A SOLITARY WALK

Labour Day Weekend is the last chance for some summer fun for many: a wild weekend at a cottage, family barbecues or a couples' getaway.

I've had a good summer and in many ways a more social one than I imagined. In my The Third Phase Solo, I am opening myself to new people.

But, inevitably, there are lulls in a social calendar - in mine at least - and suddenly when it seems everyone is off partying, the calendar is blank. I was ready for it, or so I thought, after a busy time. In the past, I welcomed lazy summer days with no plans, enjoyed doing practically nothing for a whole day. But then there was a partner, Peter, to share those days with. Even blank days were filled with all I needed. 

And I found myself this Labour Day missing Peter in the week before the third anniversary of his death.

So I took myself to a wild, deserted park near my home where I can walk through the woods and along a beach where I have to climb over trees that have been brought down by erosion. 

Being in this spot, I am often alone but yet feel more connected to Peter. It always makes me feel better.

Among the rubble on the beach, I came across a solitary shoe, a loafer that could have belonged to a woman or a man. There is nothing more useless looking than a shoe without a partner. Where has your mate gone to? I wondered as I scanned the beach. That shoe seemed to say it all: I was that shoe and I had lost the other one. With the lake waves crashing behind me I stared at the shoe and shook myself. How pathetic was I being? But I let myself feel like that shoe for a moment and then I moved on.

But the objects around me kept speaking of loss: uprooted trees, a broken dock and then, surprisingly, part of a staircase.

 

I posted the staircase on Facebook with the label, "Staircase to nowhere," a play on the song,"

A CHANGE IN LIFE AND BLOG

When Peter and I started The Third Phase blog in 2014, we’d stopped our jobs and we’d moved out of the city. We did both with the hope of exploring the new experiences of semi-retirement and the trials of aging as they came at us. 

Then, in the late fall of 2015, Peter was diagnosed with cancer and we had to drastically alter everything about our lives, including this blog. As his partner, I wrote about my fears and about the uncertainty surrounding the treatments and surgery he endured. Peter stopped writing in this blog; instead he turned to his other blog, The Man Who Learned to Walk Three Times, shifting it from one about mobility issues and the memoir of the same name published that year to one about cancer treatments and his own reactions. In the last post he filed in April, 2016, when we’d hoped he was in remission, he wrote about “his new normal,” of accepting life a day at a time. Then, in late summer, while worrying over his difficult recovery, we learned the cancer was back in the form of an inoperable, fast-growing tumour. 

Two weeks later he died of a heart attack. And I couldn’t face the blog at all.

It wasn’t that I stopped writing. Peter, my daughter, writing, gardening and travelling were the joys that kept me grounded. With the first gone, it was hard to feel anything for the rest of the list for a long time, except, of course, for my daughter whom I leaned on too much. “Fake it ‘til you make it,” was the wise advice a social worker gave me when I realized months after Peter’s death that I needed help. And so I carried on: writing, travelling and gardening. Waiting for the world to make sense again.

I already had a writing project on the go, and like everything else in life, I just kept at it. It was a project I’d started when Peter was first diagnosed. Since I couldn’t be out in the garden that November, I decided to learn about the wartime gardens known as Victory Gardens and design my own for the following spring. It wasn’t just a project to keep me busy; I felt like I was doing something positive, something nourishing. After Peter died, I couldn’t face that garden. But, then, being in it and writing about it, about the cancer, about grief, about Peter and my love for him became as essential to me as breathing.

It is being published on September 7^th by Dundurn Press, on the third anniversary of Peter’s death. A coincidence or, as my daughter says, a sign.

And now I’m ready to return to this blog and face reality. My life has changed forever. I will always feel the loss of Peter. Even now, as I sit in my office at the back of the house that we chose with such care, I can't help thinking he's in his office at the front of the house tapping furiously on his keyboard before I send him my post to read for his opinion.

So the question is: how do I have a life filled with new adventures, with friends and joy at the beauty of this miraculous world while continuing to hold Peter in my heart? That’s one of the things I hope to explore. My life and blog are now Third Phase Solo. I will describe the experiences – the horrible and the positive - of being a widow – God, how I hate that word - who now faces aging alone. But I’ll continue examining the issues of aging and perceptions of older women. And, of, course, I'll fake it ‘til I make it.

Damn the Uncertainty

If only....Sign at a local church

One thing is certain about aging. It will be filled with uncertainty. I remember a friend who was considering early retirement and, therefore a reduced pension, say, "If only I knew how long I'm going to live, then I'd know how much money I'd need." Of course, she couldn't know and, playing it safe, she decided to stay long enough at her job to garner a full pension. Uncertainty hangs over everyone. Like the saying goes:"you could die in a car crash tomorrow." But it is the awareness of uncertainty, the sense of the fragility of our lives and our choices, that grows stronger as we age.

Throw an illness, like cancer or heart disease, into the mix and the
uncertainly can become paralyzing for those afflicted and those around them. I'm in the midst now of trying to not let uncertainty control my feelings, my outlook and my plans. To not let worry ruin the good in my life. And I am really struggling with that.

Peter has finished his cancer treatments: his radiation, his chemotherapy and his surgery.* Now, he is recovering and getting back to his writing projects, starting to think ahead, talking about a road trip soon and a longer trip in the fall. I'm still not able to join in wholeheartedly.

This week we met the oncology team and they seemed quite certain that Peter is doing well now that the tumour is gone from his esophagus and the nearby lymph nodes. But the surgeon is still concerned so we have to wait for a future CT scan for more news.

Some people - and maybe I'm one - are more anxious about uncertainty. Perhaps I'm what Julie K. Noren, the author of The Positive Power of Negative Thinking, calls a defensive pessimist, someone who uses worry and low expectations to prepare for the worst and think out strategies. Noren says the "half-empty" people aren't worse off than the "half-full people" if they use their pessimism as a tool. That's worked for me time and time again with short-term anxiety about traveling to a dangerous place or taking on new work and life challenges. In those cases, it meant planning for all possible outcomes and not allowing my fear to become panic. In creative processes, I knew I didn't care enough about a project if I wasn't constantly uncertain about its outcome. The accompanying anxiety forced those back-of-the-mind solutions to pop into my brain.

But cancer seems different and this uncertainty is going to be long term. Even patients declared cured of cancer walk through life wondering if the cancer will return. So do their loved ones. "Cancer is a tricky disease," the oncologist admitted. "If we see it again, it's usually in the first two years."

I looked online for some guidance on living with this kind of uncertainty and found the expected "list," advice of The American Cancer Society for patients, advice from a psychologist in Oprah Magazine and lots of guidance on living in the moments from Buddhist sites. There wasn't anything particularly new to me. I did already know I should be trying stress reduction techniques, mindfulness, focusing on what I can control. But that's the rub. We can do what we can to safeguard Peter's health and the life we've built for ourselves but there are no set strategies to stave off cancer's return, no map I can draw to gain control of my own anxiety. I admire people who can truly live in the moment with spectres of disease or financial disasters looming over them. I'm just not sure how to become like them.

What did get me thinking about how to rise above the anxiety was a reference to Eleanor Roosevelt and her views on fear in one article. "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face...You  must do the thing you think you cannot do." It reminded me that for years I kept another quote of hers nearby. "Do one thing every day that scares you." I can't say I've done something frightening every day but the idea of it has helped me to get on a motorcycle for the first time, travel into a city divided by civil war, drop a job that wasn't working for me. But for me, trying something scary always came with a backup plan.

Now it's this anxiety over cancer that scares me more than anything. But I'll be damned if it's going to rob me of the joy I feel in my garden, the pleasure of an outing with Peter, my desire to learn new skills. I don't have a clear road map yet. I'll keep reading about it and keep Eleanor's quote in mind each morning, trying to fill each day with more life than fear.

The other day over lunch at our sunny table, Peter and I pulled out old maps and planned a short road trip. He grew excited about a museum we could see, a bar that specialized in grappa. I grew excited about traveling again, of seeing new scenery and making new memories that didn't involve hospitals, nursing clinics, cancer centres and fear. Happy at the possibility that there will be days without fear over the uncertainty. D

*Peter is blogging about his cancer treatments and his own emotions in his
 The Man Who Learned To Walk Three Times blog.

Taking Care of Myself

I like to think that throughout my adult life I've had the good common sense to take care of myself. I've tried to take care of my body by (generally) eating right, (generally) getting enough sleep and (less generally) getting enough exercise. It's an attitude I've always planned to carry into the third phase to keep up my energy and to avoid doctors as much as I can.

I've also tried to take care of my mind with new activities, new writing projects and learning new skills. And of my soul by trying to forgive and love all I can.

"Taking care of myself," however, can be a difficult attitude to maintain when life goes off the rails as it has for us this winter with Peter's diagnosis of cancer of the esophagus, his month of radiation and chemo and his recent complicated surgery.

In the many encouraging notes I've received, people reminded me to take care of myself. And I have to admit, while appreciative of their concern, it often just seemed like one more thing I had to do. And I wasn't quite sure what they were saying.

I'm sure they don't mean eating every last potato chip in the house, pouring myself an extra glass of wine, eating a second or third helping of food which I definitely didn't need because I was distressed watching Peter struggle with a forkful of dinner. I'm sure they don't mean spending hours of mindless time playing computer games. Or feeling angry and terrified.

But what were they saying? Sometimes, I imagine they meant I should have bubble baths with a glass of champagne at my side or take myself out to dinner. Although their expressions were well-intended I was just never sure what they meant.

I have wonderful friends who have taken care of me with offers of rides, lunches, gifts of soups and puddings, plants and body treatments. One amazing friend arranged an apartment for us to stay in while we had some treatments in the city. I have been grateful for it all.

That said, I wasn't heeding the advice to take care of myself because, as I said, it just took too much thought and energy. Then I remembered back to an earlier time when my life went wonky and I stopped taking care of myself. It was after my ex-husband decided to end our marriage, leaving me with feelings of inadequacy and hurt, leaving me with the need to make a life for myself and my toddler daughter.

I had the good sense then, at least, to get some counselling sessions. And I remembered - as clearly as if I was sitting in her office - when the counselor asked me if I was falling into bad habits. I admitted that, although I'd never been anything but a "social" smoker, I was now smoking regularly even though I was prone to chronic bronchitis. And I wasn't eating. She then asked me what I had done over the course of my life that I found soothing. I sat for a bit before coming up with a short list: listening to music, walking in nature, preparing a tasty meal, reading an uplifting book. "Do those things," she said. And even if my list sounded like a corny Hallmark card I did those things. And I got through it. Prospered even. Felt stronger than I ever had.  

Her words came back to me this winter. I knew how to take care of myself; I was just letting the fear and anxiety win. In the space between treatments and surgery I re-booked a weekend at a spa with my daughter that I'd had to cancel after we got Peter's diagnosis. I knew there were more anxious days ahead but I tried that weekend to live in the moment, to revel in my daughter's company and her joy. I let myself be indulged with the "detox" treatment package. I nodded absently when the reflexologist said my adrenals were working overtime and giggled with my daughter while we ate in robes and dunked in the outdoor hot tub on a relatively mild winter day.

Surgery did bring more anxiety and I both failed and succeeded at taking care of myself. I let myself panic at the extra long wait in the waiting room as the clock hand moved further and further past the point the surgery was supposed to end. But I let myself be soothed by the people waiting with me, Canadians from all backgrounds with loved ones in for all kinds of surgeries. Strangers, we shared our stories. I was the last of us to hear from a surgeon. By then only one woman sat waiting for her husband to be moved from recovery to a hospital room. A friend had come to wait with her and when she saw how distressed I was she asked my husband's name and began a long prayer in Spanish. I'm not a religious person but I let her words and kindness wash over me.
             
I ate bad hospital cafeteria food of fries and the saltiest, greasiest grilled cheese I've ever eaten. Comfort food that brought no comfort. But in the next days I brought food from home or walked to a cafe where they made good soups. And, on the day of the surgery, when I was reeling from the surgeon's mixed messages, I had the good common sense to let others know I was hurting. My sister soothed me on the phone; friends wrote comforting messages. My American doctor friend insisted on paying for a hotel so I wouldn't drive home every evening and get into an accident on a wintry highway drive. I could afford the hotel but had never thought to indulge myself that way. Her offer gave me permission to take care of myself by not trying to do it all. Her words reaffirmed the common sense I was in danger of losing track of; she said she had seen too many caregivers brought down by trauma and illness because the attention of the medical team is on the patient.

And that I believe is the message I will carry into the third phase, a phase where all of us have to balance our own health, our own needs, our own desires with our concerns for a parent, a child or a spouse. Taking care of ourselves means different things to different people. Some of us are programmed to lean too far one way or the other. Finding that balance just might be the key to survival, if not happiness.

Oh, and now that Peter is home recuperating, I had a great workout today at the gym.

Thinking Hard about the Brain

I tend not to worry excessively. I tend not to dwell on the down side of every or even any situation. The exception might well be dementia, Alzheimer's, or just any sign that my brain might be deteriorating. When I was first starting Chemo, one of the things they warned me about was Chemo Brain and that freaked me out more than anything. You can put my body through a wringer but leave my brain alone. Of course that is a self-defeating attitude but not as uncommon as you might think.

If there is anything that has us baby boomers freaking out it is the possibility of literally losing our minds. It is the stuff of novels, movies, dire health reports and frantic efforts on the part of scientists around the world. And it is the stuff of snake oil salesmen. Anytime there is a big demographic group with money and a problem or worry there are people willing to take advantage.

Luminosity is the company responsible for those never-ending ads about how neuroscience says playing games, and, by implication, giving Luminosity big bucks to play those games will make your brain stronger and put off cognitive decline. Late in January, Luminosity agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission a two million dollar fine for misleading advertising. It seems the neuroscience wasn't quite as clear as the company's marketers wanted us to believe.

On the one hand, this confirmed my deep suspicions. If games were what made the brain tough and resilient there's Backgammon, Chess, Go, Mah-jong all freely available in real life and on-line and all in their own way deep challenges, so why would you have to shell out money to a Corporate Game Maestro simply because he claimed to have access to neuroscience? On the other hand I am not alone in hoping, desperately hoping, that there is something I can do, some trick I can employ, some MacGyver spin I can implement that might mean I am lowering the odds that I will succumb to my greatest fear. If Luminosity doesn't make the brain more supple, what will, what does?

Not being able to do something, anything, is the other big fear of Boomers. We are a generation that came to believe we could conquer any problem thrown our way. It is part of what makes us as a group seem so arrogant, makes us as a group seem smug. Of course it has never been true that we can conquer everything but that has never stopped us from believing we can, from insisting that we can. So, is it hopeless, is there nothing that can be done to forestall or evade Alzheimer's and its cohort of mental nightmares?

Actually there is a fair amount of interesting science and reassuring initiatives out there to make me at least more calm, if not 100% reassured. Scientists are learning about genes and their role in developing cognitive damage, drugs are in the works that seem to be able to reverse some if not all the effects of Alzheimer's, and money is pouring into a myriad of different ideas and research avenues. What's not certain is that any of this will pan out or that any of this will be easily available to most of us.

The good news is that I experienced not one bit of Chemo Brain. The bad news is that I can't stop playing Mah-jong.

Ready to Run?

I've always been a walker. I love thinking out things and seeing the world around me when I walk, whether I'm take a meandering stroll or moving energetically at a fitness pace. I've never been much of a runner; I've tried to start regimes several times over my life but could never keep at it.

In my twenties, I suffered from several bouts of pneumonia and serious bronchitis and I used my lungs as an excuse to stay away from running. And then there was the whole thing about knees. I wanted to keep my knees as long as possible because of the fact I love to walk, and cycle and garden and climb dunes and rocks.

But lately I've been craving running. Ever since Peter received a diagnosis of cancer and all through the hideous weeks of finding out how bad it was I wanted to move fast, to dispel the anger at an idiot and rude doctor who took far too long to get to a diagnosis, to shake the fear, the uncertainty and to feel healthy myself. I also knew I'd have to be strong for the months ahead and that meant fit and mentally calm.

Our daughter came to visit the weekend we got the diagnosis. She somehow inherited my love of walking and my ambivalence toward running. In the summer, she described herself as a "runner," thanks to some zombie-run app on her phone that didn't stick. She is trying again and has a new app that is training her to run. It has a program that increases the amount of running over the course of thirty-five minutes each time she does a workout. While she listens to a playlist of music, the app tells her when to walk and when to run and when to cool down. We found an earlier version of the app for the old Ipod I have for my music. My daughter instructed me to make my own "running" playlist. Find songs that "get you pumping," she said. "You can't run to Leonard Cohen." So I found the fastest music I had including some obvious choices like Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, and the Dixie Chicks' Ready to Run. I threw in some more Bruce, some Dire Straits and some Johnny Cash (I am of that generation.) I even found a few of Lucinda Williams' songs that worked and yes, some Leonard Cohen. There'd be cool-down periods after all.

I can't say I'm a runner yet - not by a long shot - I've only tried the app a few times. When the day by day app increases the amount of running too quickly for me I just go back to the day before. Day One is still quite popular.

The old worries about running remain. My lungs are in good shape now, my heart; my joints in relatively good shape. But I'm a cautious person and a journalist so I had to check out whether it's stupid or not to take up running in the third phase. I found mainly good news. A study in Medical News Today reported that seniors who run slow down the aging process and are better at walking than seniors who walk for exercise. And there are lots of running websites and tips online for how to do it right.

I'm not wrong to worry about my knees which have held up pretty well so far. But it seems that avoiding injury to the knees has as much to do with the runner, the training style and the surface (I do find  an indoor track easier on the knees than the sidewalks.). But it doesn't look like I can get away with using my knees as an excuse anymore. For those without past injuries or who aren't overweight, running, if done properly, might actual be good for knee joints.

I don't know where my running app will take me, perhaps just back to walking. Peter begins five weeks of intensive radiation and chemotherapy this week for third stage cancer of the esophagus. And then, hopefully, surgery. I'll be running when I can, running for both our lives. D

Redefining "Second Childhood"

I like the old-fashioned sound of the word, "dotage," although I don't like its definition much with its connotations of decline, poor judgement and ill health. To be in one's dotage is not to be in a good place. There's another phrase I like even though I fear its meaning: "second childhood." It describes a stage of the old when they are as dependent as small children. Both dotage and second childhood suggest that dreaded state of dementia when old people are no longer in control of their thoughts and, therefore, their lives.

But what if we redefined second childhood to describe a phase in life when a person has the time and the strength to look at their first childhood seriously in order to make peace with the bad and sad of it and revel in the activities that gave them joy back then? What if we redefined it as the phase where we say,"I'm too old for that," in a defiant way as in "I'm too old for that shit," and think of it as a time to play as freely as we did - or wanted to - back then? As a time we jump over the need for success and material possession back to a place where our sense of right and wrong was the strongest? A second childhood where this time we have the power and means to do some good.

High horse thinking. I know. But those of us who can manage financially without the rigours of daily jobs should be capable of creative play, meaningful acts and more high horse thinking. We have that pause in our life to fill and what better way to fill it.

It's been a year since I left the institutional work force. It's been a year of settling in to a new rhythm of life, of settling into a new home and developing a garden that reminds me daily of the joys I experienced as a child growing up on a fruit farm. The mud, the taste of a hot tomato from the vine, the lost hours under a tree. They are all wonderful. My first childhood was a decent one. But, like every child, there were hurts and disappointments which I can reflect on as I pull weeds and plant trees. All the power and all the responsibility to make the most of life are mine in a second childhood.

Moving into the second year, I feel the need to be engaged again. I've no desire to be limited by the hours of a college instructor's schedule or the office politics of the journalist's world. I don't see myself going back to full-time work. But I miss the sense I was doing good for others - working on a story that matters like the current refugee crisis, helping non-Native speakers accomplish their goals in English. Like a child churning at a new stage of growth I am trying to figure my way through that now.

There was a recent article in The Atlantic on discovering the narrative of your life, of adjusting it, of finding its arc.What better stage of life to do that and what better source of material for the second childhood than the first. We can edit out what we didn't like, build on what was good and recreate the best. Only this time, the stakes are higher. In our second childhood, we don't have those seemingly endless years ahead as we did with the first. The last chapter is not that far away this time.

When One is the Loneliest Number

Loneliness can suck. When I've felt it at various periods of my life, it left me listless and desperate for ways to end it. It left me uncertain about myself and careless in my actions. I've been lucky though; I've had the right people and some good coping tricks to pull me through each time.

But it seems loneliness is becoming an epidemic. We are becoming a lonelier society, isolated in our easy-communication world from real friends and meaningful contacts. In an article from the Globe and Mail Elizabeth Renzetti documents some sad facts: social isolation is the biggest concern in the city of Vancouver, more Canadians than ever live alone and a quarter of them describe themselves as lonely.

The article is almost two years old but with updates still circulates on the Globe's website which says more than the article itself about our fear of loneliness.

When it comes to seniors, the article quotes a Statistics Canada figure from 2012: Twenty percent of old people report feeling lonely.

Being alone is not equal to loneliness. After all, the 75 per cent of those who live alone in Canada and not mentioned in the Renzetti article didn't describe themselves as lonely.

Loneliness is the cruel cousin of solitude. Solitude allows for creativity, a greater connection to the earth and a strong sense of self. Loneliness brings all the opposites.

Loneliness also pushes people in directions that can harm them. This summer  The New York Times reported on swindlers who take advantage of lonely, aging woman trying to find new partners to share their latter lives and ease their isolation. Even the fear of loneliness, the fear of dying alone, often keeps people who are in relationships in bad ones.

No one wants to die alone. Wild actor, Jack Nicholson fears it. I fear it. We all fear it. No one wants to be the British woman whose body was discovered six years after she'd died. According to Jezebel.com, those who fear dying alone are childless, have children who live far away, live alone, have physical or mental impairments, live in rural areas or are the loner type with small social networks. That covers a lot of ground.

I know childless people with the fear. And I know people who live alone with that fear. For me, my fear centers around the fact that I am a bit of the loner type without a lot of social networks.

But that's what it is: a fear. None of us can predict how or when we will die. There's little we can do about it.

On the other hand, we can tackle loneliness as we age, find ways to build a community we are comfortable with, reach out to those who we know are suffering loneliness now. We can avoid the traps, work on ourselves and work with others to stay connected. It might be one of the greatest challenges we face in The Third Phase but that doesn't mean we can't do anything about it.

That may sound Pollyanish. But as a girl I always admired the spirit of Pollyanna. Pushed in the mud, she found a quarter. I'd like to see how an older Pollyanna would handle loneliness. D

A Third Phase Vacation Conundrum

When I left the CBC, a few years after Debi did, a good friend said 'the biggest change you will experience is that in this phase of your life...you get to decide if Tuesday is a Saturday or whether Saturday should be a Tuesday. See, in the Third Phase, your schedule is your own. Where this gets slightly more complicated is when you aren`t talking about the days of the week but trying to figure out when or if you are on vacation. Being on a vacation is nothing like being hungry or tired...sometimes you need a clue.

So we conducted a bit of an experiment.

And we are back. We have been away, well not really away physically but mentally. We decided to take a vacation, or as folks like to say, a staycation because we checked out of normal routines but stayed put. That meant not writing for money, not attending to some of those weird household jobs that seem okay during the week but not on a day off or a week off. We`d leave the house for little excursions, we`d eat great food late at night, we`d sample local wines and beers and do things that had long been on our list that we'd never gotten around to.

And we thought about vacations and work life balances which gets really tricky if what you are really wrestling with is life-life balances. The big issues was why travel seems to be so much a part of how we think about vacations. We travel; we both love to travel. Sometimes travel is about work, an assignment, a research project. Sometimes travel is an adventure. Travel can be hard and arduous. Travel can be and often is mind and spirit expanding. So is all travel a vacation and does a vacation imply travel?

Vacations are conundrums. The reality is that taking a vacation was unheard of for most people until relatively recently. The word itself is connected to a break when the law courts weren`t operational, or so Wikipedia tells me, and that suggests a break for a very particular type of class of individuals. In the early days of the 20th century, cottages and resorts were the nearly exclusive luxury of the well-to-do. I know when I was a kid, vacations were about the family driving to visit relatives. When I was in my twenties and thirties, vacations were all about seeing things I had never seen.

But now, in our Third Phase, what's a vacation? Ironically, as I sat down to write this I received a free e-book from the University of Chicago press, "Travelling in Place: A History of Armchair Travel" For a moment I was lost. Travel could be done inside a room, confined to a room even. If so then if travel was truly essential to a vacation than a vacation could be me staying put, staying in my room even. And if my vacation is me staying put, then what is the difference between staying at home and travelling? And ultimately does any of this matter?

It matters because giving shape and meaning to life is what life is about and documenting that is what this blog is about. Vacations are part of the rhythms that we are are used to and are comfortable with. Vacations are also a way of forcing oneself out of routines and habits that always bear occasional evaluation. You become aware of loops and strictures often by stepping away for a moment...stepping a long way away or crossing the room. In fact, there is a whole emerging science of vacations that is providing keen insights into how to plan one, how to best enjoy one, how to reflect on one...

Our vacation was great and the proof of that may well be that we were sad when it was done. And to be completely honest, I am already planning the next one and the one after that. P

Facing The Third Phase Online

When I was a girl, I remember my parents reading the obit pages of The Hamilton Spectator to see if anyone they knew had died. I found the activity not only morbid but incomprehensible. Now, of course, I have friends who do the same thing. I don't read newspapers - in paper form - any more and don't go hunting on line for obits so I've lost the tradition of the generations before me who checked the mortality of their acquaintance and reaffirmed their own each day by scanning those pages.

In the past eighteen months, two women I have admired greatly have died - one quite suddenly. Emails circulated with the news but before that I'd learned the raw emotional details from family members who used their Facebook accounts.

One grieving husband announced his wife's death by messaging her friends on her account, and then responding to those who responded back with details of the funeral as they came together. It was an eerie feeling to log into Facebook and learn I had a message from my dead colleague.

I first joined Facebook for my work; I needed to keep up with the subjects of a book I was writing and they were all on Facebook. But when I left my place of employment after more than 20 years I came to learn its value on a personal level. Facebook became a way of checking in with people still working there or people, like me, who had left.

There's been debate about the term "friends," as it applies to Facebook. Do some people really have 332 "friends?" But for me, Facebook replaced the kind of friendly conversations I had in the workplace about where people were going on holidays, what movies they were seeing, how their children were doing. Those conversations made me feel that I belonged to a community. I might not dine or even go out for coffee with all I encountered in a day. But we shared a telling of our stories that made the workplace human. And I missed that terribly when I became a sessional instructor and a freelance writer. Facebook helped a lot.

I'm not alone in that feeling. As more of more of my former colleagues retire they suddenly become Facebook aficionados. That's perhaps why in late 2013,  Forbes magazine reported that seniors were the fastest growing group on Facebook. Any why there are Facebook for dummy books for seniors.

Grandparents love Facebook. Their photo status can command a much larger audience than the photo book stuffed in a purse.

Travels, new homes, second careers are all the stuff of Facebook postings by people in The Third Phase. For some, Facebook, becomes the promotional vehicle for their latest projects (guilty); for others it's a place to share an observation, a good article, a moment of joy in a good meal, a new garden flower (guilty) or a hack that's worked for them.

One thing I really came to appreciate about Facebook was how I was able to reconnect to people I'd lost over the years, often through my own neglect. In Toronto, a few years back I finally went to a reunion of women from my university residence and, after the event, linked to a few on Facebook. I came to exchange lively messages with a woman in B.C. whom I'd known well in my twenties. Pat Hibbits had become the vice-president of Simon Fraser University. And her Facebook posts were impressive; she gathered photos her friends had taken around the world and linked them to an album called "your views this morning." She reported on the long illness and death of her husband. She posted on sports, on politics, her children, food deals in Vancouver and the good or bad behavior of that city's citizens. And her private messages always showed an interest in my endeavours and the blogs Peter and I wrote. I felt I was rediscovering her vast intelligence and her caustic, grew-up-on-a-farm earthy wit.

So I was shocked to open Facebook one morning and discover a message posted by Pat's son. One of her children had found her collapsed and disoriented; doctors at the hospital discovered a brain tumor and operated the next day. Two days later her son posted that she had died.

I felt the same emptiness I felt when colleagues from work suddenly disappeared. Turning down a hallway where I might run into them, I'd feel the loss each time. Now when I sign into Facebook, I miss Pat's vivacious presence on the newsfeed.

Facebook has it critics and privacy is a concern. And, of course, it can never replace the pleasure of sitting and talking to flesh and blood friends. But I feel grateful that I came to know my old college friend again after all those years. It's fitting that her Facebook page is now a place for friends to remember her. I have her last message for that. A month before she died, she wrote to say she had read Peter's book on his mobility issues and to send her compliments; she described the pain of her own debilitating arthritis. She ended by saying: " I hope aging is very good to you and Peter."  D

Teaching an 'old dog' a 'new' trick

Waiting rooms everywhere are alike. It can be an emergency ward in a hospital, a visa office, a doctor's office, the closet off to the right in a garage, the ante-room to your lawyer's offices or even the Drive/Test Centre in downtown St. Catharine's. It is all the same. Old acoustic tiles in the ceiling, a number system that has lost any semblance of rationality to it (or any semblance that you can fathom), staff that are hostile, bored, abused or a toxic combo of all three and a whack of people who just want, need, to get out of this purgatory and back to life. And needless to say most of the people waiting are anxious. They are anxious because they fear that the end result of being in the waiting room will be bad news, a hefty bill, a serious disappointment or being told to come back the next day. And that's me on Thursday afternoon at the Drive/Test Centre located in a crummy little mall on Bunting Road in St. Catharine's.

I don`t drive. Well, I haven`t driven for about 30 years. I stopped driving for a whack of reasons, some practical, some psychological. But over the last few years it has become increasingly clear to me that not driving is actually very selfish. Why should others be at my beck and call and why should others not expect to be able to rely on me driving them to an appointment or heading out to do errands? Driving was becoming, had become a matter of simple basic fairness. So I committed to learning once again how to drive.

The first thing was of course passing a test to get a temporary licence in order to practise driving and them meant learning a whole bunch of rules that I might have known once and forgotten or never knew. Where should your car be if you are turning left from a one-way street to a two-way street? What does a very curvy line on a yellow sign indicate? How close can you park to a fire hydrant? And so on, and so on. Luckily there are on-line practice tests that I could train myself with and train I did. I did ok for the most part but every once in awhile I'd get thrown by a question about the penalty for some infraction was. If you didn't stop for a school bus, if you drove without a licence and so on. I would always get these wrong because I always opted for the more extreme answer and that was never right. Clearly, my sense of justice is at odds with that of the province of Ontario.

So I am sitting in this waiting room, waiting to take my test and I am really anxious. I am convinced that all these nervous teenagers sitting around me are going to ace this test and some officious bureaucrat is going to call out my name and announce loudly that I have failed and that I should go home and think about how stupid I am. (Now imagine what it portends that I am so nervous taking a written test...just think about when I actually have to get in the car with a driving examiner...one of us is going to need a Valium or two...and yes...I realize that according to rule 2.7.6 as a beginner drive I am not allowed to operate a motor vehicle while taking Valium.)

As Debi would say, of course I passed. I actually did quite well. Out of 40 questions I only got two wrong and one of the two was a trick question. Now all I have to do is learn once again how to actually drive a car. Updates to come, and no...you will never see a book with the title "The Man Who Learned How To Drive Twice". P.

A Man Mows a Lawn

I am sitting, resting actually, on an old teak bench at the back of our property. I have just finished mowing half of our very large lawn and I am feeling a bit wiped. Behind me I hear the sound of our 96-year-old neighbour firing up his sit-down mower. My mind whirls.

For the past few days, when I haven't been mowing or listening to neighbours mow, then I have been reading about mowing, thinking about mowing, planing to mow or examining mown lawns for tips, lessons or warnings.

For nearly 20 years, I have not mown lawns and  have not missed the activity. Then we moved and mowing a lawn became a necessity and strangely a bit of a blessing. I have written before of my odd way of mowing lawns and I have come to understand that mowing is strangely a guy thing, one that I have started to wrestle with in the Third Phase of my life. Everyone on my street who mows a lawn is a guy and if there is no guy in the house to mow the lawn, the rule seems to be, hire a service and a guy will come and mow the lawn. And we are judged by our lawns and once you start mowing and start feeling judged you find yourself judging other lawns. Like why has one of my neighbours let his lawn literally go to seed. Is it because he rents and doesn't own? Is he lazy, lacking in initiative, ill, away? Is it possible he has simply decided to drop out of the lawn mowing competition all together?
It intensifies. Especially if you have a big yard and an electric rechargeable mower that lacks sufficient battery power to do the whole job in one day. You start planning your assault and weather and the daily schedule starts to play a role. Soon you feel like the old guys at the community centre who talk and talk incessantly about their lawns.

My friend, the excellent writer and curmudgeon Parker Donham, has summarized the history of lawn mowing quite succinctly on his blog, and then acknowledges that his need to mow has been made easier with the purchase of a Husqvarna mower or a sit-down mower. And sit-down mowers haunt me. Is getting one a cop-out, is there some virtue in sweating through a hot day in order to lower the height of the average grass blade of our yawn? Will I feel or look foolish sitting down on a mover? Is there a mower small enough to move between our front and back yard but large enough to make having one reasonable? The questions...the questions...see what I mean about this lawn mowing stuff getting obsessive?

Roger Cohen at the New York Times places mowing the lawn at the centre of the pursuit of happiness project, the joy to be found in the repetitive tasks that make up the day-to-day of a good life, our life. I identify with that. When I was recovering from surgery, the mark for me that I was healing was when I could empty the dishwasher. There is a value in the quotidian. There is joy and meaning to be discovered in patching together all the moments that congeal together in the fashioning of a day.

That's what is really different today when it comes to mowing a lawn. In past years. when being at the office was a full-time job, mowing the lawn, doing the everyday necessary seemed to be one task too many, one straw too onerous. In this phase, where life is more malleable, more under my control, making sense of my day is my job and part of making sense of my day means stitching the repetitive into the grand scheme of things.

I am still sitting on the bench but for the moment I am now longer thinking about mowing or not directly. I am thinking about music. When I was young, in my teens, I loved Carole King's Tapestry. Still do actually. I doubt she had lawn mowing in mind when capturing the sense of life as a deeply woven tapestry, but that's okay because I do as I remember the song and contemplate the remaining half of the lawn to be mowed.

Gardens of The Third Phase

I have a wonderful new garden that is totally preoccupying me. For the past few weeks, I have been out there whenever I can, sometimes for five hours at a time.

The garden was established by the people who owned the house before we bought it last fall. They had spent 16 years turning a large barren lot into a multiple-garden bed wonder. I thought my job - daunting enough - would be to maintain their efforts.

When we made the decision to move away from Toronto to our small town and our huge garden, friends said things like, "why don't you just move to a condo?" "you're going to miss the city," "how will you ever maintain such a garden?" They knew I would care for the garden largely on my own and their comments nipped at my confidence.

So this spring I set out to face the challenge and soon discovered that the fun came not in trying to keep the garden as it was  - an impossibility anyway - but in learning each section and rebuilding it to keep it going forward, to reflect our tastes, and to add some edibles.

As I work, I'm reminded that gardening let's me know where I am at and who I am. Sometimes, I am impatient to get the jobs done. Sometimes, I want perfection, Sometimes, I lose myself in the quiet contemplation of the land. Sometimes, I channel my father as I create a vegetable patch. Sometimes, I channel my mother as I clip flowers for the house. Sometimes, I channel my original self, the one who loved to play in the dirt as a child.

But I've discovered that gardening in the third phase is a different proposition. In the past, I have planted trees and perennials - buying the cheaper, smaller pots - knowing they would grow eventually. But now, I think a lot about what a tree will look like in five years, how high a perennial will be in two. Because, just like plants, life is fragile. And as I plant a cedar or a stick of a pear tree, I hope they will survive the harder winters and I wonder how long I will be able to be around them. I plant nonetheless because life is a gamble at the best of times.

The strongest reminder of this is the paw-paw trees I recently planted. The paw-paw is a native fruit tree I'd never heard of until I moved to the Niagara region - a tree that produces a papaya-looking fruit. But I can't expect to see any fruit for at least three years, have to keep the trees wrapped for the first year and a half. In some ways, planting the paw-paw trees is a leap of faith, an incentive to keep active. If nothing else, they are a legacy. Native trees I'll leave behind. D

Let An "Old Geezer" Rant

Sometimes, if we aren't careful, we let slip our prejudices and when we realize what we have done, we are chagrined. But if we think our prejudices aren't prejudices or are sufficiently widely shared that we don't think of them as prejudices at all then putting them into play becomes simply normal. Let's be clear, a prejudice is an irrational labeling and libeling of an entire group. Examples always help so let's meet Tim Fernholz and his wholesale beat down of 'geezers'.

Fernholz writes for publications in the Atlantic network of magazines, newsletters and blogs. In the May Saturday edition of Quartz he writes:"Good morning, Quartz readers! How did we let a bunch of geezers swindle global soccer for this long? Of the 14 top soccer officials and businessmen arrested on FIFA-related corruption charges this week, all but five were over the age of 60." 

Reading that, the only thing one can conclude is that corruption is an age thing. You know, all round moral individuals acting in the best interest of sport and then the guy turns 60 and wham, he is a sleaze bucket and corrupt to boot. And I guess the brilliant analyst that is Fernholz must assume that the 5 folks under 60 who were charged were corrupted by the geezers. What's not clear to me is whether the charges the 14 are facing relate to events that occurred before they turned 60 or after. And if the charges were from a pre-geezer state, how will the authorities, let alone the public cope?

Geezer is a word that originated in England in the 1800s and originally meant an eccentric or cranky male, and often carries the adjective old in front of it, except in America where geezer seems to mean old and male. I am not sure how geezer became associated with corruption so I asked Fernholz and Quartz the following: "What is the link between age and corruption, and can you cite some research that establishes that link? Are just males susceptible or inclined this way? Is it just white males? Is corruption a universal marker of people who turned 60? There is so much here that if you had only shared the full extent of your understanding I might have been able to describe it as something I read elsewhere that made me smarter." 


Fernholz and his colleagues chose not to answer, I am assuming because they believe those over 60 wouldn't get it and those under sixty just accept that those over sixty have lost their smarts, their morals, their integrity and their sense of what is acceptable. Or they didn't bother answering because they realized that what Tim Fernholz was blathering on about was simply a moment of spouting off an irrational and a hateful generalization without a basis in fact...wait there is is a word for that...what's the word...am I having a senior moment....no there it is....prejudice.  

Ironically for Mr. Fernholz, the whole FIFA scandal is only public knowledge because a 71-year-old journalist broke the story 9 years ago when he was 62....my God, how did that happen? How did an old Geezer do something that should have been the work of some guy in his 30s? I am waiting for Mr. Fernholz to explain it. 

Brain or Body? If I Had to Choose.

I can't help being enticed by books like Two Weeks to a Younger Brain. Who wouldn't want to learn tricks to stave off Alzheimer's? And every time hacks for a longer life jump out at me on Facebook I have to open them. I like my life. I like the fact that my body still allows me to do many of the things I love and my brain works pretty well although I forget names fast and worry about that.

With good fortune I still have a couple of productive decades ahead of me. But there is a question nagging me, one left by the women who preceded me. If I had to choose which would go first - the body or the mind - which would it be? For most of my life, I never thought seriously about the question because who at 20, 30, or even 40 does? But I suppose it's been at the back of my mind for a while.

When I was young and leaving home for university, I had to go and say goodbye to my grandmother who had lived in the same town as my family my whole life. By then Ga-Ga, as we called her, had become what everybody described as "senile." That day, my grandmother told me a rambling story that ended with the stricture not to go beyond the schoolyard walls in order to keep safe, drawing on some long-ago memory, confused by why I was saying goodbye.

As a teenager I found some of my grandmother's eccentricities amusing in the unaware invincibility of youth. I laughed when her cat walked all over the dining room table and stuck his paw in her teacup and when, even after we'd told her not to drink the tea, she forgot and drank it anyway.

But there was really nothing funny about my grandmother's decline. She had always been a smart woman, a woman who may have been limited by her time but ahead of  it nonetheless. She never traveled off the continent but she understood the sorrows of others oceans away. After World War II she housed Eastern European refugees in her home until they learned English and could get jobs in nearby Hamilton. In the '60s she sponsored a young girl from Hong Kong who wanted to come to Canada. She was a business woman at heart, mind you. The young girl had to read to her each day; the Estonians who lived in her house or our house helped on the farm until they could set out on their own.

And even though she never went to university, she taught herself about the stock market and turned the meagre earnings of a fruit farm into a handsome profit, able to care for herself financially after her husband died.

And yet what I remember of her at the end is a woman who allowed a farm manager to steal from her constantly, who wouldn't trust her own children, who grew more and more paranoid all the time. On one of my last visits to her when she was in hospital she told me the staff came into her room at night and cut off the skin from her finger tips. They boiled it, she told me, and made the curtain that hung in her room.

She was never diagnosed with Alzheimer's although it was clear she suffered from some form of dementia. I saw the toll this took on my mother, her caregiver, who tried her best to help but was rewarded with mistrust and abuse. One day when she came back from my grandmother's, exhausted, my mother told me she hoped that when she grew old, her body would go before her mind, partly because she didn't want her children to have to face the same situation.

Unfortunately, she got her wish. Childhood polio, post-polio and the effects of five pregnancies on a back with weakened muscles made my mother completely immobile by her eighties. She had the wherewithal to handle her own arrangements and insisted in the end on staying in her retirement home but moving to the only floor where there were nurses who could care for her - the Alzheimer's floor. Night and day, people wandered into her room scaring her. And frustrated with her inability to manage even the simplest physical tasks, my mother said she wished her mind had gone so she didn't have to be aware of what was happening to her. I reminded her of our conversation from years earlier. But by that point she was suffering too much to engage in a discussion.

When we see our grandmothers and our mothers in their final days they are others with a fate that is foreign to us. We are the young who will go on and on. But in the third phase, that question of how our lives will end has a way of catching up to us as we face the spectre of illnesses and the death of contemporaries. But if I had to choose the how and the when, I don't know what I'd want those to be. To end up like my grandmother or be as helpless as my mother. Both seems so unfair.

So I will read hacks to keep my health and I will try to exercise my brain. Luckily, the science shows many of the same good habits will protect both. And in the meantime, I'll try to put the question aside and enjoy each day as it comes. D

Science and Music

When I was a child, my parents and my sister argued about the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, a classic trope of generational conflict over taste. Looking back from the third phase of life that family quarrel (which never ever quite resolved itself) and the old line about not knowing art but knowing what you like (arguably first uttered in the New York Times in 1880:" I don't pretend to know much about art; but I know what pleases.") just keep bumping around in my head these days but with a slight variation...now I am thinking I may not know much about science but science sure doesn't know music...or not in any way that is 'helpful' to the human condition.


I love music, love listening to it at my desk, in the car. I listen when I am moody, mellow, anxious or serene. I listen to immerse, to distract, to concentrate and to learn. I learned about music from my parents, who had a floor cabinet stereo system and a few 78s and a lot of 33's. Some of what they liked to play, I still like to listen to: Roy Orbison, Otis Redding and Harry Belafonte. My most consistent musical favourites I acquired through personal exploration in the 1960s and 1970s: Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young. When I worked at CBC radio, I was constantly learning about new musicians and new genres of music. The list of who I will and do listen to could go on and on. But I fear that some folks are intent on making music about something other than music.

The past few weeks  news feeds and newsites have been filled with stories purporting to make definitive comments on music rooted in 'science,' or, more accurately, in algorithmic analysis, lyric content analysis, suspect on-line surveys and a host of other big data analytic tools  used to make the news equivalent of click bait. The upshot of the 'news' is: Nickleback has or doesn't have 'the smartest lyrics', people stop listening to new music at age 33 (earlier if you are a parent) or don't, pop music is increasingly about advertising, that the biggest changes in music were in the 60s but in 1991...and without doubt there is more to come. Predictably, each time one of these 'studies' was released, the media both old and new when nuts.

What types of music we listen to is often portrayed as one of the key markers between generations, cultural groups, class etc. Who you like to listen to, simply reveling in the joy of performance, composition, sound, meaning and memory, has been turned into a means of division, a matter of separation rather than what it should be: a remarkable defining characteristic of what it means to be human, to be truly alive. As you can probably guess there is even a Buzzfeed quiz that bets it can guess your age by the music you listen to.

Don't get me wrong, there is much that science and music can tell us about the human condition, the idea of memory formation and even how the healthy brain works and the unhealthy one doesn't. In an earlier post, I made mention of Daniel Levitin, the neuroscience and musician who is constantly finding out new things about the brain, music and the link. And that's the science we should be paying attention to, the stuff that elevates us, that makes us think, not the stuff meant to divide and distract.

But the flood of 'news stories' did trigger one nagging thought. You do have to keep finding new music. New sounds, new ways of interpreting life are important and keep the brain working. Just don't fool yourself into thinking that the only 'new music' was music produced yesterday. I am learning more about blues musicians I had never heard of, listening to recordings and performances by people dead before I was born. New is just shorthand for new to you. In that sense new is good. P

Staying Home

Where I live has always mattered to me. I am happiest in a space I can be myself in, a space I can arrange to suit my tastes and needs and the tastes and needs of those I choose to share my life with.

In the Third Phase, questions about home take on new meaning. For those who've had children, there are decisions about "downsizing." For those who've had homes in cities where real estate has jumped in value, there are decisions about selling and moving - "cashing out." But move where? A condo? An apartment? A smaller home in a smaller town? For those who are struggling financially without any secure pension or job there are questions about how to pay for an apartment in tight markets.

But in all those questions there is an assumption that, physically, we can manage our living situations.

Hanging over us all though is the question of what will happen when we can no longer take care of ourselves or, for many, no longer afford rent or property taxes. For some those question have to be faced earlier in life than expected; for others they are made in a rush after a fall or the discovery of a disease. Few of us want to think about our final home, but in the back of our minds, even the minds of jogging, fit and disease-free third-phasers looms the last phase of life decision about a home where we will receive care and respect.

That's why it terrifying to hear news about abuses in homes for seniors or stories, like the one from Quebec, that Andre Picard so chillingly analyzed, about whether more than one bath a week is a luxury requiring extra, black market payments.

In the United States it's predicted that by 2035 those over 65 will make up 20 per cent of the population. The fastest growing demographic group there is now over 85. The Conference Board of Canada says this country's senior population will double in the next 25 years. Where will all those people live and how they will all be cared for, especially those without means to afford private care?

For our third phase we chose to get out of the city and settle in a house in a small, beautiful town. We chose a house that works for us now - much of it is on one level, has enough space for us to have offices to work from home in and a garden for me to indulge my need to get my hands dirty. So far it has proved the right decision for us. We did try to think ahead too: we have a house that we should be able to manage for at least 15 years or, fingers crossed, twenty.

But as I climb ladders to put on screens or dig a hole for a new fruit tree I wonder if this house will be manageable for that long. And if not, hope that we can carefully select the additional costs we will have to make to get things done. And hope, we get governments who will offer assistance to stay in our home. I want to pick the fruits (pear, cherry, paw-paw) of my labours.

When my mother lost her mobility she continued living for a time in the town house my father and she had bought after selling their highly needy, old farm house. A nurse from the Victorian Order of Nurses came to help her with her bath and hygiene. She had no wish for her children to visit just to bathe her and found the nurse a comfort. Then when she knew that wasn't enough she moved herself into a home with care.

And that's what I want too - to stay in our house as long as possible and to not be a burden on our single child with a busy life of her own just trying to get by.

So the option of "aging in place," appeals to me immensely. And I'm not alone. It's what most seniors want. But it takes foresight, luck, money and a government willing to include that option in it's wheelhouse of how to help the aged. Sure, we'll need well-inspected private and public care facilities and lots of them but letting the old live as independently as they can needs to be a real, well-assisted possibility. D

The "Luxury" of Retirement

Whether or not the Third Phase of life is a positive or negative experience depends on a lot of different things, not the least of which is money or as the bankers like to say "financial security." Worrying about money happens during every phase of life in varying ways and to different degrees, but worrying about money in the Third Phase is becoming both a deeply important personal issue and a very compelling public policy argument. In recent weeks, the issue of the financial independence of older citizens has been the subject of financial reports, political worrying, class anxiety and really snarky ill-informed commentary. 

In a new study by HSBC a stark reality was laid out: "half of Canadians either plan to ease into retirement by working reduced hours before hanging it up for good or have no plans to ever quit."Now we can argue about the methodology of the survey but the reality is that lack of resources to retire has long been a concern of planners. A year ago the news was just as grim: “I think there’s a broad consensus that we are heading for a retirement income crisis,” said Murray Gold, managing partner at Koskie Minsky law firm, and a pension specialist who advises the Ontario Federation of Labour. “Two-thirds of the workforce doesn’t have any pensions, and the kinds of pensions we have aren’t as good as they were 20 years ago." The positive spin on the idea of never retiring is that some people like to keep working for the love of working but what is increasingly true is that for many people staying in the work force is not a choice. And when no choice is involved the consequences are very real, nasty and divisive to all of society. As one U.S. publication argued: "One of the cruellest manifestations of widening inequality happens in life's final quarter." Some people spend more on their funerals than many people have to spend on a year of retirement. 

There are increasing signs that this 'income crisis' being experienced by older citizens is having an impact on politics. Last month's Canadian budget held real treats for older voters, not so much younger ones. If voters are poor retirees, policy decisions will be skewed both in the short term and the long term. And it is not just politics that will be warped. Policy planners are trying to figure out just what"Delaying Retirement Means For Younger Workers." Here's the bottom line concern: the longer older people remain in the work force the harder it is for younger workers to advance in the workplace, the harder it is for young people to build families, and futures and to even consider their own retirement. And this is not just a problem affecting the old and the young but it is also squeezing hard on the generation in the middle. One of the best places for keen analysis and interesting perspective is Generation Squeeze, a new and intriguing lobby group. As they like to say: 

Under 49 and feeling squeezed? You’re not alone, and governments are failing to adapt.

These are tough issues and ill-informed commentary doesn't help. Margaret Wente at the Globe and Mail has lept into the fray or hopped onto the bandwagon of questioning "senior discounts" arguing that seniors are wealthy and don't deserve the breaks from corporations or government. The reality is that she and the Institute for Research on Public Policy are just ignoring the truth that many seniors lack the wealth Wente has and giving breaks to different groups of citizens is historically the to and fro that makes society work. Seniors pay property taxes so schools are funded and seniors get help with snow removal because of obvious physical realities. Everyone benefits and to suggest otherwise is wrong and shit-disturbing at the lowest level.

We need a discussion that helps us navigate the real economic conditions of all levels of society. Not one-offs intended to simply pit different generations against each other. P

Embracing My Wrinkles

So I read about this woman who hasn't laughed or smiled in forty years, even at the birth of her child. Not because she's depressed. Not because they told her to wipe the smile off her face at the Catholic school she attended as a girl. No. She made a conscious decision in her youth to keep emotions from her face because they caused wrinkles, trained herself to show no reactions. And at fifty her face, the story goes, does look surprisingly young.

But, really, are we as women that worried about wrinkles?

Yes, we are. So worried the New York Times did "an in-depth report" on the subject. So worried we inject ourselves, lift our skin and slather our faces with products touted to smooth out those creases, plump up that aging, drying skin. And globally we spend a trillion dollars or so on treatments and anti-aging products even though over and over we're told the cost isn't worth it and the sales pitches are often lies.

And it's not just our faces. There's even a bra women can wear to bed that combats cleavage wrinkles in their sleep.

On the face of it, women look like dupes. But can we be blamed? While men with wrinkles still seem vital and even attractive, wrinkled women seem plain old and used-up. I remember a friend saying that after menopause women just dry up. That horrifying image stayed with me.

Is it any wonder that the sickly-sweet saying, "wrinkles should merely indicate were smiles have been," came from a man, Mark Twain?

Is it any less of a wonder that women try to diminish, eradicate and cover up our wrinkles.We may be the generation that breaks stereotypes of aging but the marketers will be able to play on women's insecurities about wrinkles for some time yet. I'm smart enough to know there really isn't much I can do to slow time but my bathroom drawer is full of creams and serums nonetheless. I buy into those exaggerated sales pitches all the time, hoping someone, this time, has found the magic elixir.

Grey hair I am learning to accept. But wrinkles. I still can't get there.

There are, of course a limited number of practical steps we can take to keep our faces smooth - stop smoking (easy for me: I never really smoked), drink lots of water (I like water) and stay out of the sun (harder: I like the feel of sun on my skin and sometimes find sunscreens irritating.)

But where my love of life trumps my vanity is at the idea I would stop laughing and smiling. Good God. What would be the point? So I say thanks to the woman who never smiled or laughed. Maybe by laughing out loud at her I'm taking my first step to acceptance.

While I learn to love me wrinkles, to see them as Mark Twain saw his I'm not above taking joy at the story that scientists have developed a chocolate that will make my skin look younger. Eating chocolate sounds just about right: if it doesn't make me look younger at least it will improve my mood. D

Paying Attention: Vital and Hard to do

A while back I wrote about how things that matter take time, take energy. It goes without saying, or does it, that things that matter demand attention as well. And paying attention is more difficult than we realize, more complicated than expected and more connected to a meaningful life then we ever could have imagined.

The reality is that we don't really multi-task, we do one thing at a time and we switch from one thing to another. Each switch requires real physical energy in the brain and that is tiring and draining. As with any activity, the more energy you have the more you can do and unfortunately energy levels often correlate with age. So maybe in your thirties you could juggle more things than you can in your fifties. The key here, as with many things, is to calm down and keep perspective. Luckily perspective is out there.

Daniel Levitin, neuroscientist and musician at McGill University, knows a lot about how the mind works and first hit the big time as an 'Academic Superstar' with his popular science books and articles on the brain and music. His latest work on making sense of thinking in a world of information overload is smart, clear and a good overview of how our lives have changed with the explosion of information and stimuli that we now all experience daily.

But Levitin is interested in doing more than just explain. Ever since the book was published he's been on the road and on the net trying to explain to people how to take control of their attention. He likes to talk about experiments done 50 years ago and more recently about how many things we can 'keep in mind at once' and the reality is maybe 4, maybe 5. He uses a fantastic example. You are coming through the door, with mail, groceries, a coat to hang up and the keys in your hand. That's already five things and your phone rings. Something will go astray and if you are like me you will be cursing yourself about forgetting something as important as where you put your keys. You are not 'having a senior moment;' you are coping with reality.

I find the guy truly stimulating and comforting. His explanation of how the brain works is very accessible. His understanding of how to parse out the process of decision-making is simple to follow. His approach and perspective is something we could all use at every moment of our day.

He is worth checking out: as a great talk, as a good interview, as is a nice top ten tips. But check out his book as well. If we are going to be awash in information, it is good to make sure some of it is totally useful. P