No Sweat

You might be wondering how any female writing about aging can fail to mention menopause; often a highly memorable event in a woman's life, unless of course more drastic circumstances occurred involving a hysterectomy.  I have known so many women who traveled one or the other of those two paths, and I know either one can be a challenge, so, like a lot of us, I was bracing for it in equal measures of dread and anticipation of no more periods; the anticipation part happened mostly during the periods. Any men who might wander onto the this blog, hear me now: women are amazing creatures.  We ride a hormonal bucking bronco every 28 days or so for years unless we're pregnant, which is no bed of roses itself. Then we endure unimaginable pain to bring life into the world, only to forget sleeping for the foreseeable future to care for that new life. Once we get sleep back, we have teenagers and there goes sleeping again. And then, maybe there's an interlude in there where things settle down...until night sweats, hot and cold flashes and a bit of insanity kick in. And they call us the weaker sex! Most women have a harrowing tale to tell about their path to and through menopause. But I can summarize my personal story in just a few words: there wasn't much to it.

I began perimenopause at 42.  Nothing at all unusual in that but it caught me totally off guard because by then I was dealing with a daughter in crisis and my own body wasn't my focus. I wasn't sure what was happening at first, but I felt like I'd lost any semblance of control over myself. Every single one of the classic symptoms was there.  Every. Last. One. Much to my husband's dismay. If you don't know what I mean by that, look them up.  You'll figure it out.  Mood swings probably plagued me most of all. Baby, my mood was swinging wild from the rafters. I was literally insane for a couple of days every month for a few months. I woke up a few times drenched in enough sweat to sink the Titanic but that was nothing compared to some of the crazy that washed over me. 

Once I caught on, I was able to get the mood swings under some semblance of control and most of the rest of it sort of dissipated on its own. In all, maybe there were five fun filled months before things leveled out. Again, I didn't think too much about it - I was just glad to get off that particular roller coaster because life was quite the ride in and of itself. I experienced just enough of it with just enough vigor, for lack of a better word, to be able to nod knowingly when someone would complain of having a hot flash or not having slept due to night sweats. But I never had night sweats again. And I wouldn't experience hot flashes again for another four years and then only in passing.

When I hit 46 and the real thing kicked in, it was like a bulb about to go out.  It winked on and off for a bit and then, pop, it was gone.  Almost anticlimactic. The most memorable moment - and I remember the moment so specifically I can tell you precisely where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing at the time - is when I realized I was done with menstrual cycles. Despite all those years of whining and complaining about them and actually looking forward to menopause, I felt an overwhelming sense of melancholy.  I realized that a door was closing on a phase of my life and there was no going back. It's hard to describe or justify how I felt - it's not like I was going to have anymore children at 47. But I guess it was just a very definitive announcement that I was no longer young and I needed a moment to process that.

In the way I have of making a short story long, my minimal experience with all the things a lot of women go through is why I didn't address it right out of the gate.  I guess I feel like I didn't earn my stripes: like I can't claim to be part of the sisterhood. If you feel I owe any of you an apology for not traveling that same uncomfortable path, you got it.  I watched enough of you go through the full experience to accept you earned it.

However it happened for any of us, and whatever sense of regret we might have at the moment, can we all agree that there is one great thing about aging: I don't miss periods. At all.

Simon Floats Up Here

A year ago this past spring, I was driving on my street about to pull into my driveway after caring for my grands and I got something big and black landing in my left eye. Or so I thought it was a foreign object hitching a ride. Despite that being a nearly blind eye, the sudden obstruction was just that and I was a bit nonplussed as I pulled in and started trying to blink the thing out, wondering if some gnat or something got in there. After a while I realized it wasn't a gnat or an eyelash or anything else. It was on my eye. Like part of my eye. So what do I do in response? I Googled it of course. And this time, as opposed to the horrible bulging leg vein, the Internet scared the living crap out of me. I don't know precisely what key search words I used at the time because if I try and replicate it now, I get a different set of results that are much more benign, but that day I was nearly convinced my eye was about to fall out or it was symptomatic of some awful disease OR, the most likely culprit, I had been punctured in the eye somehow.  The reason I mentioned where I was coming from is key to that: I help take care of the grandkids overnight on Fridays. It's a big slumber party for my grandson in particular (I think my granddaughter would rather me not be there because, while it's not that she doesn't like me, it's a sign her parents, whom she likes more, are going to leave) and he builds an elaborate fort/bed for us on the floor in their room and of course we're surrounded by all kinds of things: Godzillas, T-Rex's, Legos, you get the picture.  No telling what I could have secretly impaled myself with during the night. Anyway, longish story short, after some consideration, given it was a weekend, I look up eye doctors who take emergency appointments. Mine did not.  I'll let my arm fall off rather than go see a doctor, but I only have one working eye, so I get more panicky about that area of my body.

I found a place in Greenfield (for those of you not familiar with Pittsburgh, it's not just around the corner from where I live but not so bad I couldn't get there - as a matter of fact I go there all the time because the surviving Imax theatre is very near there). So on a cold, rainy weekend day I drive down there and meet this very attractive young blonde doctor who was as sweet as she could possibly be when she checked me and pronounced it as simply "a floater" which is not atypical for people "my age".  She even asked me, "Don't any of your friends have floaters?" I sort of cocked my head quizzically and said, "I have no idea. It's not something we talk about." That struck her as odd. I guess she assumes everyone old enough for senior discounts talks about whatever ails them all the time (which, face it, we sort of do but I wasn't going to concede that). I shrugged and said, "Nope, it's never come up in conversation." Her answer to that was, "Well, you might as well name it because it'll be sticking around."

So I did. It's/His name is Simon after the Mike Myers SNL character. Because he's a cheeky little monkey.

She warned me to call back if I got any flashing lights in the same eye, which I did a couple of days later for about a day and it stopped, and since I'd overreacted enough for one event, I let it go and it's never happened again. And, like she also told me would happen, I grew used to Simon.  He's there and I see him floating around in there sometimes, most notably when I'm very tired, but for the most part, I forget about him. What he is in actuality, for any of you lucky enough not to know from first hand experience, is a shadow caused by clumps of collagen (there's that word again) floating in the vitreous (goo, in short) in our eyes which changes as we age.  I feel cursed by collagen actually: too much of it here, not enough there so I've got bulging veins. Collagen, you suck.

Anyway...fast forward to not long before Christmas when I decided that since she was so nice not to make me feel stupid for overreacting, I'd give them my business. I go down there and her partner, another young, highly attractive blonde (I have a hard time telling them apart actually), sees me, and I tell her about Simon and why he's named that.  That amused her, which I'm glad about but what was not amusing was the fact that by then she could tell I've started developing cataracts, which, again, is not uncommon for someone "my age". Nothing I need to be worried about just yet, but as we learn, not just yet turns into now all too soon. But it's not now, so I'll worry about it when I need to. I'm grateful that Simon didn't turn out to be Pennywise...

...but what is scary is how fast he came on. I woke up one morning and he wasn't in my life. And literally with a blink of an eye he was and presumably always will be (at least I'll never be alone).  The realization that I'm not in control of the things beginning to pop up with my body was the real horror show. I suppose I never was and that none of us are, but still I feel like my body has a different agenda than I do suddenly, and I'm not quite sure how I get it back in line.

All in Vein

Let's take a break from philosophical musings to ask the question of whomever designed us: what the hell?!

I managed to get through my 60th birthday with little to cringe about. I had decided if I couldn't beat it, I was going to meet it head on and celebrate getting here. My daughter and her family made sure it was a wonderful day despite it falling right during the heart of the pandemic, but it helped that I was pretty much what it had always been only with some gray in the hair and lines on the face and wasn't worried about any major changes happening to me without my consent. But in the ensuing three years weird things have started to happen. For no particular reason that I know of. Are these things happening to you? There's so much, it's not going to make it into one post, so let's start with the one that makes me the craziest during the summer - my legs.

For one thing, I've noticed any bug bites, cuts and scrapes take longer to heal these days. I know that happens to folks as they age - my mother-in-law was frightening proof of that a couple of weeks ago. I was caring for her by myself when she got a scrape on her finger  She bled like her finger was coming clean off, not just subjected to a minor incident most of us would shake right off.  But it bled and then bled for a few days off and on.  Not the time to discover you're out of bandaids, I have to add. And of course it's because her skin is like parchment due to her advanced age, plus I'm sure some medication side effects.  I had just gotten to the point of taking off the child proofing we had around the house as my granddaughter is past really needing it, but one wonders if maybe that isn't who really needs bumpers on corner objects.

Anyway, I'm not even close to that same camp, but I do understand that we head in that direction as we age. But still, starting last summer, my legs looked like I'd been in a fight and lost about half the time. I was doing some of the mowing last year and that's where most of the abuse came from.

Fast forward to now and I'm not able to mow as much since I'm with my grands Friday evening/Saturday, so my left leg looks pretty normal. The right leg on the other hand looks like a map of Middle Earth and Mt Doom is looming somewhere up on my inner thigh. 

I've always had visible veins; my Irish skin is sometimes so translucent the veins look like they're just right there barely below the surface. But trust anyone who has ever tried to take blood from me, looks can be deceiving, so maybe it's just how it is for people like me, and anyone with some actual skin tone has a better time of it, but it's certainly not attractive. So of course the first thing I do when I started noticing it was to Google it. Normally that's a recipe for panic. According to the Internet, every little possible change we see is our personal Armageddon. Except this time. When I wanted some reason to run screaming to a doctor to have the offending map removed from my leg, I find site after site saying usually there's no cause for concern. Or that it's a natural result of decreased levels of collagen. I should walk 30 minutes a day. Carly and I walk roughly 45-minutes unless I'm home alone with my mother-in-law in which case I still get the work in running up and down stairs trying to take care of her and work at the same time. Plus 45-minutes five days a week on my Peloton. Not sure how much else you want if I'm still going to hold down a job too. I should drink plenty of water, the Internet tells me. If 70 ounces roughly a day isn't enough for you, what is? I take a daily vitamin for women over 50, but maybe I should take Vitamin K. No wait, this article says Vitamin E.  How about a dose of STFU, Internet? Bottom line is, I think unless I find a pot of gold at the end of some rainbow to afford non-medically mandated surgery, this is the new me. I invested heavily in Bermuda shorts and light-weight full length pants for the summer and have more or less decided this is my new reality. 

Reality is overrated.

Mt. Doom - be glad it's fuzzy, it's not for the squeamish

Next time, I'll introduce you to Simon.

Clay or Stone

Komarovsky: Pavel Pavlovich; my chief impression - and I mean no offence - is that you're very young.

Pasha Antipov: Monsieur Komarovsky; I hope I don't offend you. Do people improve with age?

Komarovsky: They grow a little more tolerant.

My favorite movie since I first saw it is Dr. Zhivago. The 1965 version. Part of the beauty of the material is that every time I watch it things resonate differently with me. The exact same scene that I know backwards and forwards will be a different revelation to me. It all depends upon the life experience I'm filtering it through. When I first saw it at 15, it was the love story that dominated my attention, and I didn't really get the subtext. Later, when I was homesick, it was Zhivago's intense love for Russia and how the two women in his life embodied the different faces of Russia.  I could go on. But no matter what phase of my life I'm in, one scene in particular strikes me differently every single time, and it's the scene in the student cafe when Lara introduces Komarovsky, the older, sexual predator who is her mother's advisor to the young idealistic, yet cold Pasha Antipov, her fiancé. Since I began this blog and took the inevitable look backward to explain my forward, I've been thinking about the conversation the two men have in the cafe and wondered: are we molded in clay or are we chipped out of stone from the time we are young? Are we capable of change as we grow older or are we pretty much a done deal as soon as we leave our parents' fold? And, indeed, do we grow a little more tolerant?

I don't think I'd like myself really if I met young me in some chance setting. I'd recognize that we had a lot in common, but I'd find the younger person high strung, gossipy and so insecure that she spends too much time masking that insecurity with false bravado which I would find grating.  I was a little bit nuts. Maybe more than a little bit. Young me would have told you I was passionate.  But, no, it was nuts. Maybe people with a great deal of passion are all a little nuts, I can't say but I'll cop to it in my case.

The things I hold dear or the overall world philosophies I've had since I was young don't seem to change. Well, not much anyway. I mean, how could I develop a guilty pleasure listening to Fall Out Boy long before they were even born? But I'm a Steelers fan now and always. I love all things on four legs but if they speak dog, then all the more so. In many ways, I'm set in stone. One thing I can point to with absolute pride is I've resisted the prediction I heard more than once, "You'll become more conservative with age." Meaning politically, and primarily from a fiscal point of view.  I have not strayed from my original liberal outlook either socially or fiscally.  What I have done, that I might not have 40 years ago, is accepted as close, dear friends, others who are on the other side of the political aisle from me. Some of you reading this might be among them. As long as you don't trash me for what I believe, I'll respect your point of view. If you want to discuss it, I'll go there if it can remain civil. But honestly I prefer we lean into the areas that made us friends and skirt around the politics. Maybe what my parents always said - never discuss religion or politics - was wiser than I credited at the time.

And I guess what I'm pondering here and posing the question to all of us: are we indeed more tolerant? Or are we like a man named Otto and become grumpier and more stodgy as we age? And are we capable of improving with age like a fine wine or do we at some point sour into vinegar? And can we choose which it will be?

I'd like to think much of my personality has changed and hopefully for the better. I'd really love to tell you I'm no longer crazy. Maybe just a smidge. I suppose we all are. We were raised by imperfect beings in an imperfect world.  It's bound to make us a little off balance. I had to work at it though; it wasn't a "eureka, I've cured all my personality quirks" kind of a thing. One thing about having kids in crisis is we did a LOT of family therapy. I've also done my share of support groups. I'm not sure I would have lost the hard edges without a lot of help, and I still find myself too edgy and judgmental for my own tastes. And opinionated?  Oof, and how!  And - wow - I do have my father's temper, even without his DNA.  All things I'd like to work on. Is it possible? Can I become the better person I want to be? I guess I worry because I spent the recent holiday superbly grumpy at all my neighbors for shooting off fireworks and terrifying my dog. And I thought to myself, "I AM a man called Otto and next thing I know I'm going to be chasing cars down the street yelling they're driving too fast." What happened to the more tolerant part?  

Anyway, back to my characters in the cafe. Fortunately for Lara, she managed to escape both those losers - at least for a time. Oh, oops, that was pretty judgmental of me, wasn't it?

But before she managed all that, she sat in that dingy cafe as Pasha's retort to Viktor Komarovsky was, "Because they have more to tolerate in themselves..."  No matter what age I am, I always find Pasha Antipov/Strelnikov insufferable, but perhaps that is right.

 

If the Caretaker Needs a Caretaker then Who Does the Caretaking

My Mother-in-Law with us at Mom's 90th Birthday Party

Those of you who know me personally may be wondering why I haven't yet addressed the elephant in the room - or more specifically, the downstairs master bedroom.  My Mother-in-Law lives with us and has now for the past four and a half years.  I've avoided it frankly because I wasn't sure I have the right to talk in detail about her for one thing. Why that never stopped me when I very first started blogging as I was caring for my mom all the way back in 2008 and first authored Woman at a Crossroads, which at its inception was about taking care of her, I can't really say. It was a lonely, hard time and it helped me cope to write about it so maybe it was worth the invasion of her privacy. Whatever it was, sharing stories about Mom never gave me pause. Maybe because she was my mom and not someone else's so I felt I owned a part of the story. Which I did, and I do here as well really so probably, despite my noblest intentions some of it will seep out over time.  But, whatever, for now here we are, and for the three people who live in this house, the roles of caretakers and caretakee (just made that word up) are the overriding factor of our lives every single day, so it's almost impossible to write about aging and not address it.  So here's what I'll do: I will address the overarching issue of caring for our aging parents when we're beginning to deal with our own health and welfare as we ourselves age.

When my dad died I was 31 with two small children, one still in diapers. I lived on the other side of the country from them. So, I was young and dumb (but old enough not to think I was young and dumb), and absorbed with my job, my kids and myself. I think back on it, and the signs were there that my dad had been struggling with his health for a while, but it was like Red Leader's shot at the Death Star: it just impacted on my surface. When Mother finally had to call and tell my husband to tell me Dad had cancer, it was very advanced (yes, she really did leave a message that my husband had to tell me that night as we celebrated our anniversary). And by the time she couldn't wait any longer to call me home, he only had days left. While I was left in shock at how fast it seemed and how little time I had to process the fact I was losing my father, I'll have to be honest that I had the thought, "Well that one was easy."

Before you judge me, what I meant by that is that I grew up realizing my parents were potentially going to reach the point where they needed my care while my children were still young. I spent way too much of my childhood wondering how I would manage it.  Mother was where those fears came to fruition. My kids were teenagers, which was not an easy time for them or me. Again, if you know me, you know some of this. But in summary, I was trying to cope and learn how to be a good caregiver for teenagers in crisis and Mom had a whole laundry list of serious ailments she was very stubbornly contending with: diabetes, Parkinson's, catastrophic heart failure, and the Apex Predator: Alzheimer's being the leaders on the list. It was a hard few years, with the last couple being a full-on nightmare. I ate what I could when I could.  Maybe I slept some, but I don't really remember.  I lost my job at one point. I lived my life in doctors' waiting rooms or in hospital ER's. I kept an ER-ready bag in my car. But, on the flip side I was young enough to put my body through that and manage to keep going, albeit gaining a lot of weight during that period that it took until the pandemic to really work off. I also started biting my nails out of stress. I managed to cure that before the pandemic, but it didn't go away overnight. If I was in my 60's and going through her last few years, I'm not sure how I'd have held up.

In theory, you think that by the time your folks are old enough and frail enough to need full-time care that your kids will be out of the house, your career will be winding down and you will still have the time and energy to deal with what they need. If you're lucky, you'll have siblings that will share the burden.  If you're truly blessed, you'll have the money to afford great care for your loved ones. But what I think too, is that too many of us are faced with is a far darker reality.  I see it living here: families are close knit in the 'Burgh. Our living situation is far from unique. Many, many other families live just down the street from one another if they don't live in the same house. My next door neighbor when I first moved into this house was an elderly woman whom we rarely saw but knew she was quite older. Her son lives across the street and down two doors from me. She's gone on now, and her grandson and his new family live in her house now and you'll see everyone walking back and forth to one another's houses a lot. Both the son and grandson are firefighters serving at the same firehouse. Family and tradition. It framed this city's personality and still holds it in place. Some of it is steel belt culture, but some of that culture is because Pittsburghers are by and large working class folks, so the children know they'll have to step in because they can't afford a phalanx of nurses or a fancy care facility. But while they all accept the responsibility, it doesn't make it easy. And what I've had to wonder a few times in the last few years is who takes care of the caregiver if something happens to them?  Which I realize is now a lot more of a possibility than it was 15 years ago when Mom went through her final years.

I asked my husband once if he'd thought about what to do for his mom if something happened to him. I got the stink eye and no response. But it's not an unreasonable question. He travels a fair amount for work; things happen.  And things happen like heart attacks, cancer, COVID, you name it.  It's a pessimistic thought, but isn't it also a practical one to have and plan for? (And, yes, let's be real: part of the reason to ask it is because I was implying the Plan B for her care is not going to be me by myself - I think he was aware of that and that's what drew the stink eye, not that I might have been implying he's heart attack bait.) Those were thoughts I didn't stop to have 15 years ago. I just accepted I'd be there to see it through. Now, I probably will be, but...

Of course, all I control is what I can control, so all my financial decisions at this point are beginning to turn toward making sure these aren't worries that keep my one and only daughter up at night when it's her turn in the caretaker role.  Well, not all - I still plan on going to lots of sporting events and trying to rescue all the dogs...can't save all your money for your final days. Gotta live some of those days in between after all.

Note to Self

 "If you could go back in time what you say to your younger self?"

Isn't that something every celebrity gets asked at some point in time? Isn't it something, as much as we might eye roll mightily when we watch that interview, we've wondered about our own selves?  I have.  I have such a long list that I think by the time the younger me sat and listened to it all she'd meet me in the present.  Probably first and foremost is stay in college and quit being a dumbass about it and take it seriously. By the time I was a good student I was working and a young mother. I missed all the fun that college can offer, taking night classes and studying sitting next to my kids' bathtub while I got them ready for bed, and while I ended up with a decent career as it stands, it's not the one I dreamed of, and one wonders...

Which brings me to the futility of the original question and probably why our eyes roll when it gets posed. Why even bother thinking about it? Take the life you've given yourself, learn from your mistakes where and how you can, but don't waste time with regrets. Sounds pretty logical, right?  Sure.  But, damn, I wish I could slap some sense into my teenage self, if not on the big stuff like college and men (which is this: don't go through the boy-crazy phase, it's not becoming and you'll cringe a lot - a LOT - when you think of it later in life), but some of the little stuff that I pay for now that was SO avoidable.

Biggest one: wear ear plugs at concerts.  I eschewed them almost out of spite of the conventional wisdom.  Like that was going to be my rebellion against The Man. And it wasn't just concerts. I used to get home from school in the afternoons when both my parents were at work and plop one of my albums on their huge living room record player - you know, the one that's larger than some apartments - and then see how loud I could get it.  I could walk to the end of the driveway and still hear it.  How I didn't blow out their speakers or cause the neighbors to complain was a wonder.  I imagine most of the neighbors were working too and their kids didn't care; they were listening to their own loud stuff.  I remember sunbathing one summer day to the sound of Donna Summer's Bad Girls...an album which I had, but it was someone several doors down playing it. But all that rebellious rock and roll has left me deaf way beyond my years.  I have a cheap pair of hearing aids but I hate them, so if you ever wonder why I prefer texting or emailing, that's probably why. Biggest problem is: all that music that was so important to me, and that I so wanted to listen intently to savor every instrument and catch every lyric?  It's still just as important to me, but now I struggle to hear it the way I want to.  Pure idiocy on my part.  Seriously.

Speaking of sunbathing, I really wish I hadn't gone the baby oil route.  For those of you too young to remember, the 70's was the bronze age, as in skin that was bronzed was the coveted look.  So we used baby oil to essentially baste ourselves - like a Thanksgiving turkey. Why I bothered I don't know. I was the penultimate Irish-American girl: pale and freckled. And embarrassed about it.  Everyone else I knew tanned so easily. I just freckled, so the goal was to merge the freckles together somehow. I never did. But, living in a high altitude location, sitting out with oil slathered all over me, I didn't do my future self any favors.  I'm so far lucky actually. Nothing as serious as melanoma, although I know others who are not so fortunate, but I look down at my hands, I feel my leathery skin, and I know I was playing with almost literal fire. And who's to say that I'm out of the woods for more serious consequences.  I'll knock on some of that wood and hope so. In many ways, I don't think being a teenager in the 2020's is easier or better than it was in the 70's but I'm grateful when I see all skin tones celebrated.  I wish I could have accepted and been comfortable in my own skin.

Maybe the real thing to try and tell my young self is that you think the future is so far away. What you'll find is it really isn't.  And you know you'll pay a price at some point for whatever it is that you're doing that is self-destructive, but that time seems so distant. What you'll actually find is that you will happen upon it so quickly that you will be left reeling from how fast it happened. How did I get here, you'll ask? Yesterday I was carefree, lathered in baby oil, listening to my neighbor's disco albums.  Today I've asked my granddaughter to repeat herself at least a dozen times, and I'm really pissing her off - and she's only three!  How can I make her so mad already? Doesn't that come later when she's in her teens and then I REALLY embarrass her?

You only get one body. Act accordingly.

A Slow Swedish Death

Obi Wan started it.

Someone had laid a truth bomb on me that I was struggling with. What it was isn't important other than it was the catalyst for me to do a little retail therapy. I had seen this particular Obi Wan collectible at a comic book store for a price that made me blink a few times rapidly and walk away, yet I couldn't stop thinking about him. After all, Alec Guinness was the catalyst that made me decide I'd go ahead and go to this silly Star Wars movie just out since I was a big fan of his. The rest is history, and I'm sitting here in a Star Wars shirt right now, a big and heavily-invested-in-Star Wars-collectibles-nerd. So I wanted that particular Obi Wan, and I wanted him bad. I just needed an excuse; had the truth bomb not exploded, something else would have come along to give me the excuse. My daughter suggested I could find him online for less, so I did. $70 less to be exact. And he arrived, in all his glory, a 6:1 scale, hand painted, limited edition marvel, on Saturday. To make room for him, I had to move a lamp, and figure out where to store the lamp, which meant I really needed to re-organize a little annex off my office we call the Hobby Hole, and as I was going through that process I had to ask myself over and over as I picked things up and moved things around, "Why exactly do I have this?"

In the great debate of nature vs. nurture I am an interesting case study. Not genetically linked to either parent, I carry forward so many of their personality traits, both good and bad - but, bluntly, mainly bad - that I think I sort of shut the door on any other argument. Nurture wins the day, and Mother was a full on hoarder. There was an understandable reason for it. Not unlike many young people who had their formative years during the Depression, she spent the rest of her life over-compensating for those years of want. While I bemoaned that fact from the time I was young all the way to trying to clean out her things after she died, and even though I never wanted for much, I am more like my mother than I would care to be.

My daughter watched as I struggled with the fallout from my mother's hoarding. I could tell so many stories, but for now suffice it to say, while I don't think my daughter is waiting or anxious for the time when she has to help me downsize, or worse still, when she has to clear out my things because I'm gone, it does admittedly cross her mind and she's more than well aware how much stuff I have. And she's also aware of how I'm wired.  I adore estate sales, and I'm in the prime location for them. Pittsburgh is a city with an older population. I love sports collectibles in addition to all the Star Wars stuff, and don't forget Lord of the Rings, because I certainly don't forget it while procuring things I just "have to have". Now add all the stuff I gather with all the stuff I inherited as the only child, and the things my husband was bequeathed over time. Not unlike a lot of people in our age bracket. As life goes on, we just stuff our space with all our stuff.  There's a reason I guess stuff is called stuff.

But I know my daughter worries about what a mess she'll be left with, and I know what it was like to deal with my mother, and don't want to repeat that cycle, so I was intrigued as Swedish Death Cleaning became a "thing". I decided I needed to make it my thing. As just one small example, do I really need to have a picture my mother took in 1970 of a bouquet of flowers sitting on her living room coffee table? No, I do not. Nor do I need a photo of a group of young women with that coveted flip up hairstyle singing in that same living room at a DAR luncheon she threw?  I don't know who any of them are.  No, I do not.

And why in the world did I keep this? Why did Mom for that matter? Other than she kept absolutely everything that is.

Not only keep it but haul it from place to place including across country - that package of "Quickies" has more miles on it than my car. 

I don't know about you, but some stuff that just defies logic stays for so long out of some weird guilt (e,g., "Mother loved this, so she would want me to keep it."). Some out of sentimentality. A lot of it falls into that bucket actually. Some because during the course of a life sad events happen, and looking too closely at certain things dredges that up and it's easier to just pack it up and haul it here, there and everywhere. But at some point, someone has to face it and handle it. It should be me, right?

I consider the name badge in
the trash a total win

Whatever the reason, it's hard to let go. And I have to be in a "mood", as I described it to my daughter this past weekend. I managed to convince myself to throw away a name tag of my dad's from a reunion he attended in 1989.  But I couldn't bring myself to toss his Elk's membership card. Maybe in the next "mood".

And I as I poured over old photos and stationery to try and cull out some space in the Hobby Hole, I did get emotionally tweaked.  I ran across a box full of my mother's photos, including a lot that were taken when my children were small and she lived in Washington, PA. So all these happy family photos of summer vacations where the biggest worry is when I'd get to go to Steelers training camp are caught in time smiling out at me, but now so, so many people in those photos are either gone, including unfortunately my oldest daughter, or are not well. I tell people all the time that I hope the memories of their loved ones brings them comfort, and I am sincere. But I'm here to tell you it doesn't always.  Sometimes memories are ghosts and they haunt you.

But anyway, this is all a long way to say, I've decided I'll take my Swedish Death Cleaning project a bit at a time, in other words I'll bank on the trust that there will be a tomorrow. Maybe over the next couple of decades I'll actually get it down to a dull roar. On the other hand, now I know there's a young Obi Wan from the same company...and really, don't you think I need them both?

So make me feel better about myself.  What do you have too much of, and how are you doing with the idea of getting rid of it as you get older?

(And...if you're a stranger reading this and think you might just want to help yourself to my Obi Wan, remember I collect things, including BIG DOGS.  They're happy to greet you appropriately.)