The Worlds We Knew

Women born in and around the Baby Boom generation -- and that accounts for a lot of us -- grew up in one world, came of age in another and are growing older in yet another. It has been a exhilarating, frustrating, joyous and arduous process.

We grew up in a world of limited options and expectations for women.

Growing up in the Fifties, I saw very few women in our neighborhood working outside their homes, except for Yvonne, the woman across the street, the veteran of several divorces, who worked at the local Fosters Freeze. All of the women had worked through the Depression and the war years -- my mother as a nurse, an American Airlines flight attendant and, finally, as an emergency services nurse who rode the ambulance out to the runways of the testing facilities at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to pick up casualties of plane crashes. Liz had been a night club pianist. Eleanor was a private secretary to a aircraft company executive. Now they were all wives and stay-at-home moms and life wasn't always as portrayed in "Leave It to Beaver."

Sure, they loved their husbands. They loved their kids. They kept life humming along for their families in their cozy suburban homes. But, for some, there was something amiss.  I overhead their complaints when my mother and the neighbor women got together for coffee at our house many mornings. They were bored and felt unappreciated and stuck. Some of them drank too much. Some of them smoked one cigarette after another. Some, like my mother, ate out of frustration. I listened and promised myself that this would not be my life.

It seemed that as invisible as they felt at times, stay-at-home wives and mothers were blamed for everything -- from Vance Packard's best-selling indictment of "Mom-ism" and his dire observation that the nation's mothers were raising "a generation of vipers" to the dreaded "ring-around-the-collar" of detergent commercial fame.  In the commercials, the man was never embarrassed when others noticed his filthy collar. It was the wife who cringed, because, of course, it was her fault that his collar was stained -- or even that he didn't keep his neck clean. It seemed that our mothers just couldn't win.

Even in school, the nuns would tell us our options were to grow up to be good Catholic wives and mothers or, even better, to be a nun.  I started sending for convent literature when I was 12.

About that time, dreaming of independence, I used to play a fantasy game: picking up the newspaper want ads and, pretending that I was twentysomething, would spend an hour, just for fun, pretending to look for a job, an apartment and a car, circling the ads that looked most promising.  But what was frustrating was that all of the most interesting jobs came under the heading "Help Wanted: Men".  Just about all I could find under "Help Wanted: Women" were jobs that were for "Gal Friday!" and "Super Secretary!" and "Easy, Fun Job!" None of those fired my imagination, but I'd pick the best of the worst and go on to find my apartment and car.

Life started changing in college and graduate school. I went to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism -- and women were taken seriously, to a point.  We were encouraged to major in Magazine -- the worst paying, most female dominated branch of journalism at that time. Women were actively discouraged from a Broadcast Journalism major because, the dean told us, "We don't want to train you for a field where you won't be able to get a job. Women just aren't being hired for broadcast, especially for on-camera jobs."  It was true. My classmate and friend Marie Traina stubbornly insisted on a Broadcast major. After graduation, she was unable to find a broadcasting job -- on camera or off -- and ended up working as a newspaper reporter, winning an award her first year at the paper. The beginning of new opportunities for women as television reporters and anchors came about five years after my class graduated.

But at least there was a nod toward competent women in our class: the few female instructors in the program inspired us. And when an honors seminar was established at the end of freshman year, it was equally divided between men and women. And the women very much held their own in discussions and achievements in school and in life beyond.

When we, the leading edge of the Baby Boomers, graduated from college in the late Sixties, opportunities were opening at a rate that would have astonished our mothers back in the day. But there were still constraints starting out.

In my case, magazine jobs paid so horribly that the expectation was, at least in New York, that indulgent parents would help support their daughters until they married.  In Los Angeles, where I started my magazine career, there was only one consumer magazine publishing group that had editiorial offices in L.A.  The company published a full list of major magazines targeted at men -- Motor Trend, Hot Rod, Photographic, Guns and Ammo -- and one magazine aimed at a female audience - 'TEEN.  It was no secret that the female editors of 'TEEN made less money than the secretaries of the editors of the other magazines. Company honchos told the EEOC that 'TEEN was a separate enterprise, after all.  And, besides, if any of us didn't like working for low wages, we could just leave. The publisher could easily find eager young college grads who would work for those wages.

Because I was the first young editor hired with a Master's degree in journalism from a prestigious school, the publisher offered me a better deal: instead of making $350 a month, I would be starting at $400. Even in 1968 that was a ridiculously low wage. However,  I jumped at the opportunity -- and long term, it was an excellent decision. The experience and exposure I would gain in my nine years at 'TEEN would set the tone and provide the groundwork for the rest of my career.

But before I could start, I -- and all of the other female staffers -- had to endure a grilling from the corporation's Human Resources Director. He was tall, skinny, pallid and socially awkward. He read from a list of prepared questions on a tattered index card -- and one of the questions made my jaw drop: "What form of birth control are you using?"

I stared at him and stammered "Nothing! I mean, I'm a virgin! I don't even have a boyfriend."

He looked over his glasses at me. "You're 23 years old."

I nodded, feeling ashamed and already like a failure. "I know," I said. "Guys don't like me. This guy in college dumped me because I wanted a career and he wanted a wife. I don't know if I'll ever get married."  I could feel my cheeks burning.

"Well," he said. "When we hire girls for editorial positions, we want to make sure they're going to stay at least a year or two. We don't want anyone getting pregnant and leaving after six months."

I stared down at my hands, humiliated. "I won't," I whispered. "I promise I won't."

This unhappy rite of passage at the company persisted into the early Seventies. As time went on, female applicants increasingly confronted him about the question, complaining that it felt intrusive.  But it took a British journalist named Ellen to bring an end to it forever.  A well-known writer and television host in England, with a quick wit and short temper, Ellen stared at him when he asked her the question. Silence.

He asked once more: "What form of birth control do you use?"

She looked him in the eye and answered "Fellatio!"

He never asked the question again.

We came of age at a time when women had more options than ever before.

Times were changing, after all, in the Seventies as feminism captured the imagination of a significant segment of Baby Boomer women. Legislative changes opened more doors. Workplaces began to change. Want ads no longer labeled jobs male or female only.

We were evolving from the constraints we had known growing up to the heady advances of the Seventies and Eighties when we dared to dream, walked the halls in our power suits and learned to multi-task.  We were coming of age in an era where we believed we could have it all: a career, a marriage, children -- just like men.

Only we found out that we couldn't really, at least not all at the same time.

The limitations were evident to me in the personal histories of those ten men and women in the honors seminar at Northwestern: the five men all went on to have high profile careers, enduring marriages and multiple children.  Of the five women, one chose to forgo a career for marriage and children. The remaining four of us opted for high profile careers. Only one of the four was ever a mother -- and her only child was born when she was in her early forties and well established.

Overall, women's lives weren't always in such stark contrast to men's, but there were concessions to the demands of child-raising with years of career-building put on hold or concessions to work with a generation of latch-key kids or various combinations over time. There was the Mommy Track. There were media-fueled "Mommy Wars" and glass ceilings that began to seem unbreakable. We were the most educated and ambitious generation of women ever, coming of age in an era of growing opportunities for women and concurrent tough choices.  Having it all was an incredible challenge.

Perhaps not by accident, inflation and growing wage stagnation made it more difficult for families to enjoy a middle class lifestyle on one salary. Increasingly, women had to work.  For those of us with careers we loved, the situation wasn't as difficult -- except for women who faced the prospect of leaving young babies or small children in the care of another.  For women who would have preferred to stay home with their children, leaving them to go to work could be agonizing.  And, in the Eighties and Nineties, the stay-at-home-with-the-children Mom whom some of us had foolishly scorned as we grew up in the Fifties became an envied lifestyle -- either the option of a parent who was affluent enough not to have to work outside the home or one who, with a partner, had made major financial sacrifices to give the children full-time nurturing.  And we realized, over time, that there were no easy choices or answers in our quest to have it all.  There were times when some of us looked back with a certain nostalgia on the simple certainty of our mothers' lives.

We're growing older in an increasingly uncertain world.


We're growing older in a rapidly changing world of increased uncertainty -- uncertainty about the stability of our careers and earning futures, uncertainty about the possibility or stability of our retirement as controversy swirls about cuts to Social Security and Medicare.  Some Boomers are considering the possibility that they will need to work until they are 70 or beyond --or, perhaps, never retire. At the same time, unemployment is disastrously high and particularly problematic for those in their forties, fifties or early sixties who face particularly steep odds as they search for new jobs.

We're watching and worrying as younger generations face challenges many of us didn't have: the prohibitive cost of college, the crushing burden of student loans, fewer jobs, the prevalence of no-pay or low-pay internships, the daunting cost of getting launched into an independent life.

We're watching as both political parties appear to put the interests of corporations and Wall Street, of political ambitions and strategies above the good of the nation and citizens in the economic lower 98%.
And we wonder what's to become of our country and of us.

We're learning, in a time of diminishing prospects and expectations, to find pleasure where we can, to live in the moment and cherish each day.  In an age where simplification and frugality have become the new standard, we're learning to live with no-frills and are happier than we had ever imagined on less than we planned.

There are times, even now, when we look back with a hint of nostalgia at the simple certainty of our mothers' lives in the Fifties. And then we remember their frustration and paltry options.  There are times when we look back at our own certainty, ambition and optimism in those heady, busy coming of age years -- and then we remember the difficult, sometimes heart-rending choices that had to be made. And, increasingly, there are times when we are grateful for our lives today -- times when we cherish the opportunity to look back on our lives and decide what has mattered most, times when we appreciate anew the value of family, friendships and enduring love. 

Remembering Cyril Ritchard

Some friends and I were talking the other day about beloved idols of our youth. Elvis, Ricky Nelson, The Beatles, and the enduring Frank Sinatra all came up.

My husband Bob remembers that he saw Ricky Nelson as the cool guy he longed to be and Annette, blooming into puberty on "The Mickey Mouse Club" for a generation of enchanted young boys, as the perfect symbol of sweet sensuality.

When all of this was going on, I wasn't among the admirers of Elvis or Ricky. Instead, from the time I was nine years old, I was totally enamored with Cyril Ritchard, the 50-something Australian actor who played Captain Hook in Mary Martin's "Peter Pan". He was the villain, but I knew he was kidding. I knew in my heart that he was a good man pretending to be bad. He was about the same height and build as my father -- but, despite his campy villainy, he projected a winning combination of warmth, silliness, outrageous humor and dignity. I felt safe when I thought of him. And, in a home where, at times, I was very frightened of my raging, alcoholic father, I thought of him a lot.

I used to fantasize that he would somehow meet and marry my beloved Aunt Molly -- both were single, after all, he a recent widower, she never married -- and they would adopt me and my siblings and we would live happily and safely ever after.

I used to write him an occasional fan letter -- and he would always write back, in his own hand, on his personal stationery with his home address on Central Park West in New York or from his country home in Connecticut. I treasured the short, but kind letters that were so adult, yet non-condescending.

I used to cut out and save any articles I could find about him. He was in his most active period -- starring on Broadway, on television, directing Broadway shows and operas at the Met.  And yet there was never enough press on him to satisfy me.  Aunt Molly, a professional writer who found my love for Mr. Ritchard both touching and amusing, stepped in -- writing a series of phony press releases about him that used stills from old silent films.  I thought they were hilarious.

                                         Three of Aunt Molly's Mock Press Releases

                                                

                                              

My father laboriously copied them in his photo lab and we sent a bunch of them to my idol.  He replied with delight that they were "excruciatingly funny! I have put them in a very special section of my scrapbook and was showing them to my dear friend Walter Pidgeon last night.  He wishes someone would write something like that for him, too! Please extend my warmest thanks to your Aunt Molly! She is very clever, indeed!"

My heart leapt for joy!

I was even more excited when he came to Los Angeles with "Visit to a Small Planet" and invited me, my brother and my friend Mary Laing, to visit him in his dressing room after the matinee performance we attended. It was one of the happiest times of my childhood.

He greeted us enthusiastically, laughing when I shyly told him that I thought he was more handsome than Rock Hudson. "I can assure you, my dear, that no one has ever told me that before," he said, smiling. "But sit down and tell me about you. I want to know about all of you."

And so we sat and told him our likes and dislikes, our hopes and dreams. He asked questions and, most of all, he listened, his attention never wavering. We told him about our teachers and our pets and a myriad of details about our lives. I quietly told him that my father sometimes frightened me a lot. He took my hand.

We talked about faith and the power of God to heal the most painful wounds.  He said that his faith had saved him when his only child, a son, passed away shortly after birth and when his beloved wife died of cancer. He assured me that faith could be my greatest support and greatest joy, too, and that it was something we would always share. He hugged me as we said goodbye and I felt a wonderful sense of safety and love.

                                                        
                                                          

Afterwards, I called Aunt Molly, who was living and working in Ohio at that time, to tell her the news. "Oh," she said, her voice choked with emotion. "I'm so glad! I'm so happy for you that he is such a good man, such a kind soul. I'm so glad he didn't disappoint you."

He never did -- even though he never met and thus never married Aunt Molly. Even though he never adopted me.  Even though I never saw him in person again, the memory of his warmth and kindness, the interest he took in us, in me, when we visited was sustaining. The shared faith kept me hopeful through many dark times.

And I delighted in seeing his television performances and listening to him read "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" on boxed LP's Aunt Molly gave me for my 12th birthday -- records I treasure to this day. And I read articles about him with new understanding -- particularly when Sondra Lee, who had played Tiger Lily in the Broadway production and in all three television broadcasts of "Peter Pan" described him in one as "an absolutely delicious human being, the kindest person I have ever known."

Many years later, when he came to Los Angeles with the Broadway musical "Sugar", there was a free Actors Equity/Screen Actors Guild showing. A close friend of mine, actor Maurice Sherbanee, got tickets. But, at the last minute, I had to go on a business trip and couldn't attend. Maurice went by himself and phoned me later that night to say he was so glad I had missed the show. Cyril Ritchard had had a heart attack onstage, had gone into cardiac arrest and was revived by co-star Larry Kert who quickly administered CPR. "It was terrible," Maurice said. "He nearly died right there in front of everyone. I'm so glad you didn't have to see it." I sent Mr. Ritchard a note when he was recovering at home in Connecticut. He replied that the episode had been frightening but now he was feeling "wonderfully well and my day was brightened even more by your kind note."

Three years later, the outcome wasn't nearly as positive. Appearing in the National Company of "Side By Side, By Sondheim" in Chicago, he had another heart attack just offstage during a Thanksgiving performance. He was admitted to Northwestern Medical Center where he died on December 18, 1977 shortly after turning 80. I heard the news when I was in San Francisco working with Dr. Chuck Wibbelsman on our first book.  Knowing my long affection for Cyril Ritchard, Çhuck brought me the newspaper, then embraced me.

While I grieved the loss of this good man and unique talent, I rejoiced that he had died doing what he loved, still active, still delighting audiences.  And I still remember his inspired silliness, his kindness, his versatility as a director, his singular charm as an actor. He was an unconventional idol, to be sure, for a young tween -- but he brought immeasurable joy and hope to a young girl who needed that so much.

Same Family, Differing Histories

When my brother Mike and his family visited us recently, he spent some time relaxing and reading some of my recent blog posts. After reading my blog about Roots and Wings, where I recounted my departure from home to college, he sighed.  "You're the only one of us to leave home in what could be called a normal way," he said.

While my memory of departure was loving parents letting go, his reality as well as Tai's were to be quite different.  He left home at 15, after years of physical and emotional abuse from our father, to go live with our maternal grandmother in Kansas, helping her on the farm and healing in the warmth of her unconditional love. Tai ran away from home when she was not quite 18, living with friends until she could find a job and a place of her own.

Even in less extreme family situations, siblings grow up experiencing the family and the world in a different way. Birth order, parental situations, and individual personalities can make such a difference in forming one's views of the family and of the past.

That's why a fond memory by one sibling is another's nightmare or may be greeted with a blank stare. That's why one sibling's feelings about aging parents may be different -- because he or she may have experienced the parents you shared at another life phase or in a whole different way.

I read recently that when one writes a memoir -- as I am in the process of doing -- it can be a minefield for family tensions because each sibling has his or her own take on what growing up in the family was like, with some shared and some very divergent memories.

The differences are quite apparent in my own family.

As the eldest child, I tried very hard to be good and to get along with both parents, keeping a low profile when things were not going well with father, doing everything I could to avoid upsetting him. I became very good at hiding.

Mike, an unusually winsome, loving child, found our father's fury and antipathy hard to understand. Once, when he was leaving for work, Father gave him a beating for no particular reason. Mike ran after him, weeping, his arms up, begging for a hug, as father climbed into his car. "Father!" he cried. "You forgot to kiss me goodbye!" Any time father was in a rare good mood, Mike would brighten. If father would take him up on his lap or show him some special attention, he was the happiest little boy alive. Unfortunately, those moments were rare.


Tai was born with spunk and spirit.  The first time father hit her, when she was about two years old, she faced him, nose to his kneecap, hands on her hips, stamped her foot and yelled "Don't you ever, ever, ever do that to me again!" I held my breath. Father laughed and said "I like your spirit, kid!" And, many years later, while the rest of us -- either at home or at a distance -- were quiet when he went on a drinking binge with his stockpiled Cuban rum, Tai ran into the kitchen screaming and smashed his entire irreplaceable stash in the sink, calling him a "hopeless alcoholic" before running off into the night to the house of a friend.

While we all share some memories and experiences -- both fun and painful -- of growing up together, our dramatically different personal experiences, relationships with parents and reactions to what went on, colored our lives in a variety of ways.

I was the first child born to parents in their mid-thirties, on an Air Force base near the end of World War II.  My parents were looking forward to the end of the war and the beginning of a prosperous and promising new life together.  My father, a difficult and conflicted man, greeted me with love and exasperation, with nurturing and verbal abuse. He encouraged me to be the best I could be and to not let my gender hold me back -- even as he treated our mother like a second class citizen.  As a result, I grew up driven, feeling I had to achieve to be loved, and wary of children as life-wreckers, after hearing much too often that having children had ruined my father's life. And yet, having been raised feeling that I was truly loved, I had no difficulty making friends and bonding with teachers, co-workers and some very good men. I got married at 32 and that marriage has survived and thrived for 34 years.

For Mike, the pain of his early years made him wary of commitment, unable to trust, until, in late middle age, he found just the right woman half a world away. A physician and expert in medical informatics, he was working at an international medical center in Bangkok, Thailand, when he met Amp -- a young Thai woman who is truly a twin soul. She's the only person I have ever met who is more frugal than he is. They married when he was 58 and had Maggie when he was 60.  Late in life, he has a happy marriage and a bright, lively toddler daughter -- and the joy and peace of real connection at last.

Tai, born to parents in their mid-forties who felt little but despair over their life situation, was essentially an only child after age eight after both Mike and I left home. She has no memory of our father ever having a job or our parents being happy or living lives with any semblance of normality. She grew up feeling abandoned and alone in a family situation that was increasingly chaotic before she fled for her life. Her growing up experience has made her tough and resilient on the outside, tender on the inside. She married for the first time at 21 and has spent a lifetime working to build a viable family.  It is, perhaps, no accident that she is a nurse who is dedicated to easing others' pain and is an infinitely patient parent to Nick.

It's important, in dealing with our siblings, to honor and respect their experiences, their memories and their very individual world views.  It isn't a matter of arguing whether something did or didn't happen,  whether a parent was this way or that.  The truth lies in each one's singular experience.

I got an email from Mike on the 4th of July, telling me that this was always his favorite holiday because father had always been in a good mood on that whole holiday weekend and always let him shoot a little carbide canon all day if he wanted,  an experience he describes as "pure pyrotechnic bliss. " And there were no beatings, ever, on the 4th of July.  For Mike, it was a blessed time of refuge from life as usual, his favorite holiday of the year.

And so he was celebrating with enthusiasm the other day, buoyed by memories and by happy current realities. He sent me a picture of Maggie celebrating the 4th in her own way.  And I rejoiced in his happiness and feeling of safety and contentment, knowing all that was very hard won.

                                  Maggie celebrating her Dad's favorite holiday - July 4!                            

Feeling the Limits With Adult Children

She was sitting in the gym locker room, furiously wiping tears away, when Kim and I walked in on her the other day. This woman, whom I'll call Joan, told us that she was feeling overwhelmed with fears and regrets: fears that her cherished 30-year-old son was about to make a major commitment to a woman she considered unworthy of him and regrets that she and her husband had ever moved to Arizona.

Their Phoenix-based son was the primary reason -- at least for Joan -- that they decided to leave their home of 42 years in the New York City area to move to the active adult community where we now live.  Their son, however, has his own life: a live-in girlfriend, a home of his own, his own circle of friends. He likes seeing his parents occasionally, but they aren't the center of his universe.

In addition to wondering why she and her husband uprooted themselves to live near a son who can live quite easily, day to day, without them, Joan loathes the Southwestern desert with every fiber of her being. It didn't help that the outside temperature at that point was 113. "Everything here is so....beige...so hideous...so hot!" she sobbed. "I want to go back to New York!" Yes, they had visited this community briefly -- for a weekend in February --  before making their decision to move to Arizona. But the real reason they came was to be closer to their son.

"So what do you think?" she asked us. "Should I speak to my son frankly and tell him that this woman is trouble? That she's taking advantage of him if she decides to go back to school? That I'm hurt about her moving all the pictures and artifacts I've given him for his new home into the spare room? After all, I'm his mother! Should I tell him all this?"

Kim and I answered as one: "No!"

We told her stories of mothers who stepped over the line and drove their kids away -- emotionally or otherwise. We speculated on the future of the British Mom-zilla, whose harsh, critical email to her son's fiancee went viral over the Internet recently and her dim prospects of a good relationship with her son and future daughter-in-law.  And we had stories closer to home. Kim talked about a friend whose potential mother-in-law made it clear that she disapproved of her son's relationship with her -- and although the marriage has been happy and the relationship between this woman and her mother-in-law was cordial, the closeness that both women might have enjoyed was precluded by that early hurt. And my childhood friend Mary told me that, in her happy 42-year-marriage, there has only been one dark cloud: the insistence of her in-laws that they continue to be the center of their son's life. That has meant more than four decades of annual vacations at the in-laws summer home in Maine rather than the trips Mary longed to take to a variety of places with her young family and with her husband when they became empty-nesters.

And it has meant that Mary learned to step back and let her own three children fly free of the nest. "It's a very hard, painful transition to make when your kids have been your whole life," she says. "But to let them go and live and vacation and love as they please is one of the greatest gifts I can give them.  And, interestingly enough, it has made us closer. When they spend time with us, I know it's because they really want to be with us rather than feeling this heavy obligation."

Letting your adult children go is one thing. Learning to keep your mouth shut is quite another.

Of course, there are times when you can't keep quiet: when your adult child is doing serious, even life-threatening harm to himself or others, with substance abuse or child abuse or neglect or is showing signs of mental illness. Those are times when you intervene with love and with professional help.

But in the choices and decisions of daily life, you may find yourself biting your tongue.

When you see an adult child maneuvering through the minefields of ill-advised relationships, financial mistakes, professional mis-steps, and questionable child-raising strategies, it's incredibly hard to sit back and be neutral. You want to scream: "He's a jerk, for heavens' sake!" or "You have HOW much credit card debt?" or "You quit your job???" or "If you keep giving her everything she screams for, you're in for a rough ride for the next 20 years."


If you can't stay totally silent, it's important to frame your concern in loving, but non-intrusive ways:


"I love you so much and don't want to see you hurt. Most of all, I want you to be happy.  Do you want to talk about your hopes and issues with this relationship? Or not?"


"I have faith that you can manage your life just fine, but I do have concerns when you tell me about this debt. Would you like some help in figuring out a budget or a payment plan that will get you out from under all that sooner?"


"What are you planning for the future? What did you learn from this job experience? How would you like the next to be different? How can I help you right now?"


"I know child-raising is different today and that you're totally committed to being a great parent. I'm just wondering how you set limits and when you say "No". How is she with 'No'?"


There are times, however, when it is just best to keep quiet, as excruciating as that can be. 


 As a parent, you know that no one will love or care for your son or daughter in quite the same way that you do. It's very hard to see kids get hurt or make mistakes, but such experiences add to growth and wisdom.  Your stepping in to spare them all that is not likely to be appreciated.


Adult children need the freedom to love and lose, screw up, and struggle with choices. As a parent, you can be there to offer support and even advice if they ask for it.  But unsolicited advice or what they might see as meddling can drive an emotional wedge between you and your adult child.

When your children were little, you taught them limits: not to interrupt when adults were speaking, to show respect for their elders, to pick up their toys, to hear the word "No" without backtalk or tantrums.

Now that they're grown, you're up against some limits. It can be a delicate balance: to express concern without overstepping into criticism and carping, to care without imposing, to support without smothering, to love and let go.

When Joan asked her, mother to mother, how to handle her doubts about her son's romance, Kim, the seasoned parent of adult children, put it all very succinctly in the locker room that day: "You shut up and pray."

Where Is Home?

Bob and I moved to our spacious new home in Arizona fourteen months ago and have delighted in owning our first brand new house with all the modern conveniences and plenty of space for us, our cats and our hobbies and interests. The neighbors are wonderful, the community welcoming, the pace of living is just what we had hoped. In short, things couldn't be better.

                                   Our home at Sun City Anthem Merrill Ranch, AZ -2011                

Then how to explain my sudden tears when our next door neighbors Carl and Judith,  while vacationing in Southern California, sent us an online postcard of our Valencia home of 29 years, a house we sold and left 14 months ago?

                              Postcard of our former Valencia, CA home - 2011

"Our home!" I gasped when I saw the picture. I noticed the pines had grown even taller, that the citrus trees inside the gate were in bad need of trimming, that the little flower pot I had put on the gate when our house went up for sale was still sitting there. And, as I studied the photo, tears rolled down my cheeks. I couldn't understand why I was crying. Bob and I have agreed many times that it would be very hard to go back to 1300 square feet after spreading out so happily over 2345 square feet here. It would be very tough to go back to a neighborhood where people were so busy working and commuting that they didn't have the time or energy to get to know each other. The Los Angeles area traffic would be horrible after the freedom of country roads. And yet....

I remember the day we moved into the house in Valenica -- the first we had ever owned. I was 36 and Bob was 37. We were thrilled with the openness of the floor plan that made this little house seem larger. It was almost new: the previous owners had lived there for only a few months before deciding to move back to Canada. They had planted pine trees and built berms in front of the fence in the front of the house, nothing else. Over time, Bob and I added our own touches -- a line of citrus trees producing delicious grapefruit and oranges in winter, fragrant blossons in spring, lush grass, shade trees on the backyard slope and, later on, a beautiful hand set stone waterfall on that slope  that we called "Molly's Falls" in memory of my beloved Aunt Molly who always thought there should be a waterfall there. The sound of the water often soothed my soul after an exhausting day and brought back memories of Aunt Molly and the wonderful times we had together in that house.

                                    Molly's Falls at former home in memory of Aunt Molly

Because my parents died when we were all still quite young, my home in Valencia became the family homestead for my brother and sister, who joined us for many years of holidays, fun visits and quiet talks. Bob and I knew many years of contentment, sitting by the hearth on rainy days, enjoying reading in our living room lined with floor to ceiling bookcases. Our first cat Freddie, the only cat we ever allowed outside, roamed the slope with great pleasure, hunting, communing with neighborhood cats and resting in the shade of the many trees. Twenty-nine years of memories -- both joyous and painful, 29 years of hopes and dreams, 29 years of daily living took place under its roof.

And that little house was our safe haven, our sturdy little home that stood up to a number of challenges.

There was the 1994 Northridge earthquake that awakened us with terror one early morning in January. Everything came out of the kitchen cabinets. Two bookcases crashed over by our bed. The house was a mess and, hampered by lack of running water, it took us more than a week to clean up (trying to clean a mixture of broken glass mixed with Midori melon liquer off the kitchen floor with a bottle of Evian was a real challenge!). But houses nearby were actually split in two by the quake. A whole condo project a few blocks away was destroyed. So, even as we scrubbed, we were thankful that the house itself had stood firm.

A year and a half later, the house next door -- the home of our beloved neighbor Carol Wilson, a 65 year old widow -- caught fire due to an electrical wiring defect in the attic. The fire, undetected, quickly spread throughout the attic, coming down through a ceiling fan outlet in Carol's bedroom, where she was relaxing, watching a Dodger game on t.v.  The flames ignited the oxygen tanks Carol kept by her bed. The house exploded. I was at a nearby supermarket at the time and heard the explosion, which sounded like a sonic boom. I wondered if the space shuttle was landing at Edwards Air Force Base again. Unusual for it to be coming in at 9 p.m. I drove home and rounded the corner to see my own house on fire. It took another moment to realize that the primary fire, the real devastation, was next door. The scene was total chaos with firefighters, police, and a crowd of neighbors. I searched the crowd frantically for Bob, for Carol....The arms of strangers enveloped me as we all came together for yet another neighborhood disaster. Finally, I found the arms of Carol's other next door neighbor Ruth Milne. She held me tight. "She didn't make it," she said softly. We wept together until Bob found us.  Our house was saved. We only lost our roof.  But the loss of Carol saddens me to this day.

And then there was the day in 2003 when, after a difficult recovery from thoracic surgery, I had been called back to work a week early at the psychiatric clinic where I was a therapist. Angry, resentful and still hurting, I went.  And while I was gone, there was a violent break-in at our house.  Gang members from nearby San Fernando chopped in the front door with an axe and upended every shelf, drawer and piece of furniture in the house, stealing jewelry, my laptop computer and some small electronics. We found  our cats Timmy and Gus trembling under the only towel remaining in the linen closet. There was a shoe shaped black smudge on Gus' head. It was weeks before they would go back into the living room.

About that time, my literary agent Susan Protter, on the phone from New York, asked the logical question: "Haven't you ever thought about moving?"

We had thought about it, but this was so much home to us. We decided that only retirement and a really terrific new home and community could make us move.

And so the time came. We found Sun City Anthem Merrill Ranch in Florence, Arizona. It was exactly what we had hoped and dreamed.  And we saw a house there, under construction at the time, that was even more than we had dreamed.  Indeed, we had never imagined that we'd be living in such a big, beautiful new home. Everything was -- and is -- perfect or nearly so.

So why did the tears come when Carl and Judith sent us that online postcard of our former home?

Where is home, after all? It's said that home is where the heart is. And our hearts are certainly here in this new home, in this community we truly love. Unless fate somehow intervenes, we expect that it will be our home for the rest of our lives. And yet, it's quite likely that we will probably be here for fewer years than we lived in that modest brown house in Valencia.

I guess the tears were for all the years of living, loving and growing there. The tears were for the memories -- of friendships made and friends tragically lost, for the fragrant citrus blossoms and juicy harvests, for the holidays shared with family, for good times with friends we see less frequently now, for the familiarity and comfort within those walls, for the soothing sound of Molly's Falls.

I guess, however comfortable, content and absolutely joyous life is here, a piece of my heart will always be in that little brown house surrounded by pine trees and soothed by the sound of Molly's Falls.

Retirement Readiness

People have been nagging my friend Nora to retire for years, pointing out that she has an excellent pension plus 401K after 35 years with one employer.  They point out how comfortable her life could be.  But she has always shrugged the advice off with "I'm not ready." And people always look shocked, thinking that she has all the financial resources anyone could want, so what's the problem? But she hasn't felt ready emotionally to make this major life transition. Over time, it has struck me how wise she has been to recognize the considerable difference between financial and emotional readiness for retirement.

There are countless books, numerous online discussions and resources, an explosion of companies ready and willing to help with retirement financial planning. But the financial aspects of retirement, while important, are only part of the equation.

Emotional preparation and planning for this major life transition is as important as financial planning.  Until you know what you want to do and the person you want to be in retirement, the pieces of your new life in retirement won't fit. And all the financial planning in the world won't prepare you fully for life changes linked to the retirement transition -- or for the unexpected.

Perhaps the most important major adjustment in retirement is: to live fully with what is.

Bob and I started serious financial planning for retirement in our forties -- a little later than optimal, but still in time to set some sound financial practices in place and in time to give a lot of thought to the kind of retirement we wanted.  We saved as much as we could. We made the decision to keep living in our modest starter home and pay the mortgage down rather than move up to a grander place. We drove our cars as long as possible.

The last five years, we made major adjustments career-wise. I took a full-time day job in a large organization that offered pensions and 401k's as well as higher salaries than would have been possible elsewhere.  The private practice I loved, as well as my writing, were both relegated to evenings and weekends as I focused on saving money for retirement. It was also a good emotional preparation for retirement to have as my primary occupation a job I didn't especially like: any doubts or conflicts I might have had about leaving the full-time workforce were diminished in those five difficult years. Nora, who was my boss during those years, used to tease me that the job was "your retirement job" meaning that it wasn't my career and would thus be easier to leave without looking back. She was right. Bob worked several years longer than he had planned, compensating a bit by working four day weeks his last four years of employment. We were elated that our savings and home equity were growing steadily and that money would not be a concern.

We also prepared emotionally, as much as possible, for the day when we would step away from our jobs into the next phase of our life together. We asked ourselves what we most wanted to do in retirement and who we wanted to be after our long years of full-time work were over. We discussed life priorities. We explored places to live. We dreamed out loud -- imagining all the things we would do and passions we would re-discover in retirement. When work seemed most tedious, a quick retirement fantasy would bring back our good humor. We both thought a lot about who we were -- and the people we hoped to be.

By the summer of 2008, we had discovered and decided on the community where we wanted to spend our retirement years.  We dreamed of a nice, but not lavish, home there -- exercising, swimming, taking classes on a daily basis. We planned to buy a new car for frequent road trips and made plans for some more extensive, exotic travel. The future seemed blissfully set.

Then came the crash of 2008.  Almost instantly, 40% of our 401K funds and 33% of our home equity vanished.  We wondered if we would be able to retire -- as so carefully planned -- in April 2010. We wondered if we would ever realize any of our dreams.

We began to imagine working until age 70. As an option, that was a mixed bag. Bob's job was very secure, his boss didn't want him to leave and he could easily have worked five or six more years if absolutely necessary. But he had dropped down to four day weeks at age 62 and loved his day off each week. He was eager to move on to full retirement.  My day job wasn't nearly as secure. The department where I worked was in a state of reorganization. There were massive budget cuts in the organization (UCLA).  My job was considered non-essential and my boss Nora had plans to retire within the next few years. I knew I was highly unlikely to have a job there until age 70. We did the math over and over. We re-examined our priorities. And we decided to take the risk of sticking with our original plans to retire in April 2010.

It meant downsizing a few of our dreams and living with what is. But what is has turned out to be very close to that long-planned retirement dream.

We now live in that community we saw and loved in 2008 -- Sun City Anthem Merrill Ranch in Florence, Arizona.  While our home equity in California continued to free fall up to the day we sold our home of 29 years, what we came away with was more than enough to pay cash for our dream home here.  In fact, due to the plunge in real estate prices in Arizona, we were able to buy a much larger, more beautiful home here in Arizona than we had ever imagined. We chose not to buy that new car quite yet, realizing that our old car -- a 9-year-old Honda Civic, with low mileage and in excellent condition was up to any trips we might choose to take. We have decided to scale down some travel plans, realizing that extensive international travel was never high on our priority list and we have opted instead to restrict travel, at least initially, only to the places we have most wanted to see.

Life is still very good.  We're comfortable with the limits and tradeoffs.  And so much of our original plan is still intact: we are exercising every day, learning on a daily basis. I'm writing. Bob is making music. We're reading voraciously. We're learning to cook and eat in a healthy way. We swim and socialize more than we ever imagined. We have time to smell the roses and cuddle with our three beloved cats. Emotionally, our retirement is exactly what we had hoped and dreamed.

So if the economy has you wondering about your retirement future, it helps immensely to have a plan for retirement that makes sense emotionally. So, then, whatever happens or doesn't happen financially, you can find a way to have a satisfying retirement or semi-retirement.

Retirement readiness is a key in making sensible choices about which trade-offs and limits work -- and which ones don't work -- for you.

Retirement readiness means much more than straining on the leash to leave a job, office politics, long commutes and days when you feel your time is never your own. It means that you are emotionally ready to run toward something rather than away from something. It means you have an active plan for your immediate and extended future.

Here, from our experience, are the five most important considerations in emotional retirement planning.

1. Have a plan emotionally as well as financially.
How will you structure your life once you retire? Maybe you'll give yourself a transitional vacation and then pursue some new interests, old passions or both in leisure and/or in part-time work. Maybe you'll choose to tweak the lifestyle you have always had, substituting part-time work or volunteer work for full-time work.  What matters most is what feels right to you.

Particularly when your identity is very much tied in with your work, it's especially important to have a transition plan. Think very specifically: what aspects of yourself and your passions do you want to explore once you retire? Start pursuing these before you retire, if possible, to fine-tune your plans, deciding with a clear vision what is going to work for you once you leave your workplace.

My major retirement dream was to reconnect with the work that most defines me -- writing. In the last fifteen years before retirement, I avoided the financial uncertainties of writing by pursuing other careers and jobs that offered more security. I did a bit of writing here and there, but, on a daily basis, I missed it terribly.  However, I didn't plunge into writing projects immediately after I retired in April 2010.  I was so exhausted and depleted that I made a very conscious decision to take a six-month vacation: to rest and exercise and settle in to my new neighborhood without giving any thought to work.  It felt wonderful.  And six months later, I felt refreshed, renewed and ready to start writing again.

It's important to know emotionally what we need as we near and enter retirement. And it's important to examine these needs through the prism of what is. Are you prepared to live on less? What can you do without?

2. Have a clear vision of how and where you want to live.
 Do you need to be near family and see them on a daily or weekly basis? Do you want to break away from the familiar and explore a whole new area and lifestyle? Have you and your partner discussed candidly what it would mean to each of you to relocate? Have you tried out new locations in all seasons? Florida during buggy, humid summers? Arizona and Nevada during blazing hot summer days? Colorado in the winter? It's important to experience a retirement spot in the most challenging -- as well as most attractive -- seasons.

It's also vital to ask yourself if a relocation decision is being made with your own, independent plans and interests in mind. Planning to relocate in order to be closer to adult children and grandchildren can be risky. Some people I know here have adult children who have had to relocate away recently in search of professional advancement or by necessity in a challenging job market -- and their parents are left living in a place they may or may not have chosen, on their own, to spend their retirement years. And some find that life near the kids isn't what they had imagined when they pulled up stakes. Their kids have lives of their own and their parents, while dearly loved, are not necessarily at the center of their lives. Some parents deal with this shift well at close range-- but some don't.

3. Know that retirement can greatly impact your marriage.
 Even long, stable marriages can be shaken by the changes that retirement brings.  Planning your lives together and apart is an important part of retirement readiness.  Do you envision doing some things on your own and some things with your partner? Or do you hope for constant togetherness?

Togetherness can take on a whole new meaning when it is 24/7 -- especially when your time together has been much more limited during your working lives.  A wife who has not worked outside the home may feel that her territory and time has been invaded when her husband is home for good.  Even a dual-career couple can struggle with personal priorities and needs for space after retirement. It can help to anticipate such needs before the fact and plan accordingly.

Bob and I enjoy spending most of our time together. But he likes movies more than I do, so he often goes to the movies on his own while I use the time alone to write or to pursue another interest that we don't necessarily share. One surprise during retirement has been our sometimes conflicting desires to socialize. I like getting together with neighbors and friends and attending community events more often than Bob does. We have agreed that I will do whatever socializing I like and that Bob will join me when he has the inclination. Our friends are very supportive of our agreement -- very happy to see Bob when he chooses to join us, very inclusive of me despite the prevailing couples' culture here.

We see some couples struggle with their interests, needs and priorities, however.  A couple I'll call Ben and Brenda are generally happy. But he likes to read and surf the Internet. She thinks books equal clutter and resents the time he spends on the computer. Her major recreation is shopping, which he hates but gets pulled into because she has given up driving and all major shopping is at least a 30 minute drive.  When they were busy working, their differences weren't quite so apparent. Now, in retirement, they're struggling to find a way to compromise on a daily basis.

4. Prepare for a change in friendship dynamics.
It can also help, in preparing emotionally for retirement, to realize how your changed status can impact friendships. Your friends who are still working will not have the time and flexibility you have in retirement. You may not see them as much as you would like.  If you choose to relocate, you will face the task of keeping up old, now long-distance friendships as well as making new friends. How open are you to making new friendships?

Some fear that it really isn't possible to expand one's circle of trusted friends in late adulthood. But some of us have been surprised, quite happily, to find that it is entirely possible.  "Isn't it amazing?" my neighbor and friend Phyllis observed the other day. "We all started as neighbors. Then we became friends. And now we're family! Who knew that would be possible?"

5. Keep your expectations realistic.
Sometimes reality exceeds our happy expectations.  And sometimes our expectations are altered by reality. A week after I retired and two days after Bob retired, we loaded ourselves and our cats Gus, Maggie and Marina in the car and drove to our new home in Arizona. In general, our first month here was exactly what we had hoped and dreamed. But real life details did intrude. Two weeks after our move, I had an abscessed tooth. Quickly hunting up a new dentist long before I had planned, I had complicated and painful oral surgery. The next week, our beloved cat Marina died, quite unexpectedly, of leukemia. And during all of this, new friendships were developing to soothe our pain and raise our spirits.  Life's ups and downs continue to happen even after you realize your dreams.

I got an email from my friend Nora today. She has finally decided to retire after 35 years at her current job.  Her last day will be next Wednesday, June 29. She says she feels ready at last.  She's anxious, nervous, excited and happy.  Her overwhelming feeling is one of satisfaction in her work and her legacy at her workplace where, for the past year, she has concentrated on getting new positions and promotions for long-time, key employees.  Her generativity has kicked in and she is delighted to have made a difference in the lives of others. She has a plan for her retirement, but is taking three months of delicious, languid vacation first.  She feels she has much left to do in making a difference for others.  She is stepping away from the familiar and running toward a new phase of life with confidence that she knows where she is going and joy in this new life transition. And that makes all the difference!

Gus: A Life of Love and Kindness

Whenever I've written a tribute to a special cat, it has been to a cat who has passed away. This tribute is to Gus, who is very much alive, and turning 13 years old this week.

Gus is a big, sweet red/orange tabby whose loving spirit has brightened our lives and the lives of the six other cats -- four now deceased -- that we have had over the years. He is the only cat we have who has known every one of the others.

I wasn't looking for a cat when I first encountered Gus and his brother Timmy.  I went to Dr. Tracy McFarland's office to get more saline solution for our dying 17-year-old Freddie, our first cat. There, in a cage in the lobby, were five beautiful, outgoing kittens who looked like little lion cubs. The receptionist told me that a postal worker had found these five kittens abandoned in a box in a local junkyard.  They had been only three weeks old, not even weaned, and close to death. He brought them in to Dr. Tracy McFarland, known as The Cat Doctor in Santa Clarita, CA.  She spent a month nursing them back to health. The staff bottle-fed and socialized them. Three -- two red tabbies and a calico -- were already adopted. The two remaining -- who saw me and rushed to the front of the cage, making eye contact and purring -- were a red tabby they had named Big Red and Blondie, a Burmese mix with faint red tabby markings. Blondie was the runt of the litter. He had a heart problem that could prove fatal if it didn't correct itself within a year. No one wanted a little kitten who could die. His brother Big Red watched him closely. They slept curled up together. They were so bonded that Dr. Tracy insisted that they be adopted together.

                                         Timmy and Gus as kittens in August 1998                                                                                

I called Bob from the vet's and begged him to come see these kittens. He was aghast. We had a much loved, dying 17-year-old cat who had always been an only animal. Was it fair or even sane to bring in two kittens at this juncture? "I know," I said. "But we have to have these kittens. There's something about them that I can't begin to explain."

Bob arrived at Dr. Tracy's office, took one look at them and fell in love. He took Blondie out of the cage and the kitten rubbed his cheek against Bob's and lay his head on his shoulder, purring loudly. Bob's eyes filled with tears. "Even if he dies soon, no matter how short or long his life is, I want every day of his life to be filled with love and happiness," he said, his voice breaking. "And I want to name him Timmy, the sweetest name I know. We'll take them both."

So Timmy and his brother Big Red -- whom we re-named Gus -- came home with us.  While our old cat Freddie found curious, playful Timmy a bit of an annoyance, he quickly warmed up to Gus.  They shared food. When Freddie could no longer groom himself, Gus would groom him. As Freddie lay on a quilt at the foot of our bed, shivering and nearing death, Gus lay beside him to warm and comfort him.

                                        Gus comforting a dying Freddie in 1998              

The day Timmy and Gus were neutered, Timmy was ill from the anesthetic most of the day -- and Gus held him in his paws, comforting him.

                                       Gus comforts Timmy on neutering day - 1998  

The love between these two brothers brought so much joy to our lives for the next nine years. Timmy's heart problem went away and he grew up healthy and strong.  Timmy, who was outgoing and loved people, eventually became my first therapy cat, working with me in animal-assisted therapy. Gus, who was equally loving but slow to warm up to strangers, limited his affection to our family and his beloved brother.

                                      Timmy (l) and Gus (r) as adults - about 2002 


And when Timmy died suddenly from melamine poisoning due to tainted cat food in 2007, we feared Gus would die as well. Not became of the cat food -- they had eaten different brands -- but because of his grief.  Gus was inconsolable. He howled all night, every night, for three weeks after Timmy's death -- until Dr. Tracy suggested that we get a pair of kittens for him to nurture.

It worked wonderfully.  When we brought home Maggie, a Bombay, and Teddy, a black and white tuxedo kitten, from a local rescue organization, Gus embraced them literally and in spirit. He quickly bonded with Maggie, especially, grooming her, holding her, sleeping with her.  He was fond of Teddy, too, grooming and hanging out with him. But when Teddy died suddenly of a neurological birth defect about a month after we adopted him, Gus was unperturbed. He had his Maggie to nurture.

                                        Gus and Maggie meeting for the first time  - 2007

                                     Gus holding Maggie and grooming Teddy

                                      Gus, Maggie and Teddy settling in for a nap  

A year later, I was in PetSmart to get cat grass for Gus and Maggie. Passing the adoption center, I caught a glimpse of a beautiful flame-point Siamese cat -- a two year old adult -- reaching a paw through the bars -- and I was enthralled. Her name was Marina and she had been relinquished not once but twice in her young life. The first family gave her up because their baby proved allergic to cats. The second family relinquished her because she was too "needy."  As she looked at me with love and longing, I couldn't resist.  There was no kitty grass in stock. We went home with Marina instead.

 Maggie was not amused, growling like a Rottweiler through the closed bathroom door at Marina for the first week she was home. (They later became buddies.) Gus was more enthusiastic, rushing to groom and embrace her.  Marina, who hadn't been with multiple cats before, was wary initially, but warmed to both Gus and Maggie in time.  She also became my second -- and last -- therapy cat, showing an amazing gift for working with clients in conflict.  Shortly after I closed my practice and Bob and I retired, moving to our new home in Arizona, Marina -- a lively, joyous creature -- became quiet and stopped eating. We rushed her to a local vet who told us that she was in end-stage leukemia with multiple organ failure. She died two days later.  The day she died,  Gus  and Maggie were both by her side, offering comfort.

                                         Gus and Marina in 2009

I was heartbroken and in an irrational desire to find another Siamese mix to replace the very loving, cuddly Marina, I searched local rescue organizations. There was a Lynx point Siamese mix kitten at a shelter 40 miles away. Her name was Sweet Pea. She looked irresistible on line. And she has taught me a lesson I should have known: no cat is ever like another.  Sweet Pea is hell on four legs. She can drive Maggie -- and even Gus -- crazy with her kitten antics that have persisted into her second year. But most of the time, Gus is infinitely patient as she nips his ears, his tail and his nose.

                            Gus and Attack Kitten Sweet Pea (aka PsychoPea) 2010          

                                  Gus, Maggie and grown-up Sweet Pea - 2011  

When my husband Bob suffers nightmares related to his temporal lobe epilepsy, Gus is quickly by his side. When I am reading in the evening, Gus snuggles up beside me, purring and rubbing. When I have a migraine headache, Gus is there instantly to comfort me and keep me company.  In all his years with us, he has never scratched or bitten anyone -- even kids who have picked him up or strangers who have rushed to pet him. He is the kindest, most gentle cat I have ever known. And he is a warm, droll companion, enjoying football games with Bob, watching with quiet bemusement as I practice tap dancing.

                                        Bob and Gus enjoy Alabama football game - 2010

                                      Gus Keeping Bob company on a sick day - 2011        

                               Maggie and Sweet Pea are quick to follow Gus' example
                                          

He is an old thirteen. He used to jump great heights to run along the tops of our library bookcases. His jumping days are over.  His gait has slowed. His days are spent snoozing between the pillows of our bed or in the little bed he has had since he was a kitten.  We wonder if he had some exposure to the tainted cat food melamine that killed Timmy. Or perhaps the loss of his brother and other feline pals has weighed heavily. Or maybe he is just getting old along with us, savoring the days, and committed to live in a spirit of love and kindness.  Not a day goes by that Gus doesn't give us the gift of his warmth and affection. And not a day goes by that we don't delight in his gentle, sweet presence. We consider every day we still have Gus a blessed one. We want every day of his life to be filled with love and happiness.