No Such Thing As An Empty Nest

Now that my children have been out of the house for several years, I realize there's no such thing as an "empty nest."  They come back.  They leave but there's always the question of when or if they'll move in again.

Dead of Winter 2010  front of our farm house

My husband and I have one remaining parent, with whom we live.  It's my MIL. Add to that one very old dog and one dog aging rapidly, a huge piece of property we're inheriting and you have a very unempty nest indeed.  

When we were young(er), my parents retired to a lovely, maintenance-free, patio style home by a golf course.  They waited til Dad was 69 and finally willing to sell his small company in LA.  My mom was 64, had been his accountant for years.  She was ready. They followed a few golfing friends to what was then a brand new condo project by a golf course in smog-free, cooler temps.  Now that I have the never-ending- despite-the-fact-menopause-ended-6-years-ago hot flashes she had, I understand her desire for cooler temps.  I didn't at the time.

I had moved out at 19 to finish college.  I never moved back.  My brother, on the other hand, was in and out of the home we grew up in til Mom told him it was "time to be on your own" at the tender age of 25 or 26.  He stayed gone and my mother breathed a sigh of relief.  

We may or may not have what our parents have.  We are rehabbing the MIL's farm house into a two family dwelling.  It's turning our nicely but the renovation is costing us two loans despite my husband doing half the work and acting as general contractor.  We hope, one day, to rent the front of the house to vacationers and thereby generate income.  We live in a vacation area in the White Mountains of NH and we have summer, fall and winter visitors.  It sounds like a good plan.  The question is, will it work?  The other side of this is, if one of the boys want to move back here to live, they could rent it.  It would solve the economic problems they face as adults in a shrinking economy, create a family compound and everyone would benefit.  

I don't know what will happen.  I do know things are not as easy as we hope they will be and not as bad as we fear they will be.  I wish we had a million dollars set aside for retirement, but we do not.  I think most of us wish that and do not.  I don't even know if tried and true ways of generating income will continue to work.                                                       
                                                                                                                                                             Fall at our farm house, rear view

 This is our present plan.  It translates into a busy nest.  Hopefully, it will be our insurance policy.                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Theme Thursday Park

The very first thing that came to mind when I read the TT word was how we used to park to neck.  My fondness for parking knew no bounds as a teenager.  And I wasn't the only one.  Most of us girls operated under the constraints of remaining virgins until we were married.  Most of the guys operated with the intention of thwarting that plan.  To park and to neck was a pretty good prelude to some kind of sexual activity, you know, first base, second base, third base...HOME!   They called it "scoring".  How very male.

                                             Interior shot from hotrodhotline.com

One of the great things about cars back in the day was bench seats.  Unless a guy had a sports car, the car had bench seats.  Bench seats allowed you to spread out, as it were.  You could lie down.  You could have sex.  You could just fool around.  It was comfortable.  Bucket seats were unsatisfactory.  You'd end up climbing in the back seat which was usually too tiny. 

                         

from Saturday Evening Post article

A favorite place to park was the drive in. What a gift!  An evenings' entertainment with a movie, food and usually some heavy necking.   If I was headed to the movies on a date, my parents didn't often ask "where?" They usually wanted to know "What movie?"  My father was much more concerned about the risque value of the movie than the risque activity that might ensue.  Of course, we usually double dated so he probably figured little would happen.  I remember one particular night on a triple date.  My best friend and her boyfriend were in the back of the station wagon.  Remember those little fold down seats?  His brother drove their parent's wagon so he was in the front seat with a new date, a nice quiet girl.  My boyfriend and I were in the middle seat.   His brother and my girlfriend were definitely hot and heavy in the back.  At one point she yelled at him, "Bill!  Why don't you ever cut your fingernails?"  I think my boyfriend and I started laughing but our driver was very embarrassed.  Some first date!

I actually recall some of the the movies I didn't really see:  "2001:  A Space Odyssey", all "The Pink Panther" flicks; "One Million Years BC"; "Planet of the Apes"; "Fahrenheit 451" and probably many more.  None of these movies mattered to us.  The ones that did, the ones we thought would be important or worthwhile, we dressed up for and went to the movie theatres in Westwood or Hollywood or Santa Monica. The experience was just better with big screens, great sound system, beautiful comfortable old theaters. 

But I digress.  It's about parking isn't it?  I still think parking is a nice way to spend an evening.  Take a drive, go sit on a hill overlooking a city of sparkling lights or the ocean while you park on the sand or a drive in restaurant where you can still eat in the car.  I love cars and the joy I've experienced in them...and that includes parking!

Theme Thursday Wrinkles

Wrinkles...everybody's got 'em; it depends to what degree.  How you feel about them is a different matter.

As a child of the Fifties and Sixties, I never thought I'd grow old.  Boomers have a Peter Pan complex.  It's an ongoing challenge to advertisers as they experiment with  marketing methods appealing to our vanity and sense of entitlement.  We should look young, feel young, act young.  And that's okay...up to a point.

Our parents raised us to believe we'd have a better life than they did during their Depression-era childhoods.  For the most part, we did;  as children, anyway.  I think we had, predominantly, decent upbringings in our respective suburbs, cities and rural areas.  Schools delivered better academic results in those decades;  expectations of manners, customs, rules and religious observances were more rigid.  I won't apologize for mythologizing my youth because it was so care free.  It is, perhaps, the reason we were surprised, angry and rebellious when our ideals proved to be so much fantasy, like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

Viet Nam is the key turning point for the Boomer generation.  It's the first deep wrinkle in our heretofore benign lives.  The involuntary draft; friends going to Viet Nam; some not returning.  Vets returning with shattered lives, shattered limbs, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and nobody to welcome them home.  Our country recognized the 40th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State in April this year.  It is not a pleasant memory.  It's still raw.  It still resonates.

I ask myself why I feel entitlement with respect to my body and face?  After all, I did nothing to deserve them but I did spend many years working to maintain what I had by playing racquetball, tennis, jogging, etc.  It was fairly easy and I thought it would last.  But it didn't.   I hit my late forties and my body began to suffer as I, in a characteristically Boomer way said, "My body began to betray me".  I had one hip replacement, then the other.  One knee needed replacing and I stopped playing tennis.  I became depressed and angry.  I drank too much.  I bloated.  My face began to sag and get some wrinkles.  I became even more angry.  You see, I had taken it all for granted.

I see this in my peers.  We have this silly sense of entitlement to things we enjoyed so effortlessly as kids, teenagers, young adults.   We think it's supposed to last but nothing lasts, as Frost said so eloquently in his poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

My mother and grandmother believed in growing old gracefully.  I wasn't sure what that meant when I was younger but I have a sense of it now.  We need to like ourselves more, criticize less.  We need to feel good about getting up each day, rather like the little girl I posted on my other blog.  She has the answers and she's only four!  If you haven't see it, you should.  I have nothing against plastic surgery and, if I had a lot of money I might very well have my chin lifted.  But, that isn't going to happen so I'd better get comfortable with this face.

Will Rogers had some pithy comments on aging:

• Some  people try to turn back their odometers. Not me;  I want people to know 'why' I look this way.  I've traveled a long way, and some of the roads  weren't paved.

• You  know you are getting old when everything either  dries up or  leaks. 

• One  must wait until evening to see how splendid the  day has been.

• Being  young is beautiful, but being old is  comfortable.

Coonskin Caps and Childhood Memories of Davy Crockett

 
Davy Crockett is dead.  Fess Parker, the actor who portrayed the famous frontierman, died Thursday at his home in Santa Ynez Valley.  He was 85.

My husband had a coonskin cap.  My brother had one as well.  Most boys I knew growing up ran around with little fake frontier rifles and caps and played at cowboys and Indians.  All of us eagerly watched his show on the Sunday night "Disneyland" as it was then called..  According to this sentimental op-ed in the NY Times,  Fess Parker suffered a great deal playing the iconic Crockett. 

He retired to the northern part of Santa Barbara County in the beautiful little town of Los Olivos.  He opened a winery.  My husband, friends and I visited the winery back in the '90s and tasted some of the best wine we'd ever had.  His label fetches good prices.  Try it and raise a glass to the man who made the coonskin cap a Boomer legacy forever.

Gone in a Blink

Just watched a "Sunday Morning" feature on the anniversary of two political and cultural events: the massacre at Tienanmen Square, June 3, 1989 and the debut of the Seinfeld Show, May 31,1990.

What strikes me about these two wildly divergent items is the passage of time. Where has it gone? How did twenty years of my life disappear "in a blink", the Anthony Hopkins line from "Meet Joe Black"?

Kids. I've been raising kids for the past twenty two years. That's where it went. Or is it?

My husband and I continually marvel at the time lapse between what we remember and when it occurred. Often when a little piece of history comes up, we cannot believe it is ten, twenty or thirty years past. Attending my 40th high school reunion last year was a reality check. Actually, it was more of a bitch slap. With apologies to Oliver Hazard Perry and Walt Kelly, "I have met the aging Boomers and they are me." The deaths of family and friends brings me up short. It's all so fleeting. Yet I take so much for granted.

As a caustic individual who sees irony in all things, I love to say, "Kids suck the life out of you and then they leave." While they're doing that, you're trying to live your life and theirs. It doesn't leave time for much else. Since the boys have moved out, I find myself able to concentrate on other things: politics, writing, blogging, reading, volunteer work. If I didn't work full time I just imagine what I could do! However, that will come.

This contemplation of the last twenty years makes me somewhat sad. I feel as though I've missed something or stopped paying attention. It's bittersweet. After all, I had my children and they are wonderful. I miss my children's childhood. I was present but was I as engaged as I could have been? There's a part of me that feels I should have taken life slower, paid more attention, taken work less seriously, enjoyed child rearing more, savored the moments.

Yes, all the sugary sentiments do make sense. "Take time to smell the roses" or they'll be will indeed be "...gone in a blink."

New Job

Exactly two months ago, I left a group of radio stations for whom I'd worked almost six years to become Sales Manager of a small tv network station in the resort area where we live. I've spent 27 years in broadcast radio sales & management and it was not easy for me to make the decision to leave. I had watched radio broadcasting move away from the once-great AM stations of my youth to the edgy and groundbreaking FMs of my late teens and college years. Having grown up in the the Los Angeles radio market, I was used to great disc jockeys, great station jingles and fun promotions. As teenagers, we all listened to the radio via transistors. Most of us started with 45's of our favorite singles, graduating to 33 1/3 LPs when we could afford it. Music was the tie that binds in that every single event in our lives was associated with at least one song or another. To this day, I can pinpoint the year most songs released because I remember what I was doing at the time it was popular on the radio. Baseball was another great radio past time. Vin Scully, still going strong after 60 years as the voice of the Dodgers, was my sports announcer hero. Who didn't listen to their favorite team on the radio?

My father worked in radio for close to fifty years. He started out in Chicago during the Depression, working for an independent rep firm that represented radio stations around the country. His job was to present the features & benefits of each station to the big ad agencies on Michigan Ave. He went on to Canada, working with the pioneering families in Canadian radio, eventually settling in LA to open his own rep firm where I would cut my teeth.

But I digress. I loved radio and all it represented. I worked for Dad as a teenager. After college, I eventually started on the ad agency side of the business as a buyer of radio, television and print. Going into media sales was a natural step and I chose radio probably because of all it represented to me at the time. I enjoyed many years of great times with great people working for great and not-so-great stations. Little by little, the business changed and, as with so much of what has occurred in American business over the last 10-15 years, consolidation took over. As it did, the individuals were bought out and individualism was weeded out. Economies of scale became the norm and all the joy and originality went too. I got out for a few years, thinking I'd never go back as it was no longer the same.

I eventually needed to go back to work and radio was what I knew best. So back I went...a fifty year old woman, no less! I was hired by a three station cluster and hit the streets with all good intentions. The company for whom I worked was huge, fifth largest in the US at the time of my hiring; third largest now. Unfortunately, they know nothing about radio. This company has decimated the existing stations they own, all in the name of those economies of scale. Voice tracking is the norm, live shows the exception. Sales departments do not try to help or please their clients, there's no money in that. The CEO took the group public and ran the price of the stock down to pennies. This company is now firing middle managers, long time air talent, and anyone who isn't absolutely positively necessary to the day-to-day business. It's a bloodbath out there and I mourn the losses. But, boy, I did I get out just in time.

Starting Over

I have just been pursued and wooed to a new job at a local television station. After 27 years in radio sales, I am now going to be the sales mgr of a local station that broadcasts resort information to tourists when they visit. Am I excited? You're darn tootin'! I have been working for a major publically owned radio company for the past six years and I actually thought I'd end my career in broadcasting with them. Zzzzzzz. I now have a new challenge and opportunity to grow with a company that is expanding and entrepreneurial. How great is that?

I didn't have time to think it through...just three days. That is probably a good thing. When you get older, you tend to think too much. I reacted on gut. I liked the people with whom I interviewed. They asked me what I wanted (can't remember the last time THAT happened) and they gave it to me. I keep thinking I should pinch myself but that is my cynicism sneaking in to spoil my fun. It's okay to feel good about myself and believe I deserve this. My Baptist/Presbyterian upbringing doesn't allow for much self-congratulation. I always feel guilty. But, like Stuart Smalley always says,

"I'm good enough,
I'm smart enough
and, dog-gone it, people like me!"

Thank you, Al Franken.



http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

"Guyland" or Why My Sons don't Wanna Grow Up

I am reminded of "I Won't Grow Up" song from Peter Pan, the musical. I sang this song on stage at the age of four or five (not sure) during a recital. I still know the words:

I won't grow up
I don't wanna go to school
Just to learn to be a parrot
and recite a silly rule

If growing up means it would be
Beneath my dignity to climb a tree
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow uuuupp!
Not me. Not I. Not me.

I won't grow up
I don't wanna wear a tie
or a serious expression
in the middle of July.

And if it means I must prepare
to shoulder burdens with a worried air
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow uuupp
Not me. Not I. Not me. So there!


Never gonna be a man
I won't.
Like to see somebody try
and make me
Anyone who wants to try
and make me turn into a man...
catch me if you can!

I won't grow up
Not a penny will I pinch
I will never grow a mustache
Or a fraction of an inch!

Cuz growing up is awfuler
than all the awful things that ever were
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow uupp!
No sir!

What strikes me about this video and the accompanying article which you can read if you double click my post title, is how true this study and appraisal of young men seems to be, at least to me.

Our boys are now 20 & 21. They are both in college; one after a false start last Fall. The elder should have completed his Junior year last Spring but didn't want to take a full load. He's still 10 credits short. He doesn't ask for money though. He's working to support himself waiting tables.They are both partyers and neither knows what they want to be when they graduate although the younger one is pretty sure he wants to own his own business and "be rich." I know the feeling.

Many but certainly not all of our friends have sons with varying degrees of similarities in their confusion and their belief they can just get by. None of us understands this and none of us knows how to help. Maybe that is the problem. What we are trying to do and have to learn to do is let go. We have to let go and let them find out for themselves what the world is about.

I listened with rapt attention to Barack Obama's acceptance speech Thursday night. One of his remarks had to do with "accepting responsibility" for who we are and where we are headed. I immediately thought of my sons and wondered when this will happen.

Then I thought of the song, my recital and most of all, Mary Martin.

Was once & Will be again

I wear a locket, purchased in Vancouver the
summer I graduated high school, with photos
of my then boyfriend, now husband and I at
Disneyland on Grad Night.

I'm headed home to my high school reunion this month. It is my fortieth.

"Fortieth?" you ask.

Fortieth.

Where did it go? I have no idea. Granted, my real fortieth reunion is next year. I graduated high school in 1969. Somehow, that doesn't make this event any less daunting. I have been preparing for this for six months. I've lost 10 lbs, I'm having glycolic face peels, I've darkened my hair to a chestnut brown and grown it to shoulder length. Many women in my age group (baby boomers) are no longer hung up on the idea that "blonde highlights and chin length" make you look younger.

Is it helping? As it is all about my looks, I'd say "Not much".

My husband and I had a nice talk yesterday and he remarked he wanted me to "find the person I used to be before I had children." He went on to say that having children changes a woman forever. She transforms to Mother first, everything else second. That has certainly been true for me. That conversation began by him asking,

"Do you remember who you were before you had children?"

I really had to think about it. I wasn't sure what he meant. I kept thinking he meant career etc. He finally explained he meant who I once was and want to be again. I'm still thinking about that. I don't know.

I can only say it bears serious thought and it's a good exercise. I'll get back to you.

Jane in Moscow

One of my very good friends, Jane, is in her second, maybe third, act teaching in Moscow. After 20+ years teaching the fourth grade in a New Hampshire elementary school, raising a daughter alone, seeing her through college and recently, elegantly, married, Jane is on an adventure.

She applied to teach in a foreign school and was picked to go to Moscow where I believe she is teaching the children of American diplomats and workers. She went all by herself. Very ballsy, I think.

She has embraced her experiences with great vigor and humor. She should be writing a blog! She keeps her friends informed with a running commentary via email. Occasionally there are photos and I share a few today.

Wish I'd kept the ones of her at the pyramids.

A Good Days' Gardening

Maggie the Cat having a drink. My husband calls this

"Here birdy birdy!"

This past weekend was warm and sunny in northern New Hampshire. My husband and I spent most of it gardening. It was a pleasure to get down in the dirt and dig. He even enjoyed mowing the lawn, not something he normally likes to do; but after the long winter, slow-to-start Spring and our trip to Kentucky where it was bluegrass and flowers all the way, we can't wait to get out in the yard.

My pansies are in so the photo I posted longingly last month is applicable now. Soon, I'll have flowering phlox, peonies, lilacs and candytuft. I have to buy more annuals to mix with the perennials. The photo above is my cat drinking out of the birdbath. It's hilarious. She looks wicked.

The bug aren't biting just yet. In northern New England, we have black flies. They bite. Before I lived here full time, I thought they were a myth...like snipe. I honestly thought they were something New Englanders made up to keep out the flatlanders. Wishful thinking. They are small, they buzz and they love to attack just behind your ears and on your neck near the carotid artery. They draw blood and leave a nasty, itchy boil full of ooze that leaks when you scratch.

As if if that weren't enough to drive you crazy, we have unbelievable mosquitoes. Southerners love to brag about their mosquitoes which are larger in size. But ours are meaner. They leave huge itchy raised welts that can last two weeks. The more you itch, the more skin you lose. It's gross. I hate them. I cannot sleep in a room when there's a mosquito present. I sit up in bed, turn on the light, grab something to use as a swatter and wait. It drives my husband berserk. But I just cannot sleep until the damn thing is dead. They buzz your head and you know you are going to wake up with bites all over. Ugh.

Did I mention the ticks? Ah, well, I'll save that for another time...

Women of a Certain Age

What the hell does that mean anyway? What "certain age" are we talking about? We know it isn't a young one. But, how old is it exactly? Am I there yet? Feels like it but I'm not sure how to react to the concept.

It's really hard getting old. I'm only 56 but there are days when I feel much older. It's the aches and pains that get you. I have two hip replacements; one for each side. Why? Degenerative osteo-arthritis. Translation: wearing down of the major weight bearing joints thanks to excessive athletic activity over the years, repititive activities, possible genetic pre-disposition and who knows what else? Mostly it is just annoying. I honestly don't mind getting older or being older, I mind "feeling older".

Stirrings from the empty nest: The only thing we have to fear ...

Double click this post title to read a blog I really enjoy. Subject matter is pertinent to the work situation in this country today: people trying to figure out how much longer they'll be gainfully employed and what does it mean?