Category: let’s talk

Let’s Talk About Getting Old

Karen

Continuing yesterday’s theme of talking about uncomfortable ideas when all anyone was expecting was cat pictures: Let’s talk about our looming mortality!

The inevitable thought after, “Kids or no kids?” is, “If no, who will take care of me when I’m old?” In the fall, the New York Times ran a series on “New York’s Oldest Old”  that destroyed me. Every article seemed to sum up the fears that had been percolating side by side with the questions of offspring and The Future (especially this one, about tracking down someone’s next of kin after he died alone and wasn’t found for weeks).

Thinking about my future as an old lady made me realize that it’s actually not that far away: If I pay off the car in five years and get a mini ranch/hobby farm/house with a bigger backyard in ten years, a thirty year mortgage on that means I will be 75 when it’s paid off. Do they even give out mortgages to old people? Will I be able to feed my animals and pay for heat?  How long will it take for anyone to find my body?

The idea of a kid who will grow up to check on you is appealing. But I think having a child just to ensure a caretaker for your old age is deeply, deeply foolish: You may survive your child. Your child may move away. You may end up hating each other. It’s not a good enough reason alone to become a parent.

So how to cope with the idea of being old and alone? The NY Times is presenting horror stories, yes, but the dying alone article also had this hopeful part:

The solitude of so many deaths wears on Mr. Plaza, the fear that someday it will be him splayed on the floor in one of these silent apartments. [Ed: NO SHIT, reporter.] “This job teaches you a lot,” he said. “You learn whatever material stuff you have you should use it and share it. Share yourself. People die with nobody to talk to…”
He is 52, also divorced, and without children, but he keeps expanding his base of friends. Every day, he sends them motivational Instagram messages…He said: “When I die, someone will find out the same day or the next day. Since I’ve worked here, my list of friends has gotten longer and longer.”

It’s good advice: Share your stuff. Share yourself. Be a good friend. Stay engaged and keep your mind sharp. (It probably wouldn’t hurt to have a lot of Instagram followers, either.)

***

I guess I just had to get some things off my chest this week. I don’t spend all my energy worrying about the future, but these are big things that are on my mind, and I’d been sitting on some links for quite a while, debating talking about them.

One day at a time, right? One day of doing 20 minutes of yoga so you can stay limber as you age at a time…

Let’s Talk About Having Kids

Karen

I am turning 36 in a month. After my annual visit to the lady doctor last year, who breezily announced that being 35 means you’re “AMA,” or “Advanced Maternal Age,” the thought of biological kids has been a pretty constant undercurrent in my brain. Like a current, it’s tossing me from side to side, sometimes into a calm eddy where being a “mom” actually means raising animals and hanging with my nephew and camping and writing and deep friendships.

And other times, the current tosses me up on the rocks, like yesterday’s annual doctor visit where I said I still wasn’t sure and the (female) doctor announced that “not having kids is a major regret for a lot of people.” I tried to articulate the thoughts that have been forming for the last year, like rocks being smoothed by the current: There are ways to be maternal even beyond an Advanced Maternal Age. Fostering. Adoption. Raising baby goats. Leading a Girl Scout troop, for chrissakes.

I think she got the picture, because she said goodbye and told me to enjoy “sleeping in and going out to dinner and other things you can do without kids”…which, however inadvertently, made a childless life seem supremely trivial. And then I was filled with doubt that I was just rationalizing what I didn’t really want and fear that I would look back on my trivial, lonely life and be filled with bitter regret

***

Last week, I came across this article by Rebecca Solnit, which I debated sharing (because this shit is getting personal). But she sums up the issues of happiness vs. meaning, childlessness vs. femininity, and everything else so perfectly:

We are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower—and wither—all around us.
[…] People lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity in part from the belief that children are the best way to fulfill your capacity to love… But there are so many things to love besides one’s own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world.

 

The whole piece is fantastic but those two passages really jumped out at me. To be reminded that there is no one right way to live a life–or to love–was seriously cathartic.

I don’t have any easy answer. I’m still writing the novel of my own life, and it may or may not have the expected plot line. The reality is I don’t want a kiddo right now (hell, I just bought a car instead of five years of diapers and preschool). And since the present moment is all we have, I’ll just have to move forward, moment by moment, checking in. No matter what, “there are so many things that need love.”

There is work for my love to do.

There’s work for everyone’s.

Let’s Talk About Cars

Karen

I’ve been driving my faithful Ford Focus hatchback for fourteen years now. I thought that 2015 would be the year of the new (fast) car for me, but this year Subaru stopped making my first pick, the WRX in a hatchback. Ford is coming out with an AWD Focus RS next year, but I think the limited quantities will push it out of my price range.

And then. Last week I read this 20,000 word blog post from Wait But Why about Elon Musk and Tesla Motors. It’s worth a read even if you’re not shopping for a car, but it also made me think, “Oh. Why not get an electric car?” (Wait Buy Why is very persuasive, what with the research and the reasoning behind all his posts.)

The “mid-range” Tesla Model 3 is slated to debut in 2017. So…maybe I keep saving my money? And keep Old Focus running strong.

Let’s Talk About The Art Of Manliness

Karen2 Comments

Recently I found a site called The Art of Manliness. (I feel as surreptitious reading this site as I did reading wedding blogs back in the day–except I think reading this is healthier.) It has an awesome name going for it and it has nearly 72,000 followers on Facebook. It is, indeed, all about manliness.

I like how the author defines “manliness” here, equating it with virtue (although the site is also full of tutorials on such topics as how to escape a riptide), and I like that the site encourages dressing appropriately, cleaning one’s car for a date, and generally being capable and decent.

But for all the virtue, it still seems mired in traditional gender roles, which I’m guilty of, too: Is my thinking a man should know things about cars and home repair and riptides any different from a man thinking I should know things about baking and mending and grocery shopping? Are we still mired in gender roles because men and women are fundamentally different, so there will always be “manliness” and “womanliness” instead of “humanness”?

It all reminds me of a quote from To The Lighthouse, where everyone is at dinner and the young male student is insecure and wants to join the conversation and the single lady painter notices:

There is a code of behaviour she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her occupation may be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may…relieve…his vanity, his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there, smiling.

Let’s Talk About Accessories

Karen3 Comments

Specifically, big sunglasses: I found the archives of Life magazine last Saturday and got sucked into looking at pictures of Jackie Kennedy, whose trademark (after Camelot) was big sunglasses.
Then I saw this stylish lady on The Sartorialist yesterday, who is also making me want to talk about leopard print, as well:

I haven’t worn big sunglasses in a few years because I think there’s a risk, with short hair, of them looking like this. But now I am reconsidering.

Let’s Talk About Shoes

Karen3 Comments

Instead of talking about our feelings today, let’s talk about brown shoes that aren’t too high-heeled. After watching Help! Thursday night, I did some major googling to find a pair of boots like they were wearing in that clip I posted Friday. While all the ankle boots for women this season seem stuck in 1986, I found some: They’re Florsheim, for men.


Sometimes I am happy to not have tiny ladylike feet, because a men’s size 7 is a women’s size 9. My only hesitation? A size 7 isn’t available from a site that offers free shipping and returns, so I’d be gambling a little that they’d work.

What do we think about these mod boots? They’d look great with jeans, but not so much with skirts or dresses. But they’re a decent price (unlike these $350 boots of magic from Sweden) and I had a pair of jodhpur boots in college that I loved. Also, I could pretend I was a Beatle.

Let’s Talk About The State Fair

Karen

The deadline to enter anything I’ve sewn or knitted in the state fair is fast approaching, so I’d better decide if I’m going to enter or not. I’ve sewn a lot over the past year, certainly, but no project is jumping out at me as particularly fair-worthy. Last year’s entries were a silk dress and a jacket–kind of big, impressive pieces–but this year my quilt certainly won’t be ready in time,* and I’m still wearing the robe and pajamas, so I don’t know.

As for knitting, I think the owl sweater is a candidate, but in my years of fair-going I’ve noticed that the judges tend to favor huge intarsia projects straight out of 1986:
And I still feel much more shy about my knitting getting judged than my sewing, although I think I do a pretty good job finishing.

Maybe I won’t enter anything; maybe my state fair phase is ending, like the derby phase (haven’t been to one in two years). Although if I don’t go, where will I ever eat funnel cake again? Lots to consider..

*I dropped the quilt off to be machine-quilted two weeks ago, hooray! I think there’s another week to go before I get it back and have to do the binding. (Not hooray.)

Let’s Talk About The Twilight Movie

Karen3 Comments

This movie made it onto the Netflix queue because I was considering the books for trashy summer reading (along with Anne McCaffery and some Ian Fleming) and I thought the movie might give me an idea of how bad the books might be.

And let me tell you, it was bad. Not so much bad dialogue, or a bad plot (well…), but bad for teen girls all over America: How did a book that teaches you that it’s ok to throw all your love at someone who will hurt you–who might even kill you–become a worldwide bestselling romance? Because in real life the person you’re throwing your love at isn’t a sparkly vampire; he’s just going to give you a broken arm. Or worse.

So I don’t think I need to read the books–I’ll spare myself that frustration (and spare Mr. Isbell the rants about women perpetuating these behavior patterns). (Seriously, Woman Author and Women Director and Producers? You think that because a secondary character asks a boy to prom that this makes your book/movie modern and empowering? Wow.)

The movie ended with a Radiohead song, though. I didn’t see that coming.

Let’s Talk About My Hair

Karen2 Comments

In the past two years my hair has gone from being this curly:

to what could only be called “wavy” if you’re feeling generous. My hair has betrayed me, and now I don’t know what to do with it.

In the winter I cut it even shorter, hoping for a Jean Seberg look:
But, in the words of the wife in a Hemingway short story*, “I get so tired of looking like a boy.”

It’s been nearly 10 years since I had long hair; I didn’t do anything special with my hair when it was long (although it was curly then, AHEM, HAIR); and I know I would hate growing it out. But. I find myself staring at pictures of braids and long glossy hair and echoing that Hemingway character:
“I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel. . . . And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.”

In other words, I don’t know what I want.

*The story is “Cat in the Rain,” from In Our Time.