Topic 152: On Losing One's Grip

Carol:

Get A Grip on It!

 I fit a lot of different statistical niches. I am a baby boomer, which is anyone born between 1946-1962 --28% of the American population. In the 1980’s I became part of a growing group who were labeled “the sandwich generation,” i.e. middle-aged women caring simultaneously for dependent children and aging parents.  Not that the notion was new, just the label.  I had shared a bedroom with my grandmother for several years when I was in grade school, and both grandmothers lived with us for a time. They had done the same for their own mothers.

My mother moved to Prescott twice. The first time was with my father.  The 5000 foot altitude seemed to sap my Dad’s strength. The change in Dad’s health was symptomatic of lung cancer, the diagnosis sending them back to the lower altitude. My mother returned to Prescott in 1990, an 80-year-old widow living by herself for the first time. Over the next nine years until her death, she aged from an independent, happy Grandma who hopped on my husband’s motorcycle for a ride around the neighborhood to a frail, house-bound invalid who needed full-time assistance. Every Sunday I relieved her care-giver, cooked a meal at her house and helped with her most intimate personal care. Just as she had done for her mother.

I earned a new label in 2002, “empty nester.” There is even a term called “empty nest syndrome” to describe a general feeling of malaise or loneliness when children leave home. Oh great, I had felt guilty in the 80’s when I dropped my kids off at day-care, guilty in the 90’s when I was cranky with my aging mother, and now I could feel guilty about not experiencing “empty nest syndrome.” I kind of liked spreading out into the abandoned bedrooms, setting up my own office and having an allocated “guest bedroom.” Still, what do baby boomers do when they reach a significant life passage? They buy a book, or…. they write a book. That’s how I ended up with Lauren Schaffer’s book 133 Ways to Avoid Going Cuckoo When the Kids Fly the Nest: A Parent’s Guide for Surviving Empty Nest Syndrome, a light and humorous approach as opposed to a deep and psychological analysis.

Last May, I reached two statistical milestones at about the same time. I became a baby boomer retiree in a town with 53% of the population over the age of 45. Prescott has been continually ranked by Money magazine as a top-20 retirement destination, and I feel like I am finally reaping all of the benefits a retirement-oriented community provides: free entertainment on the square, senior discounts, great classes for seniors at the college. The other milestone was actually attained by my daughter when she became part of a growing number of 20-somethings called the “boomerang generation” when she returned to her childhood home and childhood bedroom to begin the job search.

I’m trying to finish this essay while my daughter is staring at the back of my head. I know she is wondering why it always takes me so long to get my essays done. But, she isn’t nagging me because Bella is asleep in her lap and Megan doesn’t want to disturb the baby. Our house is looking like it did back in the 80’s when I was part of that sandwich generation, strewn with toys and blocked with baby gates. I think I have gotten a pretty good grip on my new situation, but in the meantime I’m thinking about writing a book called Raising the Perfect Grandpuppy: A Guidebook for Baby Boomer Retirees Who Lost Their Empty Nests.

Megan:

Something about that poster has always irritated me. "Hang In There" seems like such a trite statement for what is clearly a life-threatening situation.

I tried making a list of things of which one might lose one’s grip . Reality, Sanity, Time, The Dog’s Leash etc. Then the expression sort of lost meaning for me, so I looked it up. According to an idiom dictionary I found, it means to lose control of a situation. It occurs to me that, with the exception of the leash, the term is often applied incorrectly. After all, one can neither have nor lose control of things like reality or time. One can only lose the ability to act like one is in control.

When one is unemployed, one might feel like one has no grip at all. (One also might think the use of the pronoun “one” is pretentious, awkward and easily abused.) When I didn’t get that job a couple of weeks ago, I was mostly disappointed because it meant I probably wouldn’t be able to stay here in Prescott.  It’s funny how things change, because staying in Prescott used to be my biggest fear… but I’ve gotten involved in the community. I joined a softball team, I got a puppy, and I have a lot of friends here. I would like to stay.

But then I think of the adventure of moving to a new place and starting over again. I can talk myself in circles and not get anywhere. Literally, I’m just sitting in a chair, arguing with myself in an essay, and NOT applying for jobs.

I actually did apply for a different kind of job the other day. A community outreach position for a local non-profit organization. As a librarian, there are certain skills very specialized to the profession (like cataloguing and classifying), but the public service and information management skills are very transferable to other careers. I have resisted the idea of looking outside of libraries because I thought it would be a waste of the time, energy and money spent on gaining my Masters Degree, but that seems now to be a very close-minded approach.

Or maybe I’m just at the point in the cycle where I’m frustrated with the process. That seems to happen every few months. I’ve got a lot of other stuff going on – good fun things, which might not be as productive as finding a job, but that add meaning and purpose to my life. I’ve been spending time with my family, going to my cousin’s 5 year old’s T-Ball game and her 3 year old’s dance class (both of which were hilariously chaotic). Today I’m going to hang out with my aunt and see my grandmother. And I’ve got a puppy to train. 

Photo courtesy of my neighbor Jim.