Sandwich Generation

Many years ago, I was part of what is called a “sandwich generation,” an expression generally used to describe people who are in middle age and have responsibility for the care of their children and their older parents. When I was in my 30s and 40s, I had two young children and an elderly mother (she was 77 when my youngest child was born). My mother was a widow, and had dementia beginning in her mid-70s. I worked full-time, and needed to arrange childcare and manage my household, at the same time that I hired home health care aides for my mother and managed her home care. We lived in different boroughs of NYC (she in Brooklyn and I in Manhattan) and my weekly visits were often a time and emotional drain.

My two older siblings had moved to Florida, so the primary responsibility for my mother’s care-giving and management was mine. I never resented this, it just seemed the way things needed to be.

My mother spent the last two years of her life in a coma in a nursing home, not requiring much care from me, although weekly visits were sometimes challenging, given the ongoing responsibilities I had for my own children. She died at 84. My children were still quite young then, and barely remember her.

I thought my sandwich days were over, and for many years they were. But now things have changed and I seem to be in a different type of sandwich.

My sister is older than me and has had dementia for about eight years. She lives in Florida and has been in “memory care” for two years. Her care is managed by her four children, all of whom live near her in Florida. I visit two-three times each year, and stay in contact with her children to learn about her health status. I hope this contact also helps support them in their loving care for my sister. It’s difficult for them, and me, to see her as she is now.

My husband has several health conditions, including pulmonary fibrosis, requiring constant supplemental oxygen, and a heart condition that puts severe limits on his energy and activities. I manage all his care and household needs, and he has an aide who comes to our home for several days per week, giving me time to see friends, shop, and do some of the cultural and other social things I had looked forward to in my retirement.

Our children are now happily married; they have their own children, good careers, and supportive spouses. At some point I may need their assistance with caring for my husband, but not yet.

I am fortunate to be relatively healthy. I go to the gym regularly, and my engagement in several hobbies and other activities helps me to maintain good cognitive functioning. But that is no longer true of some friends I have known for years. As I have gotten older, so did they.

One had a knee replacement and expects to have the other knee replaced soon. Another is staving off knee replacements by periodic injections. Both of them experience pain often, and have limited mobility. A friend who I made late in life was well when she had to start taking care of her husband with dementia.  When he entered a care facility she anticipated being free to do things without being the primary caretaker. He lived in the facility for about a year, and she was diagnosed with cancer within a few months of his death. She died about a year later. I still miss her.

I have two friends from college who were my roommates after we graduated, and we had wonderful, sometimes a little wild, times as single women in Manhattan in the late1960s and early 1970s. We often laughed about being able to blackmail each other! They both stayed in New York, and I have been in contact with them for over 60 years, even after we married and had children. Both became widows in the past few years, and now one has kidney and multiple organ failures and is on dialysis three times weekly. The other has disc and joint degeneration, must use a walker for mobility, and has too much walking fatigue to engage in activities outside of her home. 

So what kind of sandwich am I in now? Maybe it’s an open-faced sandwich, with just one piece of bread on the bottom, me, and with the food piled on top and around the sides. I am no longer in the middle of the sandwich, as I no longer have pressures or responsibilities for generations older and younger than me. I just have concerns about family and friends who are my age peers and have started to have health challenges.

I am trying to figure out what is happening!  Thankfully, some of my friends are well and I enjoy being with them and doing things together. But I can’t help wondering how long that will last. Are the serious declines of aging coming for all of them? For me? When will that be?

I feel growing concerns, and losses, from those I have known for many years, who are my age and have always surrounded me. And it’s not just their declines that sadden me. I fear losing the support they always gave me. As I experience my own changes, I sense that I will need them more than ever.

Shopping Bag Fashion

I never considered myself to be a fashionista, that is, someone who is a follower of fashion. When I worked as a research scientist, I wore practical off-the-rack suits from department stores, and I liked comfortable clothes on weekends. During Hurricane Sandy, when I had to relocate for a few days and stay with family and friends, I bought my first hoodies in local stores, and loved their comfort and softness. These became favorites of mine and I often wear hoodies with sweatpants when I am relaxing around the house.  I suppose these even come in a “high end” variety, but those are not the ones I wear.

So fashion was never something I paid attention to, and since I retired, I am even less interested in following current styles. When I see handbags advertised for over $1,000, I think of what could be done with some of that money—for myself, or as a donation to people in need—while still leaving enough for a nice handbag. I know there are women who change handbags to match their outfits, but I generally buy bags in neutral black or brown colors, and use the same handbag over time, regardless of what I am wearing. This saves me time in having to transfer things between bags, and since I already figured out which compartments to keep and find my necessities—like keys, a Metrocard and iPhone—it just makes life easier.

Why was I so disinterested in fashion? Probably a combination of factors: my parents, who left eastern Europe in the 1920s with no money and worked hard to build a retail clothing business in Brooklyn, taught me not to be wasteful with money. Also, as a self-conscious, self-critical adolescent, I usually didn’t like how I looked when buying new clothes, so I never enjoyed shopping.  When I got older my anti-fashion views were confirmed: after giving birth to two children; I found that in some of the “stylish” stores, 10 was the largest size they carried, and that was no longer for me. And on some rare occasions when I found shops with clothes that I liked in my size, they soon went out of business. So my tendency to not care about fashion continued.

However, there is one item that is often part of my outfit that I am now concerned about, and I think this has something to do with what is known as “social signaling.” This refers to the message that I may be sending about myself by what I wear. I am talking about my choice of shopping bags.

Since the ban on providing plastic bags in supermarkets went into effect in NYC in 2020, I find that I have a large collection of shopping bags, mostly cloth ones. Some were purchased when doing supermarket or other store shopping, others came as “rewards” for subscribing to a periodical or making a contribution to a charity.

Given my desire to reduce waste in the environment, whenever I leave my house I try to remember to take a shopping bag with me, since I often do some household shopping on the way home. In addition, if I have a long ride to where I am going, or anticipate spending time in a waiting room, I use a bag to carry along a magazine or newspaper to read (yes, I still read these items in hard copy).

I find it amusing to decide what shopping bag to take with me when I leave my home.  I have a decision to make. Taking a black cloth “Thank You” bag, with messages of “Have a Nice Day” and a request to “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is very practical, and works if I am going directly to and from a supermarket. But it doesn’t seem appropriate if I am going to a museum or meeting a friend at an elegant restaurant. It seems a bit shabby, almost disrespectful. So I search for a bag that would be more appropriate, like my “The New Yorker” bag or “Central Park Conservancy Member” bag. They seem to send a message, respectively, that I read good literature and contribute to commendable causes.

I have a wide variety of bags with signs or logos from the stores where I have shopped. They can announce to the public that I shop at Macy’s or that I like Jewish delis (a “Sarge’s” bag, that lists some of its menu items, like pastrami and blintzes, right on the bag). I have shopping bags that show that I use my local supermarket, the “Morton Williams” bag, that advertises itself as a “Reusable Bag – Reuse up to 125 times.” I often find that the seam of this bag is torn by the second use, and it has to be discarded. I suppose that’s why it says “up to.” These commercial retail bags do not seem appropriate for visits to cultural or elegant locales.

And if I just need a bag to carry something I am reading, like a newspaper that I anticipate finishing before I get home, I often take it in a plain paper shopping bag, so that I can throw everything out once I am done reading. This is satisfying both for having finished reading the paper, as well as being able to toss the paper bag, of which I have more than I will ever need.  

I conclude that total disinterest in fashion is almost impossible. And although I do not ever expect to be known as a bag lady, it is likely I will continue to pay attention to this aspect of the outfits that I wear.

The Little Girl and the Beggar

In early January, with all the Christmas lights and decorations adorning the stores, I visited the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. After leaving the museum, I walked to 5th Avenue and then headed south, to get a bus to go home. It was a sunny, clear day, temperate weather for that time of year. The street was filled with lots of well-dressed people, many seemed like tourists enjoying the holiday spirit and surrounded by holiday-dressed expensive stores. Now that I am retired, I have more time to explore the city and not have to rush to a next appointment. This also gives me time to observe what is happening around me. I was thinking about the Picasso exhibit I had seen, and that experience, added to the holiday decorations and bustle of people on the street, reminded me of my love for New York City and the diversity of pleasures it offered.

It was good to feel this, as I had been concerned about recent news reports on what was happening in the city. The influx of migrants and the city’s need to cut the budget of important social services to help provide support for them had saddened me. The photos of young migrants, some with children, many of whom had no permanent homes and were likely carrying everything they owned in the world, was upsetting and seemed especially cruel at this time of year.   

 I noticed a man begging on the street. He was African American, wearing a threadbare dirty gray jacket and was leaning against the side of a building. He held out a dented metal cup for donations. A little Hispanic girl, about 7 or 8 years old, with long black shiny hair and a light-colored winter coat that reached just below her knees, put what appeared to be a quarter into his cup. He thanked her, she smiled back, and then skipped happily to return to what appeared to be her family- a mother, father, and a younger brother, all of whom were pushing two supermarket carts filled with large plastic bags containing empty glass bottles and soda cans. I assumed they were planning to bring them to where they could collect the bottle deposit money.  The father reached out his hand, patted the little girl as she came close to him, and a smile filled with pride shone on his face. I felt a spiritual reverence and pleasure for what I had seen. In the midst of the opulence and holiday atmosphere of 5th Avenue, I had just witnessed the spirit of the holiday happening among those most in need.

I don’t know if the little girl knew of her likely poverty, but it was clear that she felt joy from putting the coin in the beggar’s cup, and from her father’s look of approval and pride when she returned to his side. While it appeared that the girl’s family was financially impoverished, there was a love and spirit of giving that gave them riches.

After getting home, I told some friends about the art exhibit I had seen. I didn’t mention the experience I had watching the little girl and the beggar, it seemed incidental to the day. Days later when I realized that while the images from the museum and the holiday decorations were all still with me, it was the image of the little girl on the street that would stay with me longer than anything else I had seen, and affected me more profoundly.

It’s About Time

Welcome to the beginning of my new Blog page “Reflections on Aging”. I decided that “It’s About Time” was a good title for the introduction to this new page, as it conveys two meanings, both of which have become important to me, with a growing sense of urgency.

When spoken, “it’s about time” refers to something that should have happened already, and is sometimes said in a voice indicating impatience. When I say this to myself, I use it as a reminder to undertake concrete tasks I am not eager to do and have delayed, like going through a pile of long-neglected papers. I also use it to try and let go of things that have troubled me, like grievances about perceived past hurts, or self-critical views about my own capabilities. 

And the phrase “it’s about time” has another meaning, that underlies many of my essays. It refers to my growing awareness of the shortening of my time horizon, and the emphasis is on the word “time.”

When I was younger, even in my 40s and 50s, the time ahead seemed limitless. I wanted to write personal essays, spend more time with friends, visit new places, and do volunteer work to help those in need. It seemed I would have plenty of time to do all that especially after my children were grown and I retired from full-time work. Well, I have come to that point in my life where those milestones have been reached, and although I have been doing some of the things I had looked forward to, most of my days quickly fill up with errands and activities that aren’t very meaningful to me. And I find that much of what I think about and write about is about my aging, the passage of time, and my shrinking time horizon. To paraphrase James Carville’s expression about the economy during Bill Clinton’s campaign, I often tell myself “It’s about time, Sherry” – to remind myself to focus on those things I would like to do.

I will use this “Reflections on Aging” page to write about both meanings. I know it’s about time that I organized my papers, and that I face some of the worries and concerns that have been part of my life and try to come to peace with them. And as for the other meaning, I intend to utilize the time that I have, as much as I can, to do what is most meaningful to me.

Multitasking

The definition of multitasking is doing two or more things simultaneously. Some research indicates that multitasking reduces productivity; when attention is split between two or more tasks, quality may decline and there may be more errors. But I have found that there are some types of multitasking that can enhance pleasures and improve productivity.

I often enjoy engaging in serial multitasking, which is rapid shifting between tasks. I do this when I watch a Mets game on TV at the same time I am doing the NYTimes crossword puzzle. I can go back and forth between these two activities. I concentrate on the puzzle during commercial breaks, and I focus on the game when one of my favorite hitters is at bat. And even if I should happen to miss the moment of a great hit, these events are on instant replay, so I don’t miss anything. Since I enjoy both activities, doing them together increases my enjoyment of them both.

Making dinner often involves serial multitasking, to ensure that all the components of the meal are ready at the same time. This requires some pre-planning about the timing of each item, but once all the dishes are ready to be served, I have a feeling of satisfaction. I am especially pleased when the tastes of the various dishes enhance each other. Given that making several dishes increases the time needed for clean-up efforts, I am also pleased when someone offers to multitask those efforts with me.

But the most frequent type of multitasking I engage in is when I add a task to do on the way to doing something else. These tasks are often unrelated, but combining them can be productive and increase efficiency.

For example, when I have a garbage bag to throw out, I leave it on a table by my door. As I leave my apartment for any reason, e.g., to meet a friend or go shopping, I pick up the bag on the way out, and bring it to the garbage room on my floor to throw down the chute. This saves an additional walk to the garbage room, as going to the elevator is in the same direction. And when I leave my home, in addition to picking up the garbage, I have a section of the table where I put any letters or bills that must be mailed, so I take them too.

Sometimes I have to be very deliberate in thinking about what I have in my hands when I leave the house with multiple tasks in mind. I realized this when I found myself outside of my apartment building with a garbage bag, having forgotten to toss it down the chute when I left my apartment. I also need to make sure to carry the garbage bag and an outgoing letter in different hands- I don’t want to make a mistake in where I deposit each of them!

More recently, I have found other ways to “bundle” certain activities, accomplishing some errands on the way to doing others. For example, when I need to go to the supermarket, I often stop at the drug store and the bank, since I must pass these on the way to the market. Before leaving, I review what I need from these places, as well as other errands I need to do, so I can accomplish multiple tasks on the same trip. When I return home, I feel a sense of satisfaction, that I have been productive and made good use of my time. This can create more available time for doing other things, although when I put too many tasks together, I may need a nap once I get back home. I’m OK with monotasking for that.

Resolutions for Life

There are several milestone points for me throughout the year, when I feel a need to reflect on the recent past and make resolutions for the future. These come up during specific months of the year: in December, as I contemplate the beginning of a new year; in July, around my birthday, and in September, at the beginning of the Jewish New Year.

Since I retired, I have been successful with some of my general resolutions, like taking more time to write, visiting cultural sites in NYC, and going to the gym more frequently.  But some of my specific plans are sometimes hard to keep. For example, as the end of the current year approached, starting in early December, I made resolutions for things to accomplish before the year ended. These included losing ten pounds, cleaning up the papers on my desk, and organizing my financial records. To help lose weight and become a svelter, healthier me for the new year, I planned to go to the gym three times each week, and take long walks on all other days. But once I passed the middle of December, and realized that I wasn’t meeting these goals, they became resolutions for the new year. I felt somewhat relieved, because I now had a whole new year in which to do them!

I have enjoyed my reflections at these milestone points. In looking back, they help me identify things I accomplished, and I can see the growth and maturation of my family members. In making plans for the future, they always bring optimisim for the coming year. When I was working and raising children, making specific plans was necessary to ensure that all my responsibilities and needs were met.  But I have concluded that at this time in my life, making specific resolutions serves little purpose. Many may never be completely fulfilled, and others have their own sine wave trajectories, going up and down throughout the years.

So what shall I do in the future at these milestone points? They seem to provide good opportunities for reflection. Rather than using them to make specific goals, or to modify behaviors that seem resistant, I now want to use them to plan new activities, experiences I have never had before. The time-worn resolutions I have made in the past few years can still be there in the background, and it is likely that headway can be made throughout the year. But rather than yet again try to better control things that have eluded me for so many years, I won’t make specific plans about these any longer. And I think that focusing on unfamiliar, novel experiences may even be good for my health.

The term neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s capacity to form new connections. It has been shown that changes in the brain can happen throughout life, with new experiences and new learning contributing to increased neuroplasticity, slowing mental decline. So that’s it for me- seeking out and visiting new places, meeting new people and having new experiences, those will be my focus for plans made during my reflective milestone times.  

At the end of the current year some things happened that were new experiences for me. I was in a labor room and witnessed the birth of my newest grandchild, what an extraordinary experience to see her emerge into the world. It filled me with awe and pleasure. And after maintaining a blog with essays focused on humor and aging for four years, an anthology of selected essays was published – Not Done Yet: The Humor of Aging.  While I have authored many journal research articles throughout my professional career, this was the first publication of personal essays, and it gave me a sense of completion and fulfillment that was new to me. Both these experiences were unique and life-affirming. Perhaps neither will happen again, but there are other new experiences that I can create. On Christmas Day I decided I wanted to see some of the NYC holiday decorations. In prior years I had done so, but mainly as I passed by them on the way to some other activity. So I went to see the holiday windows at Macy’s and Saks, and walked around Rockefeller Center, looking at the tree, the skaters, and the golden Prometheus statue. I was alone, but not lonely, almost merging with the crowds enjoying the hopes and pleasure that these scenes evoked.  I believe that all these experiences likely increased my brain neuroplasticity.

It seems that I have made a resolution after all, to seek the new, the unfamiliar. But with endless possibilities and boundaries, I think this is a resolution for living that I can readily follow now, and one that will bring satisfaction and health benefits.

E-ZPass

You have probably heard about E-ZPass, an electronic toll collection system that allows you to prepay tolls so you don’t have to stop at toll plazas. It is in place in much of the US. But this essay is not about a toll-paying system. It’s about something I have thought more about as I age, making arrangements for what’s to be done at my death.

If this topic is uncomfortable for you, please do not read further. Although it was uncomfortable for me initially, I believe that making these arrangements is a gift for my children, as all the decisions will have been made and paid for.  When the time comes, they will have much to deal with and will be glad to know they are following my wishes and don’t have the burden of making these decisions. When we asked them some years back if they wanted to talk about it, and what their preferences might be, they seemed uncomfortable with the discussion and said that whatever we wanted would be fine with them.

My husband and I discussed the topic over several months and recently made all the plans, for the funeral and what is known as the “final resting place.” We have begun paying for the costs over time, and I expect all will be paid for by the time they are needed. I think about this effort as providing for an E-ZPass.

My husband and I expect to live many more years. We love spending time with our family and friends, and have many activities that we enjoy. Several years ago we took care of the items associated with dying that require legal assistance, including making a will, setting up trusts, preparing a living will, and designating a power of attorney and health care proxy.  But we were not yet ready for the items related to arrangements regarding our actual deaths.

About a year ago I started thinking about it. My husband had some health issues, and thankfully is now relatively stable. Some people we knew became ill, and some died, making us more conscious of our own eventual deaths. Also, a friend of mine who died this past year, and was a writer too, wrote an essay about making her final arrangements. She titled it “Good to Go,” and while she and I laughed at this title, her death was another reminder of the inevitable.  

I contacted a funeral parlor and arranged for the funeral and service. My husband and I are Jewish, and there is a funeral parlor in NYC where we attended services for some Jewish friends, so it was easy to know who to contact. Although I generally do comparison shopping for costly items, it didn’t appeal to me in this matter. In addition, since we both had chosen to be cremated—despite my husband’s periodic request to be bronzed— we needed to decide what would be done with the ashes. At first I thought they could just be placed in the East River as we live by the river; I often walk alongside it, and we love looking at it out our window. But I decided against that: I had heard it was illegal, and I felt I wanted a place that had my name on it. This feeling was strengthened in a discussion with my daughter, who expressed the desire to have a place to take her children when they were older, after I was gone, where they could see my name.

As a lover of New York City and all it offers, I didn’t want to be far from Manhattan, so I looked on line and found a mausoleum in Westchester; not surprisingly, it was hard to find a “vacancy” in an available suitable cemetery in Manhattan, and I didn’t want to be in the outer boroughs. I asked my son to go with me to visit the Westchester cemetery. As we drove there I asked him how he felt and he expressed some discomfort in going with me on this unusual errand. But he indicated that he appreciated what I was doing and knew that it would make things easier for him.  

The mausoleum was an attractive newly-built stone structure, located on beautiful grounds. I selected niches in the columbarium for my husband and myself.  Although they had larger niches that could accommodate two urns, given that throughout our 45+ year marriage we always had some independence in our lives, I decided on separate but adjacent niches. We also enjoy the wonderful view from our apartment window, so I selected niches with seating areas that would provide any visitor with a lovely view.  I felt that the view from the niche itself would not be as important. When I asked my son if he had any opinions about this, he didn’t. I think he was just glad that it would be settled.  I left a deposit for payment, and it was all done.

I learned several things in this process:

1. New vocabulary words –  mausoleum, columbarium and niche. I smiled when talking about it, as I think I always wanted to find my niche in life, and was glad that the final one would be in a lovely area.

2. The phrase “location, location, location” is usually used when talking about real estate, with higher expenses associated with better locations for a residence. I learned that there are cost implications for one’s location even after death. Niches at eye level were the most costly; those higher or lower were a little cheaper. And as in life, the view from one’s location makes a difference in cost. This surprised me as in buying this real estate, I had no concern about building equity nor changing property values; it didn’t seem that moving would ever be an option.

I was relieved it was done. When I told my husband about the arrangements, he seemed indifferent; I think he hasn’t yet accepted that he will ever need this.  But I can now stop thinking about it, knowing that it will not be a burden to those I love. I have created my own E-ZPass; a gift for my children and myself.  And I am back to engaging in life!

Birthing for Seniors?

 My daughter is pregnant and will soon give birth to her second child. She is healthy, all seems to be going well in the pregnancy, and hopefully a normal healthy baby girl will soon join our family.

I gave birth to two children many years ago. The pregnancies were normal, the children were healthy, and they have grown to be happy, successful adults. And other birthing events occurred in my professional career. As a research scientist I “birthed” many projects and research papers. Gestation for delivering the findings often took several years, and had several steps: develop the idea for a project, write the proposal, get funded (return to step one if not successful), implement the project, collect and analyze the data, and publish papers on the research results. As I think is true of many birthing experiences, the process was sometimes frustrating—like when data collection proved difficult, sometimes satisfying— when the findings were important, and sometimes even joyous— when writing came easily and I was “in the zone.”

Now in my 70s, I have been writing personal essays for several years, and am in the process of putting together an anthology of some of them. I think about this as part of a senior birthing process—different, yet a continuation— of birthing throughout my life stages.

For me, senior birthing has been mainly through developing new projects. After writing many essays, they seemed ready for an anthology “Not Done Yet: The Humor of Aging.” This has involved several steps in gestation: writing the essays over several years, selecting and editing those that I wanted to include, finding a publisher and appropriate artwork, and determining methods of distribution. This process has helped me see that various types of creation and production, whether of a child, a research paper, or a book, can be a fulfilling process of birthing. And there are many similarities across these creations- they require substantial time, and involve frustrations, pleasures, and learning opportunities.  Often, birthing and delivery are part of a longer process, like raising a child, or building a line of research.

I started thinking about what other kinds of birthing seniors can do.  Using the meaning of birthing as creating or producing something that was not there before, there are many ways to do this. Some are quite tangible and contained – like writing a poem, or knitting a sweater. Others can be tangible but may require longer time commitments, like writing a novel or building a bookcase. And there are many that are not tangible, but also create things that can bring satisfaction and are long-lasting, like reaching out to a friend or relative to deepen a relationship, or initiating a new relationship. I find that since retirement I have more time, and choices, for generating ideas about what I would like to do, the first step in my birthing process. And the sources of ideas for what I want to write about, or what new activity I want to do, can come from many places – just being active in the world, even taking a walk in a new neighborhood, and interacting with others, can lead to new ideas.

Certainly there are lots of things to do in retirement, including efforts to stay healthy and to manage some of the concerns that aging brings, like exercising and visiting more doctors. When health problems arise, my own or those of loved ones, substantial time may be needed for medical attention. But at least so far these have been contained, and I hope they never become my main activities. My family and some friends are generally pleased, yet sometimes surprised, that I expect to continue developing plans for new projects – writing and other interests. But I have concluded that creating something where there was not something before—birthing —is an important part of all of life’s stages, including now that I am a senior. I hope to continue that for as long as I have.

Flickering

After I got to 70 —the age, not the speed—on some days I feel all the expectations and fears about that age:

  1. My back periodically hurts.

Will the rest of my body start to deteriorate?

  • I experience memory lapses.

Am I heading toward dementia?

  • I feel that my children no longer need me.

What is my purpose in life?

  • And in the past year I have had to spend substantial time taking care of my ailing husband.

Will I need to spend more of my time in the future as a caregiver?

Wow!- these are not happy thoughts.  And although I was glad to retire from my 40+ year career just a few years ago, it took away a structure and focus for my life. And more and more of the ages of people I read about in the NYTimes obituary columns are younger than me.

Ahh, but on other days I feel ageless. I am engaged in life and I don’t even think about my age. I am excited about an anthology of my essays that I am preparing, I plan meetings with friends and weekend trips (and feel grateful for home health aides), I do volunteer work with immigrants who I enjoy talking with, and I am happy that my children love their work and have happy lives.  

I now think of my experience of life like a bulb when it is declining: I am flickering, in both my energy and enthusiasm. I think of my pleasures in life as AC and DC—alternating and direct current— not in the formal definition of those terms but rather that sometimes my life pleasure is alternating and at other times it is direct and unencumbered by distraction or worry. I often don’t have a choice as to whether it is AC or DC, and these appear on a spectrum, but I can move to the DC side by getting active—take a walk, write, read, or call a friend. These seem to work. And I had an experience recently that involved my dining area light fixture, that provided some important lessons about reducing flickering.

I have a light fixture over my dining room table that uses three small LED bulbs. A few months ago one went out and I had difficulty replacing it. I called for a porter in my building to help me. He told me that the connection was bad, that the bulb that went out couldn’t be replaced, and that I would need to get a whole new fixture. He said there was a problem with the ballast in the fixture (I looked it up, but I still don’t know what that is). Shopping for household items is one of my least favorite things to do, and as there were two other working bulbs, providing enough light for eating and reading, I postponed looking for a new fixture.

 About a month later, a second bulb went out and the third began flickering! Now this definitely needed attention. I tried replacing the newly malfunctioning bulbs but couldn’t get new bulbs into the sockets of the fixture. I realized I had no choice now, I needed to get a new fixture. Eating and reading by candlelight I suppose was an alternative, but not one I wanted to use.

Since I didn’t want to be totally without any light, and evening was approaching, I needed a short-term fix.  I called the maintenance office, and a new porter came to my apartment. He replaced the bulb that had recently gone out, and left the flickering one alone. But then, even though I told him that the third bulb was inoperable, he put a new bulb in that fixture too.

Miracle! The two new bulbs worked, and the flickering one stopped flickering. It’s been over a month now, and all three bulbs work steadily whenever I turn them on. And I am enjoying it. Although I expect the whole fixture will likely need replacing soon, the need is no longer urgent. I think there are some lessons here:

  • Just because a light has gone out, doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be rekindled. It’s worth a try.
  • Sometimes asking for help, from a new perspective, will get you what you need.
  • If a light is flickering, put another bulb nearby that is burning brightly—it may get the flickering light to shine steadily again.
  • You may have more time than you think.

Joy from Nothing… and Everything

I learned something about feeling joy in the moment from my three-year old grandson Lucas recently. He’s a happy, active child, enjoys being and experiencing whatever he finds in life. He and his parents visited me for a weekend, and I saw so many moments of his fully enjoying life, I almost missed their meaning for me. Nothing special happened, yet it was all special.

I took Lucas to the supermarket to get some milk, and decided to walk through every aisle with him. He half-walked, half-ran, eager to pick out all the things he recognized, calling them out with great pleasure: oranges, spaghetti, milk. He especially liked it when I asked him to find something I saw in the aisle before we got to it,  like eggs, chips, and ice-cream. What joy he took in the freedom to move through the aisles, to recognize so many items, and find others, in the treasure hunt I had created.

On another day at home with him I decided to do some of my floor exercises, since I knew I would not have time for the gym that day. I invited Lucas to join me. He laid down on the floor next to me and I never laughed so much doing exercises. Lying on our backs and lifting our legs into the air was easy for him; his body so much more flexible than mine, and he wiggled his legs as they went up.  Getting on our hands and knees I told him to alternate lifting his legs out to the side and I demonstrated what I meant—this exercise is called the fire hydrant— but he alternated kicking his legs up toward the back, gleefully saying  I did it higher, Grandma. His pleasure seemed to come from just experiencing his body and attempting to follow my directions.

He doesn’t know that food shopping and exercising are chores, and that I am eager to check them off my list when I get them done. For him, they are just ways he can be himself, enjoying the movements and the stimulation he experiences.

Watching Lucas’ glee in the quotidian— experiencing joy that was absolute as he ran down the supermarket aisles, and as he moved his body in doing exercises— also brought me joy. And I wondered if I could capture that feeling now in the activities of my life. Perhaps I had it as a child, but as an adult I often feel weighted down with obligations, and with concerns about people who I care about, and about the challenges of aging. These creep into my life, like mud moving on a downslope, covering and coloring everything in its way.

 What’s the meaning of this for me? I don’t expect to start taking pleasure in going down the supermarket aisles or doing my exercises, any more than I have in the past, except perhaps if I think of Lucas and how he enjoyed doing these. This is a joy of grandparenting. But I want to hold on to a belief that even in everyday activities—if I can see them in new ways, and experience my own engagement in them—there is pleasure to be had. Even now.