Talking to my friends that are well along the road, shall we say to Act #3, also known as the “Golden Years” of their lives, the topic of conversation often turns to, “What can we do that is worthwhile”, in our remaining years. We looked forward to retirement and now we have it. We’re still alive, healthy and bored. Most of us travel for a while but can only be unproductive so long before we start wondering why we are here.

If you create an honest list of the things you can still do, at least semi-competently, it will be a lot shorter than the one you could have made at the age of 45, but it will still be a list. You still have options. Looking at the list, rank them in order to which ones you would most like to be involved in now, and go for it.

I had to do this at age 80 when my wife lost her fight with cancer. The plans we had made together were now non-existent. For about a year I was at a loss as to where I was going or what I would do if I got there. I made a list. It was short. The item on the top was to stay in contact with my family as much as possible. Our pandemic has made that hard but I do the best I can.

The second on the list was to write. I have published three books so far and several short ones. I now have a path. I’m not a great writer but it’s OK; I’m not great at anything anymore, however, I am a happy person that knows he has something to do. I hope my readers find the tips I sneak in on being positive in all you do and to learn from everything you do to be worthwhile.

I love being a grandpa and a great-grandpa. I have had the joy of watching my 11 grandchildren grow into strong upright individuals, all very different and that makes each one of them very special. I would like to share what they have become as adults. Please tolerate an old man as he brags a little. Some of their occupations include lab technician manager, urban tree specialist, computer programmer, tattoo artist, hair stylist, engineers – good jobs in varied fields. The only problem is they are now adults and not inclined to sit on my lap. But it’s OK because they have given me, so far, nine great-grandchildren to take their places.

I love being the elder in my family. I get to love them all and have no responsibility. I used to help them do things. Now they all are there to help me do things.

I do my best to be like Clint Eastwood. When he was asked how he kept so active at age 88, he said, “I shut the door tight and don’t let the old man in.” Keep your door closed, remember that getting old will happen, if you are lucky, but being old is a mental state of mind. Don’t let it happen to you.

I wrote a book recently about making choices in life that set a person on a path to follow. A few people choose a path and never deviate from it their entire life. It could work out well. They might win an OLYMPIC Gold Medal. Unfortunately, most that never deviate from their original path become good at whatever they are doing in a short time, and that stops the learning process available free to them in life. They also can get burned out or just plain bored and be unhappy with where they end up. Retirement is often depicted as sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch watching the world going by.

I believe a person should take advantage of every opportunity offered to them in life. How else can they find what they are good at and what they love to do. I have taken many paths. One I stayed on because I loved it. Teaching was my calling and became my life’s freeway, but I continued to constantly take side trips to keep learning.

There are those that believe you should change your profession/work every five years or so, to stay in a constant learning mode your entire life. You are not learning when you are repeating something you do well. I find I am not on either end of that pendulum. I am halfway from the center to both ends.

The pages in my book, Life According to Grandpa II, the world is a classroom well spent as a Wonderer, tells the story of many of my side trips. What fun I had on them and how important they were as classrooms in my school of life.

Take as many side trips as you can. The freeway you are on will lead you to many off-ramps for you to try. There is always an onramp ahead to get back on your freeway. Each side road is a classroom full of wonder for you to add to your map of life.

Strive to be the one whizzing by the porch, not the one in the rocking chair. It really is worth the effort; and the bottom line, as you as you gain the wisdom of many years, you can always do anything that you can still remember. That’s the hard part.

There have been a number of books written that tell us how we can compartmentalize our lives into various sections. All of them are true for the writer of that book. We only write about what we know, however, we all live in our own worlds which we have created in our minds. Reality for us is only found within our personal world.

I have trouble at times accepting the realities in my world that I have to modify as the environmental and cultural worlds evolve around me with the inevitable passage of time.

I no longer live on a farm where I could step out of my front door with my 22-caliber rifle and shoot a rabbit for dinner. I now live in a city where if I was seen with my rifle out on the street I would be shot or arrested. What has changed?  First of all, the rabbits that live around my apartment complex are now considered wildlife pets, not food. Second, the hundreds of people that live in close proximity to me would be afraid I was going to shoot them.

Over the 85+ years in my personal world the physical environment has changed so that I am now packed into a cement container along with several hundred others in their containers called condos where our enormous population of humans live like bees in a hive.  We all come and go from the hives, and call them complexes.

The cultural environment has changed just like the physical. The people that lived around me when I was growing up made eye contact with me when they passed on the street and said hello. Now they look at the ground and try not to make eye contact because it might be taken as a challenge.

I understand the changes in the physical environment and the adaptations we all have to make in our personal lives to be happy and accommodate the huge world population growth. What is hard for me to understand, and adapt to, is the hate and fear that we have created and accept as the new normal for ourselves.

Where did it come from? How did we let it creep into our society? More important, into our personal worlds. We are not born with it. We have learned it from the people around us. It makes me want to go back to my old world where gasoline was only 17 cents a gallon and most people were looking ahead at the horizon and smiling, instead of down at their phones, doing their best to ignore what is going on around them, seemingly denying any responsibility for it.

I think the rabbits are much happier now, because I put food out for them instead of using them as my food.

In the town of Oceanside, I have watched a group of about 12 young/new mothers, with their new precious gifts tucked snugly in their strollers. They meet early in the morning just below my fifth-floor veranda when I am having my morning coffee. I come to Oceanside often and have watched them meet and take off down the back street at a good clip. Every time I see them, I think what a wonder routine that is. It isn’t very often I encounter anything that has no downside to it.

Everything about the group is positive. The new mothers need the exercise to get their normal non-pregnant body back in shape. The baby gets used to a moving environment around them. They will adapt to life more easily and not be frightened by it. The community has healthier mothers and children as residents.

The social comradery is also of great importance for the mothers. A new mother stuck at home, especially now with our lock down, has good reason to get depressed. It is a time that she needs her friends around her for support.

I smile as I watch them trotting down the street. I’m not too sure why, but I get a very warm feeling around my heart as I watch them. The babies are very fortunate to have mothers that are so committed to good health. Not only for themselves, but so they will live long and healthy lives to take care of them.

I said there was no downside. It depends on who you are, I guess. I feel a little sorry for the husbands that get up in the morning and have to make their own coffee, because momma is walking the baby. It’s OK though. Men are tough, they can handle it.

I hear that they are going to change the name of one of my favorite ski resorts, Squaw Valley, to a new name still to be determined. It seems that it is offensive to Native Americans. A number of names have been changed because they are offensive to one group or another. I have no problem with that. I think sometimes there is perhaps a little over-sensitivity involved, but that’s ok. If it makes some group feel better, that is a good thing. I just don’t want to be left out.

I have a sensitivity about something that I believe at least 100 million others have, or at least should have. It isn’t even a whole word. How can just three letters change the world?

What are the three letters, and why do they affect, in a negative way, many different groups that want to get rid of them? The letters are ISM. Three letters that affect more people than all of the rest of the letters put together – at least in my world.

I will give two examples. The first one is the word Race. We all belong to a race because we define race by the container our Self lives in. It would be ridiculous to try to judge the contents of all the packages in a UPS truck just by looking at the boxes they come in, but that is what we do with humans when we talk about race.

The body has no life force. The body is just the container for the brain. If the brain dies the body becomes just a chunk of meat. We need to look at the brain to see who we are. If we do, we find there is no difference no matter what our container looks like. We are all the same. We should strike the word racism out of our dictionary and out of our lives. The world has been working on that for a long time. I hope we are getting closer so all of us can see ourselves when we are looking at another container.

The second ism that affects a few hundred thousand is Ageism. This one affects me very personally. The term sets boundaries and limits on what we can do based on our age. It makes the assumption that because our containers are a bit damaged from the journey that our brains are too. That just isn’t true.

We are still capable of doing extraordinary things. How do we define extraordinary? The dictionary says things which are strange, unusual, unexpected, surprising, bizarre and other terms like those are extraordinary, there is no reason why an elderly person can’t do those things, and we do so all the time.

Every time we do something that is outside the normal limitations that the term ageism has set for us, we are extraordinary. We need to educate the masses that we are still functional and not invisible except to them. There are times, of course, when it is best to be invisible – like when someone needs to do the dishes.

Karin and I are back on the road again going to our timeshares. We arrived at one of our favorite places, Oceanside. Wow! What a difference in procedure to check in. We had to call on the phone and tell them we were outside ready to check in. It was 2:00pm, the time I normally check in because I am what they call a VIP, but not that day, I had to wait until 4:00pm which is the regular check in time.

There were no comfortable lounges in the lobby like normal – all seating had been taken out. We had to wait outside in our car for two hours.

We were able to use the pool during our stay, but only for one hour and with a reservation made the day before. All of the other normal activities were canceled. It worked out well for us. We had Karin’s great granddaughter and one of my great-grandsons with us.

They did the beach one day and the pool for two days. One morning we walked a mile and had breakfast at the “Swami’s”; we walked out to the end of the pier and had dinner at Ruby’s, also a mile walk.

Life can be so simple if we let it. That is one of the good things about being 85 years old. People are inclined to let you do anything you want. Your kids worry about you getting hurt for a change, instead of you worrying about them getting hurt. It is a time when they find out that you can be just as obstinate as they were when they were teenagers.

I was pleased with all of the extra precautions we had to put up with because I felt safe there. We were only there for four days. In September we will be staying for three weeks. Perhaps a few more activities will be open then. The two I missed the most were the gym and the ice cream social. Both necessary, the gym to keep me healthy enough that I can eat the ice cream to keep me happy.

It is so much fun I wish I could be 85 forever, but then 86 may be even better. Only time will tell.

As I sit here at my desk wondering how long this staying at home is going to last, I’m looking at the pictures I have on my wall. I see them of course, every day, but I don’t actually see them.

I find just siting and looking at them, letting the image enter my mind rather than letting it just flash in and out of my brain. I can close my eyes and let my mind go back to when I took them; the whole day comes back to me in sharp focus.

I have pictures on my wall from the Grand Canyon, Africa, Panama, Costa Rica and the Amazon. Each time I concentrate on one of them, my mind goes back to the actual instant when I took the picture; I can see in my mind all the things that were around me.

I see the entire water hole that the bird was sitting in; I see the tree that the birds had the nest in. It’s all in my mind and the pictures bring back the entire experience so I can enjoy it again. Looking at the picture and letting my mind go free (which, as I get older could be disastrous, it might not come back), I can relive my adventures.

It’s amazing what the mind holds in the brain. We are mostly unaware that our past is so well stored. It is like having it stored in the cloud and forgetting the passwords.

Our past is still living deep in some crevasse of our brain. It is frustrating trying to bring a memory back out for us to enjoy without the password. The triggers to our memory take many different forms. The key to open a memory might be just a word that somebody says or perhaps a story that they are telling. It could be an odor that brings back memories. In my case the photos on my walls do a great job of parting the clouds. Each one takes me back to some point in my life of wonder. I am reminded of how incredible this planet I call home is, and how fortunate I am to be allowed to explore it. I have been given health, political freedom, and enough money and opportunity to live as a wandering wonderer. I love my country

My new book volume II, leans more into what it takes to try many different things. I try to show the kind of effort it takes to see how good you are at something and how important it is to give your best effort, or you will never know.

If you find you’re not good at something, it’s alright, you have learned something. That’s the only way for you to find what you’re good at. I’ve tried many things. I gave each one my very best effort. I was never the best at any of them, but with enough effort, could generally be pretty good. When I got good at something, this was the signal for me to try something new. I was proud of my accomplishment and moved on before I got complacent, to a different skill to learn. When you are doing something that is simple for you to do, you’re not learning anything.

My new book, volume II, is based on that premise.  My parents, when I was very young, taught me a lesson that I didn’t realize until I was an adult. I wondered where I got this idea that, “The world is a classroom. All you have to do is be a good student to get a good education.”

My parents were poor and never thought I would be able to go to college, so they taught me, as I grew up, how they had learned. I was constantly asked, almost every day, “What did you learn today?” Then we would discuss whatever I came up with. Many days I didn’t know what I learned until my mother started asking questions about what I had done. I realized all the little things I had not paid any attention to which had something to teach me.

Well here I am, 85 years old and still learning from the world around me, every day. A good example is what I learned from the birds of Indio, Ca.  I want to pass on a little important lesson I learned from them.

I was sitting at the table on my small patio of the second floor where my lady-friend, Karin, and I were staying.  It is one of my time shares. We like feeding the birds, so I buy bird seed and put it in a plate on the patio wherever we’re staying. On this trip I took an aluminum pie plate to feed the birds in. It was shiny, something the birds had never seen before.

I filled it with food and the birds came onto the railing and looked down at it. Some came down and walked to within a foot or so from the plate, then flew away. They kept coming back but just couldn’t bring themselves to get in the plate and eat. They were afraid. The shiny pie pan was an unknown to them. None of them were brave enough to see what it was, even though they really wanted the food in it.

Karin and I talked about it. How very much like humans they were.

How many times have you wanted something in your life, that was there, but you were too timid for some reason to do it or to take it? The birds were missing out on a fine meal of high-quality bird food, because they were frightened of the unknown.

I can only hope that the next time I encounter a situation where I feel uncomfortable, inadequate, or for any other reason, consider passing up a good thing, I will remember the birds of Indio and just go for it.

Like everyone else I have been stuck at home for weeks now and have had a lot of time to just think. How has this new normal affected me? It is interesting the mood swings I have gone through. At first, I thought it was no big deal, just an inconvenience for a while.

I was in Alabama visiting my family when it all started the first week in March. Everything shut down so fast that I wasn’t sure I was going to get home. On my flights home there were only eight people on the first flight, Birmingham to Houston; only 35 on a big plane from Houston to Orange County. That is when I realized this was a bigger deal than I had first thought.

When I got home, Karin made me go directly to the shower and put all my clothes in the washing machine before I could give her a hug. That’s when I wondered, (I am a wonderer), what the hell is going on? I had not been watching TV at all.

Now many weeks into what’s going on, I’m still not sure. I have been basically on lockdown – house bound. All my reservations for March, April, May, and June were canceled by the resorts where I was booked for two weeks each month.

I didn’t get angry, as a biologist I understood the problem. The media has scared the bejesus out of everybody. We are not all going to die. Knowing what we know now about the problem we could open the entire country up if all the population would just follow the rules established to prevent the spread of the virus. They work!

I watch the protesters, not wearing masks, mobbed all together, carrying their signs to open things up, and I can’t help thinking, how stupid can these people be? They are involved in an activity that prolongs what they are protesting. Are they really that ignorant or do they just not give a poopoo for anyone but themselves?

Through the frustration that I have felt as time passes there are some good thing that have entered my life because of this chaos. I have watched a pair of Nuthatch birds build a nest in my patio, I work out every day instead of three days a week, and I have time to enjoy the flowers that are in my green-belt where the rabbits and squirrels live. If you are old enough to remember the children’s story of Ferdinand the Bull that wouldn’t fight in the ring because all he wanted to do was smell the flowers. That’s what I’ve become. I have learned to Hang Loose.

It is amazing how some things that seemed important in my life have become unimportant, and things that were important to me as a young person have reentered my life. For example, I no longer care much about what’s going on in the sports world but want to be more tuned in to what everyone in my family is doing. My family has become the rock in my life, again, like it was when I was growing up. I feel I don’t need all the other stuff that has surrounded me as an adult. Is that good, or bad? I don’t know, perhaps, time will tell.

I apologize for neglecting my blog for over a year but, of course, I have a good excuse, at least it is the best one I can come up with. To maintain a blog, it takes thinking and time. Last year was an off-the-wall year for Karin and me. Karin had three heart operations, a couple of stents and a new valve.  I had two leg operations to clear clots in the arteries.

Our time was used up in hospitals and going to doctor appointments and the mind was too occupied to think much. We are both back to exercising and working at being healthy again. Looking back on it, it was an excellent year of body repair and now we are good to go, for another decade!

As 2020 is now rapidly passing us by and includes Social Distancing, we have decided to reevaluate our mode of operation in the planning of the year’s travel. All of our trips we had planned for March, April, May and June were cancelled. We will be staying close to home in Oceanside for about two weeks in July, and may take a road trip around California to see our families that are in central California.

Oceanside and Indio have become our second and third homes. They are only an hour or two from the Laguna area where we live and both are full resorts with everything you could want right there.

We have made another change in our lives. Karin has invited me to move into her house. I am renting my condo and have a new man cave in one of Karin’s bedrooms. We believe it is the best arrangement for us.  I know that our children are happy about it because they all worried about us living alone. I’ve fallen down the stairs twice, but it was ok I didn’t bleed on anything. Karin has needed a few quick rides to the ER just to keep them on their toes in case she ever really needs them.

We did not make any new year’s resolutions this year. We decided to choose a word that we could use to evaluate all of our activities in 2020. Karin’s word is JOY- will it bring joy to her or someone else? My word is HAPPY- will it make me or someone else happy? It makes our choices in life much easier and is working well for us.

 

I am still writing, it makes me happy and I hope, occasionally someone else. I have two new books being published this year. Karin is working on one that should be out in 2021. Karin and I still each have our own paths to follow and support each other in them.

 

Till next time, stay close to home, wear a mask where necessary and remember, Patience is a virtue, but don’t be too virtuous or you won’t get anything done.