

Now add in 8 ounces of Sour Cream, and blend it in.                  

Then, add ½ cup lukewarm milk (a little at a time), and mix in.  

In a separate bowl, whisk:                               

 1 ½ packages of dry Fleishman yeast,  

 ½ teaspoon sugar, and  

3 ounces warm water  

Wait about 5 minutes until it foams & then add this to the flour mixture.  

And lastly, add 3 beaten eggs, a little at a time, mixing in.  Let dough stand for about an hour, covered and in a warm spot.  

THE DOUGH IS RISING

 Then cut into 6 parts and put a tea towel over the dough to cover for another 1 hr. (or double in size)  

 Roll on flour and powdered sugar surface and fill with either of the following:  

 FOR 6 rolls: use 5 lbs. ground walnuts OR 2 lbs. grounded poppy seed  

 (You can add yellow raisins to the nut filling: soak in hot water first)  

FILLING:  

In a big bowl, for every 1 pound (around 4 cups) of ground Walnuts or Poppy Seeds,  

add 1½ cups Sugar, and  

2 T. Butter, melted  

Mix  

Scald 1 cup Milk & add little at a time to the filling mix until you get a nice, spreadable consistency.   

If it thickens before used, just add more milk  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  

ROLL OUT each dough ball on a little bit of flour and spread filling to edges.  Roll up like a jelly roll.  3 rolls should fit on a pan.  Cover each pan until the rolls rise a bit.  

Then poke the tops with a toothpick.  I washed the tops with an egg yolk wash.  If you don’t, then sprinkle powdered sugar on top when they come out of the oven, after cooling a bit.  

Bake for around 40-45 minutes.  Enjoy and share!

HOW I LOVE POPPY SEED ROLLS!

Jane

I’m having trouble with the season this year.  First of all, it’s been a hard year—with everyone having financial troubles, getting by on getting by.  And now, here comes the time of year when people are expected to be happy and cheerful and—most of all—to spend money.  It’s almost your patriotic duty to spend money this year, since it will help the economy! But spending money is hard in hard times, so why do we do it anyway?  Even though the economy is in terrible shape, Americans are out, crowding the stores, buying presents.  I sometimes get a physical feeling of revulsion when I go in a crowded mall full of people spending money they don’t have.  And I’m not excluding myself from that group.  I’m out there, with the best of them. 

My family celebrates Christmas, and I wish the burden of our particular holiday could be lifted a bit.  I think it’s wonderful to give people gifts and show people you love them, but I wish there were not so much guilt wrapped up in this season.  The mother’s version goes something like this: “But if I don’t buy my daughter those $200 boots, she might think I don’t love her.” Or, “But she has been wanting that Wii for ever, so really we should just put it on the damn credit card.” Or “If I buy this present at the bargain store, will she be able to tell somehow?” 

I suspect the guilt factor is worse for mothers than for fathers, but fathers feel it, too.  They just express it differently:  “I should have gotten him that warmer jacket, no matter how much it cost!”

I’d like for there to be a big confession booth in the sky, where we could all step into at this time of year and say, “I have sinned.  I came up short.  I couldn’t buy all the presents I wanted to for people.  I couldn’t give my children the trip to Europe that so-and-so gave to theirs. But could I please just get some extra credit for wanting to give them those things?”  In my dream confessional booth, there would be a spiritual guide behind a curtain who would say, “Don’t worry.  You are doing the best you can.”  Then, maybe, we could walk out, our shoulders lighter, and enjoy the season more.

 I hope we’ll hear from our readers about their ways of dealing with the stresses of this holiday season.  I know that, for many of our readers, it helps to focus on the manger scene or the menorah or their own religious symbols that remind them of the wonder of life on this planet.  And I agree that is important. But religious belief doesn’t always eliminate the demands of the season that can drive us to distraction.   So I’m going to pretend that booth is there for me, and I guess I’ll have to be my own absolver, so that I can relax a bit and think about what really matters:  my family will soon be gathered together for Christmas, all in one house, safe and sound for a little while, before we all scatter again to the four winds.

Jane

Anna Maria Johanna Margaretha Kok or “Ans,” is a beautiful and amazing Dutch woman (and career physical therapist until the mid 1990’s) who, at 53, when her husband (my husband’s uncle) was taking early retirement and she could easily have settled into a life of leisure, instead took on a major, at times overwhelming new project that consumed her for the next 7 years and made a profound difference for a village in Cameroon, Africa.

Here is her amazing story, which shows how much individual people, working together with other individual people, can do!

 Bitoutouck, Cameroon is a small village in the jungle of Cameroon, with about 800 inhabitants.  It is located around 60 miles from the capital of Yaounde.  To get there, you can take the train, when it’s running, but then you still have to walk an hour into the jungle.  The total trip takes 3 hours from Yaounde, and, no matter which way you travel to get there, you have to cross the River Nyong, a river infested with crocodiles and therefore not easily crossed in a canoe!

When Ans Heykoop and her friend Marthe went to Bitoutouck in 1999, to visit Marthe’s home village and her family, Ans was distressed to see that there was no bridge across the river—and not because it made the journey difficult for her.  What she saw was that the lack of a bridge meant there was no easy way for the villagers to get their goods to market in the city or find jobs for themselves.  The effect on the people of the village was obvious.  Most people in the village had no income and had difficulty providing their children with even one meal a day.  The village had no clean drinking water, so children had to walk hundreds of yards to get water out of a stream before going to school in the morning, and, since the water was used for everything, many people had intestinal illnesses.  A trip to the doctor in Libamba, however, a village on the other side of the river, meant walking 16 miles!  The school building had 3 classrooms, with 140 students spread over 4 classes, one of which was held in a small building meant to house a teacher.   There were large holes in the schoolroom walls;  the floor was stamped earth, and the children were plagued with sand fleas between their toes. 

That trip, coupled with a love of Africa that had started for Ans as a young girl when she spent time visiting her missionary uncle in The Congo,  inspired her to ask her friends and family to donate money to help the village build its first clean water well.  This project soon led to others, and, the next thing you know, she and Marthe had started an official foundation to continue aid to Bitoutouck. 

Called the “Bridge to Bitoutouck Foundation,” the organization had as its long-term goal to some day build a bridge across the river Nyong to Bitoutouck, but, in the meantime, there were short-term, more immediate projects.  For the next seven years, Ans served as the first chairperson of the foundation’s steering committee, working closely with Marthe to make sure that the projects undertaken by the foundation were ones that the villagers actually needed, ones that could make a significant difference. 

 And, boy, did they make a difference!  Just look at the list of projects:

 In 2001, the first drinking water well was dug.

In 2002,  the school was fully renovated with doors, ceilings, a cement floor, whitewash, and, perhaps most importantly, outhouse toilets.

In 2003, a new schoolroom was built, as well as a small house for the school director.  A small grain milling machine was acquired for the village.  A boy with polio was aided with an operation; a man received a new hip and could walk again, and a deaf girl in the village was helped by a foundation gift to enter a boarding school.

In 2004, a medical clinic was constructed.  Ten new palm oil plantations were started, which, 3 years later, were ready to provide palm oil to sell. 

Over the next few years, a motorized press was provided for pressing oil from the palm nuts.  A used Toyota was donated to the village for getting goods to market.  A small community building was constructed as a meeting place, with a small kitchen for providing two meals per week to the schoolchildren.  And a second well was built in a nearby village.

Most recently, more wells have been constructed, and the medical clinic now has a gravity-fed water tank, filled by pumping water from the first well. 

For more information about any or all of these projects, go to www.brugnaarbitoutouck.nl.  However, I warn you:  the site is in Dutch! 

After seven years of almost daily work for the foundation, Ans has now stepped down. 

The point I want to make about this amazing woman is  1) she didn’t have official training in “foundation development” or “non-profit management” 2) she had no outside sources of funds at first, although, over the years, she has attracted other foundations, other funders to the work of the foundation; all she had was a compelling need to help the people of Marthe’s village—that and a huge amount of intelligence, persistence, and courage 3) she did all this amazing work while also continuing her own volunteer work in Soest (for 25 years, for example, Ans swam every Saturday morning with handicapped people, helping them to be more physically active) AND taking courses in or teaching herself sculpture.  To quote her husband of 28 years, Jan Heykoop:  “(The foundation work) was in addition to taking care of many folks in need and jumping in to help handicapped friends and patients find their way through the maze of Dutch medical care.  Then there was the dog, and (myself), and not to forget that she has become quite a good sculptor in the past ten years or so.”  

Once again Ans Heykoop, we at Oops50 salute you: a truly amazing, beautiful woman over 50!

To make a donation to the Bridge to Bitoutouck Foundation, go to http://www.brugnaarbitoutouck.nl and click on “How Can I Help?”

This whole thing of releasing kids into the universe should be easier by now.  After all, parts of it are so much easier:   we are not ingénue parents going to our first college to drop off our first kid; we don’t take long, extensive notes at Orientation sessions; we smoothly navigate college websites. And we are no longer intimidated by the process of packing enough stuff to make sure she has all she needs.  We know there is always the U.S. Mail.  Most of all, we no longer stay up late, worrying that our child might be homesick—or worrying more when she isn’t. We know that, either way, there is nothing we can do about it.  Not a damn thing.

 But that’s part of what makes this whole process hard, every single, damn time:  there is nothing we can do about anything any more.  Once again, one of our children—in this case, our daughter, Becky,  has stepped over the threshold that takes her out of our home, out from under us, into her own world.  We may still be here to provide financial—and occasional emotional—support, but, really, our work is done.  As the colleges love to point out these days, she is on her own now, making her own choices, setting her own curfew (or not), and we won’t even hear about it unless she chooses to tell us.  No helicoptering allowed! 

Becky with her sisters at high school graduation

So, it’s damn hard.  First of all, there is the big, gaping hole that one person’s absence creates in a family.  Secondly, there is the emptiness of rooms once occupied by Becky.  But, worst of all, there is the suddenness of it all.  In one breath,  you have moved from waking up at night and feeding a baby to pushing that baby out the door.  Overnight, you have gone from soccer practises and piano lessons, in a land where time stands still, to this strange, alien planet where kids become grownups and function on their own. Overnight, you’re supposed to make that dramatic, sudden shift that is required—from being an active parent, overseeing a teenager’s actions, keeping track of a teenager’s hours, to being a calm, uninvolved, hip, laissez faire parent who trusts that her child will be fine, no matter what.  It’s not a natural process.  It throws off all your signals. It doesn’t come naturally to me.

Becky's stuff on the ground outside her dorm

 But I’m working on it. 

It helps to make promises to myself:  I promise I won’t go whacko and think up bogus reasons to drive to Greensboro in order to show up on her doorstep in tears, with homemade brownies in hand.  I promise that I won’t cry in my beer about the fact that I never read all the Harry Potter books to her out loud.  I promise that I won’t do again what I did the first night and eat five bowls of ice cream to try to make myself feel better.  But I also promise that I will cry, damn it, when I feel like it and to hell with how pathetic I look!  Most of all, I will celebrate the fact that our daughter is happily ensconced in college, so I will be a saint and not get angry when I read her Facebook status that says “Yaay, College!” at the same time that mine says, “Bereft.” 

Becky's dorm room

Jane

I need to rant today!  All four of our kids are home this summer.  All four of our kids are teenagers–or close enough for government work!  The youngest is 14, the oldest 23.  Here’s the deal:  they are all in transitional stages.  One is finishing up college by going to summer school.  One is doing a gap year from college and getting ready to embark on an adventure in Mexico.  One is starting college in the fall.  One is starting high school in the fall.  So all 4 of them are in an antsy, restless stage, wondering if their new life will be ok, wondering if they’ll be content and happy, wondering, off and on,  how they can stand to live with their parents without shooting them in their sleep!  It’s a lot of fun.  They go back and forth between unbelievable sweetness–the kind that brings tears to your eyes–and complete irritability with everything parental. 

Mostly, since they all 4 see their freedom coming to an end in the fall, they are determined to take full advantage of it now–and I mean full advantage, in the way that only teenagers can.  They want every hour of every day to be filled with interesting activity.  So they stay up as long as possible every night and sleep all hours of the day, while working whenever they can fit it in (my son, for instance, has a job that starts at 9 p.m. and goes until 4 a.m.!) and trying to see all their friends as often as possible (when they are not facebooking them or texting them). 

One of the results of this restless, live-for-today behavior is that we never know ahead of time  1) how many mouths will need to be fed at the dinner table 2) where each of them will be spending the night (except for our 14-year-old, thank goodness!) 3) when/if they will get their respective forms filled out for their respective financial aid, job applications, applications to programs, etc. and 4) if we can survive on sleep deprivation caused by loud, raucous laughter at 4 a.m. in the downstairs guest bedroom (on the good nights, when they bring their friends to sleep at our house).   Mostly, I’m turning into a crazy woman who thinks it’s 6 a.m. when it’s 2 and yells down the stairs at a room full of kids:  “Everyone go to bed NOW!” Don’t get me wrong.  I wouldn’t change a thing about my 4 kids.  They are loving, open, generous, funny, smart, hardworking (when they have to be) people, and we’re very proud of them.  And part of the problem is that I am a crazy, neurotic mother who cannot sleep without knowing that each one of them is safe in his/her respective location.  I don’t have this problem when they are away at college.  I sleep like a baby (that is, until the phone rings at 2 a.m. because one of them has had some kind of crisis).  I don’t know why it is that when they are home with us for the summer, I have to know they are safe inside a house somewhere before I can drift off.  I guess it all boils down to this: I wish that I had started having kids when I was 10, so that I would be 33 now instead of 56 and could handle this phase of my life with more energy and a better sense of humor!  I think the answer is clear:  

Here’s what my husband and I decided last night (after five interruptions of our sleep that created a situation where we were wide awake at 4 a.m.): if there is a God, he/she must have created teenager behavior in order to make the empty nest syndrome easier to bear.

Annice

For Father’s Day, I asked my friend, Judy King-Calnek to share some of her memories about her father, who was one of the few African Americans to go to Harvard University in 1941.  Toward the end of her piece, you will find a link detailing his experience at Harvard told by the Boston Globe entitled, Southern Discomfort: With quiet grace, two black men change the heart of Harvard in 1941.   

While driving down the FDR Drive in Manhattan, I was still savoring the excitement of Brazil’s first victory in the World Cup, which I had watched and celebrated with friends in a cute little Brazilian bistro in Brooklyn that could’ve easily been in Copacabana.  I was on my way to work that morning, and even though it was only 7:45 a.m., the sun was shining brightly and it was so warm that I drove with my car windows and sunroof wide open, not to mention the radio cranked up.  

Dr. Judith King-Calnek

As I surfed the pre-selected buttons to find some music, preferably something I could sing along to as it was one of those kind of days, I was grabbed by a voice I had known since my childhood growing up in Cleveland.  It was Louis Armstrong on his tribute album to Fats Waller, singing “All That Meat and No Potatoes” – one of my father’s favorites.  I sang along at the top of my lungs, not like the 50 year old teacher getting ready to talk to her anthropology students as they prepare for a summer of fieldwork, but like the little girl who used to dance frenetically about the living room, with no clue of the double entendre of the lyrics, laughing as my father laughed at my glee and excitement when Satchmo wailed, and Daddy and I both sang out, “Give that food to the alligators!”.

That song and my experience to it, made me think about how much I missed my father, but it also made me happy because for that moment I really was four years old again and my father was about to pick me up and tickle me.  Immediately, I’d laugh and laugh some more and he’d call me his “little sugar-pie” just as Louis Armstrong began to blow his trumpet. 

As a little girl, I felt safe and protected by my father.  He’d always tell me that he was going to bring the sunshine to me when he’d join my mother and me vacationing on Nantucket.  I knew he wasn’t magic, but the strange thing was, we could be having cloudy, foggy weather, and as soon as he’d get to the island, usually in August, our birthday month, the sky would clear up and the sun would come out – just like he promised.                                        

Family House on Nantucket

As I moved into adolescence, my relationship with my father became strained by typical things like teenage rebelliousness.  Soon, I was no longer his cute “little sugar-pie”.  Then, one summer, as a teenager, I began to see a different side of my father.  Being the youngest of four children, I was the last to go through the family rite of passage - working in my father’s office for a few weeks every summer, I found it  hard to call him “Dr. King.”  I remember being surprised when his secretary told me how proud he was of my siblings and me and how much he talked about us.  We had no idea!  In those days he was very stern with us.  That summer, I was not only able to see just my father at work in his medical practice, but a man of great compassion who was profoundly respected by his patients and so many others.   

Okay, it sounds like I’m idolizing my father, and I suppose that many daughters feel that way.  It’s not that I didn’t see his warts and character flaws.  I did.  In fact, that’s what I focused on for many years, but now that I’m a parent of two boys, who will someday become fathers, I’m revisiting my memories of my father.  You see, after becoming a parent, I thought of him differently, and realized that not only did I love my father deeply, but I really liked him as a person.  

Dr. Drue King

  Unfortunately, it was not until his last few months, when my father was retired and in his 80s and had lost his physical mobility due to diabetic neuropathy, that I discovered yet another side of him.  I knew he had gone to the prestigious Boys Latin School in Boston and on to Harvard before World War II, at a time when the term “affirmative action” wasn’t even a twinkle in the eye of a legislator or admissions officer.  In fact, it would be more apt to describe that era as one of “negative action”.  Yet, he had leapt and labored over many of the racially defined hurdles of the era as did countless nameless African American men and women of the first half of the twentieth century.  But because it was Harvard, my father’s story carried certain connotations, or at least more attention than perhaps some others.  

Now, as an adult and as a parent, I realize we are usually hesitant to share certain stories with our children.  Obviously, we don’t readily tell them about the partying, exploits and abuses of young adulthood.  But there are other stories, too, the kind that our children (and other people) often consider remarkable.  It’s just that when we were living them, we didn’t see them as important.  I now understand why part of my father’s story remained with him for so long.  Firstly, he didn’t consider his actions remarkable or noteworthy; he felt he was doing what should be done.  Secondly, there was an element of shame or humiliation attached to efforts he made to move forward in his life. 

But thanks to one curious journalist, Ted Gup, who is now the Chair of the Department of Journalism at Emerson College, my father’s story came to be known through this article in the Boston Globe.  Apparently it moved the 21^st Century student body of Harvard as well as some staff and faculty members who saw fit to bestow on him the Harvard Foundation’s Humanitarian Award.  The University planned a celebration in his honor at which he was to receive the award, but he passed away just three short weeks prior to the date.  

My father died on April 1^st, 2004.  He was 84 years old.  The day he died the film “Big Fish”, a surrealistic story about a son trying to reconcile the truth about his father’s life before his death, was playing on TV.  I watched it over and over again and cried all day long thinking about my dad.  His was a very good life.  He did the things he wanted to, he achieved what he wanted to achieve; he had the family he wanted to have; enjoyed his grandchildren and even some great-grands.  The day before he died he told my sister he was tired, and then we knew we could let him go. 

My father and grandchildren

So today is Father’s Day and it’s okay that I can’t call him and tell him “Happy Father’s Day” because he is still so big and so present in my life.  But, I can reach for any one of those thousands of vivid memories and relive those My wish on Father’s Day is that my sons feel the same way about their parents as I feel about mine, and that their children feel the same.  I think my father gave me a wonderful gift, which I have a hard time naming, but I can certainly feel it when I recall so many of the lessons he bestowed on me.  So today on Father’s Day, I say “Thank you” to my father.  I think I’ll light a candle for him, download some Louis  Armstrong and sing and dance around my living room.

Jane

 Jean Boone Benfield decided in her early seventies to do something she had never done before:  to write a book.  Jean was born in Buncombe County, NC, and the book, Mountain Born, tells about her life growing up on a farm.  Her first inspiration for writing the book was noticing that a lot of the “mountain” expressions she’d heard during her growing-up years were disappearing before her eyes.  So, she decided to write them down.  She started taking notes on little pieces of paper and then in notebooks.  And then one day, her sister-in-law suggested that she put them in a book:  phrases like “soft as a pocket full of mice” or “pee out the fire and call the dogs”. 

 Jean’s first plan was to just make a permanent record of all that wonderful language, but one thing led to another, and the next thing you know, she was writing about her childhood and her parents and growing up poor in Western North Carolina and Asheville during World War II, and on and on.

Jean Boone Benfield

Jean’s book, which is self-published, is worth a read, not only if you have an interest in what it was like to grow up in the southern Appalachians of the forties and fifties but also if you like etymology or are interested in the history of Western North Carolina—or if you just like to add interesting phrases to your vocabulary, especially ones with homespun wisdom, such as “Flit like a butterfly from flower to flower and land on a pile of cow crap.”

I had lunch recently with Jean, and she told me about how she’s descended from Daniel Boone’s brother, Israel.  She also told me that another of her motivations for writing the book was being fed up with all the “silliness” that is in books about mountain ways or mountain language, such as the “hillbilly books” that you can buy at tourist stops on the highway.  She wanted to, whenever she could, show the history and derivation of the words or phrases she was quoting.  This adds another interesting layer to the book for students of language.  As Jean said, she had to do “a lot of old-fashioned research” for parts of the book.

The book is written in a homey style, as if someone is sitting in a rocking chair and talking to you.  And that’s just how Jean intended it.  She said she just “listened to a voice in (her) head” and wrote it down.  She finished the book when she got “good and tired of fiddin’ with it” and was “ready to let it go.”  Good advice for any writer!

One of the questions I asked Jean was to name one thing that her parents gave her that ended up being important to her.  She said they encouraged her to think for herself and not go with the herd.  As she said, they didn’t worry about giving her a “sense of self-worth” the way that parents focus on nowadays.  They just gave her the “sure knowledge that they were behind her,” no matter what. 

I’d say they succeeded.  Jean is definitely an independent thinker.  When she finished her book and realized she was going to have to do some work publicizing it, she joined Toastmasters, to get herself ready for the ordeal of public speaking.  Before she went to Toastmasters, she called up a speech professor at AB-Tech and asked for help in getting ready.  Jean takes life by the horns!

I encourage our readers to check out her book! You can purchase her book by writing to the author at mountainborn@bellsouth.net.

If you are in the Western North Carolina area, you can also meet her in person:   at Accent on Books in Asheville, on June 18^th, at 6 p.m. or at the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival in Burnsville on September 10 and 11, with info at www.cmlitfest.org.

Gwendie

Gwendie is well into her 7^th or 8^thlife, this one in Asheville, NC as a late-to-the-pen writer. In past lives she has been a daughter, a wife, a mother, a Professional Woman. Now she is exploring the vast universes of past and present into which she delves for stories.   

I’m an old grandmother.  Well, I’m not so very old, just 68 years young, as my cancer doctor says, but old to be just now having a grandchild.  Actually that’s not even quite true.  I have three step-grandchildren from a previous marriage, but I’ve seldom seen them, and they don’t really consider me their grandmother.

But this one, this precious little angel girl who was born last Thanksgiving Day to my son Jonathan and his beloved Irena (no, they’re not married—does anyone do that anymore?), is one of the great gifts of my life.

You see, three short years ago, I was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer (the incurable kind).  At that time, my son was adrift in life—a college graduate with no permanent job, no “significant other,” no idea what he should do with his life.  He lived with me for the first year after the diagnosis, being there for me during the mastectomy and the first harsh chemo.  But as I grew stronger, so did he, and he left to find his way in life, several states away.  I was glad for him.  Even gladder when he found a job, an apartment, and some months later, a ladyfriend.  But when they got pregnant and were thrilled at the prospect of a baby, I was more than glad for them.  And then, when adorable Daisy was born, I was so happy for them and so grateful for me. 

Gwendie's Daisy

Grateful because I’ve been given this time, even with cancer, or maybe especially with cancer, to see my own progeny grow and mature and begin to experience the wondrous gifts of life—love of a spouse or partner and love of a child.  And such a child—the most beautiful, sweet precious little creature on earth—something most grandmothers say, but in my case, it’s true. (Smile.)

Although I would love to be here to see little Daisy birth her own little daughter, my age and my health give me next-to-no chance of that.  But for me, the very fact that she exists, that she’s so loved by her parents and her grandparents and the rest of her family, gives me great satisfaction and a belief that “my work here is done.”   The continuation of the species, of MY family, of my genes, has been accomplished.  It seems to tidy up the package of my life nicely. 

As it does for mothers and grandmothers everywhere, my heart melts when I see Daisy, whether in person or in photos, or on Skype video, smiling and bubbling and looking right at me.  At the same time, my spine stiffens and my resolve hardens to continue to contest this chronic cancer as long as I can.  For Daisy, but mostly for me.  It’s the Grandmother Treatment for cancer.   And so far, it’s working.

Annice

Last week, I went to Cleveland to spend time with my aging dad.  There was concern–because he fell a few times and could not get up.   While I was visiting, various family members made comments such as, “he’s frail, he needs a walker; he might be depressed; he shouldn’t be driving,” etc.  And what did I find?   Some of the above, but not all.  It’s just not that simple.

To know what’s going on, I decided not to depend on the observations of others.   When I got the chance to talk to my dad alone (about driving, falling, not wanting to use the walker, etc.), he sat back in his big leather chair, looked me right in the eye, and said, “I wasn’t prepared. I just wasn’t prepared to get old like this and not be able to do the things I want and need to do.  I can’t believe it.” 

My heart ached for my dad, yet, at the same time, I turned selfishly to my own needs.  I immediately started thinking about what I can do to prepare myself so I won’t end up like him at 84. I started to make a list in my head of things I need to do to be more vigilant about my life, like walking, more yoga, better diet, more sleep, and on and on.  No time to lose. But then I realized the physical is just one aspect of our life, and, no matter how critical it is,  there is more, so much more, that it is hard to talk about. So, while it was a little uncomfortable to talk about such intimate issues with my dad, I knew that I could.  We have that history. 

 I began with the driving:  I reminded him thatabout 6 months ago he made the decision NOT to drive at night.  I told him I believed he would use the same good sense to decide when he couldn’t drive any more – period. I drove quite a bit with him while I was home, and in fact, let him drive me to the airport on the highway.  No problem.   And yes, he is frail.  He’s 84, with a lot of arthritis, so when he fell, he didn’t have the strength to lift himself up.  Solution, we got him the life alert.  

Of course he’s not happy about it, but because his children spent their money on it, he feels compelled to use it.  He wouldn’t want to waste our money.   As for the walker, he says he will use it more.  We shall see.    

And now for the depression.  Well, he wasn’t prepared for his decline.   And neither was Philip Roth’s anti-hero in Everyman, published in 2006.  Quoting Roth to my dad actually made him laugh.  Roth says “getting old is not a battle, it’s a massacre.”   My dad was not prepared for said massacre, so he’s a little depressed.  Then, there’s the fact that he lost his sister barely a month ago, leaving him without any siblings; not to mention that most of his friends are dying off.  Isn’t he allowed to grieve?  Can’t he be sad for a while?  Oh, did I mention he’s just getting over shingles, and his wife will be on dialysis soon?  Can’t he be sad about that?   And for the record, my dad lives in Cleveland.  Have you ever spent a winter there?  Brutal.    

Leave the man alone, I say.   

To purchase Everyman by Phillip Roth, check out this website of an independent bookseller:   http://www.malaprops.com/book/9780618735167.

Content coming soon.

May the Being of the Universe

breathe into you the light of blessing and ripeness,

the fulfillment of health and balance.

May it protect you from

distractions brittle and bent

with a sphere of lucid fire.

May it enlighten

the heart of your passion

with the contemplation of living energy.

May it uncover the

hidden strength within you,

insight gathered from the eternal now.

And may it show you its face

of secret grace and silent refuge

in a communion of deep peace.

(Translated from Hebrew by A.M. Habermann

 from the Qumran (Dead Sea) Community around 100 B.C.E)

Happy Holidays from all of us at Oops50!

Please accept with no obligation, implied or explicit, our best wishes for
an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress,
non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday,
practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion
of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the
religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice
not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

We also would like to wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. 

Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere.  Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

To Our Conservative Friends:

 Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and a Happy New Year!

Jane

Every August, I think I’m prepared for it.  After all, the house has been a mess all summer with their cartons full of school books, their various computers and printers,  and their mini-fridges.  But then, every August, I have to face the reality that my older children are no longer mine, come the 25th of August,  and I get to turn back into a non-speaking, uninvolved hose that feeds money to them on a weekly/monthly basis, for their latest bookstore bill, parking sticker,  or Art History field trip to the great museums of New York.  I no longer know what they’re doing on Saturday night (thank God!).  Unless they happen to call me up and tell me, I don’t know if they are happy or sad or getting sick or anything.  I know of people who didn’t even realize that their son/daughter had never attended a single class at their college of choice until they went to Parents’ Weekend!  Parents don’t get to be involved in any structured way in the whole process of choosing what classes they take (unless you count paying for those classes).  I am happy to say that I have no role in their choice of clothing! But I also don’t get to ask questions about most subjects without their permission, and  I don’t get a copy of their grades, unless they choose to share them with me. The only thing I have reasonable access to is the tuition bill. There’s a surprise!

I’m not even supposed to look very interested in what they are up to, or I might be accused of being that worst-of-all-bad-things:  a “helicopter parent.”

So, here’s the disconnect:  you’re supposed to go for 18 years, knowing everything about your children and being responsible–when push comes to shove–for their manners, their study habits, their spending habits, their eating habits, and even their bad living habits–that is, if those happen to 1) cause them to do community service or 2) land them in jail.  How is a parent supposed to artificially, overnight,  stop being a parent and become a casual bystander in their child’s life?

I say the whole system stinks!

Don’t get me wrong:  I’m all for students’ rights and fairness and privac.  But I have a little trouble with sending kids–and I mean kids–merrily off to college, with nothing more than the hope that they’ll be good at handling all that new-found freedom and independence.  I guess we really shouldn’t worry, since we know how well 18- and 19-year-olds perform in general with a lot of freedom and lack of rules!  What bothers me, I suppose,  is that we’ve gotten rid of all the support systems at the other end.  There are no “dorm mothers,” or parietal hours, or, as far as I can tell,  even very effective resident advisors.  Resident advisors seem to be there just to politely urge people to reduce the noise level that’s coming out of the room where all the illegal drinking/smoking/whatever is happening.   There’s nothing in colleges now that holds the student’s hand a bit through the transition from having one to two sets of eyes watching their every move to a state of complete absence of supervision (other than what their professors give them during classroom or advising hours).  I  miss those support systems.  I know I’m from another planet, but I loved having a “dorm mother” that I could go and talk to when I was homesick  or stressed.  I liked knowing that someone at the college cared if I lived or died.

I wouldn’t want to go completely back to the way things were in the dark ages when I was in school, but I think we’ve gone too far the other way.  We don’t have to have little teas with white gloves, but, please, someone at least give a damn if students adjust to college life with their bodies and souls intact.  I know if we could find a happy medium, parents would feel a lot better about shelling out thousands upon thousands of dollars each year for that education.

I’m writing to ask you if you happen to know of the laws for burying dead husbands in Wyoming.  Not that my husband will be dying any time soon.  I’m just wondering.  Is it legal to bury him in the backyard of our ranch, without a tombstone?  I don’t want to attract any unnecessary attention (he’s really a shy kind of guy), and I certainly don’t want to get in trouble with the law, if you know what I mean.

Wondering in Wyoming

Dear Wondering,

I’m with you, girlfriend. I only have three words for you:  Location, Location, Location. You want to make sure that you bury him upstream from your local water source and far enough away from any main road.  And a good time for this activity might be the middle of the night.  I heard shovels are on special at Home Depot this month, but, please, whatever happens, you didn’t hear this from me.

Dear Johanna,

How many pairs–and what type–of black pants should a stylish woman of a certain age  have in her closet?  I have 10 pairs, in sizes ranging from 12 to 22, and some still have the tags on them!

Stylish in Syracuse

Dear Stylish,

My friend, Helga, says any well-dressed woman over fifty should have at least 2 pairs of black pants for every day of the week, just in case she laughs a lot.  As for the style, I always prefer elastic waistbands to allow for frequent changes in my BMI index.  However, I do keep a few inspirational side-zipped Ann Taylor black pants for those occasions when I’ve spent a rare month drinking protein shakes 5 times a day.

Dear Johanna,

I’m so embarassed about my memory now.  How do I explain to my best friend of 30 years that I forgot her husband’s name when I was giving the toast at their 25th wedding anniversary at the house of their oldest daughter (whose name escapes me at the moment)?

Forgetful in Florida

Dear Forgetful,

Sorry.  What was your question?

Jane

My father died three weeks ago.  He was 94 years old, and he had lived a good life.  He  was  a good man.  I’d like to write something funny for him because he loved a joke better than anyone I’ve ever known.  I’d like to make him laugh.  But I can’t do that right now.

Because he was 94, I thought, as a grown woman over fifty, I was prepared for his leaving.  He had, after all, become less of himself over the past few years.  His personality, which was once happy and somewhat mischievous, had dwindled.  He’d always been a cheerful and accommodating man; now he could be grumpy.  Although he still took enjoyment in things and people, it was on a smaller scale.  In earlier days,  he had loved to travel to distant places, eat strange new foods; now he was just as satisfied by field trips from his Assisted Living Facility to the local mall with its chain restaurants.

I had actually thought–because he was this diminished version of himself–that I would adjust fairly easily to his death, that I was even ready for it.  I had told myself it might make life easier, in some ways.  I wouldn’t have to worry about Daddy falling in his bathroom or being bed-ridden in a  dreaded nursing home.  I wouldn’t have to feel uneasy any more when I went to visit him and tried to think up topics of conversation that he would enjoy.  My oldest sister, the manager of his finances, wouldn’t have to worry about him ordering $900 worth of coins from a scam artist on television.  Things would be all nice and easy.  After all, he was 94 years old!

But when your father dies, your father dies.  It doesn’t matter how old he is or how diminished or sick he has been or that he may have had a massive stroke and does not even recognize you when you walk in his hospital room.  That person hooked up to wires is still your father,  or,  in my case, still the person who sang me out-of-tune, homemade lullubies, waited up for me after Saturday night dates in high school, and sent  me $25 checks in graduate school with just brief messages like, “A little something to keep the wolves from the door.  Love, Daddy.”

So, even if I may not have realized it by the hospital bed, I got it the instant he was gone.   After all the wires and machines and nurses had disappeared, that near-stranger became,  almost instantly, the father I knew and loved, the man who had raised me.

I wasn’t prepared  for that.  Any more than I was prepared for these weeks since then.

I miss my father on a gut level.  And grief comes in waves.  I’ll do fine, until I see something he would have enjoyed–a scratch-off lottery ticket, a comic strip, an amusing and informative obituary–and I’m gone.  Or I’ll be at work, trying to be normal and act as if nothing has happened, and someone will ask how I’m doing, and I’m gone again.  And, because my mother died five years ago and I am now officially an orphan, I am gone into a deep, dark place of childish fear and overwhelming sadness.  (It’s strange how my father’s death has made the wound of my mother’s death fresh again.)

All of this makes me remember a time in Berlin, Germany, when I was almost seven years old.  I was walking down a busy street, holding what I thought was my father’s hand, when I looked up to discover a stranger looking down at me.   The man was my father’s height, and, like my father, kind enough to let me go chattering along until I discovered my mistake naturally–but he was clearly not my father.  In an instant, before I turned and saw my father behind me, waiting patiently, afraid to scare me by interrupting my story, I was completely lost and terrified.  My story was gone from my head.  Berlin was no longer anything like a city I wanted to visit.

Just like my seven-year old self, I have been stopped, mid-sentence, to discover that my father is gone.  And all I want to do is what I did then:  plant my feet firmly on the ground, draw in a deep breath, and scream at the top of my lungs, perhaps even loud enough for him to hear me again: “Daddy!”