by jphilo | Nov 26, 2012 | Daily Life
Flexibility is a necessary skill for teachers and parents of young children. When I taught school and had young kids at home, I was flexible enough to give Gumby some serious competition.
These days, not so much.
An empty nest doesn’t require flexibility. Some days it’s so quiet and orderly around here, I can almost feel my joints locking in position, my heels digging in, and my thoughts petrifying into a solid, immovable lump.
The temptation to remain in one place is enticing.
On busy weekends, like this past one, the challenge is to shake off comfortable and inflexible habits, to stretch and embrace what is good and true. Can I change with the times? Do I want to? Am I too old to try?
Maybe I am. Too old, that is.
That’s the conclusion I settled on yesterday, right before remembering the turkey carcass waiting in the cold on the porch. Waiting to be brought in and boiled in a big pot of water. Waiting for the water to turn into rich broth as it simmered on the stove. Waiting for the meat to turn tender enough to be picked off its bones.
Not worth the effort.
I quelled the voice inside my head and put the carcass in a big pot of water and hoisted it onto the stove. A few hours later, I picked through the broken down mess. The bones pulled apart easily. The meat fell off the bones. Enough meat for three pots of turkey noodle soup and eight pints of broth besides.
All from an old turkey carcass.
But I had almost believed the voice in my head. I almost turned away from the effort required to harvest good from what looked like nothing much. I almost chose comfort and quiet over what was good and true.
Maybe because there aren’t children around to keep me flexible.
Or maybe because I believe getting older means I’m not worth the effort. But if the old turkey carcass yielded enough food for many meals to come, surely my bones have more to give, too. But only if I choose to move ahead, prepare for change, and stay flexible with or without kids stretching me this way and that. It will never be easy, but it’s good. And true. Which means Gumby better step up his game, too. I plan to give him a run for his money.
As soon as I force myself out of this comfortable chair.
by jphilo | Oct 19, 2012 | Reflections on the Past
Hey, fellow baby boomers, do you remember how old you felt when you turned 30? How about 40? Remember chuckling at the jokes about wearing Depends? About eating bran muffins and drinking prune juice? Well, all that jocularity fades away when Facebook smacks you in the face with cold hard truth by announcing that one of your friends, a former fourth grade student, is celebrating her fortieth birthday.
The above scenario is completely hypothetical, of course. So, hypothetically speaking, how would you respond to the news? How would you reconcile the fact that one of the first students you taught was turning 40?
A. Would you do the Jack Benny thing and refuse to admit you were getting older?
B. Would you call a plastic surgeon?
C. Would you give thanks for the years going by swiftly and sweetly?
D. Would you be grateful for good health that makes you feel younger than are?
E. Or would you spin yourself as a child prodigy who started teaching at a young age?
Hypothetically speaking, C and D seem like excellent answers. But E has the ring of hypothetical truth, don’t you think?
image courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net
by jphilo | Oct 12, 2012 | Daily Life
The past week has been so hard on my perky, Pollyanna you’re-as-young-as-you-feel attitude, it left me thinking I’m plenty older than I feel.
The onslaught began last week with the birth of our first grandchild. Of course, that was a joyous occasion, and the man of steel and I are thrilled to be grandparents. But here’s what was the problem. When I tell people I’m a first time grandma, no one says, “Congratulations, but you don’t look old enough to be a grandma.” Rest assured, from now on, when people my age enter grandparenthood, those will be the first words out of my mouth.
Even if I have to lie through my teeth.
The next item to chip away at my inner Pollyanna was a picture in business section of the Sunday’s Des Moines Register. The photo was of Mike Wells, the CEO of Wells Blue Bunny Ice Cream, and it accompanied an article about the growth of the company. I read with interest because Wells Blue Bunny is located in my home town of Le Mars, Iowa. And I felt vaguely superior to the fit, grey-haired, and slightly balding CEO in the photo. Until I read the caption which said he was 53. So he was a measly high school freshman during my senior year at our mutual alma mater.
O-L-D neon lights started flashing in my brain.
The next blow was a Monday story on NPR about when senior drivers should give up their car keys. One expert advised adult children should initiate a conversation about the subject with their parents before those parents are 60 years old. That gives our kids only four years to screw up the courage to tell us we’re getting O-L-D.
No doubt, the person I cut off in traffic the other day agrees with the news story.
The final nail in Pollyanna’s coffin came this morning when the UPS man left a package, and I could not figure out how to open it. It was all rounded corners and tape. After cutting it open with a knife, I realized the box was a fold-over-and-insert-tab marvel of engineering, kind of like the houses we used to punch out of craft books and fold according to the directions to create a little village for paper dolls. Which made me feel even older because no one younger than me can envision those little villages or has any idea of what paper dolls are. Which leads to one final question: What good is it to be older than you feel, if no one notices you’re as young as you feel?
Please leave a comment, but only if it will put the perk back into this Pollyanna!
by jphilo | May 22, 2012 | Top Ten Tuesday
I consider myself young at heart, though periodic mailings from AARP, the ones urging my husband and me to join their fine organization make it mighty difficult to ignore the fact that we’re getting older every day.
Even so, for years we scoffed when the envelopes arrived. We’re not old enough, we told each other. We’re too young. Way too young. But recent events, ugly heads reared and teeth snapping, make it hard to keep the denial thing going. Here are the top ten signs we are indeed old enough to join AARP. (Not that we’re going to indulge, mind you. We’re way too young for that.)
10. You’re the same age you’re parents were when you thought their lives were toast. Now you know this is the age when life starts cooking.
9. You watch The Best of the Smothers Brother DVD and realize Tom and Dick are just a couple kids, not the sophisticated adults you thought they were when the show aired in the late 1960s. But in the recent interviews included in the bonus material, they look old. Kinda like you.
8. You strike up the a conversation with the old person in line behind you at the grocery store and discover you both graduated from high school the same year.
7. You reject 95% of the latest fashions considered cute by the younger gens as stupid, not cute.
6. You reject 4 of the 5% you consider cute because they look uncomfortable.
5. The remaining 1% you consider cute and comfortable go out of fashion before you make up your mind to make a purchase.
4. You can’t remember if you put the muffins in the microwave or if your spouse did.
3. You can’t remember if you ate the muffins in the microwave or if your spouse did.
2. Your oldest child is about to turn 30. He was born when you were 25.
1. 70 sounds young. Very young. Very, very young.
Anybody else brave enough to ‘fess up recent signs of aging? Leave a comment!
by jphilo | Jan 27, 2012 | Current Events, Reflections on the Past
Yesterday morning, my first thought was not, “Today, I’m gonna feel old.” But thanks to the Girl Scouts – yes, those cute little cookie peddlers who sell sugar highs in a box – for the first time ever, I am feeling a wee bit ancient.
Not just old. Ancient.
The realization was gradual, increasing the longer I listened to Talk of Iowa on the radio. The topic was the 100th Anniversary of Girl Scouts, and the host interviewed some Girl Scout leaders and a couple honest-to-goodness present day Girl Scouts. The girls were about the same age I was during my short career as cookie salesgirl and sash wearer.
And they made me feel not just old. But ancient.
It wasn’t their fault. But, while they talked, I thought about how 1912 was a century ago for the little girls. Just like 1865 was a hundred years ago when I attended Girl Scout meetings after school in 1965. So if and when they watch a show like Downton Abbey, the events portrayed there are as long ago and far away to them as the events chronicled in Gone With the Wind were to me.
And that’s when I started feeling not just old. But ancient.
Not because the Civil War seemed like a long time ago when I was a Girl Scout. And not because 1912 is a long time ago to the girls in the radio interview. And not because 1912 didn’t seem like such a long time ago in my GS days. But because the Civil War probably didn’t seem like such a long time ago to fifty-five-year-old adults in my GS days, but I thought those people were old.
But they didn’t seem just old. They seemed ancient.
Which is how today’s Girl Scouts view everybody old enough to tuck an AARP membership card next to the packet of Metamucil in their wallets, old enough to wear sensible shoes, sport age spots, and wear pants with elastic waistbands.
They view us as not just old. But ancient.
Oh my, the depression is coming on thick and fast. I think there’s only one way to fight this thing. I’m gonna find a Girl Scout, buy a box of Thin Mints, and snarf down the whole box. After all, my mom says old people like me have earned the right to eat whatever they want. And she ought to know.
‘Cause she’s not just old. She’s ancient.
