Liebster Blog Award

One of the blogs I read on a regular basis is Why I Wake Up Every Day authored by Unikorna.  She has been kind and gracious to me, and now she had presented me with an award.  It is the Liebster Award which is intended to spread bloggerly love.

I have linked to Unikorna's blog and now I get to pass on the love to others who inspire me or whose work I enjoy.  The award is meant for blogs with less than 200 followers.  I am struggling here because I don't follow many blogs--maybe that's my problem.  I don't subscribe to the idea that if I follow them they'll be obligated to follow me.  I drop in and sample things I don't follow, but to follow somebody means something more than just putting their names on a list.  Recommending a blog for an award is more meaningful to me than just adding them to a list.


Crazy Creative Magazine authored by Hannah is good.  It is always funny and it always has heart.  I nominate this blog for a Liebster Award.


Aprons in the Kitchen written by Becky is nominated for the Liebster Award.  This one is just because I love her.  She is my daughter.  It thrills me when one of my children shows talent, especially in an area that I love.  Besides being my daughter, she is a very good writer.


 Laugh With Us Blog is the product of the busy mind and life of Esther.  She shares her family stories and joy.  She is my third nominee.


When you receive a Liebster Award you are supposed to nominate 3-5 other people to enjoy this honor.  Link back to the one who nominated you then to your nominees.  I doubt that this will make you instantly famous, but like everybody says, "It's an honor just to be nominated."  If you read my blog, check out these people and see what I like about them.

Carol is My Fifth Child

Carol is my fifth child.  When she was little, her Care Bear was Grumpy and she identified with Eeyore.  It became a joke.  Carol always saw the gloomy side.

She married John who was quite caustic.  Maybe her gloom protected her from his acidic personality.  When she was 23, she was diagnosed with RA.  Her baby was three months old.  John died seven months ago.  Now she is 45, totally disabled, and lives with me.  You would think that Grumpy Bear and Eeyore would define her personality.  At least they seem to fit the situation.

Now let's view her through a different lens.  When her pain is intense, she wants medication and alone time.  She doesn't complain or gripe.  She likes to have the Golden Girls or I Love Lucy on TV--nothing too loud but always funny. 

For more active viewing, she likes game shows and food shows.  Jeopardy is her favorite.   She is a good player.  She is very quick on responses and knowledgeable about questions.  She claims she doesn't like school, but she knows a lot of facts about history, biology, and current events, and she is very analytical.  Basketball and Tennis are her favorite sports.  She is knowledgeable about the players and coaches.  She was thrilled when the Mavericks won the NBA title.  She was upset when she slept through one of Roger Federer's games.

 

She also likes more demanding plots like stories of intrigue and mysteries with red herrings, and of course, a good love story.  Since her activities are severely restricted, TV occupies the majority of her day.   She will engage in a lively discussion of foolish behavior of celebrities, and she has little patience with the commentators who exploit them.

Difficulties with sitting on pews restricts her involvement in church activities. When she goes to church, she likes a preacher who deals with the Bible passage and gets serious about why we came. Even though it may be painful, she does not enjoy the light and easy kind of worship.

Over the years many caretakers have commented on her resilient spirit and attitude.  She is always ready to try a new course of treatment even though none of them has provided much relief.  Don't let anyone tell you that artificial joints don't hurt--Carol will argue!  Phantom limb pain is real pain even though the limb isn't there.  She is able to joke about these things.  

In a strange and paradoxical way her limitations and scars, rather than limiting her growth as a person, have revealed the spirit within as generous and joyous.  I am constantly supported by her infectous optimism--optimism that knows that pain is real, bad things happen, and we go on anyway.  God has blessed me to allow me to carry some of her burden.

Don't Believe What You Have Heard About Old Dogs

Cover via Amazon

I'm reading Gene D. Cohen's book THE MATURE MIND, and it is wonderfully illuminating.  Cohen was a psychiatrist and a gerontologist, and he says things in the book that are truly amazing.  He says that as we reach more advanced ages, there are some changes in the brain that complement the aging process.  Previously I thought that when you got past eighteen your brain might learn new material, but it was finished developing.  From nineteen it was in a state of decline in the number of neurons.

Cohen says that there is research that shows that new neurons are still being created.  Fantastic!  The neurons don't take the place of those we have lost.  They do not restore memories or reclaim lost skills:  They are new neurons.  They have to be programmed with new information.  You can and should teach an old dog new tricks.

Cohen also points out a shift in brain processing indicated by scans of the amygdala that reveal a shift in how memory works in the older brain.  In the younger brain the left side of amygdala is more prominent on the scan, but in the older brain both sides are equally active.  This seems to indicate that memory is a more sensual experience for older person including spatial and logical components as well as narrative and visual ones.

Getting old is something that we all look forward to.  Let's anticipate it with joy and hope, rather than dread and fear.  What will these new brain cells and the new functions allow you to do?

Aging and How to Do It

Image via Wikipedia

I write a lot about aging.  I think our society and our media should understand the importance of this stage of life.  The elderly and the retired are not a novelty.  They represent the consequence of accomplishing old age.  It is an accomplishment. There is an added benefit to society in having people who have acquired the wisdom that comes with getting old.  Old people have stories to tell and skills to teach.  It is inappropriate to pat them tenderly on the head and ignore their efforts and accomplishments. 

Aging often represents loss of vitality and function in the media.  We usually discount retired people as not engaged in the activities of life.  We refer to their battles as "back in the day."  I am campaigning in this blog and other places that I write to revise the attitude toward old age.  A lot of information on the Internet and in print is directed toward the children or care-takers of the elderly.  Society tends to treat them as stubborn children. 

I am convinced that old people are pretty savvy.  I am old.  I like it.  I know what I want, but I often defer my wishes for the sake of others.  Don't dismiss my sacrifice because you don't think I know or understand.  I do.  I made the gesture gladly, but it was a sacrifice.  It's O.K. to thank me.

Old people who are healthy and do not have a debilitating disease should not be discussed as if they were inadequate or absent by doctors, care-takers, or relatives.  When my husband visited the doctor, he ofter asked me after the visit what the doctor had said.  I was glad to tell him what I understood, but it made me mad too when the doctor talked to me instead of him.  I thought the doctor had an obligation to make the patient understand what he was saying.   

Sometimes old people give up.  They don't ask questions.  They don't want to look foolish or be treated as stupid.  So they nod as if they understand.  O.K. this is for the Old Guys and Gals who need answers from doctors, nurses, clerks, waiters, and cabbies:  When you don't understand someone, look them in the eye and speak slowly so they will understand.  State your question simply, and make them repeat it until you are satisfied.  You deserve to be heard and understood.

Getting old involves all of us.  Some of us are on the platform, and some of us are waiting for our turn.   

Related articles

• Old Age Is NOT a Disease (gettingoldonline.com)
• How Old is Old? (gettingoldonline.com)

Why Compartmentalize?

Image by AlicePopkorn via FlickrI hear people talk about the ability of some individuals to compartmentalize, to separate the various facets of their lives into compartments.  There are some benefits.  I learned how to do it when I was working.  On my long drive to work I shifted my mental gears and left the home and family concerns and took up the work concerns until late afternoon when I reversed the process.

For years I did not understand why my husband was so short on the phone when I called him at work.  At work one day I had a sudden epiphany when one of my children called me:  the gear shifting process takes a few minutes.  I couldn't integrate the compartments.

Those separations or compartments were easier to understand than the ones I deal with now.  My situation has changed and so has the need for compartmentalization.  I still think of myself in one compartment as a single or widowed female.  My attitudes and associations are directed toward my needs as a woman alone.

The second compartment in my life includes my housemates.  I invited my daughter and her daughter to move in with me after my son-in-law died suddenly.  Carol, my daughter, is disabled and she requires a lot of assistance.  My granddaughter Sarah attends college and lives with me too.  We have some juggling to accommodate all the needs, and we are not yet a smoothing functioning machine.  Maybe with time and practice that will improve.

My private activities include writing, building and flying kites, making bread, attending church functions, and research for writing and information.  These are a sub-categories because they aren't always compatible.  I research things I don't intend to write about.  I attend church functions I don't enjoy.  In this part of the compartmentalization there is a fluidity that brings some things to prominence and allows other to fade.   Kites and writing may join for a while, and then separate again when the poem is finished.  Making bread and going to church dinners may join hands but not form a permanent bond.  Genealogy got put on the back burner, but it will have a spotlight again.  Some things are fun to share, and some are too personal. 

Compartments are the way I think about my life.  I feel like I am entertaining some kind of schizoid fantasy when I try to sort it out, but it seems to work.  I can accomplish some things almost in secret and others I advertize and shout about.  Together they keep me active and interested and engaged in life.  At my age this is important!

Adult Development

Cover via Amazon

I write a lot about adult development.  When I took the class in college I never imagined how much pleasure the concept would afford me.  I am in the middle of Aging Well by George Vaillant who also wrote Adaptation to Life.  Both books draw on the finding of the very significant Grant Study of the  Harvard  graduates begun the 1942.  Their lives were followed with interviews of them and their families and comments and insights by them from 1942 until now.  Vaillant has included two other studies of longitudinal importance to his database. 

The second set of data comes from the Gluecks' Non-delinquent Controls.  In the book this group is referred to as the Inner City Cohort.  The data come from a group of matched non-delinquent controls for a study of inner city delinquent youth.  The Gluecks last interviewed them in 1960--62.  Vaillant obtained the funds to follow them in 1975, and they have returned biennial questionnaires since then. 

To provide a female component, Vaillant included date from the study by Lewis Terman conducted at Stanford University on gifted children with IQs 135-140 or higher.  In 1987 George Vaillant and his wife Caroline were allowed to re-interview 40 of the surviving women.  This study had not required physical exams and health information suffered from this lack.

In his books George Vaillant does a great deal to allay the fear of old age for me.  He expands and explores the richer and more abundant resources of life in a new environment.  I studied his first book when I was approaching 50, and the study and the book convinced me that to about 65 there was a lot of life to enjoy.  It helped me not dread my "golden years."  Now I'm past 70, and the gold could be viewed as tarnished or fake, but the truth is I still relish life.  Now I'm reading the second book and I've found Gene Cohen, who takes pains to explore stages beyond the Retirement Curtain. 

Vaillant and Cohen both describe stages of development that extend beyond the stage Erik Erikson called Generativity vs. Despair.  Generativity is the time when we seek to pass on the skills it took us a lifetime to refine.  When we have honed a skill, we don't want it to be lost.  Generativity may begin in the 50's and 60's, but then like Kolhberg's Stages of Moral Development, it can progress to a higher, more generalized application.  Vaillant calls it the Keeper of the Meaning.  By the 70's and 80's the family genealogist wants to do more than research; she wants to write and share and relish her family.  She wants to become a historian or write a biography.  If she has not aged well, she may fall into despair and the vast chasm of aged depression.  The task of this stage is care.  We care for one another, but with maturity, we also care for our society and our family and our the world at large.

Erikson's final stage is Integrity vs. Despair.  The task here is wisdom.  Cohen describes a Liberation Phase that may occur in the 60's or early 70's.  In those people who have aged well, there may be a new willingness to take risks and an eagerness to express themselves.  In this stage the older adults seek to mentor other adults, not necessarily young adults, in how to give of themselves, how to give back.  They are mentoring wisdom and how to end well.

I think, and this is a personal opinion, that old people are not so interested in honor or even respect, but they want to know that somebody has taken up their quest, that what they have learned will not be lost.  My mother used to say, "Act your age!"  I hope she would be glad to see how I am responding to the challenges of getting old.

Related articles

• My Newest Hero - Gene Cohen (gettingoldonline.com)
• Old Age Is NOT a Disease (gettingoldonline.com)
• Overview of the Early Adult Stage (gettingoldonline.com)

100 Words: It's Been a While

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Steel doors and body searches and razor wire are not part of my daily life anymore, but I went to see him on Saturday.  When I worked in the prison system, those things were a fact of life, but now they are foreign. 

Maybe it was always like that.  It is the reason for being there that changes your view.  It was not the first time I had visited him in a place like that either. 

There was a time when some change in direction, some adjustment, could have altered his course.  It is useless to speculate about it now.