The Next Stage

 Celebrating a significant (at least to me) birthday recently, plus my mother moving to an assisted living home, has really thrown me for a loop.  Most of the time it is easy for me to ignore my age, I am only as old as I feel and most days, until recently, I feel pretty good=young.  I didn't have to deal with daily reminders of my numeric age until I had to sign up for Medicare and renew my 10 year old driver's license in June.  Now, every time I open my wallet I see 65 year old Lisa staring back at me instead of 55 year old Lisa, who was very tan, a bit thinner with fewer "experience" lines and chins.  My new photo, thanks to the new technology, is many shades of gray and makes me look like a faded version of myself which only serves to remind me that maybe I am becoming a faded version of myself.  "Damn, I hate you, new driver's license!"  Add to this the almost daily mail I now receive from Social Security and I am finding it harder and harder to deny my age, try as I may.

All of my peers have either lost their parents or if they are still alive, are now dealing with care for them in one sense or another.  As our parents get closer to the end of life it makes us also come face to face with our own mortality.  Not trying to be morbid here, it is a fact of life.  For so much of our lives, if  we are healthy and barring any tragedies, the natural end of life seems in the distant future.  For me, I never gave it too much consideration until recently.  A few things have moved it forward in my consciousness.  First, the death of my father, second my mother's health and her recent move and lastly, coming to the shore this year and realizing my generation has moved up in the pecking order of the circle of life.  

One of the blessings of the shore is the presence of several generations every summer.  Currently, I can count 4, maybe more, generations being represented here.  We grew up spending our summers surrounded by people of all ages.  It is part of what makes this place so special.  Our lives back home are not usually spent with such a broad spectrum of people.  We tend to spend most of our time with people in our same stage of life with the occasional visit from a grandparent or an aunt or uncle.  This summer, I am noticing there are fewer and fewer of my parent's generation showing up at the shore and it is eye opening.  For the last 20 years those aunts and uncles have been staples here at the shore.  They were our foundation in this place, the reason we all love this place and return year after year is because they loved this place and brought us year after year.  They started some of the very traditions that we love so much!  We have passed this down to our children and now some of them are passing it along to their children.  Suddenly, we have become the older aunts and uncles....YIKES!  

Being one of the "older" aunts and uncles is a blessing and a curse.  A curse...because obviously we are the next to "age out"....but not for a long time!  The good news is that currently, the blessings outweigh the curses.  The blessings are that we now have the freedom to spend months at a time here and don't have to rely on a few vacation weeks.  Every week is suddenly a vacation!  Being at the younger end of the older generation gives us many years to enjoy our new role.  I consider that my parents enjoyed 20 years of summers with their siblings and cousins at the shore after my dad retired.  If I think about how long 20 years really is, I have a long time to enjoy this phase of life! Another blessing is being able to watch as the next generations pass through some of the next phases.  

Rainy days at the shore mean different things to different ages!

There is lot of perspective that can be gained as we get older.  For example, rainy days.  As a child, rainy days up here were spent playing countless card games, tromping around in the rain wearing our boots and raincoats, driving our parents crazy because we were bored.  As young adults and teenagers we spent many a rainy day sleeping in, playing cards or games, and socializing, eating plenty of junk food.  As a young parent of children, rainy days felt endless.  Stuck in the small cottage, feeling alone and isolated with restless children thinking of ways to keep them entertained and not go nuts in the process.  Dealing with wet clothes and enduring a noise level that would have benefitted by the invention of noise cancelling headphones!   Add to the mix the teenagers who seemed to consume all of the food in the building and rainy days were never my favorite.  But I was a lot younger...so there was that!  As the nest emptied rainy days provided me with a much needed "day off".  A day off from the sun on the beach, a day off to read, a day off to do things around the house and catch up.  A day to sit and visit people one on one.  A good rainy day has also resulted in the writing of more than one memorable skits over the years. Retirement rainy days mean a restless husband instead of restless children! (almost the same thing, only slightly quieter). 

The point is, as I sit here on this rainy day, I think back to the many stages of my life up here and realize maybe the grass wasn't greener on the other side, maybe it was all green...just different shades of green that I  didn't see yet.  So, I will try to embrace this new stage of life at the shore and make the very most of the next 20 years, even if my driver's license does look like some old lady with a double chin.