Archives for August 2020

Be safe. We are in this together. Be kind. Be happy. Stay home. Be the change. Rainbow. Smiley face. Apparently, the painted stone thing is its own pandemic, but Covid-19 has clearly rocked the trend. Sorry. So many puns, so little time.

Brightly painted smooth stones have been making their way into nooks and crannies for quite some time, but the pandemic has definitely accelerated the trend. Commonly known as kindness rocks, the trend has a strong appeal to children who are fascinated and delighted by the discovery of these painted rocks. It appears that the artists believe we need these signs of positivity in order to keep moving forward and not be discouraged. In these very strange times, there is no argument there. Hence, we find them in garden beds and perched on walls, on library shelves, next to the playground swings, on a beach, and countless more locations.

Perversely, I’m wondering if the stones could be a bit more focused on the baby boomer demographic. Not too late to save. Try Zumba. Clean out the garage. Age in place. Get your will in order. Think about disability insurance. Unload your stuff. Get rid of your landline. Vote for your grandkids. Don’t fear retirement. Hashtag! Stop printing everything out. Lose the ponytail. Get off your ass. Try new things. Watch your weight. Lose the stupid ringtone. Stop judging. Turn the volume down.

You could place these stones outside the gerontologist’s office, inside the library, over by the shuffleboard court, along the walking trail, in the cooking class, on the bus, in the senior center, or near the ninth hole of the golf course. Anywhere that boomers congregate would be a great place to get stoned. I believe they would promote just as much delight in a 70-year old as the kindness rocks do for the 10-year olds.

So it’s time to rock!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

Our coyote friend came back to take another snooze by the pool. He appears to be a juvenile. Well-fed and healthy. I was out of the house early to play golf, so I don’t know what time the coyote bolted. Dale said he looked out mid-morning, and the coyote was gone.

I think he’s our spirit animal – sent to share a message. Reminding us to not take things too seriously and to seek balance between wisdom and playfulness. As I researched this further, I learned coyote symbolism warns us to beware of the dark side of things and reveals the answers to your problems often come in ways and forms you least expect.

Since the coyote first showed up, we’ve done quite well backing away from COVID arguments, which are principally focused on surviving shopping expeditions and managing territorial issues in the kitchen.

While it’s easy to assume these issues arose from being crushed together during pandemic sheltering, it might also result from being crushed together during my retirement, whereupon I discovered that I liked staying home … which is where Dale likes to hang out, too.

We’ve learned that both of us staying home fighting for space while the world is on fire is a dark place to start when you’re just trying to make dinner.

The thing is, we both like to cook. And with cooking comes control. When I was working, Dale basically had squatters rights in the kitchen, but now he has to share his toys. But it’s not just space or equipment. It’s about choices. What are we going to eat? How are we going to get it? Are you going to use that fresh spinach before it goes bad? Mexican … again?

We had a close call earlier this week, but I managed to defuse the fire with quick action … a skill I’ve been perfecting of late, perhaps with the help of our spirit animal. It involves pressing my lips together and keeping my mouth shut.

The situation was chicken breasts. As you may recall, I defrosted and re-organized the chest freezer. At the time, we only had one chicken breast left, so I put it in a Ziploc with thighs and labeled it, “Chicken Breasts and Thighs.” Makes sense to me.

Normally, Dale likes to buy the frozen chicken breasts individually sealed and you can just cut one off as needed. But when the stay-at-home mandate first started, those were hard to find.

When individually sealed breasts showed up again, Dale purchased a package and put them in the freezer.

I said innocently enough, “When you get the chicken breasts out to thaw, the oldest one is in a labeled Ziploc. Use that one and then cut off one of the new ones.” He did not respond.

Later, as Dale was preparing his kitchen hut for the sacred cooking ritual, I was convinced I personally witnessed him cutting off two portions from the new package of individually sealed breasts.

I wanted to say, “What is so effing hard about using the oldest one first?” But then I thought, oh, the chicken will get eaten one way or the other. Who cares? I did not say a word, and I’ve been quite proud of my restraint. I thought about all the ways to do things and how we almost always go in opposite directions. It’s actually quite funny.

So, I laughed. I thought it would make a funny post and sat down to write. Then I went to the freezer to take some sort of picture to go with. While I was there, I decided to look in the Ziploc. The chicken breast was gone. Only one missing from the other package.

That coyote. He’s a trickster.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

 

Once, some forty years ago, Lake Michigan lapped the stairs at the base of the bluff in front of my house. This year the water level is again high and, after the last storm and toppled trees, I now have an uninterrupted view to the white-capped horizon that stretches to Chicago. But, as much as the vista has expanded, I now feel constrained, confined, unable to patrol the beach two miles north and three miles south as I love to do. I even need a ladder, these days, just to get down to the rubble from what appears to have been a marine invasion.

Down on the beach, I duck through tangled tree limbs reaching for water with leaves instead of roots. Pieces of docks and decks, boathouse doors and steps-to-nowhere fight for attention. The stern of a Sunfish sailboat protrudes from a ten-foot sandbank. A barricade of automobile tires impaled on cable-twined, cast-iron posts is visible for the first time since it was installed in the 70s. That was the last time we had high water. It was a time of upheaval not just along the shores of Lake Michigan but across the country with anti-war protests, civil rights battles, women’s rights, church reform, presidential reckoning. Do cycles in nature cause seasons of change?

Fifty years on, we are in it again. Pandemic forces are washing away the way things were, and the way we ‘always did.’ Lockdown, isolation, distancing. Body counting, this time of non-combatants, here and abroad. Righteous marchers protesting murders. And so, I rest in a yawning cavity at the base of a sixty-foot bluff wondering if we have reached the high-water mark of this cycle yet? Nature with its climactic changes, seasonal cycles and a novel virus is making us re-think where we are, how we got here.

Maybe it takes general upheaval to confront norms and status quo…to reimagine. Maybe there will be another productive hiatus with changes in attitudes and laws like between the last landmark watermark and the current one. And sometimes there is just plain generational drift—some attitudes simply fold of their own weight and the openness of progeny born outside parental biases. Sometimes. Hopefully, we won’t always need hurricanes and tornadoes and oil spills and global epidemics to jolt us into spasms of legal change and national consciousness, to convince us to move our houses back from the brink.

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara and his wife live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/

Is it just me or is everyone more calculating? And I don’t mean in the manipulative or devious sense. I mean that we are all forced to analyze and gauge things in the time of Covid. A trip to the grocery store is no longer a jump in the car and drive off proposition. No, that would be foolhardy. A trip to the grocery store must be planned carefully, in order to evaluate the risk level. Can you go between 8 AM and 9 AM? Those are the hours set aside for those over age 65. Is Tuesday less busy than Wednesday? Will all the fresh produce be out at 9 AM or just the tired stuff from the previous day? It’s a lot to decide/calculate.

If the grocery run seems complicated, try thinking about a road trip. Where? Will it be overnight? Where will you sleep? Where will you eat? What can you do when you get there? Will there be social distancing or will you run into loads of maskholes? The days of deciding on the spur of the moment that you want to go somewhere for a mini-vacation or long weekend are just a memory. We can only hope that some day soon we can ponder that possibility again.

Then there’s sharing food. Let’s say you want to bake a pie or cook up a casserole for someone who is unable to get out much. The risk is low but you still might want to wear a mask and gloves while you prepare the food. When it’s time to deliver it, the mask goes back on and the 6-foot rule is in effect. Reusable and washable containers are advised. Ha! Nothing could be easier.

What I would really like to calculate is how many more days and months this pandemic is going to last. It’s a little bit like the inmate marking the days on the cell wall. The difference is that a prisoner has a defined sentence while we deal with the open-ended term. For now, we can only calculate how much longer we’ll be forced to calculate.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

 

 

 

 

The Sunday paper featured a full-page ad celebrating seniors. I was like, wow, how’d they get my name?

Upon further reflection, I realized they meant graduating seniors. Not older folks like us. Bummer.

Don’t get me wrong. I love young people and can’t imagine how hard this year has been for them. Hell, yes, celebrate their achievements! No generational warfare from me.

While some may find retirees disposable, we make important contributions to the economy – contributions that help support everyone. Even without a job, we still pay income tax on the money we withdraw from our IRAs. If we own a home, we pay property taxes and fees associated with funding schools and other community assets. Even on a fixed-income, many of us support local food banks and other charitable causes.

Not to mention the many contributions retirees make by volunteering, sharing their knowledge, connecting with their families or just being cool, interesting people.

The economy needs us, but we need the economy to thrive, too. Not just for us, but also for all the young people who have miles to go in their journeys through life. I support careful re-opening as we learn to manage the risks associated with COVID-19. A vibrant economy is good for all of us, but that doesn’t mean older people have to be first ones in the pool.

Dale and I have loosened up a bit on grocery store visits – quick trips with masks and social distancing. Plenty of hand-washing afterward. I’m playing golf – outdoors wearing a mask when I use the restroom or anticipate a close encounter. No chit-chat. Plenty of hand-washing afterward.

No mass gatherings, no travel, no restaurants.

Some people have asked why I wear a mask. I have a new response that is working well. I say, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m at higher risk than many.” I’m not even sure that’s true, but it stops almost everyone. Only one person asked why, and I said medical history. No more questions after that.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

 

I am thinking of retiring. From what? you might ask. In my defense, I must say that while it’s true that I haven’t written a newspaper article in more than a decade, nor do I have a regular teaching job anymore, I have produced three books in the last six years and I still give about a dozen lectures or workshops a year. Clearly I am at most only semi-retired. But should I retire completely?

The current virus lockdown has cut into my lecture schedule drastically. And the accompanying ennui has given me lots of time to think, time that could have been used for writing. But I can’t get motivated to do much because of the lack of a deadline. Work with no deadlines, no bosses requiring that a schedule be kept, nothing really pressing except the need to get a little exercise and find something reasonable to eat two or three times a day, is somehow not work for me. Could I be getting bored? Better check that into the equation. Boredom.

There are lots of ways to help people during this pandemic. Am I a viable helper, though, at my age, which is a risk factor for the virus? And when it’s over, if I retire, what will I do to replace those activities, should I find some? I guess there will still be people who need help. And then maybe I’ll be more welcome, when the disease is not an issue. But is there anything I will want to do? The mind goes round and round with this.  The possibilities are endless. Let’s add that one into the equation too: possibilities.

I think, on reflection, the problem is not that I don’t have anything to do. Really it might be having too much time to think about it. Time, which in my life, I have never before had. That kind of time is a luxury – I see that now – but it can also drive you crazy. Of course I could keep myself pretty busy just cleaning my house. But who wants to? So I continue to fill my time wondering what full retirement would be like.

The truth is, though, I know exactly what that life would be like. I’ve just described it. And I think it is not the healthiest outlook for the aging process. So I do not plan to consider that option any time soon. I guess I’m glad I’ve had this opportunity to taste what retirement would be for me. Perhaps that knowledge is the silver lining in all this. But, now, could we stop? I get it already.

Norma Libman is a journalist and lecturer who has been collecting women’s stories for more than twenty years. You can read the first chapter of her award-winning book, Lonely River Village, at NormaLibman.com.