The Yellow Light of November

"The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July." — Henry David Thoreau

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This rambling blog post is my love letter to November. I love the yellow hues of November. The “thin yellow light” Thoreau praises is only seen in spring and then again in fall, especially in November. There is a certain slant of light and moodiness of the sky that only comes in those two seasons. And when it comes in November, it turns the treetops golden against the blue-gray sky.

Welcoming early November is a celebration for me. I have actually declared it my favorite month, and I am quite sure from the looks I get that I don’t have a lot of confederates. It’s neither flashy nor full of the bucket-list pressures of October. I confess to feeling a bit manic in early fall. This is me: Cider donuts at the farmstand, come on let’s go while they are still warm! We need mums for the front walkway! Let’s get our pumpkin! Get in the car for a foliage ride! Let’s get pictures of all this color while the light is good! Fall picnic! It’s both exhilarating and exhausting.

Enter late fall…and the Zen Master, November. The ostentatious hoopla of “everybody’s favorite season” in Vermont has calmed down, if not disappeared. The leaves have taken on their yellow hue, many already having turned an earthy brown. There is less of the sun that lit up the oranges and reds, and the clouds of the contemplative month roll in. November’s quiet arrival heralds a month of potential stillness. November’s gray morning skies and golden sunsets offer us days to breathe, to be thoughtful and thankful. It’s a month of space. The space between the first of November and Thanksgiving is just right for long solitary walks, quiet reflection, curling up with a mug of warm tea and a book, resting, and just being. November is my psalm, and I praise its arrival.

“God bless our perfect, perfect grey day
With trees so bare, so bare
But oh so beautiful, so beautiful
The grey, blue sky, the world is here”

— "Thoughts on Grey Day" spoken poem on Fleetwood Mac's Bare Trees album (1972)

By mid-to-late November, you can begin to feel the transitional phase of the month. Punctuated by early, sparse flurries, gray skies, the last of the geese, bare tree limbs, carpets of wet leaves slippery and glistening with rain and melted snow, and of course, Thanksgiving, there is a quiet beauty that I love to savor. It begins to sink in that another year is almost at its end as thoughts of Christmas nudge their way into each day as the month moves on. So the end of the month becomes filled with anticipation, but there will be plenty of time for rushing around for the holidays in December. November, I will remind myself, is for paying attention.

I recently read a book that for me was meant to be read in November, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Sarah B talked about it on her podcast Time and Other Thieves (I listen on Spotify). It’s a painfully beautiful book by Jean-Dominque Bauby, the former editor of the French Elle Magazine. He suffered a massive stroke which left him alive, but with the rare “locked in syndrome.” I won’t go into a full review or any spoilers, but if you haven’t read it, put it on your list. It is the perfect book for a November afternoon. One of the things he comments on is “the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest.” These small events (capturing the moment, small slices of life, small gusts of happiness) are what I slow down and give my attention to in November.

My love affair with the month of November is indeed “punctuated by the small events” that capture my attention and mark the passage of its days. Those small events began as far back as elementary school and have become such special November memories. From great leaf piles of once flaming color, my friend Brenda and I kicked and shuffled the yellow and brown decaying foliage into neat rows in anyone’s front yard on the way home from school. On Veteran’s Day, which was a day off from school, we would run to the local park, jumping through more massive piles of crunchy leaves on our way to Ann’s Bake Shop for a candy apple. Then, wearing our red poppies, we were off to the local American Legion for a free bean and hot dog dinner with local elderly veterans. The waning sun, the smell of snow flurries, and damp socks inside wet shoes signaled it was time for us to rush home before the early darkness of the time change. Then there were the November preparations for Thanksgiving. My job as a child was to make sure the bread crusts were set out to dry in the oven for my mother’s Thanksgiving stuffing. And Thanksgiving, of course, was the crown jewel of the month, rivaled only by Stir-It-Up Sunday, a tradition of my mother’s Anglican, English family. Right after Thanksgiving, my mother and aunt would make our Christmas pudding, with future-vegetarian-me consigned to grind the suet. They each had a “drop of port” when the work was done. This tradition continued until we moved to another house. Through middle school and high school I spent our Veteran’s Day of no school downtown with friends, watching the parade, eating those candy apples (does anyone take more than two bites of a candy apple?), and loving the November day, rain or shine. Then later, in high school, my friend Paula and I discovered Fleetwood Mac’s Bare Trees album. And there it was (and still is)…my soundtrack of November.

November calls on me to pay attention, to be present. It coaxes me to gently plan, create, contemplate, rest, and reflect on how much I have to be grateful for. Although November may signal an end of something to most people, for me it’s the beginning of a contemplative season. Book in hand, I will make my slipper-clad way to the couch and make a toast to the month with my steaming mug of chai latte, then lose myself in thought, gazing out the window at a sliver of yellow light against a moody blue-gray sky.

“November is a bare branch caught in just the right amount of yellow moonlight, moving back and forth in the nighttime wind, holding steadfast to its few remaining leaves, not quite ready to let go of The Precious Days.”

— Me, it's a quote from me...🙂

What about you? Are you a November lover or do you have other feelings about the month? Let me know in the Comments.

The World Tells a Story

Photo: Unsplash - Mark Olsen @markolsen

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this post almost two weeks ago. I debated about posting it. I know many people come here for content about the joys and celebrations experienced in The Precious Days of retirement, and I know how much I love writing about those things. But there are sorrows and grief in those days, too, making the days that are ordinary and full of joy all the more precious. As I continue to navigate my days and move forward with life, I believe it’s important to bear witness to the challenges and tragedies this world seems to hold (with the greatest frequency I can ever remember in my adult life). I grieve for and honor the innocent people who are not able to move on. I have decided to post this as it is, and as it was earlier in the month.

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Once again, this was not the post I intended to write. I was longing to return to topics more reflective of living The Precious Days. Yet from the horrendous events of October 7 and the deaths of so many innocent people to the horrific mass shooting in Maine, with communities far and near living in fear, I felt I had to bear witness to this “story to break your heart.” Even as the news was shared that the gunman in Maine had been found dead, there were fresh images of Israel advancing a ground war into Gaza.

So I felt I could not bring myself to write about the usual topics of my life in a blog post. And I don’t have the energy to go on about the politics of it all, and what needs to change in a country that has lost its way, along with this increasingly unstable and violent world. Nor do I have the words to express my sorrow, my anger, and my outrage. These heavy times are breaking so many of us. And so, I go about my life, weighted with sadness, but refusing to accept that we are powerless to change things. I am thinking through how I can take some action, to be part of positive change in a way that I can say, “This must change and here’s what I am doing.”

But for now, as I often do, I turn to poetry to help me make sense of the senseless and express what I can’t. Poetry is solace for me. I share poems with friends to celebrate, to mourn, to reflect, to acknowledge, and to wonder and marvel. Poetry is a space to draw in a healing breath and exhale a confirmation that someone, a poet, has given voice to the moment in time you occupy. A poem can bear witness, too.

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“What can a poem do? A poem is a not a tourniquet when you’re bleeding. It’s not water when you’re thirsty or food when you’re hungry. A poem can’t protect you from an airstrike, or from abduction, or from hate. It’s hard to write when our words feel like they’re not enough—they can’t do the real, tangible work of saving lives, or making people safer. But can they remind us of our humanity? I think they can, and I think we desperately need a reminder.”

— Maggie Smith - Poet "thoughts on singing in dark times" (Substack)

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I love this quote from Maggie Smith. Mary Oliver’s Lead is such a poem. Sometimes it can seem like there are too many places in life’s journey where hope is not alive, where pain is so stark that it breaks our hearts. But if, as Mary writes, that deep grief can break our hearts open, then we must hold space to testify, to feel deeply, both the bleak and the beautiful. It is still my endless hope that such capacity is what defines us as human.

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Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

Mary Oliver, (New and Selected Poems Volume Two), Beacon Press.

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Recently the sun has been breaking through to remind me of all there is to love. I will return to celebrating The Precious Days very soon. Thanks for staying with me here.

Self-Sabotage

Photo from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/life-what-happens-you-while-youre-busy-making-other-plans-aumeerally/

Self-sabotage — sounds so James Bondish, doesn’t it? And I must say there have been times this month when I felt out-maneuvered by phantom forces. Those forces? Just life being life. That is the curse of too much planning and too many expectations. When I fall into that trap, I can become paralyzed in procrastination. Things aren’t working out? Just avoid EVERYTHING. Well, it’s not quite that dramatic, but that pretty much describes the funk I have gotten myself into this October. I could have pulled from one of the many blog ideas I have ready in the wings. I could have dismissed my absence with a breezy, “Oh, I have been so busy this month, where did the time go” as an explanation for not posting a blog since October first. But that wouldn’t be honest. I promised my readers I would portray the ebb and flow of The Precious Days as authentically as possible.

I am learning so much about myself as the rhythm of the days, weeks, months, years, and especially seasons unfold. I have imposed some pressures on myself in the form of unrealistic expectations about how my life “should be.” Oh, I’d love to go with the flow so much it hurts, but I am not wired that way. For my entire work life I had to have a plan, a design, a framework that would help to make sense of multi-faceted goals and competing priorities. That’s the kind of hard-wiring that is difficult to shake. That careful planning and mapping and evaluating worked so well for me. Yet, one of the lessons I was loath to learn is that it has never worked for me in my personal life. If anything, I find a myriad of ways to rebel against it…to self-sabotage.

There are things about me that I guess I thought would magically disappear once I was no longer working. WHAT WAS I THINKING??? I find a lot of magic in my life, but spontaneous change of life-long struggles isn’t one of them. Darn. Readers, retirement is not my magic bullet. Womp, womp.

“Self-sabotage are patterns of thinking and behavior that lock us in a loop or send us to a downward spiral, preventing us from moving forward and achieving our goals. These are subconscious ways for us to generate our own stress either now or later on.”

— Rachel Bonifacio

In The Thin Line Between Self-Care and Self-Sabotage published in Medium, author Rachel Bonifacio points out the dark side of “self-care.” In many ways, retirement can feel like an opportunity for one long Saturday night of self-care. In the article, wellness coach and psychological counselor Rachel defines real self-care as “consciously choosing to engage in activities that will allow you to live the kind of life you want to create for yourself.” Okay, so that’s what I was going for. Where did I go wrong? Rachel again: “Self-care is all about facing, befriending, accepting, and moving forward with your shadow self, i.e. the parts of you that you think are not aligned to the life you’re trying to create or those that you don’t want to admit that you have (insecurities and weaknesses).” Oh…hello, shadow.

Rachel goes on to describe “self-care” as an umbrella with lots of categories that can actually get us out of balance if there is “too much” of a need to fill our lives with these categories. She further describes self-sabotage in much the same way, and the following categories really resonated with, at the very least, October me: numbing, procrastination, over-committing and unrealistic expectations, and another very interesting category she calls, “searching for chaos.” Hmmm….

Mercifully, Rachel lists some strategies that are very doable and wise. They all begin with practicing mindfulness and pressing the pause button (much like I am trying to do with this blog post), and then asking yourself the following questions:

What is the intention of this behavior or activity?

• Will I feel emotionally or mentally recharged later by doing this now?

• Is this something I need to do for self-maintenance?

• What am I trying to avoid or escape from?

• Which dimension of my well-being am I supporting by choosing this?

• Will my future self thank me later? Or will my future self experience suffer or regret?

• Will this allow me to do the things I need to accomplish more effectively?

• Am I acting wisely or am I acting out my inner child?

The article is helping me think through my own “October Surprise” (and I do plan on having a much more flow-worthy November, my favorite month) with a great deal more reflection and compassion. Journaling has really helped. I highly recommend giving the article a close read if you ever experience something similar.

I write posts like this as a cautionary tale, in solidarity with those who are retired or thinking about it. There are wonderful days of flow and joy and intense appreciation. But it’s my mistake to think they will just unfold, like “yup, this is my life now, ain’t it grand?” That may sound overly simplistic, but in reflecting on “what the heck just happened” in the last month, I can see that was the issue for me. Slow days, autumn color, long solitary walks, yoga and meditation, good books, cozy sweaters, learning new things, etc. — that was the grand “self-care” plan for fall, a season I love so much it actually hobbled me when it didn’t go as planned. Home improvement construction (lots of it), inside and out, filled the sunny beautiful days of October. It seemed like the few days where I could get back on track with things I love were replaced with stress, paint cans, rain, and migraines. Then, another set of construction guys entered the picture. That’s not self-sabotage…that’s just life. The self-sabotage comes in the way I experience those things. In my former life, I would just throw myself into work as a distraction — “this too shall pass.” What I noticed about myself this October was not tactical distraction, but pure avoidance/procrastination patterns (see the categories from the article). And now the calendar days have flown by like a segue scene from an old black and white movie. I felt my beautiful fall reset had turned into a full-on shut down. If this post had a sound effect it would be the screeching of car brakes. And I think I got out of my own way just in time.

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. ”

— Lao-Tzu

This quote came into my life at the right time. It introduces a very helpful article from Zen Habits entitled 12 Practical Steps for Learning to Go with the Flow. It reminds me that of all the things I wanted so desperately to learn, to begin, meditation still is at the top of the list. Each time I have tried, I have either been so antsy I felt like fleeing or so relaxed that I simply fell asleep. The lesson in this is clear — those struggles are exactly why I need to show up, put in the mental sweat, and learn. It won’t kill me, but it might, indeed, make me stronger. My body is screaming for me to stick with the goal of stretching. I eschewed The Stretching Sidekick because it was too rigid and boring. That’s that self-sabotage again. I’m clever enough to adjust it and make it work for me. SarahBSeeking of the Time and Other Thieves podcast reminded me about Adriene on YouTube. I used to love those videos…I can come back and give it another try…slowly. No pressure. And I do love that Julia Cameron 12 week course…and if it becomes 12 months and I only intermittently do an Artist Date, that is totally fine. I love the writing parts and the solitary walks. I just don’t want the self-pressure. Now that’s the form of self-care I need that won’t lead to self-sabotage. I feel I am approaching this period of my life, this desire to learn to “go with the flow” in alignment with the steps outlined in the Zen Habits article:

1. Realize that you can’t control everything.

2. Become aware.

3. Breathe.

4. Get perspective.

5. Practice.

6. Baby steps.

7. Laugh.

8. Keep a journal.

9. Meditate.

10. Realize that you can’t control others.

11. Accept change and imperfection.

12. Enjoy life as a flow of change, chaos and beauty.

We are all going to experience retirement differently, so I do appreciate it when women share their ups and downs in the Comments. I had my first session with my women’s group for a new phase for us all. This session was led by Annie of Annie’s Journey. One of the things I love most about these women is the way we gently support each other. They actually inspired this post. All these joys, sorrows, setbacks, and triumphs are valid…they are parts of who we are. Although I may share a lot of my own missteps, I have never felt like any attempt at learning was a failure. That especially goes for my attempts at learning more about myself living The Precious Days.

All You’ve Ever Wanted in the World

I mentioned a quote from Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake in the Comments of my last post. It is one of the books I read in 2023 that will be among my top five no matter what else I read before the year ends. I was actually surprised by the depth of my pure and absolute love of this novel because I believe I own at least three other Ann Patchett books that I never really got into — bookmarks in place witnessing the lack of a compelling reason to keep going. Perhaps I’ll need to rethink that. Tom Lake was different. I lingered over every page, often rereading the beautiful arrangements of words and feeling them deep into my bones. The characters were so alive to me in a vaseline-covered lens, cinematic scope - their complexities, flaws, and humanity, so artfully and slowly moving the plot forward in a “beautiful human” kind of way. The mix of Lara’s storytelling, recounting a life painful in its current examination, with her reflection and her daughters’ reactions, along with Joe’s companionable support as they work as a family to harvest the cherries in this rural setting echo what I love most about “literature.” Sometimes I’d set the book down to just think about my own past and my own life and all the questions I wish I’d asked my parents…and just as Lara says in the story, “It was like being a leaf in a river. I fell in and was carried along."

For those of you who haven’t read it, here is a little context for the book Tom Lake. It’s not a review of the book…others do that much better. The novel is set in Michigan during the pandemic. It is time to harvest the cherries from the orchards on their farm, and Lara and Joe’s three daughters are all home, safe with their parents and helping with the harvest. The book starts out with high school Lara’s participation in the town’s production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” First, she is just helping out with the play, but then there is an opportunity to play Emily. Her innate talent in playing the role propels her onto Hollywood for a screen test and a movie (which gets shelved), and then Tom Lake in Michigan, summer stock theater, playing Emily once again. In that summer of her youth, Lara is again swept into slow moving life stories, where a half day can feel like six months. Characters take shape, and then in the present time of the pandemic her daughters will beg her to tell the stories of Tom Lake and especially the famous Peter Duke. Lara will finally reflect on that time of her life, her memories, and their meaning as she reveals more and more to her three daughters (so there is a tiny bit of Chekov’s “Cherry Orchard” in there, too, I guess).

The quote that begins this blogpost has become one of the most quoted passages from the book, and it’s what brings me to the page today. So many people can relate to the “simple truth.” So I don’t exaggerate when I say that retirement has become my “one morning”…. I am quite sure that almost moment by moment, all I’ve ever wanted is here. I feel so blessed that I have a home I enjoy so much. I find the property that surrounds my house, especially the gardens my husband has planted and cares for, are beautiful and peaceful, even as they turn to seed, hiding treasure for next spring. My life is filled with good books and ample time to write. The only people left in it are people that I genuinely care about. There is so much agency in the retirement years. I know that may sound contradictory, since society is so focused on what aging bodies and minds can no longer do…but I am here to tell you they are wrong. So wrong. And once you are out of the workforce, you no longer have hundreds of people to compare yourself to, or bombard you with their opinions and judgments. And you know what you get instead? Clarity…authenticity…agency…

“…and you are positive this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world.”

The other day my husband and I were standing on the deck together with our morning coffee. The sun was shining, it was cool and crisp, and the forecast of day-after-September-day of sun and comfortable temperatures was not a dream, but a reality. I looked over at him and said, “This is beautiful, isn’t it?” He knew exactly what I meant. This, all of this, is beautiful. Do I, will I still have problems, challenges, heartbreak? Of course. The alchemy of slow days to meander through, dipping between the joy or sadness of a present moment and memories of the past, paired with a depth of gratitude that I have for this phase of my life and all its contents results in a golden-hued clarity that this IS the time of my life.

“…and you are positive this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world.”

If you haven’t read Tom Lake, take this blogpost as a sign to read this beautiful tale. You don’t have to know the “Our Town” play to enjoy the book, but it makes it more fun. You can watch the sweet 1940 movie, Our Town, which is adapted from Wilder's play. This could be a nice "Artist Date" for devotees of Julia Cameron. Treat yourself to a large slice of cherry pie. Both Tom Lake and “Our Town” share the universal theme of appreciating life, even when it flies by or falls apart or is seen through someone else’s eyes. Happiness is what you have when you have it, so slow it down as best you can. Retirement gives you time to slow down time. Be reflective, be grateful, be still in watching your memories as they unfold, then tell your own stories to those who want to know them…to know you…to understand yourself. “Every, every minute of it” may at one time or another actually become The Precious Days.

“...and all we’re left with is a story.”

— Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

I’m Sorry…For A Bunch of Random Things

A disclaimer: This is a bit of an odd post. It started with the final topic for my Women Rowing North Writing Group, “Living with Intention.” It was a really tough one for me, and I went down a lot of pathways from the past…maybe too many. When I got to the point of my life when my career was finally over, something I’d put decades into, a career that was inseparable from my identity, I was scared. Scary to think that I would actually be in the process of building a new life as a “retired” person. Compared to what is behind me, it feels like I have so little time. Also with a topic like that, it made me think a lot about what I had done in my life, and what I hadn’t done in my life, especially outside of my career…big sigh. Some people live their lives like a beer commercial - “You Only Go Around Once in Life!” Sometimes I think I lived much of mine more like one long “Dear Abby” letter, whining about the sins of omission, wringing my hands in the pain of regret, and playing a waiting game.

“It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human.”
There are many actions in my life I am sorry for. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to let those actions overshadow things I should appreciate and be grateful for. I feel like my life story would be a Book of T Charts: Times I tried too hard | Times I didn’t try hard enough; Problems I obsessed over | Important things I brushed off; Times I disappointed myself | Times I overachieved…you get the point. I want to say I am sorry to the people who got caught up in some of my life kerfuffle because I am sure I was insufferable during those times. At this point in my life, I have lots of time to think about things as I look back. I try to tell myself not to dwell too much on things in the past that cannot be changed. But I also know how I can be. So when almost out of nowhere this amazing poem, How to Apologize by Ellen Bass, appeared in my life I took it as a sign. I was catching up on old Lyric Life podcasts, and the host was unpacking the lines and putting the poem back together. And it felt like it was all for my benefit. It felt healing. It was solace. Nothing can do that like a poem.

“Unharness yourself from your weary stories”
Retirement, third act, final countdown…maybe for the first time in a long life of being sorry about things, I’m beginning to finally feel I’m on solid ground. I am tired of those stories of wrong turns and false notes, and I am not sorry, but thankful to let them go. “Let go!” a woman in my women’s group said, and I heard those two words as a warrior’s call, a rallying cry, an anthem. I no longer feel caught in the things I’ve spent so much time and energy worrying about, beating myself up about, regretting, or even genuinely trying to change. Miraculously, they and a poem led me to the here and now. And you know what? I freaking love it here! I am grateful for this time and space in my life. And I am especially grateful for the people in my life who have put up with me for so many years…and accepted the fish with love (wink).

“There is much to fear as a creature caught in time, but this is safe. You need no defense. This is just another way to know you are alive.”

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How to Apologize
by Ellen Bass

Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeleton
you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying
silver carp that's invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling
the others into oblivion. If you don't live
near a lake, you'll have to travel.
Walking is best and shows you mean it,
but you could take a train and let yourself
be soothed by the rocking
on the rails. It's permitted
to receive solace for whatever you did
or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful
human. When my mother was in the hospital,
my daughter and I had to clear out the home
she wouldn't return to. Then she recovered
and asked, incredulous,
How could you have thrown out all my shoes?
So you'll need a boat. You could rent or buy,
but, for the sake of repairing the world,
build your own. Thin strips
of Western red cedar are perfect,
but don't cut a tree. There'll be
a demolished barn or downed trunk
if you venture further.
And someone will have a mill.
And someone will loan you tools.
The perfume of sawdust and the curls
that fall from your plane
will sweeten the hours. Each night
we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night
we could dream back everything lost.
So grill the pale flesh.
Unharness yourself from your weary stories.
Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt.
There is much to fear as a creature
caught in time, but this
is safe. You need no defense. This
is just another way to know
you are alive.

“How to Apologize” originally appeared in The New Yorker (March 15, 2021). 

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And on a Lighter Note, Let’s Catch Up!

Trying on a new feature as a way to catch you up on what’s going on in The Precious Days of my life since I last blogged. I hope you’ll use the Comments to catch us up on what’s going on for you, too. Let’s build this community!

ENJOYING
-Planning on paper with my new planner—why is there so much joy in stickers???
-Digging into Julia Cameron’s 12-week coursework, especially the solitary walks on sunny days (which I will never again take for granted).
-Moving (albeit out of step) to @TheFitnessMarshall dance videos on YouTube (not really loving The Stretching Sidekick I wrote about…at least not yet anyway)!
-Making my own cold brew with Starbucks Ground Fall Blend for fall iced coffees with lots of ice and a huge glug of Silk Pumpkin Spice Almond Creamer.

READING
-Fiction: Just started Riley Sager’s The Last Time I Lied. I like his books, and I like a balance of page turners and cozy mysteries this time of year. If you have any cozy fall mystery recommendations that aren’t too sugary or romance-focused (I like a good small town whodunit if I am going to go cozy), drop your suggestions in the Comments!
-Nonfiction: Still focusing on Julia Cameron’s It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again. A woman in WRN mentioned Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, which is sitting on my bookshelf. That may be next.

WATCHING
-Becoming Frida Kahlo on PBS. Watching the first episode was my version of an “Artist Date” for this week. I was introduced to Kahlo’s art in a graduate school class on Socially Conscious Art at UVM taught by Professor David Conrad (such a wonderful man) and have been a Kahlo devotee ever since.
-The original Peyton Place TV soap opera series starring Ryan O’Neal and Mia Farrow. Episode one begins as the end of summer turns into fall, so it seemed appropriate to follow along as the days here feel like an autumn welcome. I remember this being on TV when I was in grade school in the mid-sixties, but my pearl-clutching mother wouldn’t allow us (or any babysitters) to watch it. I am sure I snuck in an episode or two at my gramma’s house. There are over 500 episodes of the original series, so I think I may be all binged out by episode 100.

LISTENING
-Joni Mitchell’s Blue…I always seem to start playing this album on repeat as we enter the BER months.
-The Archers on BBC Radio 4 Sounds (via Spotify)…This serial has captured my imagination, and I am hooked. Taking this imaginary daily trip to The Midlands of England, I have fallen in love with the families, farm life, and village-related drama.
-Picking a different fall playlist from Spotify each day for Morning Pages and reading time.

Catch us up on The Precious Days of your life in the Comments.

A Celebration of The Precious Days!

I feel like every day of my retirement is a celebration of The Precious Days. It’s a celebration of how I had envisioned living my days once they were not filled with work, other people’s agendas, other people’s goals, and other people’s problems. I did love most of my working years, but toward the end when you start to ask the questions “What is this all for?” and “Does any of this really matter to anyone but me?”… it’s time to live your days on your own terms. And that, readers, is truly precious. The days behind you are legion in number compared to the days ahead, and that is humbling. So, this blog is my testament to not taking those days for granted. And although this post celebrates about six months of blogging, six months before that, in mid-September on a day much like today—cool, crisp, and fallish—I started playing some autumn playlists on Spotify as I wrote my Morning Pages.

I love the classic standards, so Frank Sinatra singing September Song showed up on just about every fall playlist. As I listened and wrote, the ideas for the kind of blog I might like to have started to take shape. I researched, read other blogs, filled a notebook with a vision, enlisted the design skills of a friend, and September Song inspired the name, with a one word change that made it my own…The Precious Days.

“Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short
When you reach September
When the Autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn’t got time for the waiting game
Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days
I’ll spend with you
These precious days
I’ll spend with you”

— (Musixmatch) Songwriters: Kurt Weill / Maxwell Anderson September Song lyrics © Kurt Weill Foundation For Music Inc., Sony/atv Music Publishing Allegro (uk), Imagem Cv, Chappell & Co., Inc.

As The Precious Days moved from song lyrics, to musings and dreaming, then to an actual blog, readers who became subscribers actually came along for the ride, filling me with such gratitude. Since my first blog post in March, I have tried to remain true to what I set out to do. I feel so much joy in crafting these posts. I have learned and will continue to learn so much about myself. The blog helps me live an “examined life” that fuels so much of what I feel is central to my purpose here. I hope reading it allows you to think a tiny bit more deeply about your own precious days….

“It is my hope that this blog serves many purposes for readers and for me. It chronicles this new journey in uncharted waters. It helps me to be accountable about being real about retirement–with you and with myself. It fulfills a burning desire and a need to write and research. Most especially, it has the potential to form a community with women who, like me, have more days behind them than ahead of them–the all important “third act” as it’s sometimes called. This is a time when there is so much to figure out, so much to learn, so much to give and receive, and so much to enjoy and perhaps suffer through.... The Precious Days will be filled with joy and angst, clarity and uncertainty, discovery and letting go, as well as endless questions and burning issues to explore. ”

— "Cannonball" Blogpost - The Precious Days

And that brings us to the purpose of today’s post: to celebrate The Precious Days subscribers. You all mean so much to me! Every time I send that email out announcing a new post, please know it is filled with appreciation, and also full of hope that your own days are filled with purpose, satisfaction, and frequent bursts of joy.

AND THE WINNER IS…

I had my husband choose the winning slip of paper. CONGRATULATIONS, Pearl! You can either email me your full name and snail mail address by replying to the email alert that comes to your inbox announcing new blog posts, or use the Contact Box located on the right side of the banner next to the Instagram icon at the top of each page of the blog. Both are secure. I will put your Polanshek of the Hills delights into the mail as soon as I hear from you.

Thank you to all of you who took the time to enter the giveaway via the Comments. And to all of The Precious Days readers and subscribers, thank you!

September Reset

September joined her place in the year with flourish. She’s not taking a backseat to summer or fall. September is a beautiful month, full of teasing transitions. Still want it to be summer? Here’s a first-week-of-September heat wave for you. Ready for pumpkin spice and sweater weather? On the way next week. September signals the beginning of the last quarter of the year. Four months of fall’s glorious colors, cozy nights, festive holidays, and a preview of the winter ahead of us. It’s time to both get moving before the snow flies and to hunker down in hygge. Oh, calendar gods, I do love this time of year. September is the best time of year to make some kind of plan or pact with oneself to make sure these months don’t just unfold without longings fulfilled or fly by in a blur. For me, September is the perfect month for a reset.

Calling my plan a “reset” feels a little cringe to me. It’s an influencer word and social media platforms are bursting with 20-somethings touting their “resets.” But this 60-something woman takes license to approach this from the retirement perspective. I won’t be talking about deep cleaning my house, changing out my wardrobe, baking all-things-pumpkin, or adjusting my make-up routine. There’s nothing wrong with those reset topics, but this isn’t a blogpost for that. What I will do is take you along as I recalibrate my actions in my retirement. Remember when that nice lady voice on your GPS would say “Recalculating your route” when you wanted to go in a slightly different direction? It’s like that. Having a plan for what I want to enjoy or accomplish and divesting myself of practices that no longer serve me or the rhythm of the season seems vital. The way I experience time is different for me in retirement, and it’s different for me during different seasons of the year, too. The big question for me is how can I experience the months that close out 2023 in ways that nourish my mind, body, and spirit? And through those adjustments, maybe I’ll find some new motivation to prepare for The Precious Days of the long winter season ahead. Readers, what a gift September is for preparing for another season of retirement with as much purpose and joy as possible…considering the inevitable ups and downs of life.

Affirming My “Why”

I responded to a reader who had commented on About this Summer with some thoughts to provide some insight into why I am wired this way. Going to school as a student and my years as a professional educator combine for a total of six decades. I am so seasonally driven. My own rhythms of retirement make it clear that adjustments in these initial years during each season as well as more deeply understanding how I am affected by seasonal change are important insights for me. I wrote to her that “Losing and finding myself in those rhythms and adjustments has become part of my journey into this new chapter in my life. I am continuing to explore, be curious, and kind to myself. Most of all, I am just trying to follow my own flow -- questioning and discovering here and there.” It’s the questioning and discovering through seizing opportunities for reflection that drive The Precious Days blog content.

Reset for both Mind and Mindset

I am actually feeling pretty positive about my mindset going into this season. I am feeling that opportunities for learning and growth are abundant this time of year. I am continuing to read and enjoy lots of good fiction. But during the summer I gave up my routine of sitting for an hour each morning with my Common Place Journal and some rich nonfiction. As the calendar changed from August to September, I returned to that ritual and it feels good. September is the last month of my Women Rowing North Alumni Writing Group. True confessions — I am worried about not having that group of women in my life to challenge my thinking, to inspire me, and to support me. It has been such an important part of my life. I have three learning adventures in writing that I can take on, but I think they might be better for winter. One is the BBC Maestro poetry course. Another is Kerry Clare’s online blogging class. And I have the six-week Write for Life course by Julia Cameron I can wade into. Lots of options and I am sure I will discover more. This reset is needed to get back into nonfiction and some more formal learning.

Decluttering is so helpful for the mind and mindset, so my husband and I will be continuing our Swedish Death Cleaning when the temperatures remain cooler. I made a checklist.

And I know my focus in this area of mind and mindset could be greatly enhanced by adding one more thing to this reset. I need to limit my mindless scrolling on IG and watching random YouTube videos. I am committed to keeping my i-pad out of the bedroom, or at the very least out of reach (because I do have sleep playlists I like).

Reset for a Healthy Heart, Brain, and Body

Uh boy. This area of my life is in desperate need of a reset. Optimal physical health is paramount to me, so why do I keep treating it like a hobby? I need to go into this last part of 2023 with a firm resolve to put my health first. I treated this summer like one long trip to a country fair: lots of ice cream and creemees—often with hot fudge, vegan burgers and vegan hotdogs in soft, doughy buns, pizza, fried food (especially from Mac’s in Wellfleet)…. Then there were my go-to summer excuses…. Too hot to walk outdoors. Too wet to walk outdoors. All that “vacation eating” for an entire summer and decrease in physical activity have really caught up with me. I am most centered and comfortable in my own skin when I am following a Mediterranean/MIND Diet Plan that is 80 (plant-based)/20 (fish, eggs, low-fat dairy). My last doctor’s appointment left both my doctor and I cheering. I owed that to intermittent fasting, my 80/20 approach, and morning and afternoon walking. I’ve gotta get back on track before my upcoming appointment. So here’s the reset. Back to intermittent fasting, back to 80/20, and I want to add a new dinner recipe each week for the fall. My husband and I can take turns with the cooking. In addition to stepping up my walking, pun intended, I am adding The Stretching Sidekick. It’s a 15-minute-a-day program to improve “flexibility, mobility, and range of motion.” I can track my progress right in the book. If this approach works for me, I will order The Yoga Sidekick for the winter. I still struggle with drinking enough water, planning meals instead of binge-watching my refrigerator shelves waiting for inspiration, and eating enough fiber and protein. So I borrowed Atomic Habits from my friend to see if I can find some words of wisdom about creating systems to change habits. Systems—that speaks to me. So I wrap up this area of my reset linking the latest important news on the relationship between heart and brain health. More evidence that what is good for one is good for the other. 

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Reset for the Spirit and Soul (the Joy factor)

In my last blog, I talked about shifting from a nightly “thought-based” reflection to a nighttime Check-in and Reflection Journal as an adjustment to one of my retirement rituals. I used to just think about the beauty of the day, what I was grateful for, and something I looked forward to as I got into bed. Truth be told, I often fell asleep as my mind wandered off before I even got to the gratitude part. So if this new ritual continues to work, I will try to carry it through for the remaining months, and then re-evaluate how useful it is to me.

Also, in the coming weeks and months I would like to delve more deeply into meditation. I listen to meditations apps, but I know I am not truly meditating, I’m just listening. I am not getting the full benefit of the practice. This is a good time of year to make that shift. I’ll keep you posted, and if you have any recommendations for cultivating a meditation practice, please drop me a comment.

I have started a new form of planning with a brand new planner that I am loving. There is more creativity involved in it because I decide what each month, week, and day is going to look like, both in terms of tasks, reminders, and set-up, and I can change my mind if it isn’t working for me. Right now, the process of setting up my weeks with a little flair (thanks to Etsy stickers, washi tape, and tons of art markers) is bringing me lots of joy. And being more organized brings some additional peace to my days.

I am about to embark on something I am really excited about that I think will be soul and spirit nourishing and full of joy. I am going to undertake the 12 week course outlined in Julia Cameron's It's Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond. Julia has been one of my gurus along with Natalie Goldberg since the 90's. The Artist’s Way tools of Morning Pages (already part of my retirement rituals) and Artist Dates are included each week along with a weekly memoir exercise and solitary walks (again, already part of my rituals). I have had the book for a while, but have put the undertaking off until a few other things fell into place. I am ready and looking forward to beginning this journey. I will update my progress in the blog every few weeks.

Finally, I love to decorate for fall. Adding seasonal purpose to the indoor and outdoor environment adds a meaningful setting to the flow of the days. It’s such a joy to celebrate this season of vibrant colors, warm drinks in my fall mug collection, cozy reads, mums, pumpkins, fall picnics, and evening backyard fires. It’s a way to express my creative side and bring deeper joy to the days. “Decorate for fall” is at the top of my Autumn Bucket List…yup, I started making those when I retired, just for fun. It’s nice to both make a new one and look back at the previous year’s list. 🍁

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So that’s a wrap-up of the reset. I am entering the end of this first four-season-year of full retirement feeling very in charge of my own life, even during the tough times. The tools of self-inquiry, seeking wisdom from others, writing, and reflection have led to much cleansing of the mind, new insights, and self-awareness. September is my best time to get unstuck and reset my life.

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It’s Time for My First Giveaway!

I am in my sixth month of blogging, folks, and I want to thank my subscribers with some products from ArtHound Gallery and Phoenix Books featuring the beautiful, whimsical illustrations of Jess Polanshek. The giveaway loot, pictured below, features The Quilted Forest notecards, a Woodland Magnet, a packet of illustrated stickers, and one large sticker — suitable for your journal or water bottle or anywhere you can think of!

To enter, you need to be a subscriber (and anyone can subscribe at any time, so invite a friend or two) and just drop this line— “I want to be entered into the Polanshek of the Hills Giveaway” — into the Comments, along with your first name and last name initial. I will choose a winner by 12:00 on Friday, September 15, and announce the winner on the blog that same day. If you are the winner, there will be directions in the post about a secure way to get your mailing address to me. If you are not the winner, please keep reading! There will be another giveaway next year that will also feature a Vermont artist/illustrator. Thank you for reading The Precious Days blog!

About this Summer…

This was the summer that was and wasn’t. This was the summer of reflecting and being more than planning and doing. This was the summer of more not knowing than knowing. This was the summer of being humbled more than riding high on the anticipated heady fumes of summer. This was the summer I learned more about who I am as I live the seasons of The Precious Days.

So, about this summer of 2023…

About starting summer early and full of anticipation

Around mid-May I was so ready for summer. We placed the Buddhas in their familiar spots. We planted geraniums and pansies in pots with spikes and trailing vines and placed them in their usual spots in the yard: the deck, the picnic table, the small “courtyard garden” tables which accent a bench, steamer chairs, and my much loved Meditation Garden. We populated the lattice walls with all shades of purple annuals, in anticipation of our clematis. We planted a new herb garden. I planted dahlia bulbs for the first time. We admired the apple blossoms. We welcomed summer, inviting her to come early and stay late. I couldn’t wait to experience the magic of June for yet another year.

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All photos from this year’s early garden…

About all that June rain

And then in June it rained…A LOT. It seemed like it rained every day. I loved the sunshine whenever it made an appearance and tried not to take it for granted. This kind of summer weather happens, I thought. My husband and I consoled ourselves by talking about other rainy summers. July would be better. We scrolled my weather app for news of dry days. We took a day trip to Middlebury to visit The Vermont Book Shop. We ate lunch along the Otter Creek. On another dry night we listened to bluegrass at Shelburne Vineyard while we sipped a crisp, dry white wine under a June sky that refused to yield to twilight. On other dry days I returned to my summer walks at the Complex happy to be lost in thought…I met a friend from my old work life there one morning for a wonderful catch up. Still…more rain. My husband and I decided to build a little outdoor hut (a patio umbrella with netting) so we at least get outside yet stay dry, and I could read there between the drizzle and the downpours. There was an upside, the rain had seemed to keep my allergies at bay. But we couldn’t do anything about those Air Quality Alerts from Canadian wildfires in Nova Scotia. Those had to end soon, right? We remembered Quebec fires from another summer years ago. And there was still July to come. July was always proper summer.

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All photos from June …

About July

July heralded … more rain. My tiny state was deluged. We experienced the worst flooding in 100 years. Communities were literally torn apart by flood waters. It was devastating. We were spared in my section of the state, and so much came into perspective. When the rains finally stopped, the heat stayed — such humidity from ridiculously high dew points. Rather than ending, the wildfires spread across Canada continuing the Air Quality Alerts on our phones. Perspective shift: these events weren’t just caused by climate change, this WAS climate change. July was a real turning point in confronting stark realities with new depths of understanding. My heart ached for the planet. It was still summer, and there were glimmers to ease the angst and take some breaks from globally pervasive worries. We visited our local state park to read for an afternoon while we stared at a calm lake and watched the cormorants careening across a blue sky. We took our camp chairs to the local park to listen to a concert performed by a rock band of former classmates, all in various shades of their sixties. And we planned our annual trip to Cape Cod for the first week of August. We crossed our fingers for good weather and for ample time to gaze into the Atlantic to reflect on all we were grateful for. “This will be the beginning of our summer,” my husband said. And we looked forward to an August summer that would carry us right into the days of mid-September.

About adjusting expectations for The Precious Days of summer

In many ways my husband was right. Our summer did truly begin in August on The Cape. We had a week of gorgeous weather at Marconi Beach. Countless small pods of seals swam close to the shore and actually seemed to be waving to us. Fins were spotted one day a little further out, and Lifeguard whistles blew. I read the perfect beach books for Wellfleet. Seafood was eaten. More of The Cape was explored. We came back for a few weeks, and I read a few more excellent books as the rain came again. And then when we headed to Baltimore to see my husband’s beloved Orioles for 3 games in all their first-place glory, and once again the weather gods were with us. Then, sure enough, we came home to rain. But I came home ready to reflect on all that I had learned about myself over this strange summer.

• Lesson One: When I am thrown off course, as I was this summer, my routines fly out the window. I have written before about the importance of my retirement routines. Those routines got me through last fall, winter, and spring. But I have had the same summer routines for decades, so I thought I’d just cruise. Nope. Those summer routines were firmly anchored in the “vacation weeks” of the working world. They no longer fit or served me. In my first bonafide retirement summer, one which was not coming on the heels of a work year, I was not prepared. The routines I needed to ground me just weren’t there. Retirement rookie mistake on my part.

• Lesson Two: My expectations were too fixed. I had taken for granted that summer would just be … summer. There is an important lesson for me about learning to be more nimble in my own life and adjusting accordingly. Experiencing summer as I’ve always known it…well, as much as it hurts my heart to think about it, that ship may have sailed. Summers will be what they are, and we all have to adjust and do what we can as individuals, as a country, and as a world to address the impacts of climate change. We will all be “doing summer” somewhat differently in the years to come. Going forward, I will be approaching summer with a beginner’s mind.

• Lesson Three: I also learned that whenever there is something to get out of my own way about, books are there for me to create a path. I love to read, but I needed to deeply know and acknowledge how crucial it is in my life. It’s hard to go down the rabbit hole of funk when there are fictional characters to care about or be mad at, and writing styles of such gifted authors to marvel at and sink into joyfully and sometimes in awe. I read so many not just good, but GREAT books this summer. Here are just a few of my favorites that I highly endorse: The Vanishing Half, Remarkably Bright Creatures, Tom Lake, Hello Beautiful, and Rachel Joyce’s Harold Fry trilogy: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, and Maureen.

• Lesson Four: Writing can save my life as much as reading can. My Women Rowing North Writing Group with Helen and the crew of gifted, sensitive, and wise women in their 60’s and beyond is a lifeline. Those sessions where we read our writing and listen to such powerful women’s stories transport me out of the messiest mires of my own making to a place where everything feels bigger than me, and that encourages me to grow. And I have LOVED blogging this summer. It has brought me such joy. But with some trips scheduled for August, I took a break from blogging for the month because that is what bloggers do, right? That really did not work for me. I felt like I lost my voice. I felt like I lost a piece of the self I was becoming since retiring — a piece that already felt core. I need to write these posts, as silly as that sounds. I need to write them for me and hope my readers will find something in my words that resonates. My WRN writing friend Pearl articulated such a beautiful and relatable “why” about blogging in her latest piece celebrating her 100th post. Check out her blog, The Pits and the Pieces.

• Lesson Five: I have celebrated the virtues of Morning Pages in my blog several times. I love the looking forward aspect of the three pages every morning. This summer, I learned they weren’t enough for me. I needed check-in time with myself and more thoughtful processing and reflection on my day. I needed more than my “At Least Three Things” Evening Reflection. So I started a nightly Reflection Journal as a way to look back over the day. I write only what I need to in it and I don’t feel compelled to write every night. It has become a form of meditation, helping me to regulate my mind and my heart.

• Lesson Six: This is the lesson I currently have the most appreciation for — Celebrate September as Summer! Now that I no longer have that “back to school” thing as a major end of summer event, summer really isn’t over for me when Labor Day rolls around. September pulls its weight with three weeks of summer — and they are summer days that usually have something for everyone. There are some sweltering days, some crisp fall previews, and even the rainy days signal hygge is just around the corner. I love fall, and I love the transitional allure of September. When a friend and I were sharing our love for all things fall recently, I told her that after this summer I may become a winter lover. Is it possible that WINTER could become my second favorite season after fall? Hmmm….

I know I am not the first blogger to comment on the sheer weirdness of this summer of 2023. As summers go, it will be one that I remember for its atypical hallmarks that unfortunately are portents of things to come for this fragile planet. And on a personal level, it will be one that I remember because I learned more about who I am as I age. It is possible to savor what is rather than focus so heavily on what was. Those expectations are based on my past decades — the decades I have ahead of me (yup, I am planning on sticking around for a while) are just going to hit differently. And about Lesson Six—stay tuned!

What was your experience of this summer? Did anything change for you that caused you to learn more about yourself? Were you affected by any of the weather extremes? As always, I love it when you share your comments.

My July Top Five

I still intend to take a brief August break from the blog, but before I do I wanted to celebrate the good things about July with this little post. My last blog focused on a few summer struggles, and I would be remiss if I didn’t celebrate some of the things I loved and appreciated during the times in July when the rain took a break, the temperatures dropped a little, and the smokey haze cleared out. There is so much to love about The Precious Days of summer. Here are just a few July highlights:

1. Our Backyard Gardens
By mid to late July, the second phase of blooms begins. So much color explodes: pink echinacea and bee balm, yellow coreopsis and black-eyed Susans, white delphinium and daisies, purple and white hydrangeas, purple harebell and globe thistle, and every color of phlox and lilies to delight. And that’s just to name a few. So much lush color in our gardens serves as the setting for morning coffee, afternoon reading, and lots of lounging and daydreaming.

2. Going for a Ride
The hot July days have been perfect for taking a windows-rolled-down-tunes-turned-up, breezy drive around the lake. Envying lakefront living, watching boats shoot across the bay, planning our next state park picnic — these spontaneous rides cool us off and remind us how much we are loving being able to live The Precious Days. Bonus! They usually end up with a trip to the creemee stand.

3. Chasing Bubbles with our Dachshund
This July I found a partially full bottle of “bubble stuff” in our junk drawer and took it outside while we were playing with the dog. She loves running after those bubbles, and we love watching her. It’s the best backyard summer entertainment we could have asked for. There is no dog more entertaining than a dachshund, and I’ll stand by that statement—back me up dachshund lovers!

4. Blackberry Anticipation
We are fortunate to have mature blackberry bushes in our backyard. The berries start to ripen at the end of July and into August. I am looking forward to August mornings on the deck with warm sunshine and a bowl of yogurt studded with slices of Amish peaches from our local farmstand and our own blackberries. Whether in simple cobblers or just by the handful, our blackberries are a wonderful part of The Precious Days of summer life.

5. Planning our August Adventures
August is becoming my favorite of the summer months now that I am retired. We get serious in July about making our plans for August. They are full of summer travel, baseball games, outdoor concerts, waterfront dining, and trips to state parks for reading, relaxing, and picnics….exhale and enjoy. August is also the month we celebrate the anniversary of our first date, our birthdays, and NOT having to go back to school (IYKYK). The calendar is FULL of what we love about summer.

And One to Grow On…
In the month of July I hit the 1000th entry of my Morning Pages! I know I am just a youngster at Morning Pages compared to some of you, but I am proud of this milestone, and I intend to keep going. Morning Pages is a game changer…a life changer. You can check it out here.

All photos from Unsplash except the garden, our dachshund, and the blackberry photos. Those are mine.

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Hope you all had a wonderful July and are looking forward to August as much as I am. Enjoy The Precious Days!

Stop Thieves! Give Me Back My Summer!

A PREFACE

A few months ago I was searching podcasts to see who had episodes discussing May Sarton. I stumbled upon a podcast on Spotify called “Time and Other Thieves.” I listened to the May Sarton episode and was hooked. The podcaster, Sarah B, describes her show as: “Reflections and conversations on the nature of existence.” It is that and so much more. Give her show a listen. If you are interested in writing, books, ideas, spirituality, metaphysics, and philosophy, just to name a few topics to twist yourself a Gordian knot (and BTW, that’s what I call living), then you’ll be hooked.

Initially what stopped me from continuing to scroll in my Spotify search wasn’t just making the May Sarton connection with Sarah B. It was the intriguing title of her podcast. I am sure Sarah B has explained its origin, and I apologize for not knowing. The only other place I had ever heard the line, “time and other thieves” was from the icon and goddess, Joni Mitchell, in a song from her album Hejira called “Furry Sings the Blues.” This version she did with The Band and Neil Young is extra meaningful to me.

That title of Sarah B’s podcast sent me down a rabbit hole, and I decided to start digging myself out in this post. Time, of course, is the guiltiest of perps in the identity parade of joy-sucks. We all recognize the associations: “not enough time,” “too much time on my hands,” “out of time,” “on borrowed time” … time is the culprit that steals joy, peace, hope, and intention, among other things. It’s almost too easy to blame time for everything that ails us. So I am going to give time a pass in this blog post. Take a seat, TIME…no one needs to hold your beer for this one.

MY OTHER THIEVES

There are other forces at work in my life right now, stealing snatches of my summer happiness just when it was starting to feel like The Precious Days were humming along. I consider these culprits to be more than thieves…they are robber barons who have been stealing from me for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why I thought they’d be magically exiled for this newest phase of my life. It has been hard work to keep them at bay over the decades. Clearly, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

Having an unprecedented unsettling summer due to excessive heat, fires impacting our air quality, so much rain, and catastrophic flooding has been like leaving the doors unlocked for the burglars. Being off my summer game has made me an easy mark. During this weird summer, my joy, peace, contentment, and “joie de vivre” have been temporarily poached. Self-doubt, comparison, and worry have shown up again. Maybe I should have been expecting them.

All three of these are related of course and each has a gang of emotionally draining accomplices waiting to be called in. My summer rituals and routines — which are so important to my mental health and happiness— never really got off the ground. By about mid-July, I felt I’d been ambushed by the old struggles. I know these struggles are not uncommon among the newly retired. But for me, they are pernicious. Every time I think I have come to terms with something, have let it go, and have moved onto a better place, I get a wake up call: “Is this Linda’s peace of mind? We just want her to know we’re still here.” I don’t know why I still haven’t learned that coping with these parts of me is not a linear process, with a beginning, middle, and end. These behaviors have been woven into my existence, and can be typically set off by environmental factors like too much heat, too much rain, dark days, etc. Factors, catalysts, triggers, disruptors, whatever you want to call them give these three behaviors opportunity and space to pillage my peace of mind. Lately, they are my other thieves.

Lately, self-doubt is pummeling me with questions and second-guesses, and attacking my confidence. Did I retire too soon? Have we saved enough? Am I prioritizing the right things? Do I have anything to offer as I continue to age? Is this blog even worth reading? Yada, yada, yada.

Lately, comparison to other bloggers has taken center stage with my insecurities. This is something I am doing to myself, clearly. I read so many other blogs that I am eager to read. They have tons of followers, lots of comments, and a signature style that is so appealing. I’m feeling stagnant. Inferior. Inadequate. Okay, jealous.

Lately, this summer worry has taken the form of obsessing about my health, from tiny pock marks that I imagine is skin cancer to an ache in my heel that results in some phantom doctor telling me I can’t go for long walks anymore. I worry about our house becoming too much for us. Should we fix everything this summer (oh, but the rain, the humidity)? Downsize? Leave it all to chance? I worry about the uncertainties of aging. And the news, of course. And climate change. Worry is robbing me of enjoying the occasional dry and comfortable day, when I should be enjoying a walk in the sun. Nuff said. I need to kick this thief to the curb, pronto.

Now here’s the intellectual part: the doubts, the comparisons, and the worries are not grounded in anything rational. Why so much self-doubt? I took my time to carefully think through the things I’m second guessing. Doubts are just thoughts. They are not facts. It’s unrealistic and a bit ridiculous to compare myself to bloggers who have been at it, working hard, through hundreds of posts. I am just starting out as a blogger. And worry…well, I know how to deal with that one. If I stay in the present moment and fine-tune my self-talk, worry loses its power. As the British say, “Cheer up. It may never happen.”

There’s nothing to pathologize here. “Lately” equates with temporary in my book. These behaviors are not abnormal. Naming them, thinking them through, and addressing them helps to fend them off. But I can’t be naive about this as The Precious Days accrue. These thieves are lurking in the shadows.

Optimism. I can’t leave this blog post without MacGyvering a plan. So here it is:

• Reframe it. Reframe it all. I have strategies to think about things differently.

• Listen to my husband (he’s a master at reframing). We are getting ready to do some summer travel. He said to think of it as our summer finally getting started. It’s an opportunity for a reset.

• Intentionally create experiences that lead to the kind of summer feeling I am missing.

• Use my Morning Pages to list intentions to set up the kind of day I want to have (see above).

• Take an online blogging class this fall. I hear this one is really good.

• I am still going to worry about climate change, but I can make a plan.

• Pay more attention to what I am eating. That’s one remedy for almost anything that ails me (and the planet).

Again, I want to thank Sarah B for giving me so much to think about (and think through) just from the title of her podcast. The podcast itself is a chance to mine your own thoughts to whatever depths you choose to go. There are so many intriguing ideas, personal stories, deep questions — and all of it wrapped in her own unique voice and tied with a big bow of pure authenticity. Something I can only aspire to.

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Do you have “thieves” that rob you of your peace? Your joy? What are some of your strategies for confronting them? I’d love for you to share in the comments.

I will be taking a break from Friday blogging (maybe the entire month of August) due to some happy travel plans. If you are subscribed, you can keep current about new posts via email. I also highlight new posts on my Instagram Account (@thepreciousdays).

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Ten Things I Don’t Want to Give Up as a Boomer

Boomers. Baby Boomers. By most calculations, we were born between the years of 1946 and 1964. There I am somewhere in the late middle of the era, born in the 50’s.

I reject the “Ok Boomer” Peanut Gallery. They just don’t get it. You can’t singularly focus on the current age of a generation or just on what a generation got wrong. Some might argue that we got more right than we got wrong, and that we are still trying to get it right because of our age, not in spite of it. We still have a hefty relevance. I could go on and on about some of the greatest contributions of the Boomer generation, as well as where we went off the rails, but perhaps I’ll save that for a more serious post. This post is a fun one, grounded in the spirit of things like rock and roll and popular culture, both of which are courtesy of my generation (in case anyone is keeping score, looking at you Gen X).

Boomers are a generation of adapters…we’ve seen a lot of change, young ‘uns, whether you want to make fun of us or not. I have no problem integrating a lot of “newness” and change into my life. People who know me know how much I do like change. It was what I enjoyed most in my career— the “change initiatives.” I actually love technology and most of you know I follow media for the latest brain research, another passion honed in my career as an educator. Yup, I can grow and evolve with the best of ‘em.

But there are some things I guess I just dig my heels in about as a Boomer. And that means there are some things that are part of my life as that “born in the fifties” girl that I’m not giving up. Although I am neither an aging hippie (well maybe a little bit) nor an old fogey (not that there’s anything wrong with that), a Gen Z’er would probably find a few things in my home and habits that are a bit cringe. So in no particular order of my own dependence, here they are:

#1 Listening to A.M. Radio
So I confess to still being up on summer nights twirling the tuning dial, listening for the interruption of static to hear the call letters from Ottawa, Chicago, Philly, or some station so obscure that I feel like a wartime codebreaker. There is so much interference now it’s nowhere near as satisfying as it was when I was a kid. Picking up a far-off baseball game fading in and out among the static has lulled many boomer kids to sleep on a summer night. In college I searched the dial for American Popular Standards, which I loved to pick up on 1560 WQXR. I listened for news (often chilling) from NYC on WCBS 880. And I loved CBC Radio’s As It Happens with Barbara Frum. I listened for old “Theater of the Mind” radio late at night on an a.m. station from Toronto. Now I like to listen to two local a.m. stations, one in Vermont and one in Plattsburgh that play hits from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. One is also the local home to Yankee baseball, so it’s all good. I listen to those stations on an actual radio, folks, loving to hear the crackle of an approaching storm in the summer. That brings me to another confession. I actually listen to a lot of non-local a.m. radio stations on TuneIn (Internet) Radio now; it’s just easier and the reception is always good. And I do like and listen to all kinds of music, but I return to the old a.m. reliables to feel grounded and “at home” with myself.

#2 The “Good” Dishes
I have read countless self-care articles that chastise, “What are you waiting for? Use the good dishes every day!” I.just.can’t. This is another throwback to my childhood. I do use nice things. My “everyday” dishes are beautiful, handmade pottery. But before the pandemic kept us from regularly having guests, I saved my Portmeirion dishes for special lunches, brunches, or dinners in the spring or summer because of their lovely floral patterns. I have special fall dishes for Thanksgiving and a special set for Christmas, too. These days many dishes are headed to the charity shop. Just not the “good” dishes.

#3 Ironing
I love ironing. I always have. From the first time I saw my mom testing the heat of the flat iron with the lick of her finger and a sizzle, I wanted to do it myself. I remember my first pink metal toy ironing board and my own toy iron — heaven. My mom taught me how to iron at an early age. I remember the old Coke bottle with the sprinkler topper (my aunt had one where the topper fit into an elephant’s trunk, oh I coveted that). It was my job to sprinkle and roll the items to get them ready for ironing. Pretty soon I had license to solo, and I never looked back. I iron pretty much everything I wear. And yes, I still buy spray starch. I don’t iron sheets and pillow cases like my mom did, just clothing that I am going to be wearing right before I wear it. Yes, tablecloths and napkins get ironed for special occasions. No, not going to apologize for it. There is something about that burst of steam smoothing away those wrinkles like so many tiny problems—both, all ironed out.

#4 Boxed Mac and Cheese
Oh, boy, Kraft Dinner! That was probably my favorite school night dinner growing up and throughout most of my teaching career. Easy, fast, and delicious. Healthy? Not so much. Sometimes I’d add a can of tuna and a can of peas to up the nutrition. I haven’t eaten that particular boxed brand in years. Now my boxed favorite is Annie’s Vegan Mac made with plant milk, vegan butter, and usually served with a generous side of steamed broccoli. It’s a fall and winter staple I will likely never part with.

#5 Clock Radios
Reader, if it weren’t for clock radios I would have probably slept through my entire working career. Without the early morning sounds of Public Radio, the genius of a snooze button, and the digital glow of the time (always set 10 minutes ahead), I don’t know if I could have lived as successfully as I have in the land of adulting. No cell phone alarm for me. I am never giving up my Bose Wave and the “wake to” sound of the radio.

#6 Vinyl Albums and a Turntable
Maybe it’s a cloudy, rainy, or snowy Sunday afternoon, or an evening just relaxing with my husband in our family room that we affectionately call “The 70’s Room”… regardless, there will be vinyl on the turntable. Depending on the mood it could be Leon Russell, Joan Baez, Patti Smith, or April Wine, maybe Shawn Phillips, Edward Bear, or even The Cowsills. Those would be choices from my collection. My husband would say he has a much cooler selection. Both of our collections don’t stretch beyond music from the mid 1970’s. We love the vinyl experience so much that we both have our own turntables. And just to be clear, our vinyl albums aren’t some remastered, newly pressed hipster records — they are the real deal, scratches and all.

#7 Eating in Front of the TV
What can I say in my defense? I am from the TV tray generation. The whole family popped open TV trays and ate our dinner to the Ballad of Paladin and Have Gun, Will Travel and then finished up dessert with Walter Cronkite. And as kids, we did love our Swanson TV Dinners. For years of single life, the TV was my dinner companion. I still love watching a black and white rerun with dinner…and my husband will join me on the couch for the news. When dinner is involved, which is not always eaten in front of the TV, there will be TV trays involved — not floral patterned, rusty metal ones, but trays with nice-looking wood grain tops. We fancy.

#8 My Landline
I know I have fewer and fewer contemporaries to keep me company with this one. Yes, both my husband and I have cell phones. I don’t even like to talk on the phone. But I do like the idea that when the power goes out, my gas stove will still work and so will my phone. Number nine on my list helps to explain my stubbornness with giving this up.

#9 “Just in Case” Provisions
When my husband asks why we have 10 cans of RoTel Diced Tomatoes and 4 jars of Teddy Peanut Butter (and I can tell he’s just warming up), the answer is simple: “just in case.” Boomers can thank our parents for this holdover. The Great Depression and WWII left them with scarcity trauma that never fully passed. My mom called her walk-in cupboard in our basement “The Reserve Shelf.” To a newly working teacher barely able to afford rent, it was my grocery store. Rows and rows of cans of Maxwell House, jars of Sanka, tuna, soups, canned vegetables, and SpaghettiOs didn’t make sense to me, but I used it. Now, it makes total sense, and when the pandemic hit was I glad I had inherited that “skill” from my mother. Not giving that one up…you just never know.

#10 Playing Cards
This is something each generation inherits from the last. That traditional deck of 52 with its 4 suits has been around since the 1500’s. Playing cards is not just recreational, it’s relational and intergenerational. Whether played alongside cups of cocoa or cocktails, that ASMR slap of the cut deck and shuffling of the cards is something I wouldn’t want to live without. I just wish my husband felt the same. Oh well.

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As Boomers, the list of things we’ve moved beyond would be too long to print, and Pop Tarts and Tang may or may not be on it. So what are some generational things you’re just not willing to give up? Is there something typically “Boomer” about them? Not a Boomer? Share your generation’s keepers. Drop your thoughts into the Comments. I guarantee, just wondering about it is a fun walk down memory lane. Those nostalgic strolls are one of the best parts of living The Precious Days.

Snacks and Naps: Lessons on Healthy Aging from Toddlerhood

Exhausted and cranky from a cereal-fueled, long morning of looking at books, chasing the dog, breaking a cup, and a quick car ride, it was definitely time for a nap. A few sliced strawberries later and shhhh…finally snoozing as the early afternoon sun peeked through the shade’s gaps in the darkened room.

Oh the terrible twos…“two years away from 68” that is. Is that even a thing? I’m making it a thing because this is not a description of a sweet toddler in my life. This IS my life.

There are many “new to me” experiences that define The Precious Days. And two of the most recent involve an afternoon snack and a snooze. I think the afternoon naps began last winter. Usually sometime between 2:00 and 4:00, I’d find myself prone on the couch, book in hand, and within 5 minutes…buh bye. I’d sleep anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes, but it felt like hours. Raring to go, I needed a snack to get me through to dinner. The snack left me feeling a bit guiltier than the nap, since I have tried for years not to eat between meals. But I have strategized that I can use this snack for something I am not getting enough of on any given day. What might that be? Fruit? Some nuts? Veggies? Protein? It varies from day to day. It also has to be a snack-size portion, not a prelude meal to dinner (I’ve always had to watch that, too).

The naps are definitely a new treat. My husband naps, but with a purpose: to stay up later for a sporting event. But like that inner two year old, I have resisted napping in the past. During my years of work, a nap at between 2:00 and 4:00 was out of the question. I had bosses who frowned on that (go figure). But at work, I did often have a snack — just not always the healthiest choices. You know what work breakrooms can be like. Someone’s extra Christmas cookies, meeting donuts, second loaf of banana bread, left-over birthday cake, old Halloween candy…suddenly we became gulls at the dump. These days, I make better choices by design and desire to age as healthy as possible. The virtues of retirement….

So I’ve recently made peace with my snacking because it’s become part of my brain health arsenal. That’s right, I can potentially snack my way to better cognitive health. It turns out brain health experts have some recommendations for afternoon-slump snackers that will not only satisfy retirees, but the workforce, too.

Many of the recommendations come from Dr. Annie Fenn. I follow her on Instagram. I also use her cookbook, The Brain Health Kitchen. She’s a guru of mine for sure. In the article she co-authored that appeared in Parade Online entitled, A Neurologist and Alzheimer's Expert Share Their Go-To Snacks for Brain Power, she recommends “foods (that) contain either flavonoids, unsaturated fats or fiber—all nutrients the experts say support brain health” to combat the slump. These are the little something-somethings I tend to seek out for my snack after a nap. Some good choices are a few whole grain crackers and hummus or mashed sardines (my favorite), some berries, a hard boiled egg, a handful of nuts and seeds, or some minimally-processed peanut butter on whole grain toast (I love Ezekiel). Not a Peanut M&M in sight — processed and high in sugar foods are no go’s. Digging in a little deeper, the article notes: “…when (Fenn) needs an energizing snack, she incorporates foods high in unsaturated fats, like nuts, avocado or olive oil. She also chooses foods that contain flavonoids—bioactive substances found in colorful foods important for memory and focus. Dr. Fenn explains that flavonoids fight inflammation in the brain and spark circuits that improve memory and focus. “I’ll eat a small packet of olives, a cup of blueberries, half an avocado drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil, an apple or pear dipped in almond butter, or one of my homemade blueberry banana hemp muffins,” she says, listing some of her favorite snacks for brain power.” You all know many of these things already, I’m sure. But it’s the intentionality of doing something good for your brain. Pairing the snack with a nap? Ring all the bells.

Now more about those naps and their effect on the brain. Neuroscience News reported that “habitual daytime napping could help preserve brain health and slow down the brain shrinkage that comes with aging.” A heavier brain? That’s one area that I would welcome the extra weight. The online article entitled A Power Nap a Day May Keep Brain Aging at Bay, further explains that the sleep study in focus revealed that “while the researchers did not have information on nap duration, earlier studies suggest that naps of 30 minutes or less provide the best short-term cognitive benefits, and napping earlier in the day is less likely to disrupt night-time sleep.” Early afternoon seems like a good choice for me.

So there you go. The new dynamic duo for your afternoons… drum roll… SNACKS AND NAPS! So watch and learn, current and future grandmas. Who knew those grand-toddlers would be teaching us the secrets of healthy aging?

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Are you an napper or a snacker? What fuels your choices? If you have any tips, please share in the comments. Let’s be a community of super agers!

Too Much of a Good Thing?

“There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over any encounter and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.”

— May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude, p. 195.

By now you are starting to notice my patterns. I love to quote May Sarton. I love to write about things that keep the brain engaged and healthy. I also write about the potential threats to brain health lurking in my lifestyle. Random? Let’s start with that Sarton obsession, since she’s become a bit of a writing inspiration to me. Here’s the intersection. Publishing her journals into her 80’s, mind intact, Sarton did suffer (and endured) some serious health issues, which I hope to avoid (working at it). Unlike May, I have the luxury of online access to the most up-to-date, reliable research on brain health and longevity. Like May, I love solitude, too. So what possible risk could there be in aspiring to live long, keep a journal, and carve out as much solitude as possible like Sarton? Well, one lurking out there is risk of isolation; loneliness to name names.

Many studies on Alzheimer’s prevention point to the importance of maintaining social networks as we age and the risk of isolation in accelerating cognitive decline. “Socially isolated older adults have smaller social networks, live alone and have limited participation in social activities,” says Alison Huang, Ph.D., M.P.H., senior research associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “One possible explanation is that having fewer opportunities to socialize with others decreases cognitive engagement as well, potentially contributing to increased risk of dementia.”

I don’t feel I experience much loneliness unless my husband is away, so I don’t realize how easy it is for me to become isolated from “in person” connections. As I wrote about in my last post, I’ve had a long relationship with solitude. And although today, I am writing all this bravado about not being lonely and prizing my solitude, I know that might not be the case in the future. This active period of my life would be a good time to cultivate greater community and nurture relationships. Right? Ugh, but that solitude thing again. How can I find the balance? Precarious business indeed, May. Awareness of the risks is key. Sarton was calculating the risk to her creativity; I am thinking about cognitive health more broadly. I want to write AND not forget what a pencil is for.

I am older now than Sarton was when she wrote Journal of a Solitude. Like Sarton, I know solitude is my center. I have that luxury in retirement. And I am also blessed that most of the important people in my life, people I care deeply about, are still around. And even though I’m still luxuriating right now in being age 65 (it feels deliciously young to me at the start of The Precious Days), time will march on. I appreciate the wisdom of experience that Sarton shares in her book. But I do actually think my musings on solitude and loneliness are a bit different than Sarton’s, and more troubling.

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.”

— May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

What do I know now about just how dangerous the “poverty of the self” Sarton posits might be? Here is some tough love data that I think is relevant in helping anyone who’s aging mindfully walk the tightrope of aloneness (whether self-imposed or circumstantial) with some sought-after balance. Knowing these risks and being aware of strategies for prevention will benefit both the brain and longevity, and allow those of us who need that cherished solitude to intentionally balance it with social connections. To drive the point home one more time, here’s what the CDC lists as possible harmful health risks of too much isolation as we age:

• Social isolation significantly increased a person’s risk of premature death from all causes, a risk that may rival those of smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity.

• Social isolation was associated with about a 50% increased risk of dementia.

• Poor social relationships (characterized by social isolation or loneliness) was associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke.

• Loneliness was associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide.

• Loneliness among heart failure patients was associated with a nearly 4 times increased risk of death, 68% increased risk of hospitalization, and 57% increased risk of emergency department visits.

That data is downright frightening. It reminds me to be aware not only of my own patterns, but also to be sure I continue to reach out to dear ones as we move through these years.

Tomorrow I am having lunch with some cherished friends. I am trying to plan to see friends once or twice a week and make sure I have some weekly outings for a change of scenery, too. I am blessed to have a husband who is also my best friend. And I know I will still have plenty of time to center myself in solitude. Feels like the right balance (for now) for The Precious Days.

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How do you balance your need for connection with a need for solitude? Does one just naturally outweigh the other? Are you worried about loneliness or does it seem like a faraway concern? I love getting your comments. They signal we really are a community navigating The Precious Days not alone, but together.

Desert Oasis

When I  finally coasted into The Precious Days of retirement, I knew I would have ample opportunity to indulge my need for solitude. Hours alone writing and reading and thinking and just being…heaven. The deeply camouflaged introvert in me got a chance to take center stage during lockdown, and I continued to pay attention to my need for aloneness as often as I could. 

So what is it about solitude that I love so much? I mentioned reading, writing, and thinking, my top three solitary activities. Done separately or combined they bring both peace and energy. That may sound contradictory, but I am simultaneously soothed and stimulated by my solitary time. I remember playing in a large bedroom closet for hours as a child, just me, one doll, and lots of imagination. The emotional independence of solitude was exhilarating. Negotiating play and moods with other children was something I did, of course, but it always set me on edge, as did school. It seems I was forever saying the wrong things to friends, classmates, and especially teachers. A few years later, the my teenage bedroom was another sanctuary. Every school night after dinner, you could hear the bang of my bedroom door, and I was gone for the night. School books for homework, books of poetry, a few Ingenue magazines, a Diet Pepsi, a bit of sandalwood incense to burn, and an endless stack of albums. I was in my element. Those albums, so many inspired by my brother’s extensive record collection, became the score of my formative years. Then from high school, to college, to my first jobs and apartments, to a professional career, to marriage(s), and now to The Precious Days, I have discovered that my solitude has a soundtrack. I have returned to certain songs over and over during the times of my life when I had to go deeply inside myself to just be “okay.”

I had heard the description of solitude as an oasis and loneliness as a desert.  Thinking about the oasis and desert imagery, along with my own personal soundtrack of solitude, landed me at the perfect platform for such a metaphor: BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. 

The premise of the show is: “Eight tracks, a book, and a luxury: what would you take to a desert island? Guests share the soundtrack of their lives.” I won’t go into any analysis about the book I’d choose (Loretta Mason Potts) or my luxury item (a bottomless case of journals and pens, pretty obvious). I am focused on my soundtrack of solitude. So with apologies to Lauren Laverne, this castaway is making up her own rules. 

Tracks One and Two:

When I was growing up and starting school, it became increasingly clear that we weren’t an altogether happy family like the ones on television. We weren’t always unhappy, but there was often palpable tension: some shouting, some fighting, demons my father wrestled and secrets my mother kept. Thankfully, my older brother wrestled with the real world to single-handedly bring music into our lives. He chose records that would speak to his own preadolescent tastes, but also entertain my parents. For me, the songs that flowed out of our hi-fi were a childhood backdrop to hours of sitting alone on the linoleum floor in the sunbeams of the living room bay window. This was my own little desert island, as I quietly played with paper dolls and coloring books, and imagined a happier life, courtesy of tunes like these:

There is a Place by the Beatles, Please Please Me, 1963.

“There, there is a place
Where I can go
When I feel low
When I feel blue”

Everybody Loves Somebody by Dean Martin, Everybody Loves Somebody, 1964.

“Everybody finds somebody someplace
There's no telling where love may appear
Something in my heart keeps saying
My someplace is here”

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Tracks Three and Four:

By high school, things had already reached their crescendo of family dysfunction. That, coupled with my own adolescent angst, kicked my need for solitude into high gear. It was becoming more obvious to me that I liked being alone, working alone, and avoiding home and school drama. At times I felt directionless, and as with most teens, things hit hard and hurt deeply. Being alone with music helped me find solace through the sheer relatability of songs. Here are the two tracks that felt like anthems of my youth that I’d take to the desert island:

Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited, 1965

“How does it feel, how does it feel?

To be on your own, with no direction home

Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone”

Hey Miss Lonely by Shawn Phillips, Faces, 1972

“Hey miss flipped-out, don't you ever want to scream and shout?
Telling this sphere about all the wrong there is, my dear
Got to remember that you're part of the day
Hey miss lonely, you can stay, don't go away”

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Tracks Five and Six:

Investigating and interrogating myself, moving deeper and deeper into introspection to figure things out without the clutter of opinions, ill-fitting examples, and how to’s from others characterized the bulk of my adult years. Changes were tumultuous: acquiring degrees and certifications, changing roles in professional education, leaving and making friends, marriage and divorce. During these times, blessed solitude gave me the fortitude to persevere to brighter days, inching closer year by year to a more authentic self. Here are the two tracks I would take to the island to represent the solitude of my “adulting years”:

Landslide by Fleetwood Mac, Fleetwood Mac, 1975

“Well, I've been afraid of changin'

'Cause I've built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I'm getting older, too”

Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles, Abbey Road, 1969

“Little darlin', I feel that ice is slowly melting

Little darlin', it seems like years since it's been clear”

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Tracks Seven and Eight:

During the pandemic and moving forward, more and more frequently nature has become the setting for solitude. Outdoor walks in snow, rain, and sun, from cold mornings to sweltering afternoons just feels like the right environment for deep communion with myself. Since my last years of work and into my first year of full retirement, “getting through” has moved to “keeping on.” And part of that keeping on is continuing, as a closet introvert who craves solitude, to reach out to others and give them support when they need it, work on being a good person, and try to avoid the distractions that interfere with genuine connections. These last two songs have sustained and grounded me, nurturing my love for solitude and also reminding me to continue to try to do good, even if sometimes I get it wrong—I would want these with me:

These Days by Nico, Chelsea Girl, 1967

“I've been out walking
I don't do too much talking these days

These days
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to”

The Weight by The Band, Music from Big Pink, 1968

“Catch a cannon ball now to take me down the line
My bag is sinkin' low and I do believe it's time
To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone”

My personal solitude soundtrack has helped me both hide and heal the broken bits of life, in my own time and by my own rules. There is a rear-view mirror on my desert island oasis of solitude, and through it I’ve glimpsed sunset-bound, camel-riding ghosts, mercifully fleeting images of sadness and past regrets, and slowly evaporating mirages conjured up by guilt and worry. Year by year, the horizon reveals a more solid and hopeful future, and in the here and now I am happy with this phase of my life and the abundance of solitude. Should I take a look at solitude from another perspective? Can too much solitude possibly be a bad thing? Solitude and loneliness straddle a chasm of isolation as we age. But those deep thoughts are for the next blog post. For now, let's fill our heads and hearts with the soundtrack of The Precious Days. What would your eight songs be?

“Ain’t it Funny How the Night Moves”

I hope you aren’t feeling cheated by the title — like the old bait and switch.  This is more about night magic courtesy of the brain, rather than Night Moves, à la Bob Seger.

Recently, in our Women Rowing North-Our Life Stories Alumni writing group, facilitated by our sage guide, Helen, we were tasked with writing about everyday magic. Incredible stories were shared. Listening to this group of wise women is one of my greatest sources of inspiration during The Precious Days. I decided to write about the magic of every night. After writing and sharing my story, it got me thinking about another extraordinary feat of the brain — memory. I focused my last blog on that. I’ve had time to flesh out and polish up the writing group piece, and it feels like the right fit for this Friday’s blog — another testimonial to the brain’s amazing functions and a little trip to dreamland.

Think about it. What earthly magic can compare to the otherworldly wonder of the dreams created by the human mind? Shakespeare got it. A Midsummer Night’s Dream continues to be one of his most enduringly popular plays, with the hapless humans’ succumbing to the bewitching antics of fairies, all in a dream-like slumber (or so says Puck). And if you have not seen the John Cusack movie 1408 based on Stephen King’s short story by the same name, you have not experienced the thrill of a bizarre and terrifying twist on lucid dreaming. And I would be remiss not to mention that The Shining wouldn’t have had us all scared witless if it hadn’t been for one of King’s own dreams. Magic? Sorcery? Madness? Fantasy? Any and all of these can result from the alchemy of merging the conscious and unconscious mind somewhere between the time of fluttering lids, eyes rolling back heavy with sleep, and then hours later, a rheumy-eyed awakening into the real world. Upon waking, sometimes we are relieved; sometimes we are disappointed. But, you have to admit that the fantastical landscape that exists in that “in between” is nothing short of miraculous. Indeed, dreams reign supreme in the world of everyday magic. 

My dreams haven’t always been a source of enchantment. A tumultuous relationship with dreams started when I was small. My mother recited poems to me at bedtime, and one of my favorites was Eugene Fields’ Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.  The fantasy of sailing off in that wooden shoe seemed like a lovely journey to dreamland. But between toddlerhood and age eight, while “sailing on a river of crystal light into a sea of dew,” night terrors featured heavily. Bedtimes were full of tears and the fear of what awaited me. 

As a small child I wanted my mother to explain why something that scary happened to me at night. I was so young that it was hard for me to conceptually understand dreams, especially such vivid ones. I was sure someone real was pursuing me in my sleep. But who was the monster under the bed? Was it my Aunt Hetty? She terrified me with her nurse’s command of sharp tweezers, gaggy tongue depressors, and stinging peroxide, not to mention the creepiness of that long stringy bun she unraveled each night before bed. Often at bedtime, she knocked on the wall from the other side of our duplex intoning a haunting, “Bye for now.” Maybe it was the specter of the local telephone operator who had scolded me every time I picked up that heavy black phone’s receiver, then remained mute as she snapped, “Number PLEASE!” two or three times before loudly disconnecting me. Or was it Lord Jesus, whom I prayed to every night “my soul to keep”? Just in case, I tried saying my prayers in a pious plea rather than a hurried chant.  My mother was sympathetic and consoling, even taking me to the pediatrician to see what could be done. Nothing. Could. Be. Done. Time will tell. Wait and see. 

Eventually, I did outgrow the nightmares and the terrifying prickling that traveled up my spine into the base of my skull that accompanied them. Every person who has ever touched me on a certain area of my back has heard me admonish, “Don’t touch my spine!” That’s how powerful a force those dreams were from my childhood. I saw a neurologist once for something unrelated, or so I thought, and he was fascinated by my opposite handedness in sports, the closing of what seemed like the “wrong eye” to sight something, and that recurring, electrically-charged, spine-tingling dream, which I decided to share. Were they all connected in my brain? Who knows. But I am fine. My brain signals are fine. Thankfully. 

So why would a child tormented by such dark and frightening visions grow into an adult who looks forward to remembering every detail of every dream before they evaporate into the daily routine? First, it is precisely because of the recurring nightmares of childhood, so vivid and visceral, that as an adult I am able to recall my dreams in such detail. Second, thanks to my own “comes in handy” degree in psychology, the theories of the brilliant Gestaltist, Frederick “Fritz” Perls, and my own therapist, I learned that not only did I actually script everything that happened in my dreams, but that I might actually be able to control the narrative of my dreams through self-coaching before sleep (a toe-dip into lucid dreaming). Finally and most importantly, as the years have progressed, my brain has produced some of the most thrilling, fantastical dream scenarios that could ever be imagined … although I did, in fact, imagine them. They are worth remembering and working through to more deeply understand conscious, subconscious, and unconscious me. This deeper meaning comes through my own version of Gestalt dreamwork, which I sometimes write about in my Morning Pages.

“For some must watch, while some must sleep...so runs the world away”

— William Shakespeare, Hamlet

These grown-up dreams can be categorized as what Gretchen Rubin calls “adult wonder.” Rubin explains this as “wonder that comes from experience and understanding.” And that fits for me because the wonder of these dreams has been made more marvelous with the knowledge of what is happening both to produce them and understand their meaning. Dreams as adult wonders should matter. You wouldn’t poo-poo 8 hours of what your conscious mind produces during your waking hours, so why wouldn’t you pay attention to 8 hours of what your mind is doing while you sleep? By paying attention, one thing I’ve found out is my adult dreams have pretty regularly fallen into three recurring patterns in the land of Nod.

PATTERN #1

The first is the discovery dreams, which started shortly after we moved when I was in elementary school. The initial dreams included opening a door in our new house that led to yet undiscovered secret passages revealing intricately designed rooms, furnished with unfamiliar and odd pieces. These kinds of dreams have continued through every phase of my life. Apartments and homes I have lived in or visited reappear with new rooms. Corridors and winding staircases connect to larger floors with other units full of high, old world ceilings and cosmopolitan amenities. There have also been years of dreams in which I discover an entirely new section of my hometown as I turn the corner on a familiar street. There are new clothing stores, bustling restaurants and bars, all kinds of entertainment venues from movie theaters to opera houses, new neighborhoods, and streets teeming with people living this exciting unfamiliar life I am just coming to know. The same dream pattern plays out on my own street, as I take a walk up to an actual neighbor’s house and behind it find New York City style brownstones alongside Maine cottages and multi-story metropolitan glass-clad libraries.“Wow” is all I can think at the time, awestruck by these discoveries and the anticipation of living in these new worlds. 

PATTERN #2

The second is the “White Nights” dreams. These began after I visited the former Soviet Union in July during the 1980’s. In these dreams, I wake up to an outdoor world where the middle of the night isn’t dark, and I inhabit an unfamiliar world that is a cross between polar day and full moon magic. I find myself under a tree reading a book well after the night hours have descended. In the glow of the midnight sun, I find backyard neighborhood parties taking place as I stroll on a 2:00 a.m. walk, greeting other nocturnal neighbors and visitors for whom this illuminated life has continued into the wee hours of the morning. And it’s all so vivid, so possible, so real. 

PATTERN #3

The final pattern, which I learned to work on in therapy, is to take narrative control of my dreams when my deceased parents enter. This has allowed me to have a loving, albeit oneiric relationship with my parents, one where my father is free of Alzheimer’s and my mother and I no longer play out a complicated, hurtful dynamic. Now I look forward to the dreams in which my mother and I again laugh together, the familiar sights and smells of home anchor the setting, and my father helps me solve a problem nestled somewhere deep in my subconscious.

Over the years, dreams have transformed from my tormentors and nemeses to the muses and oracles in my life. Their particular brand of mystical intelligence and wondrous wisdom is fleeting in the face of the morning sun, as the more practical enchantments of the everyday take center stage. So I am grateful that the night magic of my imagination continues its strange moves, waiting to reveal some marvelous new dreamy drama, one Precious Night at a time. 

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Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
   Sailed off in a wooden shoe,—
Sailed on a river of crystal light
   Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
   The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring-fish
   That live in this beautiful sea;
   Nets of silver and gold have we,"
            Said Wynken,
            Blynken,
            And Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song,
   As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
And the wind that sped them all night long
   Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were the herring-fish
   That lived in the beautiful sea.
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish,—
   Never afraid are we!"
   So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
            Wynken,
            Blynken,
            And Nod.

All night long their nets they threw
   To the stars in the twinkling foam,—
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
   Bringing the fishermen home:
'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
   As if it could not be;
And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed
   Of sailing that beautiful sea;
   But I shall name you the fishermen three:
            Wynken,
            Blynken,
            And Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
   And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
   Is a wee one's trundle-bed;
So shut your eyes while Mother sings
   Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
   As you rock in the misty sea
   Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:—
            Wynken,
            Blynken,
            And Nod.

“Time Passages”

“All round the day was going down slow…”

Am I motivated by the sun or unmotivated by gray skies? Whichever, it HIT this week, and I am a few days late with my blog. I am trying to blog regularly…want to be consistent…but then the procrastinator side of me just wants to duke it out with my responsible side, and there you go. Place no bets. So it’s a Monday instead of a Friday that the blog is coming out. Gotta watch that Readers, gotta hold myself accountable…or not. Meh. I’m retired (wink). So here we go. Do you recognize these lyrics? Thanks to my brother, they have been on a replay loop in my head for the last few weeks.

“It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don’t know why you should feel
That there’s something to learn
It’s just a game that you play
Well the picture is changing
Now you’re part of a crowd
They’re laughing at something
And the music’s loud
A girl comes towards you
You once used to know
You reach out your hand
But you’re all alone, in these
Time passages
I know you’re in there, you’re just out of sight
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight”

— Al Stewart, Time Passages (1978)

“Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn…”

My brother has been extolling the concert virtues of Al Stewart. At 77, Stewart in concert sounds just like Stewart in his early thirties, when he released Time Passages. I chose this song as an example because it is my absolute favorite Al Stewart song. And as I begin my journey into the second half of my sixties, the words speak to me in ways that were impossible in 1978 when I was just breaking into my twenties.

“Well I'm not the kind to live in the past…”

I am at a juncture in my life when maybe I am the kind to live in the past. Well, not actually “live” there, but I spend an awful lot of time visiting. The act of recalling details such as years, dates, my state of mind at the time, and honing in on significant milestones and childhood memories reassures me that my retrieval is intact. All is well. As my grandmother used to say, “I’ll be fine, Linda, as long as I’ve got my brains.” How true, Gram—wise words.

At the time she shared that wisdom with me, my grandmother could not have known that her eldest son would “lose his brains” and die of Alzheimer’s at 85 — roughly the same age as his own father died suffering from dementia. I use the term “dementia” because I don’t remember people getting an Alzheimer’s diagnosis in the early 80’s. But perhaps I wasn’t paying attention. I sure am paying attention now.

“There's something back here that you left behind…”

So what’s going on with this compelling need to visit the past, to reminisce, to recall, to steep some portion of every day in nostalgia? Some parts of it are just plain personal gratitude. When you’ve been around for decades you’ve lived a lot of life and have made a lot of memories. Some of it is inspiration for writing. I like to sprinkle memoir-esque vignettes throughout my writing (thank you, Ally Berthiaume for your coaching and The Writing Bar). But most of all, it’s family, past and present, that compels me to exercise my memory as much as I can. And I understand that these memories are as much about my brain and its miraculous activities as they are about living, capturing, and retrieving the past.

“The things we lean on that don’t last…”

My brother and I lean on our memories to connect. That is our love language. That is our sibling bond. We try to talk on the phone weekly. If one of us doesn’t pick up, we’ll leave messages on voicemail prefaced by, “I wanted to tell you something I remembered before I forget.” The content of that voice message has such high stakes for us both. As I mentioned, we lost people we loved to dementia. We lived the heartbreaking “long goodbye” with my dad for more years than we were willing to admit. When he started to lose both short and long-term memory, he would struggle to piece together who we were and why we inserted ourselves into whatever waking bad dream he lived each day. Most painfully, we all struggled as he forgot how to do the things that we take for granted. I used to ask him what year it was and his answer was always the same: 1974. I wondered what happened in 1974 that the year was stuck and retrieved each time? When I would say, “Nope, Dad, it’s later,” he might get up to 1979 before I would tell him it was 2000 something. That number made no sense to him. He’d just look at me with those blank eyes, then turn away. My brother spent so much time with my father when they worked together over the years. He’d know the significance of 1974. I should leave him a voicemail and ask, before I forget.

“I know you're in there, you're just out of sight…”

Neither my brother nor I know if we have the Alzheimer’s apolipoprotein gene (ApoE4). With both a grandfather and father with Alzheimer’s, there’s a good chance. But no, we don’t need to know. Because here’s what my brother and I already know:

BLEAK: “Studies of family history say that if you have a close relative who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease—the most common form of dementia in older adults—your risk increases by about 30%. This is a relative risk increase, meaning a 30% hike in your existing risk. If you are age 65, the risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's is 2% per year, although this also means a 98% chance per year of not developing Alzheimer's. In absolute numbers, a 2% annual risk means that two out of 100 65-year-olds will develop dementia every year. Family history raises the 2% annual risk by about 30%, to 2.6% per year.” Harvard Health

BLEAKER: “ 1 in 10 Americans over age 65 is living with dementia and another 22%of seniors experience mild cognitive impairment, and another 22% of seniors experience mild cognitive impairment, which is one of the initial signs of that more serious cognition challenges might be on the way.” Jama Neurology Study via EatingWell.

KIND OF HOPEFUL: “My grandmother knew what she was talking about. It’s all about brain health. There is so much you can do to slow down the onset of Alzheimer’s, maybe even prevent it (my daily “maybe” prayer) through diet, exercise, watching blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol numbers, staying away from too much alcohol (well, all of it actually), eating whole, minimally-processed foods, and good carbs, taking key supplements, keeping excess weight off, using your brain to keep learning…the internet is FULL of good, sound advice.” Linda (me)

“Don't know why you should feel…that there's something to learn…”

I have done some reading lately that has put this whole “memory is more than just remembering” vibe on the front burner and it makes me more determined than ever to take on any threats to my own memory. The first is a fascinating new novel by one of my favorite British authors, Claire Fuller. First I should say that I am obsessed with pandemic-error fiction, and this book, The Memory of Animals, is an exceptionally fascinating fictionalized take on a pandemic. In part of the plot, the main character, Neffy, gains access to some experimental technology that allows her to vividly relive some critical memories while trying to make sense of so many things that have moved far beyond making sense. I have to be careful here of spoilers, but The Memory of Animals time travel technology functions pretty much exactly like cognitive scientists have described how the brain engages in “mental time travel” using memory:

“In everyday life, when you have an experience, your brain constructs this rich neural code representing the details of that experience. Later, if you think back to that experience, the brain attempts to reactivate that neural representation,” Polyn explained in an email to The Huffington Post. “Mental time travel is when the brain does a really good job reactivating that past state, which can feel like you are actually revisiting the experience, in your mind’s eye. ”

— How The Brain Performs 'Mental Time Travel' in Huffpost by Carolyn Gregoire: How The Brain Travels Back In Time (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brain-mental-time-travel_n_6714550)

“Drifting into time passages…”

This mental time travel is accomplished through episodic memory, which is defined as “the ability to learn, store, and retrieve information about unique personal experiences that occur in daily life.” We can, indeed, briefly and with some degree of control, live in the past without any fancy technology. In The Memory of Animals, Neffy uses the technology to seek out the person she was in these memories to better understand the person she is, and shape the person she will become. Um, it turns out that isn’t actually fiction:

“..through mental time travel, episodic memory can also directly transport us into past, to the person that lived through our previous experiences, and into the future, to the person we are yet to become.”

— Donna Rose Addis as quoted in "Linking the Past to the Future Through Memory" (https://www.cogneurosociety.org/memory_addis_yia/)

“Well the picture is changing…”

Well, so what? The aging woman in me wants to tell you all that it is never too soon or too late to protect your brain’s functioning, folks. Shout it from the rooftops to everyone in your life. The work on Alzheimer’s is evolving and shifting, and while there is still no cure, there is progress in understanding how to both prevent and delay. Both Addis and Polyn point out that this deeper understanding of how the brain produces memories has huge implications in Alzheimer’s research. Polyn, again, in Gregoire’s Huffpost story: “If we can understand what different brain regions are doing during healthy memory retrieval, that can give us great insight into what’s going wrong when memory is damaged. It may also help us develop better tests for early detection of memory disorders, and give us ideas for how to better treat people with these disorders." I will continue to work daily in this phase of my life to protect my brain, to share memories with the people I made them with as often as I can, and to make new memories that hopefully I will be recalling and sharing well into my nineties. And Al Stewart, I love your song, but there was one line you got wrong: “You're all NOT alone in these time passages ….” There, fixed it for you.

June’s Magic

A brief backstory about this blog post:

When I started this blog post draft it was sunny, warm, and about as June-y as June can get. The days actually sparkled in the sun and the laughter of the neighborhood kids was heralding that excitement that comes with the end of the school year. Then it all fell apart. The temperature dropped into the fifties, and it has been cloudy and rainy for over a week. Reader, I lost my mojo. But today, I decided I needed to buck up and not let the fickle nature of fronts dampen (pun intended) The Precious Days. So here we go….

It had to be June…

One of the things I am loving about retirement is my growing capacity to experience the months of the year for all the joy they possess. These months have always been there of course, along with their monthly enchantments fueled by the seasons, ancient wisdom, and my own past. The difference in the experience is both obvious (no work-world distractions) and subtle (taking the time to notice). With each month, the present moment mingles with nostalgia and the delights deepen. June is emblematic of this marriage of mindfulness and memories. From the Strawberry Moon to the Summer Solstice, it has always been surrounded by a magical aura for me. If I trace the origins of June’s captivating role in my life, I can find its beginnings in the summer of 1964.

The school year of 1963-1964 is memorable for so many reasons. It was my first year of school. First grade. What a milestone. I had an older brother in grade school and a mother who was a fifth grade teacher. School ruled our lives, and I had longed to be part of it. The year was full of excitement and historical milestones. At six years old I was afraid of a man named Kruschev. I experienced the assassination of a president in November, being told to “run home” as the news hit our school and teachers were crying, including my beloved first grade teacher, Miss Corliss. As things calmed in our classroom and 1963 turned into 1964 with school parties, Dick and Jane readers, and flips on the monkey bars, our country was not calming down. Black and white images of protests, riots, and a place called Vietnam started to populate the evening news as we put our Beatles 45s away to get ready for a dinner of cube steak and scalloped potatoes. But as a six year old, I lived in a world of Little Golden Books, Barbies, Uncle Wiggily, and first grade. I didn’t understand what a turning point 1964 would prove to be in American history, but that is an analysis for another time.

At school, the days flew by and the minutes dragged. I remember the ticking of our classroom clock, so loud when our heads were on our desks for a '“rest.” I remember the minute hand moving so slowly that I thought I’d burst with the energy stored in little legs that wanted to run, jump, and skip. And then it was June. At school, June was different. In first grade Miss Corliss patiently explained to us how the school year would soon be over. I wasn’t sure whether I should be sad or excited. But the prospect of a whole summer to run, jump, skip, and play with my friends won me over. On a sunny, warm Friday in early June of 1964, school got out early. And every single one of us was given a Hood’s Ice Cream Sandwich on our way out the door. What kind of school day was this? A few hours of cleaning our desks punctuated by an ice cream sandwich? Pure magic.

My beloved neighborhood school was within walking distance to and from all of our houses. We ran and scattered throughout the neighborhood that day. I remember hanging on to my ice cream sandwich until I reached a favorite concrete step surrounding a culvert. As I peeled the waxed paper off the melting confection, I looked up and noticed I was alone. Apparently, the other kids had gone home for lunch. Still true to this day, I needed some alone time to process.

And what a summer that June had in store for me as a six year old. Right off, June was all summer magic in 1964. It started with that ice cream sandwich on a Friday and just got better and better. The jangling bells of the ice cream truck could be heard every day. Every. Single. Day. June was a month of first swims, first fireflies, first family vacations, and first picnics. As a teacher, my mom had summer vacation right along with my brother and me. My dad was anxious to hit the road once my mother was out of school. The Land of Make Believe and Frontier Town were our first stops. Then there were the weekend picnics. All year long the metal picnic basket and the gray thermos sat unused on the cellar landing until June. Then the basket was filled with deviled eggs wrapped in waxed paper, Tupperware containers filled with fried chicken or hot dogs to be grilled, and homemade cookies. And that gray picnic thermos held the holy grail of summer drinks: grape Kool-aid laced with a glug of 7-up and copious slices of lemon…nectar of the gods.

I was so lucky to have a neighbor friend just a year younger. We were Schultz and Dooley. Me, a chubby six year old with an over-processed Toni that snapped dozens of plastic headbands — she, a cute, tiny five year, with silky blond hair swooped up by her side part into a ponytail. We spent pretty much every day of that first school vacation in the summer of 1964 together. The June days and those that followed were filled with dolls, ducks (in her backyard), homemade popsicles, and lying on our backs looking up at the fluffiest clouds in the bluest sky of my childhood. The nights were dotted with twilight happenings in between our two houses, moms talking, brothers “having a catch.” The night sky filled with fast balls and flying bats, whizzing and whirling above our heads. And on a summer night in June, there we were, Cherry and I, running and laughing at something funny only to a six and a five year old, palms pushed down on our heads like a protective cap, screaming at the bats not to make nests in our hair. Finally our moms would have had enough, and we retreated to our own sides of the driveway.

“Then add some happy children to the fields and flowers and skies,
And so you have June’s picture here before your eyes.”

— June's Picture by Annette Wynne, last stanza

As I finish this blog post, the late afternoon June sun is making an appearance. It’s time for me to fill The Precious Days of June with some new magic, suitable for a picnic-loving, sky-gazing, bat-fearing retiree.

Travel Adventure

It’s not what you think. This kind of travel journey doesn’t involve flying on a plane or packing a suitcase, although there is definitely some baggage involved.

“The trouble is, old age is not interesting until one gets there. It’s a foreign country with an unknown language to the young and even to the middle-aged.”

— May Sarton, As We Are NowQuote Source

This travel adventure to a “foreign country” is my own journey into aging, and God-willing, “old old” will be the destination. It’s perhaps the most important trip of my cumulative life, so I want to make sure I have done everything possible to be the most responsible traveler I can be.

So what exactly is the destination “old old”? I first heard of this description of aging in one of May Sarton’s journals, and found out it was actually a description of phases framed in sociology: “The older adult population can be divided into three life-stage subgroups: the young-old (approximately 65–74), the middle-old (ages 75–84), and the old-old (over age 85). Today’s young-old age group is generally happier, healthier, and financially better off than the young-old of previous generations.” The numbers bookending the phases may have shifted a bit, I honestly don’t know, but I really like this concept. It reminded me of descriptions of travel plans I’ve heard from people: “First we’ll take a cruise to _____ then fly to _____ until we reach our ultimate destination of _____.” And the travel analogy for this blog post was born.

What is the first thing one might do when traveling to a foreign destination? Well, consult the internet of course. I went straight to the Travelers Insurance Company to check out their recommendations. They were easily adapted to my own journey, with some minor additions and tweaking.

LEARN THE LANGUAGE

There is a lexicon that I didn’t think much about until I began my journey to this foreign land from “young old to middle old to old old.” Now I can converse like a native about Medicare, Social Security, annuities, pensions, and the benefits of AARP. It took a while to feel comfortable to initiate a conversation about such things, but now I am less self-conscious. Recently, I’ve taken a deeper dive into the cultural influences associated with “ageism.” Fluency definitely reveals some deeper understandings that aren’t always pleasant.

PACK LIGHT

Accumulating certain “stuff” was fun over a lifetime, but as I prepare for this journey to the next and final phases of life, I don’t want or need so much stuff. And I certainly don’t want to burden whomever is tasked with clearing out my life after I am gone. I don’t mean to sound morbid here, just realistic. Swedish Death Cleaning sounds like a god-awful process, but it sure makes a lot of sense. The internet is full of “how to” articles and there is a book written on the topic that lays it all out: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. There is even a checklist to follow. My husband and I are starting with clothing. A lot of it has already gone to Goodwill, but I have such a long way to go. I was worried about all the stuff that wasn’t suitable for Goodwill that I did not want to end up in the landfill. I found out that our recycling center takes those kinds of things for just a dollar a bag. The material gets turned into insulation. After clothing, you continue with the clutter by size, and finally you declutter your digital life. I am trying to buy less, pay attention to packaging, and pack as many unused household things for charity as I can stand. It’s not easy. These are my current strategies to pack light for destination “old old.”

SECURE YOUR VALUABLES

On this journey, the valuable I am keeping safe at all times is my health. I don’t let my health goals get out of my line of sight too often. Eating for cognitive health, exercising to keep my heart strong, and keeping myself informed of health issues and recommended actions for my age and profile are things that keep me alert to possible threats on this journey.

SHARE YOUR TRAVEL ITINERARY

“Young old” is the right time for my husband and I to get our finances and other important plans in order and make sure significant others know the plan we have for destination “old old. ” Wills, Advance Directives, Living Trusts, long-term care plans, assisted living facilities, Power-of-Attorney, planning for probate, family members’ roles, etc. didn’t exactly cross my mind when I was kicking up my heels for the first 3 to 5 decades of my life, but they are on my mind now. Each of the aging phases has specific “stops along the way.” My husband has two adult children, we both have siblings, and I have some very special life-long friends who have been like family. We want them to know our itinerary. Putting things like this in order is necessary preparation for a smooth trip.

MAKE AN EMERGENCY PLAN

I have always been a pretty good “just in case” planner. During the pandemic, I brought it to an art form in our home. There were important talks, lists, a mini grocery store in our basement, and contingency plans in case one of us became seriously ill. Covid emergency bags containing soups, ginger ale, Gatorade, crackers, tissues, ibuprofen, and lists of our medications sat in the back of a closet, thankfully unused. I am still learning about the best emergency plans for this journey. One plan includes having a bag packed for the hospital with all the necessities, including a few books, a new journal and pen, and detailed directions of where to find important things back at home. My husband has been very on top of this, and all his important information is easy to access. As we continue to prepare for this journey to foreign territory, we’ll enlist the help of others much younger to become part of our emergency planning. Just being in the mindset of this kind of planning makes me feel like this can be a safe trip.

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I fully intend to reach the foreign destination of “old old.” It is a distinct possibility that I will spend many of The Precious Days there. And I hope that when I do, I will find it to have been much like the travel adventure described by May Sarton in Coming into Eighty. I’m hoping the title of my poem would be “Coming into One Hundred.” As May said, “Wish me well.”

Coming into eighty
I slow my ship down
For a safe landing.
It has been battered,
One sail torn, the rudder
Sometimes wobbly.
We are hardly a glorious sight.
It has been a long voyage
Through time, travail and triumph,
Eighty years
Of learning what to be 
And how to become it.

One day the ship will
decompose
and then what will become of me?
Only a breath 
Gone into nothingness
Alone
Or a spirit of air and fire
Set free?
Who knows?

Greet us at landfall
The old ship and me,
But we can’t stay anchored.
Soon we must set sail
On the last mysterious voyage
Everybody takes
Toward death.
Without my ship there,
Wish me well.

Are you a planner in this phase of your life, more of a one-day-at-a-time person, or a combination of both? How are you navigating your own journey into aging? Drop me a line in the Comments section, and thank you for reading The Precious Days.

“Monday, Monday”

“Bah-da bah-da-da-da” … I bet you think this is going to be another Monday rant, don’t you? Well, I come here in my full retirement regalia not to bury Monday, but to praise her. If you are retired, you may already be #TeamMonday. If you are looking forward to retirement in the near future, you have probably already thought about how nice it will be not to have that dark cloud descend on your life at about 5:00 pm on Sunday.

That cloud followed most of us from our school days right into decades of work. From our earliest school age we learned that five days a week we lived a life contrary to one that made us abundantly happy. During those 5 days, someone else called the shots. Our working parents were right there in it with us. They tried to cram real life into four or five hours after work, while we as kids ate our predictable dinners, did our homework, watched a show, and were hustled off to bed so their tasks could continue. As adults, we understood why our working moms were so tired. Lather, rinse, repeat. But when Friday afternoon hit and the weekend was in sight, and our lives were suddenly like those old, slow-motion TV commercials of people with arms outstretched, running and twirling through a field of daisies bathed in sunlight.

The weekend. What a concept (thank you labor unions). The freedom, the leisure, the looming MONDAY (gulp)! Poor Monday, you never really stood a chance. I was definitely in the “I Don’t Like Monday” club when I worked. It didn’t mean I didn’t like my job, I just really never warmed to the idea of the 5 day work week. It seemed like (still does) a really antiquated construct to me. It has served its purpose to protect workers, but it’s time to rethink the work week. If you are still in the workforce, the pandemic may have changed your work week a bit, but most likely things snapped back to a model that was framed shortly after the turn of the century (that’s the 20th century). The history of the work week and the weekend is something one might want to be familiar with, and this article from The Atlantic explains it well.

Back to Mondays. I used to really dislike them. I remember being at an education training with some colleagues when I was a principal. The presenter, I’ll call him Dr. D., chastised anyone in the group who didn’t raise a hand when he asked, “Is Monday your favorite day of the week?” I don’t think a single hand went up. My friend and I looked at each other because we often commiserated when it was time to “get up and do it again, amen.” For years after that, my friend and I would text on Monday morning to acknowledge how disappointed Dr. D. would be in us, yet again. Like I said, it wasn’t my job I dreaded…it was years of Monday conditioning that probably started even before I started school. Even preschoolers could recognize the change in their own little lives once Monday hit. Babysitters, different routines, different foods, and different moods with the grown-ups. That’s a lot of psychology to unpack, folks.

Enter the Mondays of retirement. Mondays occupy an entirely different headspace for the retired. During my transition into full retirement, I was viewing Mondays in vacation mode, so the Monday transformation took a while. This transitory phase still had me “bookending” Mondays from an old work mindset. Some of the related emotions still occurred, and I would often be at odds with myself on a Monday. Know that it takes a while to get rid of this kind of thinking. It involves a complete unlearning of how you see time. This is all new terrain, and you are thrown back into the learning curve only this time your old habits may not serve you well at all. The concept of “beginners mind” can be so helpful once you start to feel the dissonance.

Once I realized that both unlearning and a beginner’s perspective about time could reframe the construct of the week for me, I was on my way to living The Precious Days. Now that I am well into my first year of full retirement, with eyes wide open and a conscious mind to boot, I find myself positively giddy about Mondays. They feel magical. A whole week opening up in front of me, full of extraordinary potential? Yes, please. I love the anticipation that comes quite surprisingly with the slowness of a Monday. I love the quiet of the stores on a Monday. I can shop, walk, go to appointments on a Monday encountering few others with the exception of “my people.” The young olds, the middle olds, and the old olds are a quiet society on a Monday. We love our solitude bubbles as we round the walking paths or stroll the aisles, sometimes nodding in recognition of this bliss, this loving of Mondays.

The markers of Mondays for me now are peace and possibility. The confluence of the pandemic and my retirement provided me with the solitude I have longed for most of my life. The safety and peace of not having to be around throngs of others every day in the work world has played such an important role in my mental health. I feel tremendous gratitude as I know this is not true for so many, and that is humbling. For now, I am blessed that Monday has become my life-muse. Most of my Mondays start with time outside and a poem. This one by Mary Oliver seems to speak both to how I used to feel on Mondays and to my new love of magical Monday, which is creating a wondrous world for me 52 times a year.

Morning Poem
by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches—
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging–

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray

How is your relationship with Mondays? Let me know in the Comments.

Part Three: Retirement Routines

A brief disclaimer: This is the final entry in the 3 part series of Rites, Rituals, and Routines of Retirement. Just like no two lives are lived the same way, your retirement plans and trajectory, current or future, may not parallel my own. In this post, I am offering some examples of my retirement routines based on my own experience – free to take or leave. I hope the routines you create bring you satisfaction and an abundance of joy in The Precious Days. 

For so many years, I woke up each morning in a rush. Barely 5:00 a.m. and I already felt I was behind. So many of my workdays started with a mix of excitement and stress. I loved what I did, so there was a lot to look forward to at work. But stress often won out, and most of the time it would rule not only the hectic starts to the day, but even my time once I got home from work. I usually did manage to eat some kind of breakfast and pack a lunch that usually just went on a tupperware vacation each day, from my fridge to the fridge at work, or sometimes just along for the ride in the backseat of my car. Work was often too busy or poorly timed for lunch. Ravenous and exhausted by the time I got home, I’d make poor eating choices, unwind with TV and with my laptop on the couch, working and mindlessly eating until it was time to go to bed and get up and do it all over again. There were so many times my husband would ask at 8:00 p.m.,“Why do you still have your coat on?” If you know, you know. 

Oh, how I looked forward to the point in my life when I would have more time to do the things I loved. Enter retirement, the era of new routines. 

There is nothing magical about trading in one set of routines for another. Of course, I wanted magic. Finding that sense of wonder, of something revealed to me in the routines of The Precious Days would actually take some work and another change in mindset. Time doesn’t change in retirement. I didn’t get “more time.” There are still 24 hours in a day. It’s how I use the time that changed for me. More importantly, it was how I thought about time that changed things for me. In the process of reinventing my routines for retirement, I no longer thought in terms of “wasting time” or feeling guilty because I didn’t complete a task. I had obsessed so much about that in my work years. Did the 7 day week change? No. But the consequences imposed by a 5 day work week with a 2 day weekend used to play catch up dissolved away. Ahhh…finally. In retirement, I was able to decide how I wanted to “spend” the time of The Precious Days, and I felt time had become the richest commodity in my life. I wanted to spend this investment of minutes, hours, and days in ways that could bring me satisfaction, peace, and joy. 

There were two tools that helped me in the process of establishing the routines in retirement to help me achieve the goals of satisfaction, happiness, accomplishment, and purpose: unlearning and structure.

1. UNLEARNING

Unlearning the routines of decades of work as a professional in education, not to mention the years as a student going to school for half a year, is no small feat. The rhythm of everything for me was tied to the field of education. Celebration of a New Year? Why that’s the first day of school, of course. Time to exhale? Um, that would be June. Every month held some educational touchstone, related emotions, and often obstacles to enjoying what the months truly had to offer.  Unlearning the routines that accompanied these rhythms meant dismantling a worldview, and not to sound too dramatic, but a deconstruction of my self. My professional self. 

One of the most critical areas of unlearning was related to my own headspace. I noticed that during my transition year, I was still approaching my days with a work mindset, even though my new role was very part time.  Annie, who is the wonderful writer and storyteller behind the blog Annie’s Journey said it so well commenting on my blog The Rites of Retirement: “What I'm only realizing now, almost a year after leaving my job, is that … my head was still "in the game." My (former) employer's game, not mine…. I was thinking about …work…not…my life work.”   As we both learned, once you’re ready in your transition to retirement, you need to “make peace and move on.”

My ritual of Morning Pages really helped me with this “exorcism.” I found I would “think forward” about the day and focus on exciting possibilities and what  I wanted to accomplish, which sometimes was more of a feeling (like satisfaction) than a task. I had to “unlearn” the routines of the workday, which I saw as limiting (early meetings, late meetings, a project that would consume evenings, and god forbid that outfit I needed was in the laundry or at the dry cleaners). So my new routines took on the meaning I wanted them to. They were no longer routines in service to a work day. They were life routines: life giving, life affirming, life enhancing. By unlearning my old work-related routines, I was open to creating retirement routines that served the purpose of The Precious Days. 

“When I wake up now, I breathe deeply and look around in wonder. I can do or not do. I can meditate or exercise, check email or practice ukulele…. Who am I, if I am not the Doer? It’s an age-old spiritual question and a perfect practice for me now.”

— Honoring Retirement With A Ritual by Connie Zweig (Forbes Online)

2. STRUCTURE

This may seem a bit counter intuitive. Why would I need structure? Go with the flow! Do whatever I want! Oh, I admit there were days when I said “my retirement, my rules” and just ambled through my day. But that wasn’t very satisfying for me. You can only stay in your pajamas watching Mike and Molly reruns for so long, even if you don’t feel particularly guilty about it. But I am a self-confessed structure lover. So it was critical for me in unlearning my old routines that I replaced them with routines that would provide a pleasant, unhurried, “non-task-specific” structure to the day. My daily retirement routines are the backdrop for my retirement rituals. Most routines set up or flow into those deeper rituals. Adopting a morning, afternoon, and evening framework was the right structure for my routines. Early in my retirement, my husband and I agreed to keep the weekends a bit non-routine. I still wanted those two days to feel special since I was finally able to enjoy weekend activities, like a Farmer’s Market or a night out for live music.

Here is a sampling of my current Retirement Routines (without the obvious ones added), which don’t always follow an “order” — they are routines rather than a schedule:

Morning:

• Morning Rituals

• Make the bed 

• Take the dog out for a morning walk

• Wordle, Spelling Bee, and The Mini (thank you NYT)

• “Good morning” texts to friends 

• An episode of The Archers on BBC Radio 4 or The CBS Radio Mystery Theater on Brando Oldtime Radio

• Watch any new videos in my subscriptions on Youtube and/or update Goodreads

• Have a high protein late breakfast (I pay way more attention to protein now at this stage of my life)

• Read a chapter or two of my current novel

• Morning walking at the Complex (I have just started this)

• Clean up chores

Afternoon:

• Write 

• Read a chapter or two of my current novel

• Run errands, if I have them

• Water the plants, sit in the garden

• A walk if I haven’t gone in the morning

• Take the dog out for her pre-dinner walk

• Eat an early dinner 

Evening:

• Clean up chores, maybe laundry

• Relaxing on the deck in the warmer months

• An hour or so on the the treadmill, watching a show on Britbox or Acorn TV and/or watching sports with my husband

• Taking the dog out for her evening walk (my husband takes her out at various times, too)

• A few hours of reading my current novel with a cup of herbal tea

• Evening Rituals

Now that the weather is nicer, my husband and I have started to take more day trips and various outings, which I will share in another blogpost next month. 

These routines are working for me now, but I am sure they will be modified and adjusted as I make my way. Some may become the seed of a new ritual. And there are still some days that feel a bit like the “bad old days” of my work life, but they are few and far between and much more easily put into perspective. I used to feel like the days of my work life just slipped away. But now, The Precious Days feel more like they unfold.

What are some of the things you’ve had to unlearn? What new routines have you created to serve the life you want to live each day. I would love for you to share in the Comments below. And speaking of the Comments, thank you to all of you who take the time to share. It feels like community when that happens. It may take me a while, but I promise to respond to each comment.