Category: Life Lessons

I’ll Be Brief

I aim to write a 2-3 minute blog post every day. And for most of the past 65 days, I have. Sometimes four minutes long which I consider excessive. I ain’t all that. I love that what I write sometimes surprises me. Like chasing a rabbit down a hole and finding yourself having a delicious and carefully prepared tea with some interesting characters.

As I consider how to approach this piece you are reading, I am reminded of a quote attributed to various literary luminaries. Often believed to be from Mark Twain but it was really Blaise Pascal: “I’m sorry that this was such a long lett­er, but I didn’t have time to write you a short one.” 

We faceless bureaucrats often changed the text of that original quote to throw in politicians’ speeches for the laugh: “I am sorry I am giving such a long speech. I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

Today’s blog length is a deliberate choice. A short blog so I can focus on other writing. So I can organize some things I have been letting slip to the back burner.

One of those back-burner issues is taxes. I have about a month’s leeway on submitting everything with no taxes to pay. But I need the accursed annual nuisance off my plate.

The laundry needs folding. The fridge needs offloading. Mail must be posted. Unsuitable items must be returned to merchants. So today, and for most of tomorrow, I am going to focus on those.

I will see what new things the world has to show me and what insight or amusement I can gain from them. My car is stocked with a bottle of birdseed in case I see some compatriot Canada Geese looking for grub. It is always a pleasant activity to watch them gobbling up corn and sunflower seeds.

And yes, I almost forgot. We bought a new house. Closes in about three weeks. Now there is a major distraction if ever there was one.

There will no doubt be more to say about that acquisition. I am in the giddy-overwhelmed stage where we have to check all the boxes before closing and then actually move. If I survive, I shall let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, if this blog post is more than a minute, I will hang a picture of myself on the WordPress Wall of Shame. Surely there must be such a thing.

Live and Let Live

“I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them. After my father died, the book that sort of saved my life was Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Because of that experience, I firmly believe there are books whose greatness actually enables you to live, to do something. And sometimes, human beings need story and narrative more than they need nourishment and food.”— Emma Thompson in @oprah’s O Magazine.

I have a whole book I want to write about this phenomenon. Books and messages show up when you most need them. It is a real thing.

I want to write a book that is an homage to the many self-help geniuses who emerged in the middle of my life as I was facing different challenges. I was a single parent of two babies. Their father turned out to be financially and emotionally inadequate. My family had utterly let me down and abandoned me.

But my book coaches tell me I am not yet well-enough known to succeed at that type of “healing anthology.” Success in their view, understandably, means how many books will fly off the shelf. More sales, more profit. Duh.

I am really glad I am out from behind the paywall. I get to write whatever I want within the realms of good taste and what I hope is, readability. I don’t much give a care about that really. I mean, it is impossible to know what will strike other people’s fancy. I am mostly here to develop my own writing voice and to find out what I really think and feel about things.

So I have had the exact same relationship with books that Emma Thompson refers to. At the very moment guidance is needed, a book popped up in my life to comfort me or provide insight or help me find a resolution. For a girl that felt pretty odd and alone for much of her life, those books were nothing short of lifesavers.

I remember with fondness and some amusement the book The Dance of Anger by Dr. Harriet Lerner. Her book nailed and accurately described problem-solving in troubled families. Instead of tackling and working on issues to resolve them together, raising issues in many families just causes resistance and more turmoil.

The book jacket blurb puts it this way: “Anger is a signal and one worth listening to,” writes Dr. Harriet Lerner. While anger deserves our attention and respect, women still learn to silence their anger, deny it entirely, or vent it in a way that leaves them feeling helpless and powerless. In this engaging and eminently wise book, Dr. Lerner teaches both women and men to identify the true sources of anger and to use it as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change.”

Did that ever speak to me. People bring up a difficult topic. Feelings get hurt. People hurl insults and blame at each other. The conversation you wanted to have escalates and before you know it, slam. Someone has headed out the door in a swath of anger. The issue – whatever it was – gets left on the floor abandoned and is ignored yet again. Nothing changes. The issue continues to fester.

When I first read Lerner’s book, I fairly danced with excitement. She gets it! Here is a way out of this horrible pattern! This will bring us all closer to each other! I rushed out to the local bookstore and immediately bought three more copies. One for my mother and one for each of my sisters.

Gathered around my kitchen table that evening, I gave my elevator pitch on the book. Why it was helpful to me. How it could help us.”If we all read it,” I reasoned, naively, “We could work at making our relationships better.”

My youngest sister picked up her copy. Glancing at the back cover, she curled her lip in disdain and threw the book down on the table: “You and your psychobabble.”

Yes, well, okay. That did not work. No one will likely be surprised that I have been estranged from her for decades and the relationship is unlikely to right itself in this lifetime.

Author Jeff Brown (https://www.jeffbrown.co) recently posted about a likely reality we need to accept if we have chosen a healing path. Not everyone feels the need to heal. Not everyone has the capacity to face up to their pain and demons. There is wisdom in the German saying made famous in the movie, Cabaret. “Leben und leben lassen.” “Live and let live.”

The choice to stay where you are and not grow is a choice everyone can make. What we don’t have to do is stay there with them or engage with them any longer. That single decision has made my life a much more peaceful and pleasant place to live. Considerably less drama and accumulated emotional clutter.

Fuggedaboutit

I hate being fooled. Or conned. Or realizing someone has tried “to put one over on me.” Whatever that means. I realize everyone has to make a living. But how they make that living is important.

A solar salesman called me today. He is the Texas-based boss of the local solar salesman that we put off last week. No reason to put him off except we are overburdened by other projects and not eager to take on a new one at the minute.

Did that deter them from reaching out to us again after we had already firmly and politely put them off once?

Of course not. Before he could ask me another leading question about how they might make the terms more agreeable and entice us to move forward, I calmly and firmly told him no appeal would work or be tolerated. we had already said no. If/when we decided to proceed and not a minute before, we would be in touch. If he did contact us again, his company would be relegated to our waste bin should we ever decide to proceed with solar. Thank you and goodbye.

I was a consumer reporter on television. The complaints that came into my email were often consumers telling me a salesman caught them at a weak moment. They had signed on to some service or subscription that they really didn’t want and seriously could not afford. This angered me. I have no time for the questionable ethics of “salespeople” who make their living on the backs of others’ weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

I have a particular soft spot for women in this regard. Women are financially disadvantaged compared to men. Not individually, but collectively. I have a particular disdain for pressure on women to be constantly “cooperative” or “nice.” It costs them.

Women regularly denigrate their own needs to keep peace and make others happy. I used to do this a lot. I don’t do it so much anymore. The scales of plenty tipped largely in other people’s favor. Not only was I not rewarded for my acquiesence, I was not given any credit for the opportunity my acquiesence created for them.

Learning boundaries should be a pretty normal part of any child’s upbringing. But it isn’t. Some children grow up with weak or non-existent boundaries and it makes life harder. Some have a very difficult time saying “no” to anyone or anything. Some go in the other direction and become difficult and unpleasant as a matter of course just to protect themselves from being taken advantage of. Neither way works out very well.

Finding out what I deeply care about and what matters most to me makes it easier for me to choose “what hill to die on.” What matters to me has changed over the course of my lifetime. It can change on the spot if I am forced to make choices among limited options. Hmm … Coke Zero or Diet root beer?? I’ll just take ice water, thanks.

Back in the day, I would go right to the wall for causes or issues I deeply believed in. I was a very junior social activist mostly devoted to social vanities or similarly lightweight issues. I overturned the “white shirts only” policy at our uniform-wearing high school. I got my first public taste of humility.

In a couple of years, the whole school dress code broke down and girls in their plain black tunics were wearing the most outrageous colors and styles resplendent with frills and lace and pouffy sleeves. Not sure that effort was worth it. But it did give me my first taste of “be careful what you wish for.”

The whole stress session dealing with the solar salesman today and then dealing with a couple of other external irritants like being overcharged without consultation got to me. For a little while. But the outrage I used to carry over seeming injustice has tempered now. I no longer go to any walls or leap any tall buildings when someone – deliberately or collaterally – annoys me.

I move on. I fuggedaboutit. Seems healthier all around for them and most especially for me.

Heaven or Hell? Your Choice

I lived a large part of my life as a flibbertigibbet. I know people who have lived in the same house in the same city since they were children and became adults. Some moved into their parents’ homes when their parents had either moved or passed on. Actual people married their high school sweethearts and stayed married. I regard them with a mix of wonder and disbelief.

I moved around when I was younger. A lot. I was always sure the next place would be the “best ever.” “It will be perfect!” Never mind that with my background, I did not have the slightest clue how to pull a house together let alone decorate it. Nor did I have sufficient coin for the necessary furnishings and so-called “home elements.”.

I did try interior decorating. Massive failure. I once put a sort of French boudoir black and white rococo style wallpaper in my small bedsit. Once I’d hung the last length of wallpaper, that small bedsit instantaneously became teeny tiny. It felt claustrophobic. Oh well, I thought. That didn’t work. I’ll paint it a solid color. That’ll fix it.

I painted it orange. Not that tasteful mango pastel you might be imagining. Oh no. Think of the vests worn by people doing roadwork. Safety vest orange. I had one quart of flat latex. It did not quite cover the black and white rococo.

Thinking back, when money was tight – as it invariably was – it was my wont to bargain hunt. Clothes. Shoes. Wallpaper. Paint. Buying what I really wanted was always trumped the actual cost. “Oops” paint and I became closely acquainted. So the safety vest orange shade that required four coats to cover hideous black and white wallpaper was probably quite cheap. Almost certainly.

It took time to learn that any place you land can become heaven or hell. Even odder, if you lower your expectations sufficiently to adapt to the environment, even hell can be a pleasant or leastways, interesting, road stop.

I loved the privations of camping and “roughing it” generally. On a memorable cross-Andes horse trek back in the aughts, it was certainly filled with enough excitement and dread to keep the adrenaline flowing. But I am fairly sure that type of vacation would not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Even my longtime, deeply adventurous friend Ursula met her match when a winter snowstorm came up in the middle of the mountains. close to nightfall (Quite a shock as in January it was “mid-summer” in Argentina. Mountains have their own rules.)

In the chaos of getting the horses down quickly to flatter, sheltered land to pitch our tents for the night, Ursula almost backed her horse off a cliff to what would have been certain death. Ursula remembers that snowstorm, nearly falling off a cliff, and dying experience with a certain testiness.

Back down here on terra firma, I am still hell-bent and determined to find a heavenly “forever” home. In my mind’s eye, my home would have everything I ever dreamt of. It would exude and reek of elegance, style, and taste.

I can see the wide, wooden double front doors and the dark grey slate floors of the foyer entrance. In the library just off the front hall to the left, I see through the doors to the low-plush wall-to-wall carpet and mahogany or cherrywood (I am not fussy) floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on both sides of the room. There is a deep-seated leather office chair in front of a mahogany (or cherrywood) desk. Books everywhere.

There are two easy chairs in the middle of the room with brass reading lamps on the end tables. Maybe an ottoman or two. And a dog. Maybe two. There is a large bay window at the back of the room that frames the desk with a wide, cushioned window seat. That upholstered seat looks out on a garden, or maybe an orchard. Trees of some sort at any rate. A birdcage-covered swimming pool is just barely in sight to the left of the property.

The living room across the wide hall from the library would be furnished with two deep, soft sofas facing each other in front of the wood-burning fireplace. The sofas would be set off by a matching easy chair or two with leather inlaid end tables and a large wooden coffee table between them.

The couches would frame a brick or maybe fieldstone, wood-burning fireplace. I adore the smell of burning wood. My dream home would be safe and cozy and, most of all, it would always be there.

You may have already concluded that I have been deeply swayed by (pick one) Alistair Cooke on Masterpiece Theatre or Upstairs, Downstairs (only the Upstairs, thank you), or Downtown Abbey. These are my influencers.

It is still a vague notion at present. Where. When. How. I’ve had bits and bobs of that decorative schemata in former houses but not all elements altogether in the same place. I am not 100% sure what that “forever” home will look like but I will know the place when I see it. I need to acquire the bones before I can start dressing them.

What I am sure of is that it will not have any trace of faux French boudoir black and white rococo wallpaper covered with a seethrough layer of safety vest orange paint. My aesthetic has grown somewhat beyond those days, thankfully.

When Is Enough?

I frequently ask that question these days. I am struck by the similarities in so many posts and blogs I read. Everyone has advice about how to create a happy life. Or how to set goals that will help you achieve your “happily ever after.” Do you ever think about how people figured out life before the advice of strangers from all over the world was available?

Well to start with, I imagine life was much simpler, say, a hundred and fifty years ago. You could look forward to a basic education – if you were lucky. You were expected to marry the most suitable match who probably lived a few houses away. Your future spouse was almost certainly from the same town.

Your parents were likely friends with the parents of your intended or they would certainly have known one another. From church or encounters at the general store or sports and hobbies. Social and geographic boundaries were much smaller and tighter.

The rules for living a good life were generally agreed upon by most of the community. You were born, got married, worked either inside (usually the wife) or outside the home (usually the husband), had kids, then grandkids, retired, got sick, and died. Dead easy.

My dear departed Dad chased the one overriding goal in life he was convinced would make him happy: becoming a millionaire. His admiration for money was a lifelong obsession. He faithfully attended Dale Carnegie courses that taught him How to Win Friends and Influence People. He learned “tricks” about how the wealthy nurtured an aura of money … like always sporting a tan. It encouraged the perception: “A man of means has time to relax in the sun.”

Dad missed one of the fundamental rules of creating wealth that follows the counter-intuitive rule: if you want more of something, you have to give it away. His miserliness always seemed like a synonym for misery. After he lost all his money in middle age, it made him cling to it even more fiercely.

He complimented his wife for saving scraps of wax paper in a kitchen drawer. He refused to buy anything “frivolous.” He balked at buying a package of better quality ham that cost only pennies more than his choice. After retiring from law, he owned and operated an ice cream store. He drove his employees crazy. When someone ordered a banana split, he would drive down to the supermarket … and buy one banana at a time.

To all outward appearances, he had a comfortable life toward its end. A house he owned outright. A luxury car. Steady passive income. Savings in the bank (if not quite a million dollars). But his emotional and financial miserliness cost him his family.

Like many kids in his generation, we were on our own after high school. I marveled with envy at peers whose parents paid for their education or paid for their fees to stay in residence or regularly sent them “care packages.” There was no support for “frivolous” pursuits like university in my Dad’s opinion. Dad once asked an old boyfriend of mine: “What is Margot doing in university? She is only going to get married and have children.”

I often wonder how Dad felt about his life and the goals he accomplished. He kept himself and his second wife safe and comfortable. But he did no community service to speak of. Had very few friends and as time went by, fewer and fewer interests. It seemed he lived his life with an anvil on his heart and soul. He never had enough.

Marketing gurus today push the glamor of high-end vodka and designer purses and shoes and all the symbols of wealth and status. Strategically, they target a younger clientele who are not yet encumbered by families and mortgage payments. This time period of “disposable income” is usually a short phase.

So I come back to my question. When we are setting goals for our lives, what is our absolute endpoint? When and why should we move the goalposts? To whose benefit? I’m convinced the answer can only be found in getting to know ourselves better. I recently read Steve Jobs’ said that a $300 watch and a $30 dollar watch tell the same time.

I learned that lesson early. There were high-end items I wanted and acquired for their quality as much as for their cachet. A Tissot wood watch I bought in Florence, Italy years ago still brings me pleasure aesthetically and sentimentally.

When we are young, we want to hurry up and get on with it. We want it all. We are hungry and eager to explore and experience everything that life can offer. We test our wings and seek out our pack. We build castles in the air then eventually settle for a three-bedroom and two-bathroom house that better suits our lifestyle, our budget, and our needs. Needs is the operative word. Life choices essentially come down to that.

The quicker we learn what makes us happy, the faster we begin to attract those things into our lives. It doesn’t matter what anyone else wants or what the world tells you will make you happy. We learn what is enough, for us. It is up to us to decide when that is.

Mother’s Day

I have written about mothers before. I have written and will continue to write about my own mother. It is a primal bond, yet the relationship can be difficult, no matter what its origin story. I wrote yesterday about idealized motherhood as a special, sacred state. The day-to-day reality can be quite different and difficult. There are common themes in the universal experience of motherhood. Yet each mother’s story is unique. This is one of those unique stories.

Lala and Her Son

“The child was tightly wrapped in the threadbare blanket his mother had taken with her as they were leaving the camp. At the immigration center, she struggled to quell her nerves and quiet her baby. The baby had a cough. The cough needed to be suppressed.

If even a slight cough was detected by an immigration official, the whole family – dad, mom, sister, and baby – might have been diverted to quarantine for suspicion of TB. Getting out of the detention center and on with their lives in Canada could have taken them many more months. The family had already spent what seemed like an eternity in a European refugee camp. Lala wasn’t sure how much more they could survive.

Homemade cough medicine liberally laced with brandy and administered in quantity had quieted her fussy boy before they disembarked at Pier 19 in Halifax. It had been effective in putting him into a deep slumber. Still, Lala worried the effects would wear off and the baby would wake and delay their plans.

The baby’s conception and birth originated in a post-World War II European refugee camp. It was there Lala met her future husband. Both parents were suffering from the brutal treatment and losses imposed by World War II Nazis. The post-War effects of displacement and relocation only compounded the traumatic effects.

At the war’s end, they jumped at the chance to come to Canada to begin life over again. They made it through the customs inspection and boarded the train for Toronto, Ontario.

Thanks to friends and relatives in the similarly displaced post-War community, they were able to buy a house. Eventually, his mother opened a dress store on the ground floor.  The family lived upstairs.

That baby had grown into a bright and mischievous little boy. He remembered spying on naked women through the cracks in the changing room doors. The ladies paid him little attention as he was but a child but he reveled in the memories. He vividly recalled the pretty ladies.

A concern in this family was the little boy’s birth origins. The baby was now a boy. He was short in stature and tended to obesity. Food was comforting for him in a way his traumatized parents could not be. On top of the traumas of war, his father harbored deep fears that his son was not his own. He took out his anxiety on the child.

The story persisted that Lala had been raped by Russian soldiers in the camps and the story muddied the waters of the boy’s origins. His father feared that the boy was the product of that violent act and not his own biological son.

One of the results was that his father measured the boy regularly. He stood him up against a door jamb with a yardstick and pencil to mark his growth. The father made careful note of how tall the boy was.  The boy recalls standing on tippy toes to appear taller to avoid his father’s rage. If the boy’s measurements “came up short,” a physical beating might ensue from deep within the wells of his father’s anger and frustration.

The boy had an older sister whose origins were equally murky. She was not the product of rape. But Lals worried her daughter was the product of another displaced Jewish refugee in the camp. When the daughter discovered her alternate origin story, she flipped out.

She stole her parents’ credit card and flew to Israel to seek out the man she believed might have been her “real father.” Israel is purportedly where he went after the war. The sister had a complete breakdown and was hospitalized in a mental hospital for a time with depression and suicidal ideation.  Her brother was enraged and disdainful.

Her parents flew to Israel to find her and bring her back to Canada. The travel costs and the psychiatrists they paid to have her seen, were a burden on her family’s limited financial resources. Her brother saw all of her “acting out” as a “choice.” In his mind, she was a stupid and selfish brat.

As an academic years later, he would publish a paper called The Myth of Mental Illness. Although he didn’t mention his sister specifically, there is no doubt she was his intellectual inspiration. It is common for those who have grown up sublimating their distress to condemn as weak those who struggle.

Her brother was angry at the financial and emotional cost to his parents. They were not wealthy people and his sister had racked up a hefty credit card bill that his parents were forced to pay off. Her rebellion stirred up troubling memories of the war.

The boy sought comfort in food and his girth expanded in proportion to his loneliness and distress. His Ph.D. thesis explored the lengths that fat people go to appear “normal” in society. Those efforts to “cover” up their fat were a study in learned manipulation that Lala’s grown son transferred to other parts of his life. He would learn to hide his rage under layers of charm and intelligence that took him up the ladder of career success in fairly short order.

He was a product of the abusive background he came from and became a volatile and violent abuser himself. Survival skills bred in post-war European refugee camps and in his family home came in handy for a sad and angry little man-child. He was intent on making up for the miseries his parents suffered that caused him to suffer in kind.

Sadly and perhaps inevitably, he inflicted that suffering on others. Lala’s boy became as twisted as the Russian soldier (allegedly) responsible for his presence on the planet.”

Not My Children

Mother’s Day is coming up on Sunday. Have you noticed? If not, are you living in a cave in Tibet? We collectively shake our heads over the commercialization of this single day in the annual calendar. We may trivialize it but heaven forfends that we ignore the chance to publicly honor Mom. Because if we do, she will undoubtedly “remind” us.

There is more grounded discussion these days about the real cost and sacrifice in choosing motherhood. Where “this blessed event” was once wreathed in ephemeral images of ribbons and lace and sweet babies raising a dainty hand to their mother’s radiant face, the new narrative has become more realistic. The real underlying narrative of that earlier time was driven by economics and even harder necessity. Children were needed as much as they were wanted.

Parenting is tough. Motherhood is tougher. It comes with a host of unspoken expectations and “rules” that no mother ever fully gets until she gets there. Motherhood can be a bitch. (I like using BITCH as an acronym: Babe In Total Control of Herself). Nothing adequately prepares you for the literal gut punch that babies bring into your world.

Their demands are urgent and incessant. Thank god Nature takes you over and every fiber of a mother’s being strains to ensure her newborn’s survival and comfort. Thank god there is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business devoted to the business of ensuring that that perfect little baby person you are holding remains that way and develops accordingly.

And when they don’t? Brace yourself for “Mother Guilt.” Or more accurately the mother of all guilt. After my son was born, I remember how sensitive I was to his every gurgle or whimper. If he started crying, there was a mental checklist to go through: “Is he hungry? Is he wet? Does his diaper need changing? Does he have gas? At a given time, it may have been any one or two or all of those. It is often said that babies do not come with instruction manuals which, if I may put my oar in, was very short-sighted on god’s part.

In my early days of motherhood, a wise and kind woman friend advised: “Never wake a sleeping baby.” The biggest psychological shift comes at the minute they hand that squirmy and wrinkled little bundle to you in the delivery room and you officially “become” a parent. For the rest of your life, your mindset will be: “Oh my God, if I don’t take care of this child, nobody else will. It’s totally on me.” My brother-in-law put this perfectly: “Parenting is unrelenting.”

The constant fussing and protection rather get in the way of a lot of parent-child relationships when they come of age. Especially if you are still treating them as if you need to cut up their food and wipe their mouths. I know. I’ve done it. Odd how sarcastic your grown-up baby boy becomes in public after he’s put on a few years.

I also learned – the hard way and in other ways – that neither of my babies was entirely “mine.” They have their own thoughts. Imagine? They have their own ideas. What? They may gently tease and cajole (constantly) to remind you that they are the new guard and you are the old. “Well, fetch me some tea then. Please?”

As they often have in my life, words helped me cope and understand. No one has done this more eloquently than my favorite poet Kahlil Gibran. Over the years, I have bought around twenty copies of his magnum opus, The Prophet. His books make beautiful and meaningful gifts. His poems cover the waterfront of life from birth to death and in between.

Take comfort from his wise words, fellow parenting people. If your babies are still with you, cherish every minute with them. Soon enough, you will be one of those parents who wistfully realizes their babies left the nest altogether too quickly.

Kahlil Gibran – 1883-1931

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

     You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

60 Today

Two months sure flew by. Much like life generally as we get older.

Today is the publication of my 60th blog post. I feel there should be cake and candles. And balloons. Or something.

I like honoring commitments to myself. Two months in, I see the value of these posts to keep greasing my internal writing wheels. Topics aren’t hard to come by. I’m pretty outspoken. But as dear old Ma liked to say, “Yes, she is outspoken … but not often and not by many.” Putting an original spin on those topics is the challenge.

In honor of this milestone today, I want to share some great advice I once received about getting older. I have collected many nuggets and some boulders of wisdom as I have wandered around this life. Then I either publish those nuggets or otherwise share them in the hope they will do somebody some good. Just as they once did for me. This post is twice as long a read as normal. Deserves every damn word.

If you have already achieved the status of eminence grise, enjoy. If you aren’t there yet, file this in your “Someday” file. Because – trust me on this – if you’re lucky, one day you will be old. It might be nice to have some guidelines lying around on how to do old well.

Great advice

This excellent list for aging is good advice to follow.

1. It’s time to use the money you saved up. Use it and enjoy it. Don’t just keep it for those who may have no notion of the sacrifices you made to get it. Remember there is nothing more dangerous than a son or daughter-in-law with big ideas for your hard-earned capital. Warning: This is also a bad time for investments, even if it seems wonderful or foolproof. They only bring problems and worries. This is a time for you to enjoy some peace and quiet.

2. Stop worrying about the financial situation of your children and grandchildren, and don’t feel bad spending your money on yourself. You’ve taken care of them for many years, and you’ve taught them what you could. You gave them an education, food, shelter, and support. The responsibility is now theirs to earn their own money.

3. Keep a healthy life, without great physical effort. Do moderate exercise (like walking every day), eat well and get your sleep. It’s easy to become sick, and it gets harder to remain healthy. That is why you need to keep yourself in good shape and be aware of your medical and physical needs. Keep in touch with your doctor, do tests even when you’re feeling well. Stay informed.

4. Always buy the best, most beautiful items for your significant other. The key goal is to enjoy your money with your partner. One day one of you will miss the other, and the money will not provide any comfort then, enjoy it together.

5. Don’t stress over the little things. Like paying a little extra on price quotes. You’ve already overcome so much in your life. You have good memories and bad ones, but the important thing is the present. Don’t let the past drag you down and don’t let the future frighten you. Feel good in the now. Small issues will soon be forgotten.

6. Regardless of age, always keep love alive. Love your partner, love life, love your family, love your neighbor and remember: “A man is not old as long as he has intelligence and affection.”

7. Be proud, both inside and out. Don’t stop going to your hair salon or barber, do your nails, go to the dermatologist and the dentist, keep your perfumes and creams well stocked. When you are well-maintained on the outside, it seeps in, making you feel proud and strong.

8. Don’t lose sight of fashion trends for your age, but keep your own sense of style. There’s nothing worse than an older person trying to wear the current fashion among youngsters. You’ve developed your own sense of what looks good on you – keep it and be proud of it. It’s part of who you are.

9. ALWAYS stay up-to-date. Read newspapers, and watch the news. Go online and read what people are saying. Make sure you have an active email account and try to use some of those social networks. You’ll be surprised what old friends you’ll meet. Keeping in touch with what is going on and with the people you know is important at any age.

10. Respect the younger generation and their opinions. They may not have the same ideals as you, but they are the future, and will take the world in their direction. Give advice, not criticism, and try to remind them that yesterday’s wisdom still applies today.

11. Never use the phrase: “In my time.” Your time is now. As long as you’re alive, you are part of this time. You may have been younger, but you are still you now, having fun and enjoying life.

12. Some people embrace their golden years, while others become bitter and surly. Life is too short to waste your days on the latter. Spend your time with positive, cheerful people, it’ll rub off on you and your days will seem that much better. Spending your time with bitter people will make you older and harder to be around. Be better, not bitter.

13. Do not surrender to the temptation of living with your children or grandchildren (if you have a financial choice, that is). Sure, being surrounded by family sounds great, but we all need our privacy. They need theirs and you need yours. If you’ve lost your partner (our deepest condolences), then find a person to move in with you and help out. Even then, do so only if you feel you really need the help or do not want to live alone.

14. Don’t abandon your hobbies. If you don’t have any, make new ones. You can travel, hike, cook, read, dance. You can adopt a cat or a dog, grow a garden, play cards, checkers, chess, dominoes, golf. You can paint, volunteer or just collect certain items. Find something you like and spend some real time having fun with it.

15. Even if you don’t feel like it, try to accept invitations. Baptisms, graduations, birthdays, weddings, conferences. Try to go. Get out of the house, meet people you haven’t seen in a while, experience something new (or something old). But don’t get upset when you’re not invited. Some events are limited by resources, and not everyone can be hosted. The important thing is to leave the house from time to time. Go to museums, go walk through a field. Get out there.

16. Be a conversationalist. Talk less and listen more. Some people go on and on about the past, not caring if their listeners are really interested. That’s a great way of reducing their desire to speak with you. Listen first and answer questions, but don’t go off into long stories unless asked to. Speak in courteous tones and try not to complain or criticize too much unless you really need to. Try to accept situations as they are. Everyone is going through the same things, and people have a low tolerance for hearing complaints. Always find some good things to say as well.

17. Pain and discomfort go hand in hand with getting older. Try not to dwell on them but accept them as a part of the cycle of life we’re all going through. Try to minimize them in your mind. They are not who you are, they are something that life added to you. If they become your entire focus, you lose sight of the person you used to be.

18. If you’ve been offended by someone – forgive them. If you’ve offended someone – apologize. Don’t drag around resentment with you. It only serves to make you sad and bitter. It doesn’t matter who was right. Someone once said: “Holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Don’t take that poison. Forgive, forget, and move on with your life.

19. If you have a strong belief, savor it. But don’t waste your time trying to convince others. They will make their own choices no matter what you tell them, and it will only bring you frustration. Live your faith and set an example. Live true to your beliefs and let that memory sway them.

20. Laugh. Laugh A LOT. Laugh at everything. Remember, you are one of the lucky ones. You managed to have a life, a long one. Many never get to this age, and never get to experience a full life. But you did. So what’s not to laugh about? Find the humor in your situation.

21. Take no notice of what others say about you and even less notice of what they might be thinking. They’ll do it anyway, and you should have pride in yourself and what you’ve achieved. Let them talk and don’t worry. They have no idea about your history, your memories, and the life you’ve lived so far. There’s still much to be written, so get busy writing and don’t waste time thinking about what others might think. Now is the time to be at rest, at peace, and as happy as you can be!

REMEMBER: “Life is too short to drink bad wine and warm beer.”

ED NOTE: My personal thanks to the anonymous writer of this great advice. If it was you, please let me know!

The Power of the Dog

I have said before that I will occasionally borrow from an author’s work that resonates or hits a particular chord in me. What follows is the poem The Power of the Dog by Rudyard Kipling. This little guy in the picture is the reason. If you own a dog, have ever owned a dog, lost a dog, lived with a dog, had a relative who owned a dog you were close to, or even considered having a dog in your life, this poem will resonate with you, too.

I am not one of those into the “my dog’s better than your dog” banter. My life is not centered around or consumed by this little fella. Yet. But in an attempt to appease the dog hunger in both my and my husband’s hearts created years ago when our beloved dog companions passed, we thought we’d foster for a little while to temporarily fill the void.

Snort. This guy was no sooner in the door than he was on my husband’s lap and nanoseconds later in his heart. A so-called “foster fail.” It happens frequently Maxine of Max’s Pet Rescue tells me. Maxine Hirsch has run her dog adoption rescue charity in the same Pet Smart location for the past 17 years.

Maxine is a transplanted Canadian lured like countless other fed-up,winter-challenged Northerners to sunny Florida climes. She has made this exclusive dog rescue (no cats) and her devotion to the homeless, stray, and displaced the center of her world. Many of her dogs come to her from owners who suddenly or otherwise leave the planet.

If there was an award for canine caring canonization, Maxine Hirsch would be a viable contender. She has a bevy of volunteers equally committed to the welfare of canines living in limbo. When Max can’t immediately find owners or fosters for her charges, she keeps them at home. That home has been known to occasionally be full to the rafters. Fourteen of them just this week. Plus her own two dogs.

Our foster fail came with a name we will not keep. As his character emerges, so will his name. For now, this seven-year-old almost eight-year-old mixed breed (Bichon and Pomeranian) is simply called Dog. What we do know is how loving and gentle and love-hungry he is. He’s found a good match.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) had a special bond with his dogs. In this poem, he shares the joy a dog’s loyalty and devotion brings, but bids you consider a dog also has the power to break your heart when its life comes to an end. Oh well. We’ve been warned.

And what, you might ask, has this got to do with Writing A Book? Not a damned thing unless, of course, you will agree that writing is about life with all of its unexpected twists and turns and that is one of life’s finest domestic manifestations. Herewith, an ode to those heartbreakers.

The Power of the Dog

by Rudyard Kipling 

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie—
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless, it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair—
But … you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long—
So why in—Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?