Category Archives: AGING, RELATIONSHIPS, SANDWICH GENERATION

Info and Articles on above topics, Memoirs, Humor, Miscellaneous

Parenting Is A Bit Like A Taffy Pull

Posted on
2

Have you ever been to an old-fashioned taffy pull?  Probably not, since people don’t do that much nowadays but my family was once invited to one years ago.  It was a lot of fun, but lately when I think about taffy being pulled every which way, I think about parenting my adult kids.

As you wrap up this first day of the work week, I hope you are reviewing your past weekend and that you have some nice memories of good times and/or  pure relaxation.  I hope you are saying to yourself,  ”What an amazing weekend I had!”    Mine  didn’t quite  turn out as I had hoped and planned.  It seems that life usually has its own ideas and we must roll with the punches.

I had expected to catch up on writing , reading, grocery shopping and a few phone calls.  My husband, a cardiology R.N., had to work all weekend, so it felt like a great time to play catch-up on things that have eluded me, including some craved-for quiet time for myself.

A man named Orlando Aloysius Battista, once said, “The best inheritance a parent can give his children is a few minutes of his time each day.”  I always thought so when my kids were growing up.  There were certainly days when I would have preferred to immerse myself in projects and creative pursuits that were beckoning to me. but I truly believed at that stage of my life, that my kids’ needs came first.  I felt that the time I spent with my children was an investment in their futures and that we were making memories for that future.    I still enjoy seeing my kids, but my perspective is different now.  I consider my personal time to be precious and spending it on myself feels like an investment in me. . I have already invested heavily in my four kids and even though I love them , I believe it is high time that I “diversify”

Inevitably though, when I look forward to a stretch of time to luxuriate in quiet and bask in the joy of choosing to do whatever I wish, one of my kids ends up needing something.  It’s not as though I jump at every whimper, but it does feel like crises have a way of occurring in bunches and as my mother once told me, “You never stop being a mother”, so it is difficult to ignore a cry for help when it feels sincere.  We do raise our kids with the hope that they will become self-sufficient adults and some of mine are, or some of mine are some of the time anyway.

As long as everything is going smoothly, or they perceive that it is, they seem to manage.  Mom is then an invisible commodity to them. The story changes when something explodes (figuratively) at the job, when unexpected bills come pouring in, or when a little one is ill and there is no babysitter.  My adult kids are pretty spread out in age.  They are all very different and their needs, lifestyles and priorities are pretty disparate.  When things are going smoothly, they don’t seem to need my support. That is understandable.  In fact, they usually don’t want my opinion or involvement at all.  Most of the time that doesn’t phase me as I am a  busy person and I prefer not to offer advice that I am pretty certain is going to be ignored anyway.  That is not to say I don’t often have some strong opinions, but they do tend to act as though I am a relic from the Ice Age.   I normally  try to keep my opinions to myself, though this does take self-control and I am not always successful in doing so.

The weekend is over now and the crises have passed, for the moment.  I never did catch up on the tasks I wanted to. I never got to take that long soak in the bathtub with a glass of wine nearby and a book that has been beckoning to me from the shelf in the living room. I didn’t really get more than a few minutes to myself, to be honest.  I am making plans for the next stretch of time that will be available for me to indulge in some solitude and self-focus, because I know how important it is and that I must never give up on this.

I remember that taffy pull so many years ago.  I can still hear the  giggles of the children and our warnings not to touch everything with their sticky hands.  There were six or seven kids there and at first they were pretty wild and loud.  We parents thought that perhaps the activity in which we were engaged was a mistake and that the children were too young.  I remember how the taffy was a big messy blob  when we began to work on it and how it gradually took shape . Finally we all settled down happily to cocoa, cookies and our finished product–the taffy, which was enjoyed by all.

I do have times when I feel that I am being tugged and pulled every which way and that my life resembles more of a sticky, crazy mess than I had anticipated it would at this stage of the game.  I am working on it though.and several times a week, I ask myself, “How would you like your life to look and to feel? What steps, Iris, are you taking, to bring your vision into greater alignment with your reality, without sacrificing your deeply held values of being there for those who are important to you?” (Yes, I talk to myself sometimes!)

It’s all about balance and self-care. These have become buzz words but there is a reason and we need to pay attention to them. I hope you will make it a point to think about that when you feel yourself being pulled in too many directions.

Is There An App for Decluttering Your Life?

Posted on
10

    

      I wish there were an app to simplify and make less painful, the cleaning out of all the clutter (and crap) that accumulates in our homes over the years. Some of the clutter has real meaning for us, which  makes it a formidable task to take care of, but I wonder more and more these days about the benefits of having so much “stuff”.

      I wish there were a way to just hit delete and to have some cyber-genie make the decisions and do all the work, sifting and sorting through the possessions that are beginning to bog me down, that call forth memories of wonderful and terrible times. It would be terrific to simply move my delete finger  without brain involvement and not have to make tough decisions that may not be immediately necessary, but that will be one day, if history repeats itself as it tends to do.

     I helped my mother “downsize” four times. She and my father moved from the house where I (mostly) grew up in Brooklyn, NY, to an apartment in Sheepshead Bay, and then after my father’s death, to senior housing in the CT town where I live.  It didn’t seem possible to compress her life and history any more than had already been done by the great figurative trash compacter of aging, but when she  moved into a nursing home for the final nine months of her life, I agonized over the allocation of what was left.  

     I certainly am not saying that my mother’s life amounted to a trash heap of junk. Each and every piece of furniture, doily, dish towel, figurine, dog-eared photo, ugly lampshade, card, letter, book, and dish was a treasure to her. Each represented a life in which I truly had a bit part, a walk-on, really, in comparision to the years lived before I blinked into the sunlight one day at Brooklyn Doctor’s Hospital.  I am not saying that I was not important in her life. Naturally I was, but so many others were too. She had a life of thirty-five years before I made it into the world.  I did not live inside of her head either.  I could not possibly have understood her unique memories and the attachments she had to her own things. Even when we share certain memories with another person, the ways in which those memories become recorded in our brains and etched on our hearts have to do with how we personally perceive life.  

     The items that triggered some type of memory for me and had meaning in my own version of our family experience, I held onto. Some things I foisted off on anyone in the family who had even the slightest interest, and they also chose what was useful to them.  The rest I gave away or even discarded, with no small measure of sadness.

     Years later (yesterday was the eleventh anniversary of my mother’s death) my husband and I went through a similar experience with my mother-in-law. We conducted what almost amounted to an archeological dig though her house in Pennsylvania. She was definitely a horder, so there was a lot to go through.  In her attic, we even found pay stubs from her very first job.  We unearthed an abundance of school papers and drawings done by her two adult sons.  There were personal items that should have been discarded forty years earlier (believe me, you don’t want details). We found toys, old religious artifacts belonging to her parents, more photos of few people we recognized, and furniture that was her mother’s, but was too beat up to have much monetary value.  We discovered bags and boxes of clothing that had traveled the roads of weight gain, weight loss and renewed weight gain. There were unopened cartons of things ordered from catalogues, tucked away and never used, as her life became more and more isolated.

     We helped Bernice move to an apartment in a senior complex. She lived there for about four years and when she became less and less able to function on her own, we moved her two floors down to an  assisted living unit in the same complex in Chester, PA.   After a little more than a year there, her health and mental status further declined, so we once again downsized.  We circulated her worldy goods among those who wanted them, sold some and moved a few meaningful items into her small, cozy room at an assisted living facility  for those with dementia, near our home in CT.  My husband claimed the objects that meant something to him. We also ended up with a few pieces of furniture that were too new to discard and that nobody else had room for.

     Some pieces of crystal joined the collection from my mother,  from my late sister, my grandmother and my sister’s mother-in-law. They sit, mostly gathering dust, on my dining room mantel.  A couple of times a year I  tend to them, washing them in dish liquid and trying to remember which piece belonged to whom.  The bud vases my mother collected on their travels to Europe after my father retired, are in her curio cabinet in my upstairs family room. My aunt, the baby in their family of origin, was to have been the recipient of the vases, having greatly admired them, though they aren’t worth much. She died about nine months before my mother did.  I have earrings that were my aunt’s, along with various pieces, mainly costume jewelry, that belonged to my mother and my sister. Again, little of it is worth money, but I am now the repository of all of the collective memories connected to these things.

     I have several bookcases filled with books that were primarily my  father’s  He treasured them. I have books of my mother’s too and of one uncle. There are only a couple of rooms in our house that don’t have bookshelves and all of them are full.  I have my late brother’s photo album from his days at Parris Island when he was in Boot Camp in the Marines. I have pictures he painted before he gave up his art and music and became a family man who thought (sadly) that he needed to put his talents and passions away for eternity. On our walls are awards my sister won at her job and in her volunteer work with the Jewish War Veterans. I have (tucked on a shelf in a plastic bag somewhere) a cap, one of many exactly the same, worn by my father at work, from the time he was sixteen to the time he retired.  Boxes and boxes of photos of people in old-fashioned garb are stashed in various closets.  The photos are full of faces nobody remaining in our family recognizes.  A large plastic container of vinyl records sits in a spare bedroom. They are of opera, jazz, pop, folk music and are not in good enough condition to sell,  but  I keep hanging on to them, till the day I have the heart to discard them.  I also have part of a downstairs closet filled with metal boxes of my father’s slides. I would love to find time to view them, or even better, to transfer them to disks or save them on the computer “some day”.

     Then there are the things I have left from my first husband who died in his thirties. I have a box with the tie he wore at our wedding and letters he wrote to me. Maybe my kids will want them one day, but then again, maybe they won’t. These are stashed In our very crowded attic.  I believe there is an old cricket bat of his, as well as family trinkets from his New England clan that can trace their ancestry back many generations.

     I have lived in my current house for thirty-three years now. I have done a fair amount of traveling, so naturally, I have my own “treasures” that evoke memories of those trips and the people I was fortunate enough to meet. I have photos and art from various countries, and then there are my own collections that represent my personal interests and obsessions, depending on which person you ask.  There are paintings, posters, ceramic figures, postcards, greeting cards, mugs, garlands and wall hangings portraying my family’s favorite, canine, the diehard Scottish Terrier, as well as photos of our own Scotties. There are cardboard cartons of papers, and notebooks filled with my own poetry and other writing (before the days of computer archives).

    

       Then there are the toys and books belonging to my four kids who have no place to store them. Now that my youngest and her daughter live with us, we also have boxes of Gabby’s outgrown clothes and her toys grace a few rooms in our house.

     Lest you think I am a hoarder like my mother-in-law was, I can assure you that I have a good-sized home, a bit  cluttered by some standards, but not unbearable, and not anything you might see on a TV show about people who can no longer function, due to the disastrous mess that surrounds them. Ours is a very old house, so  it lends itself easily to being filled with momentoes, rather than with simple, sleek, modern furniture and open space.

     I do like my things and can literally walk around my home and see an imaginary slide show of all of the lives that are represented by the “stuff” around me.  Sometimes looking at these things evokes smiles and sometimes some tears, but mostly I don’t have time to dwell on them because I am too busy. They get dusted periodically and then I permit myself a moment of connection with them, calling up names, faces, places and feelings.

     Now that I am at the age some consider “retirement age”, though that is not really on my agenda, it makes sense that I am beginning to wonder what will happen to the generations of possessions that surround me each day.  None of us like think about the negative aspects of aging.  Most prefer to deny our chronological advancing as much as we can and to focus on our experience and wisdom, or our fantasies that we possess them.   A few of us are  fortunate and can remain in our homes and care for ourselves, but most of us ultimately will require some help, will choose to downsize our living quarters, or will have this chosen for us, due to circumstances.

     Long ago, after we moved back into our home following a fire and the terrible tragedy of my first husband’s death in that fire, I vowed to never again take for granted my home and the things I was lucky enough to have in my life once more.  Most of what we had was destroyed or damaged in the fire.  I have never forgotten my vow to myself. Part of my routine on an almost daily basis, is to make sure I notice things in my surroundings and appreciate and take pleasure in them.

     In the end though, I recognize that many or most of the material acquisitions that belong to me and that belonged to multiple people before me, will end up being tossed to the four winds, or possibly at the thrift shop, or in the garbage dumpster. I am sure my adult kids and grandkids will choose to keep certain objects, but they will be faced with an even more imposing job than I faced, simply due to the fact that I have outlasted the members of my family of origin.

     I imagine that when one of my kids picks up an antique book of maps given me by a dear friend during one of my trips to India, or finds a bent and tarnished silver baby cup from one of my first husband’s ancestors, there will be some fleeting interest. I am sure that when someone comes across old love letters, or sets of leather-bound books my father purchased with great pride on time payments in the 1930′s, there may even be some animated discussion among my survivors. My suspicion  is though, based on my own experiences, that life will move forward and most of what simultaneously enriches and confines my world in the present, will be clutter that isn ‘t particularly needed or wanted, beyond a few miscellaneous treasures. This seems a reasonable forecast of the future.

    I intend to continue reminding myself to take pleasure in my surroundings and that means enjoying some of the special posessions in my midst, but it is clearly time in the life cycle to begin to at least think about who will want what and to get rid of some things.  It’s definitely time to stop acquiring a lot more.  I may give in to temptation on occasion, but I need to think twice about new purchases.  Did I really need those two  1800′s cobalt pottery pitchers made in a town where we used to live?  Do I really need another Scottish Terrier statue? I hope to still be around for a lot of years, but I am going to make a pledge to actively begin the grueling task of decluttering before too much more time has passed.

     The most important thing, I think, is to begin to “download” the events and remembrances I absolutely want to leave for posterity . There are family anecdotes, values and learning that may die with me, and these are the true gifts I want to leave for my kids and grandchildren.  I don’t believe I am a terribly materialistic sort, but in the next decade I want to focus a  lot less on the wordly goods in my little dominion and a whole lot more on decluttering.  It’s not going to be easy, but I am starting to feel the need for more visual and physical space. Clearing out some seems to help me do what is  more crucial to me than ever, which is to reflect, create and positively interact with others. It’s impossible to interact with a Chinese vase, don’t you think?

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     Speaking of clutter, one kind of “clutter” I welcome is a batch of comments, so how about taking a minute or two to comment directly on my blog at www.coachirisblogs or on on Facebook, if that is where you first accessed this.  Did you like this post at all? Did you disagree with it? Did you relate to it in any way?  Let’s hear from you, please. Subscribe to this blog if you enjoyed this post, or explore older ones. Also watch for the launch of a couple of my new web sites and take a few moments to visit one that’s up and running at  www.meetcoachiris.com .

Good Friends

Posted on
7

Rose Garden by Samantha DeWitt-Public Domain Photo

“Friends are the roses of life: pick them carefully and avoid the thorns.”-Unknown

     I have no idea who said the above, but  I was thinking about this recently after the departure of some dear friends who had visited and spent the night. They live about six hours away, so we hadn’t seen them in a few years. I have known them for many years and though we don’t see each other often, when we do, I am reminded of what wonderful blossoms they are in the bouquet of terrific friendships I have been fortunate to gather.

      As far as friendships go, I have been blessed with few thorns. I have numerous friends who have been a part of my life for 25, 30, 40 and even over 50 years. They may not all be people I see frequently, but we do communicate and there is one characteristic shared by the very special ones. We are able to pick up where we left off each and every time we talk or visit, it seems as though we have never been apart.

     Sometimes people get caught up in thinking about how unfair life can be, or get stuck in anger and resentment and let themselves believe that they have somehow been targeted for heartache and troubles. The truth is, there is nobody who avoids pain and heartache altogether.  It may seem like there are those who have more than their fair share, but all human beings eventually get some thorns. It would be so sad if they let the roses in their gardens turn brown and did not ever pick any magnificent flowers to enjoy and to bring a little bit of nature’s beauty into their living space.

     Remember, though, that friendships are much like flowers, in that they require some tending if they are going to blossom and give back.   You must feed your friendships or they will wither from neglect. Care about your friends as you expect them to care about you. Make the time to listen and not only to unburden your own woes. Don’t just use your time together to complain or to one-up them when you discuss your pain and troubles.

     No relationship is always perfectly balanced. The scales can and do tip in terms of the giving and receiving. This is natural. There will be periods of stress or misfortune when your friends need a good deal of  understanding and support. You may be the needy one at other times and that is ok. Those who live in isolation and who do not have compassionate ears and occasional objective advice to help them over hurdles, normally do not do as well as those who can open themselves up  to a trusted and trustworthy support system.   In fact, this tendency to shutting out the world and living in secrecy or isolation is often a recipe that leads to overwhelm, depression and self-destructive behavior. Self-reliance is a valuable and admirable quality, but “no man is an island”.

     If you have a lot of folks you call friends, but often feel alone because few of your buddies are available to you when you need to share, unburden and seek comfort,   it is time to examine your roster of buddies.  When you have contact with certain friends, do you feel drained because they are in a state of perpetual crisis, but are rarely willing or able to listen to what you want or need to speak about?   I am not suggesting abandoning friends in their times of woe or crisis, but if this is a regular pattern that has endured for a long time and you have a hard time getting a word-in edgewise, then this is probably a toxic relationship and is one you have to consider winding down or eliminating altogether.

     Friendships, like any other relationship, are dynamic organisms and they do change over time. Our focus, interests, needs and life circumstances change. Certain commonalities that brought us together with some people may have ceased to exist. Some of our acquaintances will fall by the wayside and maintaining these relationships may not be beneficial to you or to the other parties. It’s practical to acknowledge this.

     It is possible for new friends to become close and important allies with whom we can easily share and who share with us.  Sometimes people just plain click and find an incredible sense of honesty and compatability, but it does usually take time to build a foundation of confidence on which you can both rely.

     There will be a core of individuals who have shared with you the good and bad, who have been there for you and for whom you have been a faithful support and a bedrock of help, love and wisdom over time.  These are the friends to trust, to keep, to water, tend and enjoy.

      If you find something of value in this post, please do comment and please pass it on. Thank you.

When You Want to Curl Up in a Corner and Rock Away the Stress

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If you are going through some tough times and are feeling very stressed for multiple reasons, you may wake up some mornings and, try as you might, have a hard time facing a new day. You know that for you, this is generally not a feeling that lasts and what you feel does seem to be rational depression, in that there are things going on in your world that are primarily beyond your own control, but that are making you feel worried, sad and anxious. You know from past experience that you possess some tools to help you out of the hole, but with all that is going on in your life, lately it just feels more and more difficult to make a search for that figurative ladder hiding in the bushes that you can drag close and use to climb out of the deep, dark pit.

Have you had days like that? Have you ever awakened and thought to yourself, “This is the worst time I have ever gone through”?  I know I have, but then I mull it over some more  and remember (though sometimes I don’t really want to) that as bad as whatever it is feels now, I have lived  through times that were equally as bad, or even worse.  During those earlier bleak times it seemed that things would never get better and that I might never feel joy again.  I was always wrong.

I had a client once, who compared every bad occurrence or bump in her life’s road to “dead baby”. She she had been through such a horrible loss and survived it, though the pain will always be with her, but in what seemed to me at the time like a strange way of coping, she used that shock and awareness she made herself feel, to help her get through whatever difficulties were happening in the present. This was how she reminded herself that she was a strong woman. It worked for her! I am a huge advocate of doing whatever works for you, as long as others are not hurt in the process, and as long as in making your choices, you are not doing something that simply feels good for the moment, but has the potential to cause you longer term harm.

I know what it’s like to  feel as though life could not possibly throw one more horrendous thing at you. It feels like you will explode if you have to cope with anything more than is overflowing your already full bowl.  I know there are folks who believe that God only gives us what we can handle. I don’t know what I think on that score but if it’s true, He or She  must consider me a veritable rock. Sometimes I surprise myself by feeling that I am indeed a rock, albeit a wobbly one, not always on level ground, and I marvel at my ability to summon up courage and strength in times of adversity.  At other times, I just want to curl up in a  very dark corner and shut out reality, at least for a day or two. I think most of us feel that way sometimes.

Sometimes nothing we do works at reducing our stress, no matter what we try.  When our worry, anxiety and sadness prevail, it is a good idea to seek professional help.  However, when these responses are caused by real-life situations that  hit us all at once, such as being in the Sandwich Generation and worrying about serious issues our children and parents are facing, or any other combination of very real, painful, worrysome problems, there is no magic pill that is just going to make everything get better or disappear. That doesn’t  mean, though, that we can’t get some help, because we certainly can.  It disturbs me that some doctors are so quick to pull out the prescription pad and offer a chemical solution without knowing all of the facts, or even what the individual’s coping techniques are and have been historically. Remember that it is not the stress itself that causes our defenses to break down and makes us feel bad, but how we handle it.  We can definitely learn more effective methods of relaxation and can find outlets and activities that help us unwind and help us cope better. 

If you are somebody like me and have a long, cumulative history of stress and hardships (and a lot of us do) and also a history of being a perpetual caretaker, always there for others, always needed and always ready to the best of your ability to step up and help, maybe it is time to stop and take some breaths.  Maybe it’s a good time to re-think your next course of action and take stock of what tools and help you have available for yourself.  I hope you can do this before you go on depleting all of your resources so that you are not of any use to yourself, or to anyone else you care about.

We know that repeated and prolonged stress takes a terrible toll on us. We know that chronic stress can diminish our immune systems and can affect all of our bodily organs.  It can make us more vulnerable to a variety of infections and conditions.  It can zap our energy and our creativity if it has gone on for a long while, though in small doses can spur us on to change and growth.

Still, even with the best help and with the most superior tools and resources we can put into place, there will be some days when we really do want to curl up in a corner and self-soothe. Is this so awful if it is not something we do often?   Maybe we don’t need to be strong and giving all of the time? Maybe part of our journey is learning how to allow ourselves to retreat and even to lick our wounds once in a while and just shut out the world for a bit.  Maybe we need more practice in calming and comforting ourselves, rather than relying on external measures to carry us to a more healthy place.  It is considered a good thing to teach infants to self-soothe when they are anxious or irritable,because eventually they must separate emotionally and physically from their maternal figures. The  world can be an unsettling place if they don’t have the ability to calm themselves and to get a little respite from the over-stimulation of their environment.  Neglected infants engage in too-much self-soothing, because that is all they can rely on.  I don’t recommend that we retreat into behaviors like that, but a healthy amount of curling up and pulling in may be just what we need some days.

Would You LikeTo Get Carded At 65?

Posted on
9

The other day I got a belated birthday gift that had been ordered but hadn’t arrived in time.  My new shirt says, “It took me 65 years to look this good”.

My initial reaction was, “Why do I want to tell the whole world how old I am?”  Then I mulled it all over and decided I like the shirt and that I actually like flaunting my age.  I have been proudly claiming my senior citizen discount for a while, when and wherever I was permitted to do so before having reached my 65th milestone, so why not wear the shirt?  It’s true that most of the waitstaff and customer service providers I encounter are in their teens or barely past, so I imagine I look old to them and don’t get too many reactions one way or the other.  I do get some, though and admit that I enjoy it when I get comments of surprise that this is my age.  Once I  actually  had to pull out my driver’s license to prove that I was legitimately entitled to the senior discount. I still smile if someone tells me I don’t look my age, because I must acknowledge that I possess  a certain amount of vanity, but I know that whether or not I look young is not an accomplishment for which I can take much, if any, personal credit.  It’s mostly in the genes!

 I remember how indignant I felt many years ago because I was carded till my mid to late 30′s.   It even infuriated me at times. At age 35,  I was widowed and had been through life’s wringer.  I had lost multiple family members, had lived through years of caring for a sick husband and finally, had lost him and most of what he, my kids and I owned in a terrible fire.  I felt almost disrespected when people could not see on my face the sum of my life experiences and thought I was just a kid, not even entitled to a glass of wine in public.

One day, in a fit of annoyance, at age 36, I cut off my long braids and went for a makeover. It was the first time since my early teens that I had set foot in a beauty salon. It just wasn’t my style, but I needed a change and wanted to look more my age. I felt positive about the new look, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. I continued to get carded on the rare occasions that I got to go out and enjoy myself.

I never in a million years thought there might come a day when I would want to look younger than my chronological age.  On the other hand, I am what I am and who I am. There is absolutely no way I would want to live through the things I did in earlier decades. Life isn’t always a picnic now, but it’s the life I have. All we have with any certainty is the life we can see, feel, smell, touch and enjoy in this very moment. The past is part of the recipe that has produced the “masterpiece” that we are today. The future is unknown. Anything can happen and probably will…both good and bad.  Like everyone else, I have times when the uncertainty worries me and gets me down. Then I remember that I am a SURVIVOR and I review the trials and tribulations through which I have had to prove that to myself.

We Remember Moments–Musings Just After A Milestone Birthday

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“We do not remember days. We remember moments.” -Cesare Pavese

“I have realized that the past and future are really illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is, and all there is.”-Alan Watts

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      Today, dear readers, I am providing a quick reminder to you and to myself, of the message in the above quotes.  I don’t have much time  now to write extensively on the topic. I may just pause and finish up the post tonight.  

     Like many of my days lately, this one hasn’t turned out the way I planned.  Yesterday wasn’t such a predictable day either. I had pushed back a couple of client coaching sessions in order to enjoy my birthday. It was a milestone birthday and I knew that circumstances might not make it possible for others in my life to join me in celebration, so I was determined to celebrate myself.  It has taken me a lot of years to figure out how to do that even minimally.  I  have also spent many birthdays in past years feeling blue because life did not measure up to my expectations and at this stage of my life, I don’t want to waste time with that kind of resentment and negativity. My birthdays, too, have often been days when I felt alone and wrapped myself in an intense blanket of missing all of my loved ones who are deceased.  I used to find it so hard to remember and concentrate on  the happy and positive ways in which they touched and contributed to my life.   I zeroed in on the loss I felt, rather than the moments we all had together that added up to a lifetime of love.

     So in honor of my milestone birthday, I managed to reschedule my appointments for that day and looked forward to a Thursday and Friday of productivity to make up for it.   I have a number of deadlines for goals I have set and work that needs to be accomplished, but told myself that I could surely afford one day without work.  Unfortunately, the needs of a family member took precedence during a good part of the day yesterday.  There were some other disappointments, but in the end, I was there for someone I love and managed not to allow myself to get too stressed. I felt pretty good about that, because that hasn’t always been the case. The day did end with some pleasant surprises and one of these  was that there were no hysterical calls from or about my mother-in-law, who suffers from dementia and resides in a nearby facility now.

      This morning I was rested and raring to go. Then life happened again.  My youngest daughter has a new job. She was unemployed for some time and has only been working again for a week. She likes the job very much so far.  Last week I helped her find an appropriate daycare center for her two-year-old and helped out with putting together an emergency work wardrobe.  When I awoke this morning, I went downstairs to say goodbye to the little one before  she left for daycare.   I was eager to have breakfast and to get to the computer.

     I was greeted by my daughter, who was running late. Her clothes had emerged from our fancy new dryer looking like a Chinese Shar-Pei.  We managed to get them to a presentable state when we discovered that the two-year-old was warm and seemed unusually fussy.  A quick check with the tympanic thermometer revealed that yes, she had a termperature and there was no time to discuss things or to figure out care arrangements. My daughter was beginning to panic about missing a day so soon after starting her job. All other family members have regular, punching time-clocks sort of jobs.  I am the only one who is self-employed and somewhat flexible with my work, but not as flexible as most people seem to believe.

     I admit I felt a sinking sensation. I felt the all-too-familiar lately, squeeze of stress from being that slab of meat packed tightly in the middle of the generational sandwich.  I didn’t have a mirror handy but am certain that, had I checked one, I would have had a big frown on my face.   My daughter left and the dog began making Scottie talking noises indicating she was ready for her morning constitutional (and accompanying personal business). The little one looked unhappy and climbed up on my lap, requesting the “binky” (pacifyer) we are trying to wean her of. It was clear she was settling in for a long, comforting cuddle, which I had to cut short to attend to the dog.  I took them both outside and curtailed the walk. The remainder of the morning was filled with the typical stuff of dumping toys out all over the floor, juice, snack, competing with Aunt Scottie Dog Emily for attention, some giggles, some whining  and lots of requests for  hugs.

     Finally Little Miss Muffet climbed up on the couch and fell asleep.  Amazingly she  slept for hours, which is highly unusual for her, showing she was definitely under the weather.  I quickly made a mental list of which tasks would most benefit from my attention while she slept. This blog post won out, but I decided to do it quickly and to focus on savoring my free time, reading and relaxing.

    What are some of the things that went through my mind today during my limited period of rest and contemplation?. I am one day past my 65th birthday, now officially “old”, but still always ready to sample the newest items from the smörgåsbord of life, brain always busy looking for new ideas and possibilities for the future, and sometimes still worrying  pointlessly over things out of my control.  Today I made a real effort to soak up the silence I truly need to nourish my spirit and to think over and appreciate the moment in which I found myself.  I knew that my granddaughter would probably wake up cranky and that in my role as the Nurturer, I would step back into the job, but for a few minutes I  would nurture myself.

     It’s true that with all that has been going on in my life I need more than an hour or two, but I focused on appreciating the gift of that time.  My daughter has just returned from her long day.  I am glad that my mood of the early part of  today was not sustained.  When I think about what happened, I am not letting myself concentrate on what I didn’t get done, but am remembering the moments of quiet, and the moments of having a sweet (and also rambunctious) girl on my lap, who asked for, and received a lot of hugs today. I am remembering her giggles when I was silly and my giggles when she was.  We had fun today, discounting the juice spilled all over the coffee table and a few other mishaps. We shared one of my special birthday cupcakes that a good friend delivered to me last night. We read stories. We played together. We looked at pictures of when she was an infant.

     These are the moments that will be the foundation for other moments we spend together. These are the moments that will shape her memories of me, whether they are consciously retained or not. These are the tapes I will play in my head when she is a teenager who wants to spend time with her friends and not with her doddering grandmother. I will remember the moment when she woke up from her nap, rubbed her eyes,  and called me to come sit next to her on the couch, flashing me a wonderful smile.

     I ask you to consider taking some time to savor the present and to set aside hurt, anger, loss from the past as much as you can, as well as worries about what’s next, just over the horizon.  It’s worth it. Do you think the moments you remember most will be ones of the work you accomplished on a particular day, or didn’t accomplish? What do you think you will remember? What would you like to remember?

The Second Best Time Is Right Now

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Willow Tree By Anna Cervova-free for personal or commercial use

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese proverb

What were you doing twenty years ago?  Some of you believe that was the very best time of your life. Maybe it’s true that you missed a great opportunity and it would have been the perfect time for you to embark on an important goal or dream.   Did you want to acquire an advanced degree, write a novel or start a family and somehow life got in the way and you didn’t do whatever it was you thought you wanted? It’s true that sometimes when we miss the perfect moment, the moment when the all the stars are totally aligned, it is not easy to recreate the conditions that would have supported our optimal possibilities. Fortunately I know many people who did not let the lack of perfection stand in their way. When they realized they still had a burning desire to do something and they made a commitment to take care of their unfinished personal business, nothing was able to hold them back.

When I was young, older folks used to tell me repeatedly that time seems to speed up as you age.   I thought that was ridiculous and defied logic. Now I know what they meant.  The reality is that we never get today back. While we have it, let’s not waste it. I don’t mean we have to be doing busy work all the time or creating something every day, but we need to be mindful about the things we find important and we need to understand our most important values as people. We need to resist worrying about what we can’t control because if things are going to happen, they will happen and we will have thrown away our lives worrying.  The same thing goes for obsessing about what might have been. If we truly believe there is something we “should have done” then there is no time like the present to begin to do it, or as close to whatever it was as is reasonable within the framework of the life we now lead. Regrets just weigh us down, paralyze us and prevent us from fully living the life we have..

Sometimes we really beat ourselves up over not having reached a goal, or for not having achieved something. We probably torment and batter ourselves better than almost anyone else could do it. We might even find ourselves engulfed in jealousy of others who have done what we believed we were meant to do.  This creates an excellent opportunity to sit down and to engage in some introspection.  Do we really have the same interests as when we were younger?  How about our values and beliefs? Have they shifted as we have matured? Is the old dream or hope relevant to us in the here and now?  Have we discovered new and fascinating things that would not have had meaning for us years ago?  Sometimes we merely cling to the old dreams as a way of continuing to punish ourselves  or to make excuses for why we are not moving on and finding something new and just as wonderful.  If we know what it is we want to do and don’t do it, we  also may be clinging to an old plan out of fear of failure.

The truth is that we have no way of knowing how things might have turned out if we had followed a certain path when we were younger. During the passage of years, though, we have gained experience, wisdom, insight, and maybe even have developed a sense of humor we were too single-minded or rigid to have in our youth.

One thing we can do is think about what gives us the most joy and satisfaction now. Has this changed over time?  What inspires us at this time in life?  Do we know anybody who launched a new career or who picked up on a previous interest or passion? How about making up a small list of questions for that person? Most people find it flattering to know that someone is interested and enjoy sharing their process and their experiences with others.

Now that I have reached a “certain age” and one long career is behind me and another has been unfolding, I too, have mulled over what I  left in the past that I would want to once again pick up and reexamine. Once-upon-a-time, I used to enjoy doing watercolors. I wasn’t a great artist, but I had fun and it was one more form of self-expression for me   that could be quite beneficial and relaxing.  On the other hand, some of the academic goals that seemed important to me when I was a young mother no longer interest me. I remember feeling so frustrated at my lack of funds and time to pursue my goals.   I know I want to write more and to spend more time building my coaching practice. I have done a lot of traveling for my previous work as an adoption agency director, but there are many places I never got to see that I definitely want to.  I also always wanted to take courses in subjects that fascinated me, but that were not required for any type of degree program. It seemed too impractical and expensive to do back then. This is definitely an area I plan to work on. I want to spend time learning just for the sake of learning and for nourishing my brain and soul.

Several times in my past I went back and looked at some early yearnings that were still unfulfilled. When I was widowed young, I wanted to add a fourth child to our family but it didn’t seem realistic or possible.  In my 40′s I did just that, realizing that this was indeed significant unfinished business for me, though many in my life thought I was nuts to do it.

Do you have a burning desire to change the world, to make a greater difference than you have in the past?  Maybe you think you missed your chance the first time around, but maybe not? If you want it badly enough, I would venture a guess that you may have more skill and determination now than you did before. You can’t reverse time but you can still plan, dream and implement goals once you have figured out what you want. Stop making excuses.

Would you consider making up a list of potential resources to kick-start your plans?  They could be people you already know, people you want to research and contact on the Internet,  or books you want to start reading to help you focus and figure out your first action steps. How about sending an e-mail to as many friends as you can informing them of what you are thinking about, asking for ideas and contacts they may know whose brains you can pick?  What’s holding you back?

Is it possible, then, that this isn’t the second best time at all, but the very best time for you to shine?

TO HARRY, THE GREAT, ON FATHER’S DAY

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     I imagine some of my friends and family will find this amusing because I am always saying how much I don’t like doing what everybody else does. Here I go, though, writing a post in tribute to my late father, Harry, on Father’s Day.

      Harry Arenson was a complex man.  Of course, I didn’t realize how much so until I was an adult.   I always knew he was special and that he was usually a lot more fun than most of my friends’ fathers. He has been dead since May of 1981. When I look at his pictures, I can hear him telling me joke after joke and making  his outrageous puns, as though he were right in the room with me.  He had such a quick, clever wit and an excelllent command of the English language. He did not truly believe this, being ashamed of his lack of formal education. I learned after he died that he had never finished high school. He was forced (as were many in those days) to leave school to help support his parents and brothers.  It simultaneously touched and saddened me that I was the only one in the family who had not known this. He had not wanted me to know, for some reason.  Losing my father really shook the foundation under my legs.  When he died, I had no idea that within the next year we would also lose my young nephew and then that I would become a widow, joining my mother in that role. 

     During my first husband’s illness, my father was my shoulder for crying. My mother was the practical one who provided strength and who helped me to be strong too.  My father found ways to help us laugh when there were scant reasons for laughter.

     One of the things I most loved was what a tender-hearted, compassionate person Harry was.  Although he did not always approve of all of the causes in which I was involved during my teens and young adult years, he was really my model. He hated to see injustice and railed against it at every opportunity.  He had self-esteem issues stemming from his childhood and from his own father, (who was in many ways tyrannical, even though we all adored our Zaida or Grandfather) but Harry was the first to stand up for someone he felt wasn’t being treated properly or with fairness.  When my Girl Scout Troop no longer wanted me as a member because I had proposed membership for one of the (then) few girls in our neighborhood of African-American background, my mother was horrified that I wrote a letter to the troop leader and quit in defiance, saying that I wouldn’t be caught dead in their company after the revelation of their bigotry.  My father was so proud and took me out for a huge ice cream sundae at Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlour, home of the amazing “Kitchen Sink” sundae.

     Harry was poet at heart, though I don’t know that he ever wrote a poem in  his life. He was a workingman, a staunch union supporter,  a newspaper routeman in Manhattan, delivering stacks of newspapers from a truck from the age of 16. He worked for the Hearst Corporation at the N.Y. Journal American, for 41 years till they went out of business and then went to work at a slightly different job for the New York Times, until his retirement.   From the time I was a small child, he recited poetry to me, with great feeling and encouraged me to memorize the same poems. I can still recite most of them.  He was thrilled when I began writing poetry at the age of three, dictating what I wanted to say to my parents, or to my much older sister.  Every spare moment my father had, and there weren’t many with long work hours and constant extended family crises and obligations, was spent reading his beloved books and listening to music of all types, but mostly classical.  Like most parents of his day, he hated early rock music, but he loved folk songs and very much enjoyed the Beatles.  He came from poverty, but his books and records were his pride and joy, along with his cameras. During the Great Depression, as a newlywed, he supplemented the family income by taking portraits and even won some prizes.

     Any chance for an excursion into the “country”, which included suburban New Jersey or Long Island, as well as more rural areas in  Upstate New York or Connecticut, was a great delight to Harry.  He would get lost in his own world, setting out on long walks with his cameras. I have a closet full of boxes of his slides that  I need to digitalize.  He enjoyed photographing his kids and grandkids too, but probably not as much as capturing the beauty of nature. We would all tease him about his endless pictures of what looked to  us like empty country roads going nowhere. He said walking along country roads and observing nature gave him a chance to think and to resolve things that worried him.  I don’t much enjoy being photographed now, but I have to say that the photos my father took of me in my teens and early adulthood were the best.

     Harry often recited Shakespeare to me, having committed an astonishing amount of his works to memory.  In fact, when I was quite small,  part of our bedtime ritual was that he always said,, “Goodnight, goodnight! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.”   My mother, impatient and always practical, would wave him off and tell him to just let me go upstairs so she could relax for the evening.

     Harry blubbered easily. He definitely wore his feelings on his sleeve and so do I.  He was born in 1909 and in many ways, he bought into typical gender roles and stereotypes, but he was not in the least ashamed of, or embarrassed about being so emotional and crying so easily.  In fact, he was mostly proud of being this way, except when in the presence of his own father.  My father taught me early that humor and pathos were very closely related and sometimes inseparable.

     The  role as “breadwinner” was one Harry took very seriously, so he was traditional in that respect. He did not want my mother to work outside the home and she was fine with that. He did not abide by definitions of women’s work in other ways. He remained very much in love with my mother till his dying breath and he always wanted to help her and to make things easier for her.  He regularly assisted with shopping, vacuuming, washing walls, windows, and draperies.  He did not see this as unmasculine behavior. He absolutely loved buying gifts for my mother. There was a good deal of plotting and happy planning around these purchases.  My father would  turn over his paycheck to her because she managed the household budget, but he kept a few dollars for his own expenses. Somehow, he saved money out of his small self-alottment, and from this, he bought my mother jewelry, handbags, clothing and flowers. He recognized and appreciated fine quality and had to do a lot of convincing to have my mother accept his gifts.

     My father maintained a tiny garden in front of our Brooklyn home. He planted my mother’s favorite flowers.  Peonies, lilacs and sweet williams were among her favorites. He loved them for the pleasure they provided her.

     Very little kids enjoyed my father so much because sometimes he was so  absolutely silly and knew how to relate to them. It might not sound too appealing to you, but he enjoyed the giggles he invariably got when he took his false teeth out of his mouth and sucked them back in again.  He adored playing with toys along with the youngsters in the family.   It was his chance to be a kid again and I am just like that. I still get super-excited at toy stores. I will never forget that he was almost as excited as I was when I got my first bike, an amazing reddish-purple J.C. Higgins English racer with a wonderful brown leather tool bag holding miniature tools.

      My father was a master at making up silly words in pretend languages and I confess to this “talent” as well. There must be something in our genes because my eldest son invented his own Slavic-sounding language and actually once created and performed a comedy routine entirely in his private language.   I have incorporated some of Harry’s  ridiculous, but hilarious words and expressions into my own vocabulary.

     Again, though he was traditional about some things, he wasn’t with others. He preferred my mother to dress in a “feminine” fashion and hated it when I dressed in what he considered a provocative or undemure way when I was a teenager. That said, he argued with my mother sometimes about the activities he and I shared and enjoyed together. He grew up in a family of five boys and didn’t know much about paper dolls or makeup. He  taught me how to build crystal radios, how to make boat and airplane models, and how to use my woodburning set, even though my  mother said those things were for boys.

      My father’s family had been ultra-poor when he was a boy, so it was important to him to dress well. He wore work pants, work shirts and a cap most days, but when he wasn’t working he sported expensive suits and cashmere topcoats and he always wore a dress hat, or fedora. He was meticulous about his shirts, ties and cufflinks too. I have one of the gold cufflinks with his initials on a chain and wear it as a necklace.

     Harry wasn’t perfect and he didn’t pretend to be. He lost his temper and shouted (though never lifted a finger to hit anyone, ever).  He bore grudges, he gossiped with his brothers and was over-protective of his kids, sometimes to the point of interference, he was highly superstitious, had a number of phobias, was nervous and borderline obsessive-compulsive.  He had little confidence in his abilities, though he was clearly very intelligent. He was born with six fingers on one hand, as was his youngest brother. His brother had his extra digit removed when he was a young man, but my father was terrified of doctors and could not. For all of his life he suffered from the delusion that everyone noticed it and that it was, in fact, the first thing they noticed about him. 

     Loyalty was probably one of Harry’s most memorable qualities. He spent most of his limited spare time with family on both sides, but he had lifelong friends, Tommy Moran and Petie Embarrata. He used to joke at times that we were Irish and our name was Erinson, or Italian and our name was Arensino.  My father would have done anything for his friends and they , in turn, for him. He never tired of telling me that family and trusted friends were more important than infinite riches and without the first two life would not be worth living.

     Many Father’s Days have passed since Harry’s death in 1981.  I spent a lot of years trying not to feel too blue on this day, and trying to find ways for my kids not to, since three of them lost their father pretty young. Today, Father’s Day also coincides with the birthday of my eldest son, who has many qualities of both his grandfather and his father.  Life isn’t always easy, but I know my father would have understood and liked the Native American saying, “If the eyes had no tears, the soul would have no rainbow”.

     On his gravestone, it says, “His love and beauty are immortal”. As I sit here today,  writing this, I know this is true.

Alphabet Soup

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Alphabet Soup
                                   By Iris Arenson-Fuller-Revised June 15, 2011
 
 Sometimes we witness wild animal tantrums
 but she’s two, so we know what that means.
She sings like our own black-capped chickadee,
carried tunes before she walked, makes us laugh
even when the sky is midnight and our legs feel
like we’re marching through fields of ashes,
even when gloom we can’t shake, shadows us in silence.
Then there she is, baby bird girl, elfin,
caramelized sugar, sticky kisses, birdsongs,
floating from small grandbaby lips like flute sounds.
 
***
 
Press E for Elmo, press B for Bert, G for Gabby,
press all the letters, letting them drift softly to the brain,
making a little letter-burrow, living there till the end of days.
I will need them later to battle other letters, the harsh ones,
to push those off the field with swords of happy memory,
to take the Boar’s Tooth Stance, guarding, then thrusting
as the second cruel alphabet threatens to attack.
 I will need them as weapons against big-as-life scary things,
the kind that happen when we worry endlessly,
the kind that happen when we don’t.
 
***
 
The girl engine hums a tune, her eating-music.
Between bites of pancakes and strawberry, the motor rests,
A real song takes shape, rising up in sweet vapors,
floating over us like bottled-up genie notes set free.
I  think of letters that try to lock me into fear,
call to me from the vat of bitter soup steaming below,
waiting impatiently for me to lose my grip and fall. 
 Evil letters from the past, ones I hate to think of,
 swim with those from lessons yet unlearned.
I recite them in the night, almost sacred, though hated.
MS, MI, PTSD, COPD, AD, more that yet have no meaning,
but lurk when I let them into dark imagination.
 
***
 
I say stop then, hushing bustling brain
with spoons of good soup.
I know I want my alphabet soup golden, savory,
alphabet noodles swimming in flavor,
melting on the tongue, sweet carrots too,
snow peas, bits of tender chicken courting me,
promising amazing desserts.
I want to smoke pipes of licorice, eat years of penny candy.
I want to play with spun brown sugar girl till the moon yawns,
till the sun rises, kisses the moon and heads off to work.
I don’t want to worry about big-as-life scary things
while goldfish are dancing in the sky for us to catch.
I want to press E for Elmo, B for Bert, G for Gabby and I will.