RETIREMENT

My friends, my peers and many of my relatives are beginning to retire or have already.  As a woman of a certain age, I’ve had the opportunity to have a variety of careers and have, so far, retired 3 times, if you count when I left the practice of law to have my first child. I’ve also not worked for long periods of time.

Women like me grew up in a time when we weren’t expected to have a serious career and working after having children was frowned upon.  Even when our children had grown or at least were in school all day, going back to work wasn’t a requirement.  Many of my peers stayed home indefinitely being volunteers, playing golf, tennis and bridge and joining garden clubs and the Junior League. Women my age have already figured out how to make life worth living without working.

On the other hand, my husband and just about every male I know in my generation has been working at his career since his mid to early twenties and has put his job in the center of his life. Putting work first was how we were raised and how we raised our kids.  Mothers, including me, went to the sports events, the back to school nights, the school trips and extracurricular outings.

I have come to realize that particular division of labor was not great for anyone.  I think kids suffer not having both their parents involved in their every day lives.  Being the main breadwinner also put an unfair burden on husbands who felt that their family’s livelihood was entirely on their shoulders.  And it was not good for wives and mothers who never gained the confidence that can come from having a career.

I live in Manhattan now.  We moved here fifteen years ago after raising our children in the suburbs.  Because city living is such a communal situation I get to closely observe my fellow citizens and see, either on the elevator in my building, on the crosstown bus or just walking the neighborhood streets, how the next generation deals with their kids.  My takeaway is how much more involved fathers are now. It’s as likely that a dad will be escorting a child to school on the bus or running alongside their preschooler riding his scooter on the way to nursery school. 

I also get to hear the conversations. I get teary for what my husband and my children missed, when I overhear a dad and his son or daughter talk about their day and question what they’ve seen and what they’ve heard. The conversations in such settings come about naturally and lead to important issues. I had the same kind when I ferried my children to their practices and lessons or did carpools. As anyone who’s had them knows, they’re priceless and a great basis for later years when kids aren’t so apt to be open.  Back in the day, very few dads ever had the benefit.

But on top of that loss, that special relationship with their children, many men and some woman I know now have a hard time facing retirement.  They worked all their lives, focused on their jobs instead of cultivating other interests and have no idea what to do once they don’t have that job. 

It’s true that some have more or less figured it out.  I’m thinking of the golfers who throw themselves into the game the same way they threw themselves into their careers. Golf can—at least until you’re in your mid to late 80’s—for some be something to focus on.  But not everyone is a golfer or wants to be one.  Some retirees travel and can’t wait to take cruises to Alaska and Europe and the Caribbean.  Others, like my husband, who is not retired yet, but wishes he were, garden. But it’s the rare individual who finds golf or a life of travel, or even gardening, as engaging or stimulating as the job they once had.

Of course I’m talking about the advantaged, not the retirees who are struggling financially.  But I’m not so sure it’s any different for them.  Their jobs may not have been as engaging or rewarding, but like the more affluent, the burden of supporting their families was on them and like people of means, if they’re reaching retirement age, they too have to figure out how to find meaning in their days.

Bottom line, defining ourselves by our jobs has major limitations and perhaps it’s the one area where women of a certain age have the advantage.

Have Books Will Move

Packed on their backs? In boxes too small?

Sandy Cody’s blog for Classic and Cozy Books a few weeks ago spoke of coming home. I’m writing this week about leaving home. 

This is not an uncommon experience for me, my husband or any of our clan. We pull up stakes periodically after establishing ourselves in a town or job, leaving behind good friends who promise to keep in touch and we welcome them to every new home, especially when they bring with them the treasure of shared memories and events—which they always do—or they send their offspring as representatives.

Wherever we go, we embrace the adventure and the chance to explore—not only our new territory but ourselves and our opportunities to meet new friends.

Prepared for packing-by size

The one category of possessions that go where we go? Our books! The number of boxes of books increases with each new home, rarely decreasing, even though I have a fondness for digital books.

A good 70% of the books I hoist into cardboard boxes are non-fiction for research in world and American history. They aren’t known as “heavy reading” without good reason. Some are the ubiquitous “coffee table” books of photographs with captions. These cannot be packed spine to spine. Nor can they be grouped together in larger boxes. The logistics of moving books takes the love of jigsaw puzzles to slip and slot books of all sizes into boxes that can be stacked in a cargo container.

Despite the number of boxes—well-over 50 by now—and the weight, there are very few books that haven’t made the cut. One never knows when a book about herbal medicine, the history of the oldest town in Wales, or quilting in Pennsylvania will be needed. However, an instruction manual for a database program or software application which are no longer current may find a good home with someone else.

As sometimes happens in a writer’s life, we are moving to a state that has attracted my interest as a setting in one of my novels, currently a manuscript—a work-in-progress, titled Dance by the Light of the Moon. Research is one thing, actual physical contact with the fictionalized setting is another.

Having moved so frequently during and since my childhood, I’ve had the extraordinary opportunity to experience places that also inspire my imagination as an adult. Who would have thought that a rock formation in a Welsh forest could spawn an eleven-book historical series?

Or the threat of a tornado in the high plains east of the Rocky Mountains to form the perfect setting for a post-Civil War romance juxtaposed against the lilac groves of the Maine woods?

But what would all those physical settings be without the inspiration of reading books by other writers whose imaginations were sparked by fishing from a small boat in the seas off the Caribbean islands or tramping through the sands of the Sahara in search of lost gold mines?

Real life Inspires Stories

The thing that most immersed me in the joy of reading was girls' series books such as Nancy Drew, the Dana Girls, etc. I devoured them from age 8 up. I was especially intrigued by the Judy Bolton Books. The publisher declared on the book jackets that each book was based on something which really happened. Often the author, Margaret Sutton, would add a note at the beginning of the book explaining the event which sparked the story. The first book, The Vanishing Shadow, was based on a real flood which she survived as a child--the Austin Damn breaking. I always thought, how exciting! As an author, I soon realized that my own stories often had something from my real life woven into them, too. As a teacher I was part of the negotiations team in my school district and I used some of those experiences in my traditional romance "Negotiating Love." As a member of the board of my local animal shelter for many years, I was aware of the amount of abandoned cats in the area and a cat became an important character in my book "Setting the Stage for Love." We authors use bits and pieces of our own lives and weave them into our stories--sometimes they inspire the whole book! If you've seen the movie "The Man Who Invented Christmas" you know that "A Christmas Carol" was inspired by a character Charles Dickens heard about, a miser whom people were discussing as he unashamedly listened in. Lots of real events make it into the fictional world!

It Wasn’t Exactly the Christmas I Wanted…

By Karen McCullough

But it was the one I got, and it was terrific in its own way. Just not the way I planned.

It’s always a better Christmas when there are children around, so I was elated when my daughter said
she, her husband, and four little boys would be able to come to our place for the holiday. That meant a lot of packing for them, and a ten-hour drive with the four boys (ages 6, 4, 2 ½, and 6 months) in car seats in a mini-van. It’s a pretty big venture for them.



The three older boys playing at the kitchen island.

But come they did. I had things mostly ready – guest rooms, toys for the kids, high chair and portable crib for the baby, plus all the Christmas decorations. Gifts were bought and wrapped. We had plans to visit several relatives in the week following Christmas and to take the boys to a few of their favorite places. The back yard was ready with toys so they could play outside, since winters are generally pretty mild in central North Carolina.

My daughter warned me on her final phone call the day before they left that she and the baby weren’t feeling well and seemed to be developing colds. I assured her that wasn’t going to be a problem.  Little did I know…  (Writers love to use that particular cliché, and it’s so appropriate here.)

They arrived a few days before Christmas, and things started going sideways almost immediately.  The weather took a turn for the bitter, making it too cold for the boys to spend much time out-of-doors. In fact, temperatures remained ridiculously low for this area throughout their visit, making any outing an adventure in endurance. I’m talking daytime highs in the 20s and lows at night in single digits. Biting wind at times.

But I had a good supply of toys, crayons, markers, scratch paper, and books to keep them entertained. They’re good about playing on their own. Until all three of the older boys got sick as well a couple of days after they arrived. Then their Dad caught it. And my husband and I came down with it the day after Christmas.

This wasn’t the normal, garden-variety cold either, of the sort that makes you sniffle for a couple of days. We don’t think it was the flu, since none of had the achy muscles and joints, bad headaches, and nausea that go along with flu, but it was a really ferocious cold that made people feel generally icky for close to a week, then left us all congested, coughing, sneezing, and running for an additional week to ten days.

We had to cancel all the planned visits to relatives, forego the church services we wanted to attend, and forget some of the other places I wanted to take the boys. The kids were frequently, and understandably, cranky, mopey, and whiney.

On top of that, the bug exacerbated a continuing throat problem in my son-in-law, which forced a trip to the emergency room – right as we were getting ready to sit down to Christmas dinner. And a day or two after that the bug set off the six-year-old’s asthma. Fortunately they’d brought along his medicine and a friend lent us a nebulizer, but his parents didn’t get much sleep that night. In fact, sleep was in short supply for them for most of the visit with four wheezy, snuffly, stuffed-up children who all had trouble sleeping.

We blew through (literally) about 20 packages of wipes (for diaper changes and cleaning up runny noses) and several boxes of Kleenex for the adults.

And yet, amid all the chaos and changes of plans, there were some wonderful moments and great blessings.

Present-opening on Christmas morning went well for the most part. We do stockings first, and each of the boys got a foam play sword stuffed in the top. The two-year-old was so excited about the play sword, he went off brandishing it, and Christmas could have ended right there for him. We had to call him back and remind him there were other things in his stocking.

And there was the moment when the six-year-old unwrapped a present and found a book he desperately wanted. He literally shook with excitement and his face lit up with the kind of joy that, if bottled, could solve many of the world’s major problems.

The assistance of my older daughter, who lives nearby and has grown children of her own who were spending the holiday with their other grandmother, was invaluable during the chaos of Christmas day, and my sister-in-law Page was also helpful and understanding when dinner didn’t go according to plan.

At the end, they had to extend their say here a few days because of ice and snow clogging the roads back home on the day they’d planned to leave. That, too, was a blessing in disguise. With the boys finally mostly healthy again, we were able to do some of the things I’d wanted to do earlier, including outings to Safari Nation, a terrific indoor playground, the library for story time, and the Greensboro Children’s Museum.

Perhaps the biggest blessing was contained in something my daughter told me shortly before they left. In thanking me for all the help (though I still don’t feel like it was that much), she said that if they’d been at home with everyone sick, Christmas would’ve been pretty dreary. Being with us meant she didn’t have to handle everything herself, could grab a few extra naps she might not have had at home, and had extra hands to help with caring for the children. That made a huge difference for her.
And I realized I was glad that she and the family were here, illness and all. Together we all had a better Christmas holiday than any of us would’ve had on our own.

Coming Home

by Sandy Cody

I'm home. That's how it feels to be writing a post for this blog. I've been away for a while as a poster, but I've continued to read ClassicAndCozy and, always, I've been grateful to be a part of this family of writers. I was reminded of that recently when I started a new book. My first published works were the Jennie Connors mysteries, published by Avalon Books, and the Avaloners group was my introduction to these talented, generous people.

I've been writing other things for a while, but always knew I would come back to Jennie. That's where I am now - writing the sixth Jennie Connors mystery. Feeling the need to renew my acquaintance with Jennie and the characters who share her crime-solving adventures. I decided to re-read the books in that series. I began with LEFT AT AT OZ - amzn.to/2chHD5A  When I opened the book, the first thing I saw was the acknowledgement:

"Writing for Avalon makes me part of a very special group of writers. Whatever our genres, we share a belief that "happily ever after" is possible and that good will triumph over evil. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, many of us have become friends, though we have never met face-to-face and our physical addresses span the globe. I am truly grateful for the encouragement given me by my fellow Avaloners."

A bit about Jennie: She's an optimist by nature and an unrelenting champion of the underdog. She has two young sons and works as Activities Director of Riverview Manor, a retirement community where the residents are feisty, mobile, alert, and just bored enough enough to stir up trouble. If there's a murder to be solved - Whoo Hoo and Hurray! They're in.

So, here I am again - blogging on Classic and Cozy and writing a Jennie Connors mystery. I've come home. More than ever, I want to share my belief in "happily ever after" and to show good triumphing over evil. It's good to be back.

Creating Characters

I go to yoga classes in the city near my apartment on the upper Westside.  Although I’ve been taking classes there for about 5 years and recognize a lot of the people, I don’t really know any of them, but I still find them fascinating.

The class I go to most regularly is on Wednesdays at 10:30, Level One yoga. About half of the class is women like me, between 55 and 70, along with two or three guys also that age. The rest of the class is mostly women somewhere between 30 and 40 years old.  I observe them all.

It would be easy if I recognized them.  I used to see David Duchovny at my gym.  Actors are obvious.  They’re better looking than the rest of us and work out like their job depended on it—which of course it does.  But that’s not usually the case with my fellow yogis.  They’re not as handsome or as fit and not easily recognizable.  My speculation has been that they’re journalists, lesser known actors or artists, or teachers if it’s the summer or spring or winter breaks.

For several years there was a guy who came to yoga every Wednesday.  I think he was about 45 or so and lean and fit, but not super handsome so he probably wasn’t an actor.  He’d put his mat down in the first row and take off his shirt.  He’d also practice some of the harder poses until class started.  All of this annoyed me—he was, in my opinion, being a show off.  But besides being annoyed, I’d wondered who he was. Then he disappeared, leaving at the same time as our yoga teacher who went on maternity leave. I briefly wondered if he’d been her husband.  But that didn’t really work since he was, again in my opinion, too old for her.  But I decided he’d been coming to class because he had a crush on the instructor, explaining why he left when she did.  What he did for a living puzzled me.  Fast forward last week.  He shows up again. The woman I’ve designated our “class leader,” because she talks to everyone, asked him where he’d been.  “Travelling,” he said.  Hmm… Now I really don’t know what this guy does or who he is. Who travels for 18 months?

There are other interesting characters in the class.  The distinguished 60 plus man who’s all arms and legs,  shows up late every week, is totally inflexible, but keeps on coming. Then there’s the man with the therapy dog, sitting quietly in the back corner. I usually don’t notice them until the end of class when I’m leaving when I marvel at how well behaved his dog is.  There has to be a story there.  Finally there are the joggers, a band of 40-somethings, naturally fit and flexible, who head out to the park to run after our 90 minute class.  They just make me tired.

As fiction writers we create characters seemingly out of air, but maybe not so much.  Is it possible that my musings about my fellow yogis provide the blocks for building characters?  What they look like, what they wear, how they talk, and their regular attendance at yoga every Wednesday could all go to creating a believable character who will some day appear in a book. So much of what we do isn’t even conscious, but comes with being an artist.