According to a national survey, 1 in 4 boomers believe that they can’t trust younger generations with an inheritance.

Fine! Keep your money! Are you afraid you’re going to run out of dough and trust issues are just an excuse? Or you really think your kids are too dumb to do the right thing with the money?

Either way, it doesn’t say anything good about A) the way you handle your retirement funds or B) the way your brought up your kids.

Half of the respondents thought it was more important to enjoy life with the cash on hand than leave it behind as an inheritance. Okay, that’s more like it. Travel, play, enjoy yourselves (“it’s later than you think”) and the kids will be fine. When you’re gone, they can have the house and whatever is left in the bank and mutual funds. That’s not such a bad deal all the way around.

Is it too late to mention that close to 45 percent of Gen Xers and Millennials surveyed were confident that they would make good use of an inheritance. And why not? It’s found money. Almost like seeing a $100 bill laying on the ground. Only it’s 50, 60, or 100 thousand of them laying on the ground. Of course they will make good use of it. They could afford a nicer home, a more reliable car, better colleges for the kids and maybe a nice vacation now and then. Wouldn’t that make you happy knowing that your money can make your kids happy? No! You’re dead, remember?

Families and money. It can be a real palaver. In the end (and I mean that in the life cycle sense), all you can do is hope that whatever assets you leave behind are passed on to your progeny and they get some real pleasure out of whatever they do with that money. And if you enjoyed spending it when you were alive, all the better. Everyone’s happy. Unless you wanted to live to spend it a little longer. Can’t help you there.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. You can also visit his author page here. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon.

My father’s name was Egon. Pronounced egg-on. He grew up in Czechoslovakia, so he pronounced a lot of his words wrong, or so I thought as a kid growing up in NJ. I tried to help him with that, and in return he helped me spell Czechoslovakia. I was the only kid in my class who could. We’d go to the International House of Pancakes, me and Egon, and sit across from each other in the booth, like nations at the table.

A language is a dialect with an army, say the linguists, and while we waited for our pancakes I’d drill him in pronouncing all the different syrups, and he’d drill me in C-z-e-c-h-o-s-l-o-v-a-k-i-a.

He didn’t know much about sports. He thought John Havlicek was Czech. But I said no, he’s from Ohio. He thought a home run was something you did when your mother forgot to pick you up after your baseball game.

He died when I was 14. Many years later, after the Berlin wall came down, I visited Prague. It was a sort of home run, to my father’s home, in my father’s honor. They suggested I visit the Castle but I was more interested in the little things, like the doorknobs, which were mostly levers instead of knobs. And the “pater noster elevators” which were left over from Communism and had no doors or buttons and never stopped moving so you had to leap in or leap out when they got to your floor. And the squirrels which were mostly red or black instead of gray. And the blue streaks of the thieving socialist magpies with their clicking metered phrases, which reminded me of their cousins the American blue jays back home. And the fact that everything in Prague just seemed a lot more substantial, the bread for example, and the soups, and the eyebrows of the grandmothers, and the beer, and the coffee, and the buildings, and the rooftops which were mostly red instead of gray. And the heft of the coins, and the blue of the sky, and the beauty of the women, all those beautiful substantial Czech women, none of whom, I’d have bet my return ticket, was headed for the Castle or the Old Jewish Cemetery.

Paul Hostovsky lives in Medfield, MA

Saw a disturbing headline today. “What is the future for baby boomers?”

I think/hope they were referring to lofty subjects such as eldercare, co-op housing, workplace transitions, etc. Otherwise, you would have to infer they were talking about the fact that we are not just retiring in great numbers, but also dying in great numbers.

Sorry about going a little dark here, but if you query Google for what year most baby boomers will die, you get the following: “Projected deaths rise steadily as the baby boomers age and eventually die, then plateau around 2045. By 2060, the tail end of the baby boom will be 95 or older.”

If the first thing you do upon seeing that statement is subtract 2022 from 2045, you are not alone. Let’s see…that’s 23 years from now. Twenty-three more years to live, breathe, travel, enjoy good food and fine wine, maybe visit places you’ve always wanted to see, finish reading the books you started but never completed, enjoy the companionship of one special friend (along with the other great friends and family in your life), play pickleball if still able, and the list could go on and on. I’ll let you make your own list.

But the picture is not all rosy. Life expectancies for boomers are improving all the time, but about 2.6 million boomers die each year. By 2050, that number will be 4 million each year. Whoosh! That’s the sound of positive thoughts now hurriedly escaping from your brain.

The point however, if there is one, is if we can just hang on in reasonably good health, there’s still a lot of time to enjoy life. The good health aspect is a major caveat. If you’re not taking good care of yourself, aren’t you just cheating yourself out of that 23-year package? That’s just a little nudge to get you out there walking and exercising. And flossing! Don’t forget flossing. No one really wants to travel to exotic places without their own teeth.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. You can also visit his author page here. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon.

The foothills of the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, are often bathed in sunlight and blue skies punctuated with cumulus clouds rolling through on a summer’s day. As 9 year old mountain kids, my best friend Pamela and I would often “pasture” our horses on open land during the summer. Our mountain family homes boasted only a three acre plot of land on which we each kept a horse. Any good horse owner knows that a horse requires at least 10 acres of grazing land to support its appetite. So, we had to supplement our horses’ diet by taking them to graze on available grassland nearby.

One such place was an area at Pence Park, a narrow meadow running along side the paved road to the little town of Kittredge below. We would often ride our horses bareback to this open area about two miles from our homes, take off the horse’s bridles and leave their “underwear” halters on their heads. We’d turn them loose and Shorty and Rombo would immediately put their hungry heads down and start munching the long grass, having no other interest but to stay right there and graze.

Meanwhile, we two girls would have to occupy ourselves while the horses chomped grass, moving one step at a time to find new bites. After talking and giggling as young girls do, we’d come up with things to do. Sometimes, we would bring a finishing brush with us and brush the horses until they were sleek and shiny. We’d play games, tie “grass knots,” tell stories, and sometimes take off our boots and feel the grass in our toes. These “pasturing” times would last about an hour or so and then we would bridle up and ride home, our horses satisfied with full bellies.

One beautiful summer day, while “pasturing” the horses, we noticed that the shadows cast by the huge white, fast-moving clouds would overtake us and we could feel the temperature suddenly drop and the world turned a little darker in the shade. After the cloud passed over and the sun’s rays could once again warm the tops of our heads and arms, the temperature would rise, we were warm and the color of our clothes brightened once again. We decided to see if we could chase the sunlight and hopefully outrun the cloud’s shadow which we did if only for a few moments. The line between the sunlit earth and the cloud’s shadow was a marked one and we’d run our skinny legs as fast as we could to stay in the sunlit area. The cloud’s shadow would always overtake us, however, and we’d flop down on the grass in defeat and catch our breath.

I’m reminded of the lyrics from an old song: “Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance for ever and a day. We’d lead the life we’d chose, we’d fight and never lose. Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days.”

To live such a carefree and unburdened existence was the epitome of childhood joy and happiness. Two young girls chasing the sunlight while their beloved horses lifted their heads from their chomping and chewing and craned their necks to watch us in our follies. Yes, those were indeed the days.

Kathy Kain lives in Grand Junction, Colorado.

‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ blaring from the Good Humor truck trolling our neighborhood got me salivating for a popsicle. Another sound that got me running as a youngster was the single note, BLAT, of the junk man’s horn and his dreary old horse dragging a spoke-wheeled wagon through our alley. Recycling made easy. We didn’t have to schlep dead appliances and paint cans to the community recycling center on a certain day for no reward beyond the glow of environmental good stewardship. Nor did we have to pay for recycling service with a yellow-lidded bin at the curb once a week. Just the opposite, the wizened collector at our garage door gave us money for old rags, newspapers, bottles and anything else that might be repurposed. We kids took care of two-cent pop bottle deposits at the corner store on our own initiative. But other ‘stuff’ might earn a few pennies dredged from the dusty pocket of the itinerate salvage man.

Later in life, I experienced the call of the wild—plunged into lakes, hiked up mountains, peered down canyons. But as a kid in the bowels of Eastside Detroit there was nothing like the draw of alleys for shortcuts, hide-and-seek, and the search for abandoned treasures. There was a limit, however, a certain scorn, for avid scavengers who took too much pleasure in rescued ‘gems.’ We called them alley pickers. I mean, there is a limit!

Years of exposure to museums, digs reported in National Geographic, documentaries with letters, photos and relics from the past makes me wonder if there is a connection between a kid bringing a rusty roller skate home and an archeologist bringing a fossil to his lab. Is there shared social/historical value in a found artifact for both of them? Or is it simply hoarding—knee-jerk braking and turning at the glimpse of a Yard Sale sign? A way of finding a use for useful things? Addiction to bargains? Maybe an overdeveloped survival gene to squirrel and stash, to stock my cave.

Whatever…I still can’t stroll past a Goodwill outlet or the local Cancer Center resale and not feel a tug to save something ‘still good’ from the land fill? Or maybe I harbor a secret itch, deep in my DNA, to be digging for the missing link in the Olduvai Gorge. Ha!

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