The summer of 1971, freshman orientation, was when we first met. June 2021 we are meeting again – half a century later.

During the isolation of pandemic, the tools of modern technology allowed us to reconnect by phone, email, and Facebook between her farm in Pennsylvania just west of Philadelphia, where my daughter lives, and my home in western North Carolina. As we reawaken and move about in the world again, I set out on a road trip to see them both. First stop is my daughter, where we spend several days rejoicing in our usual groove. Then I pack my bags to head home, with the planned stopover at Cathy’s farm.

Do you think we’ll have enough to talk about? I ask my daughter. You can always come back here if it’s uncomfortable, she replies. I enter Cathy’s address in Waze, hug my daughter close, and head out. I take the Pottstown exit off the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and wind through a scenic landscape until the disembodied voice tells me I’ve reached my destination. I turn left onto a long, thin gravel drive bordered by trees. I pass a pond, then a pasture where three donkeys and a horse twitch their tails at me. I see chickens pecking at the ground, a vegetable garden. Then, the farmhouse set on a small rise. My wheels crunch the gravel as I approach the back of the house, where the driveway ends. I get out, not sure which door to go to. She comes out the side door and we hug. Her hair is silver now; her face, like mine, lined with years of living. She shows me the house and the grounds, including where the ashes of her second husband are buried, and introduces me to her animals. We go to dinner, where we share stories of what happened to the people we knew back then. Like the young man I dated who became a priest and then died from melanoma in his late forties.

The next morning, she shows me a cookbook I gave her for her birthday in March 1972: To one romantic and practical girl from another I inscribed. Who knew we would be standing in her kitchen all these years later reading those words together. In the post-pandemic world, I’ve resolved to nurture relationships and focus on writing. As I head home, I know I’ve made a good start.

Lee Stevens is writing and reconnecting in Hendersonville, NC.

The socks were grey. They had been white, you could see that. Today I saw that they were sports socks, those tube things that are so hard to pull up over freshly showered feet, unless you use a bit of talc.

I’d seen these socks every weekday for I don’t know how long. A couple of months at least, maybe more, I don’t know. I wish I could tell you that I saw them get greyer and the soles get blacker. Can’t, though. I did see them, but only out of the corner of my eye. Just like I looked at the person in them. Until today.

Those once white socks, likely put on without the luxury of a shower let alone a sprinkling of talc, sticking out of a pile of blankets, were just part of the unlovely scenery on my commute to work each day. Litter, sleeping bags, McDonald’s cups, faces, hands – it was one rolling vista of none of my business.

Today the grey socks and the feet inside them were splayed wide as if the owner were sunbathing on a beach. Today people were standing around them. People like me. One of us was greedily telling anyone who slowed down long enough to look, that she was dead. I had never even wondered if there was a he or a she in those socks.

I looked at her home. Plastic bags, some bearing the names of long bankrupt supermarkets, were filled with her life and lined up against the wall. Her thermos flask was standing close by, a packet of cigarettes balanced on the top. No lighter. Her shoes were under her head.

Sirens – time to continue on to work. It really was none of my business. She’d be gone by the time I pass later this afternoon. She’d just be a story to tell by the weekend. Then I saw the Ikea catalogue tucked under her dead arm.

Helen Kreeger lives in Israel

But how will we be able to tell which generation to blame? That was my first thought when I saw that a group of demographers and social scientists was asking the Pew Research Center to stop promoting the use of generation labels (e.g.Silent Generation, baby boomers, Generation X, millennials, etc.).

It’s been all too easy to blame baby boomers for a whole host of societal ills, but if you stop to think about it, that means you’re blaming your 75 year-old brother along with a 63 year-old sister. You would expect twelve years age difference would have significant impact in their respective outlooks and behavior.

This name game supposedly started with the “Lost Generation” appellation in the late 19^th century. But then it mushroomed into the Greatest Generation, the Beat Generation, Boomers, Gen X, Gen Z, Snowflake Generation, etc. The labels seem like fun, but when journalists and marketing firms start making generalizations about your generation, the party the fun is not so much.

Demographers say the classifications are not real, and you would have to acknowledge that at this moment in time there is one hell of a lot of disparity in what baby boomers are thinking and how they are behaving. Just take the last election or the current political party divide as one example of how useless it is to try to categorize baby boomers.

Maybe one day we can drop all the labels and just try to get along.

Nah! It will never happen. Everyone from journalists to armchair philosophers thinks they have a God given right to pigeonhole one generation after another, so good luck with ending that practice. Guess it’s up to us as individuals to try and stop labeling each other and just try to listen to each other.

Nah! That’s not going to happen either. You can just continue on with your stereotypes, and I’ll go on with mine.

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

I woke up the other morning thinking, “I should get a job.” I used to like people. Maybe I could learn to like them again.

Yes! I could quit using cannabis, pass a drug test and get back in the workstream. I’ve read there’s a shortage of employees. Except I haven’t read anything about trying to lure back the 50 and 60-somethings they drove out in favor of snappy young talent. So, there’s that.

Oh, and then dealing with all those problematic young people. They are in charge now, and I liked it better the other way around.

I suppose I’d be the new troublemaker, asking for all sorts of special accommodations. You know I can’t sit in a regular chair for hours on end. And such ridiculous expectations. Forty hours a week, seriously? I could maybe squeeze in some Spider Solitaire, but when would I have time to swim, cook, walk, play golf, take naps, stretch or work on my art?

Clearly, a desk job is out of the question. Not good for my health.

Then I thought, I could be a budtender! I could get some training online and apply for a job at a dispensary. I imagined myself, silver hair flowing, adorned in turquoise jewelry, imparting sage cannabis wisdom.

Except being a budtender is a fancy name for working retail. Horrible hours and crummy pay. Sometimes they want you to work at night! What about dinner????? Not to mention whiny customers, and that’s kind of a deal-breaker for me. Any filters I may have had in the past are gone. It’s like retirement truth serum. Now I just say what I think, and I assure you, it won’t be good for sales.

The truth is, I love retirement. Time and freedom is a hard-earned gift, and I have no interest in going backward. My guess is the job idea is more about the ongoing isolation of COVID. Maybe a subconscious yearning for pre-pandemic life?

Except it will be post-pandemic life. Something new, different, maybe better in some ways. I mean, why not? An uncertain future, for sure, but with any luck we’ll still be here to explore it.

I’m ready.

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