Category Archives: Self Care

September 22, 2009

GREAT (BOOMER) EXPECTATIONS

By JL
Once again I’ve bumped into an old school chum in a place I never expected.  For years she was behind the counter at the family pharmacy in the neighborhood where we both grew up. 
In this age of superstore chains, it’s comforting to see our little drugstore still in business whenever I get the chance to visit.  Though my husband’s and my prescription needs are filled by the Veterans’ Administration via US mail, I drop in now and then for sundries; the occasional greeting card, small items to stock the medicine cabinet and perhaps something from their gift line.
This past week I caught sight of Mary pushing the pharmacy cart through the corridors of the hospital where my husband was paying a visit on the Cardiac Care ward (the phrase, paying a visit takes on a whole new connotation in the preset health care system).
Anyway, there she was, 15 miles away from the little neighborhood drug store.  Turns out she gave up the job she loved because her husband was laid off in the cut backs that swept yet another of our local industries.  Also turns out that it’s much easier for an older middle aged woman to find a full time job with benefits than it is for a man in the same age range.
Great.  We finally win a battle in the war for equality when we’re too darn old to even care anymore.
I am struggling through my first semester of full time credits in over 30 years.  Each time I dissolve into tears over a new chapter in my Business Math book, I ask myself why I’m doing this.
My husband is 100% disabled due to an increasingly complicated heart condition.  There is about a zero to one tenth of a percent chance that he will ever improve, and that would only be if medical science beats the grim reaper by coming up with some way to Roto-Rooter human arteries without completely destroying them in the process.
Here’s the catch 22.  IF there is some great advance (angiogenisis is proving promising) and my husband is suddenly “cured”, the disability income stops (as it should) and he becomes an almost 60-something man looking for a job in a crippled economy.  Ever hopeful for the chance that his health can improve, I figure we’d better be prepared for the consequences.
So when I burst into frustrated tears over math equations that, to me, are a foreign language, I practice by figuring out what our living expenses are, how much I’ll need to earn and the statistics of job opportunities in my chosen field. I work endless calculations figuring the cost of my higher education and the number of working years I have left to recoup and pay that debt.
Running into friends like Mary is a double-edged sword.  She is an inspiration—an  example that we are strong and capable.  It is also a reminder that this isn’t the midlife we expected.
But, really, how much of life ever turns out the way we expected?

. . . . . . mid
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3 Comments | posted in Self Care

April 3, 2009

SPRING PASSAGES

By JL

March winds blow in the season of April proms and May graduations. Being an empty-nester, I am so done with all of that.

Proms are a fun and exciting time, especially for the mother of three daughters who each attended three proms. Do the math – I could be driving around in a cherry, classic Mustang convertible for the price. Add in the grad portraits and I could have some impressive custom wheel covers.

I am eternally grateful that we snuck by on the cheap with the first two girls – that’s the middle daughter (in the middle) wearing my early 80’s disco diva dress. You can see by the expression on her face that the girl has attitude. With the third daughter, we managed to keep a firm, though somewhat weakening hold on the budget – from her first prom (less than $200 total expenditure) to her last prom, in which she went all out.

Being the baby in my own family, I remember my mother’s excuse for everything I got away with (according to my older siblings). “I’m old. I’m tired,” she said summarily dismissing the ranks. Oh, how true. It becomes so easy to choose your battles when you are road-weary from traveling that path before.

I am enjoying a window of respite from this season of high emotion and high priced necessities before my first born grandchild is ready for her first prom. I admit, I’m a little (okay a lot) excited about dress shopping when the bill is on her father.

Of course, this grandma might be tempted to fork over the extra dollars for that dress she just has to have or she knows she’ll die. Ah, the payback is rich! For now, I am thankful to sit back and observe this season of young adult passages.

Like all grandma’s who sit in their rockers thinking their thoughts, I can’t help but wonder at how things have changed.

Several years ago in the autumn of the year, a college administrator sent a memo to his staff reminding them of the things the incoming freshman had never experienced. The list became somewhat famous, and now current versions can be easily found on the internet. Here’s my spring passages version ~

The young folks shopping for proms and graduations this year have never known a world without malls and chain stores. It’s unthinkable that they might wear their sister’s or cousin’s prom dress from two years ago. And they can’t believe that dress shops never“registered” your dress so that no other girl at your school would show up in the same one.

They have no idea what polyester is or what leisure suits were and have never danced with a man in stacked heels as high as their own (thank the goddess for small favors!).

They can’t imagine being restricted to going to prom as couples only or arriving in their parent’s four door sedan. They wonder if we didn’t have limos in our days.

Their feet never danced across the floor of a crepe paper festooned gymnasium. They rent ballrooms and receptions halls and drink punch (we can only hope it is only punch) in engraved stemware.

They’re dumbfounded by the suggestion that one or two poses are enough for graduation portraits. What about the sports pose, the sexy pose and the outdoor pose? What about touch-ups to remove glare from glasses, pimples on noses and flyaway hair? What about the Photoshop special effects – black and white drama with pseudo hand tinted accents?

They expect full scale receptions for graduation parties, complete with music and dancing. If they were given a suitcase (the classic gift from my day with the hint that it was time to move on being apparent) they would expect it to be the “gift box” containing their tickets for a graduation trip to Cancun.

Greek philosopher Heraclitus said “The only constant in life is change.” Bob dylan expounded on this theory in his song The Times They Are A-Changin’. As Dylan so aptly sates, we parents and grandparents can either keep up or get out of the way:

“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
and don’t criticize what you can’t understand.
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.
Your old road is rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand,
for the times they are a-changin’.”

. . . . . . mid
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4 Comments | posted in Beauty and Image, RITUALS & PASSAGES

March 29, 2009

WALK THE TALK

By JL

This past week has been of those that you would just like to rewind and start over. Too many obligations pulling me in too many directions and when the dust settles I can see that I accommodated the wrong people. Worse, exhausted and on my last – no really – my last nerve, I lashed out at the one least deserving.

After twelve hours of sleep followed by a day in jammies and slippers, I am beginning to feel human again.

When will my husband learn that doormat and wife are not synonymous? He would like me to live in a landscape of limitations where he rules by virtue of his testosterone. Instead, I systematically (and ever so gently) remind him that he is an ass.

Sometimes, extenuating circumstances like a 1,235 mile round trip in less than 48 hours to attend a funeral pushes me to the brink. When I get little thanks and even less consideration – I’m over the edge.

The real problem here is that it’s entirely my own fault. I never was very good at math, but an idiot can figure out that 48 hours of pure stress followed by two days of recuperation and a stack of backed up projects at work, when measured against an hour or two of argument over not attending his uncle’s funeral, is not equal.

As a good (single) friend once said to me, “I am not responsible for anybody’s happiness but my own.”

Perhaps if I have it tattooed to the back of my hand where I can see it everyday, I won’t forget again.

And if I try really, really hard, I will set a better example of placing and respecting my own boundaries in a healthy marriage (in all relationships for that matter). Then maybe I’ll be less apt to lash out at the wrong people.


. . . . . . mid
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