Baggage

I try not to live in my regrets. Mainly because I have so many. If I let them, it'd be like the poster for Drag Me to Hell - I'd be enveloped and sucked down by all the ghosts of the stupid shit I've done in life.  I've screwed up way more than almost anyone else who isn't serving a prison sentence. Maybe that's overly dramatic, but maybe it really isn't.  I always jokingly say when talking about my career that I learned by making mistakes.  I had a LOT of lessons in both my work and personal lives.  Not sure why I'm so prone to being a screw up - impetuous I guess.  I leap before I look a lot, or I did anyway. Sometimes I'd get so worked up or passionate about something, I failed to see reason. The list could go on. So best to just look forward and not back, trust me. But once a year as the calendar turns to May, it's hard as a mother not to stew in the juices of past mistakes. There's Mother's Day to ponder one's shortcomings in that role for one thing, but primarily it's because my oldest daughter's birthday is in late May. Of course she's no longer here to celebrate said birthday, and invariably I tend to wonder if she was, would she even have a relationship with me? Or would she have shut me out as the reason she struggled as a teenager.  She wouldn't be entirely right if that's how she felt, but she wouldn't be entirely wrong either. Of course, we'll never know because she's been gone almost 15 years now.

But why am I thinking about all this early when the calendar still says April? Well, ironically, it's indirectly due to a posthumous gift my daughter left me: Fall Out Boy. When we were organizing a fund raising art exhibit in her honor back in 2009/early 2010, I was trying to pull together the music for it and was going through all her CD's and sampling them. I knew about a lot of the bands in her collection but she had all these FOB discs, and I had never heard them before.  So I'd load them up and give them a go. And I loved them.  Where had they been? Why hadn't she done what she always did and try to get me exposed to these guys? Of course, half the time she'd do that with a band, and if I ended up liking them then she'd discard them as no longer worthy.  She hated it when a band got too popular, and I seemed to be the litmus test for that: if square old Mom liked a band, they'd peaked and needed to retire. The exceptions were Foo Fighters and Sigur Ros.  She survived me liking them but they were exceptions.  Maybe she'd kept Fall Out Boy to herself for that reason. Whatever the reason was, the cat was out of the bag. An acoustic version of What a Catch, Donnie made the playlist but maybe more notable I was hooked. And how. When they came through Pittsburgh recently when I had the migraine bout, I drug myself there. I told my husband there were only three bands I'd make it out the door for feeling the way I did. Rush, Foo Fighters and the great guilty pleasure band: Fall Out Boy.

A few days later my husband rewarded that loyalty by surprising me with a signed copy of the lead guitarist's autobiography.  Joe Trohman, it's no surprise, is a funny engaging writer, but he's carrying a lot of anger and resentment toward his deceased mother. His mother, he fully, clear-headedly acknowledges was the way she was because she had a brain tumor eradicated through radiation in the 70's. The treatment changed her and significantly altered the way she could express affection, among many other odd behaviors. In short, she was mentally ill. But of course that's not his fault, and for a young boy it was a rough way to grow up, admittedly, and he hopefully processed a lot of that damage in the writing process but the pages tell me he wasn't there yet when he started. And his mother herself apparently held onto a lot of resentment toward her parents. I'm sure if he could have kept digging into his family history, the cycle would repeat itself back to the cave dweller days, and I say that only because I think that's the way a lot of families are. And as I read all this written by a contemporary of Kelsey's about a mom who is of my generation, I'm thinking a lot about the amount of baggage I left my own children with. How could I not really? And then I can't help but ponder the mental weight I brought to the job of parenting that I had accumulated growing up with a father who self-medicated his PTSD with booze, and a mother who was complicated to say the very least. Sometimes the spouses of alcoholics have as much if not more to work through, let me just leave it there.

I swore I'd parent differently. All that meant is I made different mistakes.  It's not lost on me that I'm incredibly lucky that my younger daughter still has a relationship with me, including accompanying me to the concert the other day.

But here's something I know: there's no erasing the past. I can make amends where I can and should but that doesn't change history. Personally, all I can do is work through my own upbringing and find a way to make peace with it.  I did that work about my dad long after he died. Casting off all that resentment was liberating.  I feel lighter.  And I genuinely feel like I got my dad back. He'll never know any of this, but I know it, and I think it sends positive little ripples through the rest of my life. The history is still there, but I changed my future.

I hope that our children find that same release and forgive us for all that messy baggage we packed up for them to carry around. Not for our sakes. But so they find the same sense of release I felt.  But I also realize we can't make that happen, they have to do that work themselves. 

And we need to make peace that we weren't perfect humans. 

My Gum Band's Got No Snap!

urbandictionary.com

The 90th birthday celebration for my mother-in-law is officially now more than a week behind us. One would think I suddenly have all the time in the world to blog, read, and not the least of which is to catch up on all the Oscar nominees I couldn't see before the actual ceremony (I have done some of that: I can now discuss Poor Things and American Fiction with you if you're so inclined). But the reason I was lazing around watching movies after the party and the furious prep for it was over is part of a hard lesson I've had to learn about aging: one does not snap back easily once in the 60+ age bracket from illness, injury or just in general exhaustion. I have qualified for all three so far this April.

The two weeks leading up to the actual event were brutal. No one's fault.  Bad karma maybe, and definitely rough timing, but nothing anyone, including myself, set me up for. But the hits, once they started, kept coming. I ended up first with a brutal migraine that lasted well over 48 hours mid-week the week before. Then the grands came to stay for a couple of days, and I picked up something from them - likely because I was already sleep deprived and vulnerable because of the migraine. Flu? Maybe. I can tell you it wasn't COVID because we tested for that, thinking we might actually have to call the party off. All I know for sure is that by Easter Sunday I was the sickest I could ever recall being, and by Monday it was worse. Tuesday took it to a new low, and I ended up racking up the highest temperature I have ever had in my life, all while Mother Nature was hammering the entire region with freezing rain that flooded our basement and hit us with snow squalls when it wasn't raining.  By the Wednesday before the party, which was scheduled for the coming Sunday, I couldn't quite believe I was still so sick, but between whatever I was sick with added to the cold weather, absolutely everything ached. My head, my back, my legs. My toes hurt. I wasn't rebounding. Which meant that walls weren't getting patched and painted from where my mother-in-law bashed into them with her walker like it was a Sherman tank on the way to the Battle of the Bulge. Bathrooms weren't getting cleaned and spring flowers weren't going to grace our visitors as they walked up to our door. My husband in the meantime had his hands full with his mother 's care and keeping the water creeping into the basement at bay.

I sound like I'm complaining but seriously I'm not.  I probably was at the time.  My sense of self-pity was pretty refined at the worst of it.  But it's more that I just can't quite believe I couldn't push through it and will myself to be better. 

As a working mother who has always suffered from migraines, I adopted over time a Han Solo like toughness: never tell me the odds. I could power through - miserable and half-assed but still upright - just about anything. By Wednesday I realized my ability to snap back and gut it up through an illness coupled with miserable weather wasn't going to be a happening thing. I thought about the old rubber bands I'll come across in my office from time-to-time. So old they've lost their elasticity and they're just brittle. I felt that defined me in that moment: just a brittle old gum band ready for the trash.

In the end, everything pretty much did get done. The fever broke, and I wasn't a physical threat to anyone who came that Sunday. The sun even came out and it was a pleasant, mild day. And my mother-in-law truly loved her party, which of course was the whole goal, but the next day both she and I were exhausted.  I tried getting back on the Peloton for the first time in almost two weeks that morning and could only handle 20 minutes. Badly, I might add. More than a week later, I'm still not back where I was.  There's no life in my legs. I still have a cough that racks through me after I ride, and I still tire easily.

Is this what it's going to be like moving forward? Things will hit me hard and fast, but leave me only slowly and with a fight? If so, I think of all the things I've faced in the post 60-yr old landscape - wrinkles, gray hair, weird bumps on legs and arms and veins that look like a map of Middle Earth carving across my skin - this loss of bodily control is the hardest. Not just physically but mentally. 

But, for anyone else who has gone through something like this, I will offer what I always said as a migraine sufferer: the one upside is you would never appreciate how great just feeling normal is unless you get taken down by a migraine at least once in your life. I can appreciate that same sentiment now. Just sitting here now without every inch of my body aching is worth being thankful for.  Maybe there's some snap left in the old gum band after all.

The Tortoise

There's been a lot made about the age of the two Presidential candidates.  I don't want to go down the political road at all.  At all.  I know where my vote is going, you probably know where yours is too and debating it will only frustrate everyone, but yeah, I can't deny it's crossed my mind that the two likely candidates are both significantly older than me, and I'm pretty sure I could not lay down the kind of hours it requires to competently lead a country.  Particularly one facing the challenges ours does.  And after 16 or so hours of constant unrelenting stress every single day, could I remain mentally sharp? Not sure because my whole being screams at me to stop short of that any longer. Of course, I don't actually know if any sitting President has to work a 16-hr day, it's just assuming on my part that between formal events, world events unfolding inconveniently not on EST workday schedules, and the volume of work there must be, it's not a 9-to-5 gig.

Of course, they do have young, eager staffers at their beck and call, which I do not.  I have four aging collies and a husky who likes to sleep under my desk all day but really doesn't contribute much to the workload. But being more than a decade younger than either candidate, I'm here to tell you as much as I'd like to say you're as young as you feel, come around 9:00 PM these days I feel like I'm a 100. You would not want me in charge of the nuclear codes after 10:00 PM.  The world could be ending and I'd sleep right through it. Until I needed to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom that is - another fun part of aging.

Case in point: I was intent on finishing a deliverable one night last week.  Used to be if that took me to the next morning I was there until the next morning to get it done. That night I just hit both a mental and physical wall before it was even 9:00 PM. I just cannot lay down the number of hours I used to or even really need to. The brain just shuts me down. And it does feel a lot like some little munchkin inside my head just flips a switch and says, "Turn out the lights, your party is over." And I truly have to obey. It's hard to describe. But there's no option to shake it off or take a break and sit back down. Nope, I'm just done. That night, I was so intent on getting my task finished, I did try to fight with myself for a couple of minutes.  I lost.  My brain said, "You are solidly, 100% done for the day, I'm shutting it down."

I've read some articles that say older workers can work just as hard and be as productive as their younger counterparts so maybe something is wrong with me. There may be a correlation that older workers don't gather around the water cooler as much or show up late or ask to leave early, but when it comes to all-nighters, can we really still pull them off like a kid fresh out of college? I don't think so based on personal experience. I need time to rest and recharge now, whereas I could have made a great Energizer Bunny in my day. Well...that's not true. I was never the bunny, fast and energetic, I was the tortoise that just never quit.

Of course this opens up the whole work-life balance conversation.  One tends to wonder if I spent a little more time actually balancing the two if I could work longer and better now. But there's no telling. It's history. But this question isn't, it's as relevant as it probably was in my day, I just never asked it: is it right for companies to expect anyone - whether 22 or 72 - to pull down monster hours? Particularly if your position is anything less than leader of the free world?

As a young woman in the workforce intent on proving I could run with the big boy dogs, I somehow saw my worth as a worker tied to the number of hours I could lay down. Some of my employers over the years demanded it. Others might not have demanded it, but were happy to let me live with that mindset. Clients wanted us available at all times day or night, regardless of whatever else we had happening in our lives. I think looking back on it now I wish I'd put more boundaries on all of that and in turn worked smarter and proved my value that way. But, again, the past is history. Only the future is yet to be written.

And this chapter is done for the night. I am turning out the lights.

So how do all of you do it?  Those of you reading who are still in the workforce: how do you keep your energy up?

The Luckiest Generation

(Disclaimer: This probably should have been a Thanksgiving post, but you know - I'll likely forget about it, so you're getting it now.)

Masters of the Air, Apple TV

I've been watching Masters of the Air.  It's been a hard watch for me because my father was a B-17 and B-29 bomber pilot.  For any of you who saw Godzilla Minus One (and if you haven't: do because even if you're not into monster movies like me, it's a genuinely great film) the devastation Kōichi Shikishima returns home to...well, my dad did that.  He was one of the pilots on the fire raids over Tokyo trying to bomb Japan into submission. He was 27 at the time.

It haunted him until the day he died. He was pretty open about talking about the war unlike a lot of veterans, but he fashioned it the way he wanted us to hear it, not the way it really was. He always told my mom it was the safest of the armed services. He told me stories about the war as if he was narrating an Indiana Jones movie - he made it seem adventurous almost. I remember watching a war movie with Mom one night that I hadn't seen before. It ended up being particularly brutal to the point it made me uncomfortable thinking of her watching it, knowing she knew young men in those shoes who didn't come back. At the end of it I turned to her and apologized.  I'll never forget her telling me it was okay, she was just glad my dad had been a pilot. I nodded like I knew that was right. It wasn't until I read Andy Rooney's autobiography My War many years later and after Dad's death that I realized the extent to which he had lied. Rooney set me straight about the mortality rate of bomber pilots and what even the ones who survived endured. They called my dad's type of plane the Flying Fortress. It was a flying coffin for so, so many. My dad was incredibly lucky.  He suffered one minor wound, a tiny scar to show for it. But the horror he must have seen. The fear every time they left the runway. The anxiety. And he did it anyway. And then to live with the horror of what he was ordered to do over Tokyo. My heart breaks over and over and over again as I watch what seems to be a pretty accurate telling of the 100th Bombardment Group (a few issues here and there but overall it fits with what I know), and they're pretty frank about it being a brutal, deadly war. I never stop thinking of my dad.  But all from the comfort of my living room because never - not at 27 or now at 63 - did I have to face the things he did.

Credit: Joseph Louw

And that's made me think that for all my gritching about aging, I have a lot to be thankful for, having grown where and when I did. I was too young to have any of my classmates serve in Vietnam, and too old for the Gulf War.  I was alive during the Civil Rights Movement and remember the day Dr. King was shot, but sheltered in the bosom of the Rockies where the population was about as white as the snow in December I had no idea what really went on to try and secure basic equality for people of color.  I was in college in Texas before I realized there had been segregated bathrooms in my lifetime. Pardon the pun but I shit you not. I was WAY too young to sweat out the Cuban Missile Crisis. I became a Godzilla fan because he symbolized the threat of nuclear annihilation we all lived under growing up but I can't tell you I led a traumatized childhood because of it (I did have some intense dreams of trying to find shelter during various weird attacks though). But all in all I grew up in a time where we still accepted that things progressed in an upward trajectory, each generation righting some of the wrongs of their forefathers and making the world a better place. Talk about naïveté!

But I am thankful I lived in a time and a place where we seldom worried about locking the door at night. Where I could wander anywhere in the town my bike or legs could carry me and my parents didn't worry (there was a serial killer who lived on Sourdough Rd for a time however - David Meirhofer - and I had friends who lived on that street, so...yeah, maybe they should have).

I am thankful that I met many of my father's friends, most of whom were also war veterans, when they were middle aged and still full of life and generally willing to tell me their stories, glad I suppose that someone my age was interested. 

I am really glad I lived in a time before social media. I use it now like just about everyone, but it would have been so destructive to an immature soul like mine when I was young, and I would have been so destructive with it.  And while I would've been happy to have had a cellphone when I was very, very pregnant and stuck in traffic in Austin wondering what I'd do if my water broke while I just sat there going nowhere fast, I didn't appreciate at the time what a relief it was to just disconnect when the workday was done and should have. Now I answer emails and texts at hockey games.  You're never really off.

Don't get me started on the environment, or how crazy and divisive politics is now. Our great scandal was Watergate, which broke when I was in the sixth grade, my friends and I just starting to get interested in party politics.  It seemed so awful to us; that a sitting President would do such a thing! I wonder what those young girls would've thought of the January 6th Insurrection. 

Bozeman / MSU

While the world was far from perfect, it was a peaceful time in Bozeman, Mt. Later I would find that peace stifling, but I can be grateful for that time and place, and if I have any idealism left in me it was fostered there. I was indeed so lucky to have grown up when and where I did.

Now, of course, I worry about the time and place my grands are growing up in, and want to use my time left to make my childish belief that each generation leaves things better than they found them a reality.  Not sure I'll make much of a difference in a world so polluted, so full of hate, but they're worth fighting for so it's worth trying for.

Brittle

I've never understood snowbirds. Probably because I'm such a creature of habit.  I hyperventilate if I can't get the same parking space...there's no way I'm going to relocate myself twice a year, even without the issues of mother-in-law, five dogs and a job. But I'm beginning to get why people do upend their lives to go down south and then come back up. And I'm not really liking it about myself.

I grew up with winter. And I grew up spending a lot of time outside in it. I love winter.

In theory.

Like a lot of the country, Pittsburgh was enveloped in a cold snap a few weeks back.  It broke and now it's unseasonably warm and slowly, oh so slowly, drying out from the nasty, muddy mess that resulted from snow melting and rain pounding down for days.  But for several days it was in the teens with snow on the ground - the Collie Army's happiest of happy places. And with the exception of about a half hour one Sunday when I dressed like I was about to go on an Arctic expedition and went out to play with the dogs (and a half hour is being generous), I huddled up inside unless I absolutely had to go out in it.

I can make it through winter Steelers games because I've become a master at the football fan layering technique - although I have been known to go to the Pro Shop once or twice to buy more layers - but I feel like the younger son in A Christmas Story, and I am exhausted when I get home because I was literally walking around with ten extra pounds. But the rest of the time when I'm just dressed warmly but not like the Michelin Man I feel so brittle, like you could tap me and I would shatter.

I first noticed I was becoming a Winter Wimp about three years ago I guess. We'd get a cold snap, I'd suddenly develop an aversion to going out, then it would warm and I'd chastise myself for missing out and tell myself next time to man up (if you will), then I wouldn't, and around I'd go.  What happened to me?  Is it mind over matter or is there an actual physical thing that happens to us as we age that makes us less likely to tolerate cold (and don't say we get smarter and know to come in from the cold...LOL).  Well of course I Googled the question and learned it's loss of thermoregulation as we age and our circulation decreases and a few other, non-sexy reasons, so yeah, there is something that happens to us.  But what I didn't find was what to do about it.  Because I don't want to lose the romance of winter. 

Feb 2011 in Glenshaw

I chose the oddest time to voluntarily move to a northern town: mid-January.  Just the way the cookies crumbled really - spending one last holiday as an extended family, cutting off ties with the old position in my company at the year-end, etc. However it was probably stupid for other reasons...mainly a lot of snow that January in Pittsburgh.  I have a lot of stories about trying to get moved in during the dead of winter.  Most funny now that time has passed. Some weren't as amusing at the time.  But I recall the day I first walked into our empty house and first looked outside my kitchen window at the massive oak that stood point blank in the center of the yard as snow fell softly all around it.  That was as close to heaven as I had been in years.  That quiet lovely moment that so reminded me of Montana. And that winter I was out in all that snow a lot: no fence and a dog...multiple walkies no matter the weather.  But it was fine.  The snow insulated us and it was joyous.  That is what I want back.

Of course, climate change is having a huge say in that, but when the rarer opportunities to frolic in the snow with the dogs come, I want to enjoy it, not just miserably tolerate it.

My dad hunted when he was my age. The cold didn't bother him. I'd love to ask him (he did have these awful metal battery operated hand warmer things that I don't know how you actually used your hands with those bricks in your glove), but sadly that opportunity is lost. Honestly the answer I might be chagrined to learn was a little help from Jim Beam, so maybe it's okay he's not my role model for snow days as we age. I don't really need the image of my dad loaded with a loaded rifle haunting me.

So I'm turning to all of you. Particularly all of you living North.  What's the secret to enjoying winter without having to go to Florida or Arizona to do it?

The Grump

Remember how you watched the oldest person in your office when you were first starting out in the workforce and thought to yourself, "I'll never be like them?"  

I mean, there was always someone, right?  Someone who worked diligently enough (and/or knew where the bodies were buried) and been with the same company for eons but never rose up past a certain point not because they didn't know their job but because their lack of people skills kept them down, and now was sort of disillusioned with life, sometimes the company, but generally the people they work with in the company, and definitely all of us young dumb ones with our fresh enthusiasm gunning for the corner office.

One gentleman that springs to mind was a career doorman at the first high rise I worked at.  He was older than I think anyone else on staff, including our manager, and been there for a long time.  He was fastidious at his job and took it oh-so-seriously.  He once was engaged in a heated argument with the manager, an attractive blonde female (think Rebecca from Ted Lasso if she had a Texas accent and you'll be close) at the lobby elevator as she was waiting for it.  He got on with her, argued with her all the way up to the top floor and back down.  She got off and retreated to her office to tell me about it, having never gotten to where she was originally going.  I don't remember what they were arguing about, but he was intractable when he wanted to be, and he wanted to be a lot. We saw him as and reacted to him as a total PIA.

When did I become that person?

Let me illustrate how I know I am.

I base it on many times I throw anywhere from a Level Five to Level Ten fit over something. It used to be measured in how many times in a week, but lately it seems it's the number of times a day, and when I stopped to consider that, that's when I knew. Yep I'm him.

Me reading a group email

What gets my goat?  What doesn't.  Group replies to group emails for starters.  A group email has its place, although its overused in my opinion, but when an email is sent to everyone and their dog and everyone but the dog, who doesn't have opposable thumbs and therefore can't type, starts replying to all of us my atomic rays begin pulsing because I have to deal with all of those replies that are irrelevant to me. I really don't need to know that you acknowledge to the boss that you read the email and are wishing him a good evening.  He might need to know that...but not me. 

I monitor three different email boxes for my job. Friday a very sweet individual whom I don't know emailed them all to ask for my help.  That irritated me more than one might think, but part of our software capabilities collates communications for reporting purposes, so you don't just close an email, you have to attribute it, notate it and then dispatch it.  It's a time suck, and the older I get the more irritated I get with my time being wasted.

Or interrupted.  I spent decades under the delusion that work-life balance was for pussies.  I sacrificed my family at that altar.  I'm determined to spend the rest of my time on earth differently.  Some of it's selfish, some of it is to be more available to the family I have left.  So text me at night, particularly on a hockey night, with a work question, and be prepared: you likely will feel the atomic blast I was building up from reading those reply all emails earlier.

And that's just email/text related. Do I tend to overly judge young workers because they don't have the depth of knowledge that I do? Do I blame them for not acknowledging that what they have is based on a foundation myself and my generation built for them? Do I just get irritated because? Have I lost sight of the fact that I was once in their very shoes: eager, wanting to prove I could work hard, and a little arrogant? Guilty on all counts.

But you know what it really is?  It's fear. It's the fear that after having spent a lifetime doing something and giving it your all but now you're becoming irrelevant.  Younger co-workers do and think differently than I do. They speak a different language. They deal with different challenges.  My ideas and etiquettes seem old fashioned and out of touch. And no one remembers who I once was within the organization, and honestly once I came to face that fact, I suddenly understood that long ago doorman: it's a fear of being forgotten.  And far worse still, being forgotten while we're still standing right there.

I really wish I could go back to those long ago days and deal with our problematic doorman differently. I have a lot more compassion for him now than I was capable of at 21.  And had we all been more solicitous of him, who knows, he probably had some things to teach us that would have made us better.

Would that have kept him from being a PIA?  We'll never know, but...

The Matriarchy: Be Careful What You Wish For

When the duty to be the hostess for the family holidays first came down to me, I was excited. I had my mother's Noritake china and brushed gold flatware that I was thrilled to be able to trot out for occasions. I had a house I loved and had the space. Then the reality of it set in:

1. It's a lot of work when you're working a lot.

2. I would try to please two former matriarchs by honoring their traditions and serving their recipes when I had two daughters in the throes of their eating disorders. No one was happy as a result.

3. Instead of sometimes causing some of the family drama (ask me about the Christmas we all got lice that the kids picked up from trying on bonnets at Pioneer Farms for just one example), I had to navigate around it.

4. The reality is, I've concluded, someone will be pissed off at something no matter what you do, but you work so hard to prevent it that it stings on a really deep level all the more because of it.

And yet I persist.  As a matter of fact, I doubled down. Having always wanted Christmas dishes, I got a set of Lenox last fall at an estate sale. If drama will ensue, at least it'll be around a beautifully set table.  But honestly, now that we're a smaller group it's not the drama that threatens to undo me; it's just the labor of it.

When my mother-in-law more or less handed me the reins, no one wanted her to I don't think. They loved their family traditions and it must have seemed like a betrayal of them.  Coming to my house wasn't the same as going back to the home they grew up in. Christmas memories were made at her house, not mine.  I get it, but I can look back now and absolutely know why she did it.  My guess is she was ready to relax and be a guest, not a hostess. I actually almost begged her to take it back for a year in 2009. My daughter had died six months before; I didn't want to throw a family holiday. I wanted nothing to do with the holidays in all candor. But she wasn't having any of it. Maybe she thought it would be good to give me something to do, and maybe it was.  It ended up being one of the nicer, mellow holidays I hosted.  It would be my mom's last, and she had a good day.  That was a gift. But, sometimes I wonder if Jan was just too tired to take it back, even briefly. I understand now if that was the case, I really do.

It starts with Thanksgiving, which is not exactly a walk in the park for a 60-something working woman just on its own.  The day after Thanksgiving, when you've been on your feet all day cooking the day before, you get the honor of working on your feet all day throwing up Christmas decorations. Then the shopping and wrapping ensue.  Every night for nearly a month if I wasn't working or physically at a sporting event, I was wrapping gifts. Countless hours choosing paper, ribbon and unique gift tags to make a nice presentation, all of which will be ripped off in less than two hours on Christmas day. And if you have kids or grandkids, there's the worry of making it all equitable: if one kid has x number of packages to unwrap, the other one better have the same number.  And then there's the mother-in-law in her current state of mind. I got her quite a lot for Christmas a few years back. I felt bad for her at that juncture: she was away from her kids and living in a state she had no affinity for.  You know what she told me? That I embarrassed her.  No thank you.  Just "you embarrassed me." In my kinder moments I understand why: she had always been the one who was the overly generous gift giver, and at that point it bothered her that she could not reciprocate. She doesn't get as much anymore from us.  But there is a lot of worry to not under-do it either; she's still deserving of nice things after all.  To sum up: it's a lot of physical work to wrap all that crap, and a lot of emotional stress about how it'll all be received. Let's not even talk about the expense!

If I wasn't wrapping, I was baking.  Because what's Christmas without home baked cookies? 

Last week after I finished wrapping the last gift, and all the baking and prep work I could do was done, I came downstairs and plopped myself on the couch,  Greg found Captain America on FX for me, and I just stared blankly at it until I finally got the energy to get up and go to bed. To truly appreciate how drained I was: not only do I own all the Avenger and Captain Americas on Blu-ray, I have Disney +, but there I sat watching it with commercials.  Commercials. Who watches stuff with commercials anymore?!

But you get past the wrapping, then there's the actual day: a lot of chaos if kids are involved. And cooking and then hand washing all that fancy Lenox I wanted so badly. It's a long day.

Now add in the caretaker part: Christmas takes a lot out of my MIL. The next day was a true challenge for her, which means it was for us as well.

And that's another point to the holidays: the rest of life keeps going.  All this just gets layered on.

Yeah, I get why Jan threw in the towel at roughly my age. Even at its best it's a lot.

Am I ready to pass the torch myself? No, not really - despite all my belly aching about it. And I don't think my daughter, who works hard and has the other constant exhaustion issue women have - young motherhood - is ready to take it. But what I can tell you is: respect and go hug the matriarch in your family. If she's over the age of 60, flat out worship her because I can tell you that personally all I really want to do now is sleep for a month, and my back wants a divorce. And there's still taking down the decorations to look forward to.  My guess is your mom or grandmother, or whoever filled that role in your life, felt that way too at least some of the time, and I bet you never knew. Because that's the other thing: we all want to make it seem like it was a breeze.

If you are that person, I got nothing but mad respect for you. Let's go for a massage.

Happy New Year!