What I Know About Being 60-Something

When I was younger, I thought age came in only two flavors—you were old or you were young. I preferred young. I dreaded being—old. But I’ve discovered some things I wish someone had told me when I was 40.

The sixties (not talking about the 1960s—the hippie, Beach Boy, maryjane toke years, ) talking about the years between 59 and 70. I haven’t experienced so much growth and change since I was a teenager.

These are the years where the decisions we made in our 40's reap consequences—for good or bad. When I was 40 I thought the consequences were immediate—divorce or stay together, your kids go to college or they don’t, you get to go to Europe (or Alaska or Hawaii) or you don’t. I didn’t realize that what you put into your mouth at 40 stays in your body like a simmering volcano, waiting to erupt when you reach 60. Ditto, the conversations you have with your husband, the disposable income you tuck away, the amount of exercising or couch potatoing you do.

The early 60's seems to be a gateway. People die of heart attacks, have strokes and cancer. They die on golf courses in greater numbers. I thought it was my imagination, or my unlucky choice of friends, but my doctor told me that if I live to 70 I’ll probably live to 90. Wow. Not sure I want to, but that’s another story.

Here’s what I know about being 60-something:

Sixty comes in like a lamb. You and your husband are those happy people in cruise line and Viagra commercials—smiling at the camera like you have a secret. Smiling with your own teeth and hair, wearing sexy shoes and real make-up. You think nothing of driving into “The City” to take in a show. Midnight and wine are your friends. So is your chin. In good lighting you could pass for 48. And you do.  

By 68 you start to see life as an assembly line. Some of your family and friends are dropping off. People who rode the conveyer belt on the last loop aren’t there anymore. You start to wonder if it’s your turn for the packing box.

You start making a mental “Bucket List” that includes unfinished novels, a collection of short stories from all the stories you’ve written. You start giving things away—advice, clothes, a little cash to your children (as long as they don’t call saying they’re in jail in Mexico.) You start reading about senior abuse. You make a medical end-of-life plan—just in case. You go elk hunting, walk part of the Pacific Crest Trail, learn to fish, learn to play the piano. You buy the luxury car you always wanted because it may be your last.

You notice that the clothes and shoes you’re drawn to in stores aren’t that comfortable. You make some unwise fashion decisions and reality starts to dawn. You find an excellent assisted living facility for your mother. You go through her closets and you keep a few pieces of her clothing that you always liked—and you hang them in your own closet. You wear the muumuu a week later. It becomes a staple.

Your brain starts to get really smart. You’re a whiz at Sudoku and Scrabble. You hang onto candidates' policies and can’t understand why everyone doesn’t vote. You see both sides of the issues—either that or you become radically one-sided. You read prostate statistics. Take an over-55 driving course—and ace it. You record TV shows because you don’t need 90% of the stuff they sell in commercials. The most important phone calls start with, “Hello . . .Grandma?”            

  

Listening to your friends complain about their mates gives you a headache. So do a lot of things that you decide to cut out of your life. Church becomes personal, the journey more spiritual, people more lovable. You share meals at restaurants and over-tip out of guilt. You post photos of your grand-kids on the refrigerator and Skype them on Sunday afternoons, and spend long weekends at soccer games and gymnastic try-outs. You play with the grand-kids because their parents are too busy working—and too serious about life. You eat ice cream sundaes. You play.

You make plans for the next ten years but you live every day in the moment. 

What’s With All The Dog-Crazy?

I had an epiphany yesterday while driving to town. (Writers do their best thinking on road trips.) It started out with me already worrying about the ranch dogs at the place where we plan to park our travel trailer for two weeks while we explore the Central Coast.

Don’t hate me! But I find dogs to be rather a nuisance. Akkk! I can hear it now. In a country where an estimated 17-62% of people sleep with their dogs, I realize I am so politically incorrect. Most people would consider it a character flaw—a lack of sensitivity, coldness of heart, mean spiritedness and maybe a dark side that can be detected by four-footed little critters. I see myself in the politician who picks up a poopy little baby at his political rally and gives it a smooch for the cameras. Then hands it back to the mother before he breaks into hives.

I pet dogs with reluctance. For several seconds I’m considering the downside of extending my hand, which scientifically speaking is magnified a hecka-lotta times by the cones in a dog’s eyes. It sees this immense catcher’s mitt swooping down, blocking out the sunlight and invading its personal space. And what does it do? Wags its tail and begs for more. I find this insane.

My husband is a big yellow flower in the garden of dogdom. There is no dog too big, too growly or too stinky. He beckons and soon the dog is standing in front of us, panting and drooling, and I’m looking for froth, like with Old Yeller. Meanwhile my mouth is dry. My hands are trembling, I’m getting hot and my skin is producing fear scent. Still, I pet most dogs. And as soon as I can, I retract my hand and mentally count my fingers. Meanwhile my husband is burrowed in the dog’s fur and the two of them are romping around like new best friends while I look for someplace to wash my hands. Then there’s the matter of picking up the excrement when we walk our own dogs in town. Yuck. Can I say that again? Yuck.   

Here’s the scoop (metaphorically speaking.) There’s a reason why dogs and me are a bit standoffish. I come from a long line of Norwegian women who didn’t let dogs in their tidy little houses—although to be fair, the great-greats in Norway kept goats under the house in the winter. These women prided themselves on their homes. Immaculate, germ-free homes. A huge, muddy dog on a Norwegian sofa? Think again.

Growing up, we had scruffy sheepherding dogs that stayed with the herd (and tended to kill any strange dog that entered the pasture.) Not exactly Lassie. And my cousins kept ranch dogs that were great guard dogs. I have the scars to prove it.

Full Disclosure, our Labs have the run of ten acres. They roll in strange stuff, swim in murky water and stink an hour after their baths. They fill anal glands with regularity and they don’t sleep in the house. They guard the chickens like their own, bark at the UPS man for treats and seem to be having a wonderful life in spite of having to sleep on their own beds.     

Back to my epiphany. God and dog have the same three letters. I get that for many, rescuing dogs is an act of pure love—like feeding the poor, tending the sick or clothing the naked. Rescuing dogs is a Corporal Act of Mercy. For many, dogs are the path to spiritual enlightenment. For others, snakes, hamsters and little white rats.  

I like the concept.  I just don’t want to do it. I’ll feed the poor, diaper the poopy, anything. Does that make me crazy? Not to my friends who are cat crazy. They get my dog thing, completely.  

Good Friends, Good Food, Good Grief, Let’s Eat.

Ever have a blast-from-the-past, let-the-good-times-roll, crazy fun good time? 

Just waved some friends off after they spent several days visiting us from California’s Central Coast; amazing storytellers who grew up on the same street as my husband and who knew the old crowd. I suspected something great was in store the moment Cindy began pulling frozen Cattaneo Brothers sausages out of her tote and started with a great story about the local legends. And the stories never stopped.

It was an intense, creative, problematic, story-telling, throwback Thursday sort of week that left us giggling like seventh graders at a slumber party. I sat and listened as the three of them (Classes of 65, 66, 69) reminisced about hamburger hangouts, cherry Pepsi’s, days at the beach—and jet skiing at the lake, the Sunset Drive-in, late night escapes in borrowed cars, stolen kisses and the cops on the beat. Growing up in San Luis Obispo in the 50s and 60s sounded like a hoot. Names from the past peppered with stories about defending the huge letter “M” that marked the territory of Mission High School from the “SL” that marked the territory of San Luis High. High school rivalries, beauty queens and Vietnam casualties remembered with love and respect.

So many stories, so many great times. I watched the years roll off and laughter soften the wrinkles. Let the good times roll. We toured the Redwoods and the Oregon Coast, Crater Lake and Lake of the Woods while stories flowed. We target shot, shopped, sipped phosphates at the old soda fountain, toured antique stores and explored Southern Oregon while stories of another time and place kept inserting themselves into the here-and-now. I learned a lot listening to three people share their deep roots in one town. Good for the soul, those memories.

So now they’re gone and it’s back to the business of living. But the energy of their visit remains like the fading scent of a favorite cologne. I learned a lot about being a welcome visitor from watching these two. That’s how a visit should be—each party thinking they got the better of the arrangement.

Adios for now, Tom and Cindy. Don’t be strangers. We’ll keep the light on.

Got the Hanging Out, Old Man Blues

I’m retired. It should be easy to spend an afternoon in the hammock. To lie beneath the sky on a spring day and watch the cumulus clouds float by, to watch the breeze push the fluffy cloud bridge into a puffy old man with a sunshine wink. But I think I’ve forgotten how to do this. I remember from days past a childhood when the hot hours of the day were spent beneath the elm trees, just being alive. One day I found a patch of shamrocks in the lawn, huge shamrocks with four-leaf-clover leaves and I plucked one and pressed it in the old dictionary that had been my grandfather’s at the turn of the century.

It’s still there. I saw it the last time I rummaged through the old trunk. But where did the girl disappear to, the girl who noticed all those sweet clovers just under her nose? Is it a coincidence that I’ve never found another four-leaf clover in all the passing years? Maybe. But I never looked.

So now I’m the puffy old lady in the clouds. My granddaughters think I’m wise beyond words. I guess to them, I am, but inside I feel like I’m waiting for something to happen. And all that waiting makes me nervous so I stay busy.

On my list for today: Write the next big American novel, cure the lawn of whatever ails it, give a talk to my marketing group, go to the gym, post two letters, clean a closet, bake a pie, participate in a conference call for an organization I lead. Oh, and in the middle of it all, sit at the computer and write a blog.

Creating Balance seems to be the national pastime. Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but something is seriously out of whack. I sign up for more than I want or need in my life. Make promises to myself, my family, my God, my community that start smarting before the ink is dry on the contract (metaphorically speaking.) Hard to admit, but I’m that smarty pants kind of person who thinks she can do it all. I like the sound of my own voice.  

Spring is shortly here and quickly gone while housework is forever. Add to that the constant pressure of clubs, social media and the smart phone. I don’t mean to be cranky, but none of them are a fair trade for the old man in the sky. So that's it. It's midnight--officially a new day. Time to apply the lessons that I learned today. It was a good one, this day. But tomorrow... 

  

No matter what, tomorrow I’m hanging out in the hammock.  

Sharing the Deep Roots of Belonging to a Place

I recently read a man's journey of coming home that stirred a need to share my own story. This is a reprint of the article published in the Grants Pass Courier on Sunday, March 22,2015.

I grew up in similar circumstances in Thousand Oaks, California, then a small community where my family farmed for five generations. My family lived on a rural road, on land my great great-grandfather Borchard divided among his eight children. The elementary school I attended was filled with first and second cousins. My roots were deep; I was twelve years old before I ever entered a room where everyone there didn’t know and love me. I came to see death as an occasion for grand family reunions.  My world included a half-dozen Catholic funerals by the time I was ten; elegant events for ancient, regal German great aunts and uncles, great-grandmothers.

In 1959, Los Angeles exploded into our farming community. We moved to a tiny town, Shandon, east of Paso Robles, California, where my father established a sheep farm. Shandon was a closed community that required my six brothers and sisters and me to find a way to fit in. We were the odd, sheep-raising Catholic family in a Protestant community of cattlemen and pioneer families with their own deep roots. Everything in me wanted to shout, “I have deep roots, too!” But I said nothing.

The first week in my new school the class took a field trip. Afterwards we were required to write an article for the Paso Robles Press about the field trip. The teacher read the top articles and after three tie votes, someone shifted their vote from the popular boy’s to mine. When I saw my byline printed in the newspaper, I knew I had found a way to survive my loneliness. I would be a writer.

In later years I wrote a memoir of my family roots; Branches on the Conejo: Leaving the Soil after Five Generations.  I later wrote another memoir about the small steps of a woman’s journey: Ordinary Aphrodite. As a writer I learned to see the world with eyes wide open. My husband and I traveled the West and I wrote short stories and essays for print magazines.  

In 2012, we saw a house and ten acres in rural Grants Pass that we loved, but I wanted to meet the neighbors before we made a decision. Jack and Ruth are lovely people, he in his eighties. It turns out that he and I attended the same college, Cal Poly. But more surprisingly, his family was a pioneer family from Shandon. He asked if I had ever heard of Truesdale Road. I told him that my family had lived next to Truesdale Road. His grandfather was the Truesdale, he said. His family is buried in the Shandon Cemetery. I took that as a sign and we bought the property. 

When I am downtown I’ll hear it repeated five, six times a day, the boast that someone is a lifetime Grants Pass resident. I understand the pride, the sense of place that this feeling expresses. In many ways I envy them. But I also understand that everyone has deep roots somewhere. I honor mine by writing our history for other newcomers to discover

What I have learned is that there are two kinds of joy. There is the joy that comes from having deep roots; a family in one place for five generations, but there is another kind of joy in leaving the roots behind. I am an Oregonian now, one of the working people with a smile for others and appreciation for the basic joys in life. I see bent-over, work worn men on the streets of Grants Pass and they remind me of my father, who passed, like some of his hard-working neighbors, of a heart attack when he was fifty-nine.

Life is good in the woods. I live among the treetops now, seeing life in a new and fuller way. Still, I’m so grateful for the people who have tended the deep roots of my new home, Grants Pass. Thank you to everyone who shares their history with  others.  

   

California Redwoods, ALS and the Elephant in the Room

I’ve reached an age in life where writers I knew “way back when” are achieving significant success. I count film makers, top-selling authors and trend setters among my long-time friends. These are content producers who have gotten lucky after making their way into their writing room for  the 6,500^th time.  

For writers, professional jealousy can be the five-ton elephant in the room that seems to be devouring our share of the canapés tray. If our friends get to the tray first, then logic tells us there won’t be anything left by the time we get there.

But I just had a lesson taught to me by Anita, a lovely woman visiting me from Seattle for a trip to the California Redwoods.  She’s a much better writer than I am. She’s spent her career in the Foreign Service, living in Europe, South America and points between. She writes masterfully, but for whatever reason has been unsuccessful in finding an agent and subsequent publication. And here she is, thumbing through Cholama Moon, my new novel release, genuinely thrilled for me. “I am proud of you,” she says. “You are so successful in your field.” Successful? She’s traveled the world alone. She’s written a memoir that should be a chart topper, and she’s happy for me?

I heard the words and it struck me that she has all the reasons in the world to think that life is unfair. Because of course it is. But she understands that my strengths do not have the power to cast shade on hers. In fact, we benefit from association with each other. Having friends is called “networking.” It’s what we spend hours doing on social media. Having successful people on speed dial is a good thing—right?

Anita's RHODIES IN THE REDWOODS

We’ve all experienced the downside, friends who disappear at the first sign of our success, who fail to buy our books and who remain strangely silent in the din of applause that follows our publication. We are hurt by the betrayal of friends we have supported, who fail to support us when our time comes around. But I suspect that we forgive ourselves when we do the same thing to them.

One of my biggest boosters is a woman who has suffered from ALS for the past decade. She’s confined to a wheelchair now, but she encourages me with every breath. She’s taught me to let the small stuff go and concentrate on the journey ahead. Her message is: Be gracious, buy books and write reviews, don’t worry, be happy.

Share the canapés. There’s enough to go around. What fun would the party be if we were the only ones there?    

How about you. Any five-ton elephants in your writing closet?

Blogging CHOLAMA MOON Like There's No Tomorrow.

Here’s what I’ve been doing lately, since I obviously haven't been writing for my own site. I invite you to take a blog tour to see why, how and what I write.  There will be more. 

I guest blog about finding my writing authenticity on Andrea Downing’s Blog, My Word, My World, My Work  http://andreadowning.com/ or (as time goes by)

http://andreadowning.com/2014/05/01/romancing-the-vaquero/#comments

I blog about “Historical or Romance” on MK McClintock’s blog http://www.booksandbenches.com/2014/04/western-historical-or-romance-cholama.html?spref=fb

I blog about the grit and determination of our pioneer ancestors “No Sunbonnet Sue” on Jean Henry Mead’s blog Writer’s of the West http://writersofthewest.blogspot.com/2014/01/no-bluebonnet-sue.html

I include an excerpt from CHOLAMA MOON on Shanna Hatfield “Hopeless Romantic Blog” http://shannahatfield.com/2014/04/01/anne-schroeder-and-cholama-moon/

Chapter one of CHOLAMA MOON is on Heidi Thomas’s blog http://heidiwriter.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/cholama-moon-book-giveaway/

A Pioneer Woman's Femnist Rant? 

http://www.jamesrcallan.com/blog/2014/05/23/bring-on-the-women/#comment-3917

A bit about researching Historical Westerns
www.MaryTrimbleBooks.com/marys-blog

Romancing the Historical Western