Moving Closer?

My mother turned 75 today.  Later, we will celebrate her creativity, vibrant energy, health & well-being by attending an art reception at a gallery showing some of her paintings. She rides a bike, swims laps and hikes, a lot!  She keeps her mind healthy with meditation and prayer.  Ever since she read an article that brain games exercise the brain cells, she plays Sudoku and Free Cell to “relax”.  She keeps her heart engaged with other people through her art and continuing therapy practice.  In other words, she is the picture of good health on all fronts.

Still, she recently admitted to me that she is more easily tired.  Also, the idea of possibly moving to live closer to me, her only daughter, is a stressful decision. And I understand why.

There is a house for sale in my neighborhood.  It is almost close enough to set-up an old-fashioned tin can string phone between it and my house.  It would be perfect for her and my step-dad.  It has a lovely view. It is near a wonderful hiking area and bike paths. Wonderful doctors live all around. It has an “in-law” unit for either an art studio or a live-in care taker, if that is ever needed.

The information processing that goes into a decision like this one could cause overload for some people.  Also, there are friendships and possibilities blooming where she is now.  To move closer is a subtle statement about dependence rather than independence.

We both wonder how this will flow.  I walk by the house every morning and imagine what it would be like to live near my mother again.  It has been a lifetime since we spent more than a few days together every so often.  The last time we lived in the same house, I was a spoiled, selfish young lady (now I wonder, am I the same only older?).  She and my father were beginning the end of their marriage together.  Needless to say, we did not talk much then.

Now, I enjoy her sage advice, when I ask her for her thoughts.  I enjoy her enthusiasm about people and color and nature and art.  I enjoy the optimism she is learning from her “possibility thinker” husband.   As I walk by this house, with its possible future, I think I would like to have them closer. Still, we both worry about how much care will be needed, required, or even demanded; and, how to stay independent while moving closer.   

Maybe that tension is part of all of our close relationships.  We want to be close, but we want to see ourselves shine in our own story as well.

Whatever my mom decides about moving closer, I am glad to have parents that have provided support, encouragement, and love. I am also grateful that she is still quite capable of making this decision herself.  Happy Birthday, Mom.  Thanks for being the colorful, sprite of my life!

The 5th Chapter of Life

        Various writers on the stages of life offer different perspectives depending upon the purpose of their prose.  Some are tied to age categories; others to poetry.  Each provides some insights.  For instance, Shakespeare, in his play, “As You Like It”, describes seven stages of life and the last scene of life is “second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”  The Talmud lists 14 stages of life, the last few being described in the following manner, “ at seventy for gray hairs, at eighty for special strength, at ninety for decrepitude, and at a hundred a man is as one who has already died and has ceased from the affairs of this world.”  Rudolph Steiner, an early twentieth century philosopher described a seven stage life process which he linked with astrology.  The final seven year period and seventh stage was associated by Steiner with Saturn (56 - 63 years old) “when Saturn completes its second “return” (e.g. comes back to its position it had at one’s birth), and the soul can manifest an even higher element of Self called Spirit Man.”

        Indeed, while we do not tend to associate our “second childhood” to such an early age these days, many begin to experience the higher element of "spirit self".  As we age, we can experience a greater awakening of spirit and freedom as we begin to let go of the dross while we allow ourselves to let go of some of our “possible selves”.  Laura A. King and Joshua A. Hicks have written about this phenomena of aging in “Whatever Happened to ‘What Might Have Been’” in an October 2007 article published in American Psychologist.  Still, in my study of various attempts to categorize Old Age, it is not obvious when the aging adult’s feisty lack of concern about appearances and other people’s opinions can be seen to have turned from a healthy acceptance of limits into an unhealthy stubborn need to hang on when independence is no longer helpful.

        So to help sort out the distinction, I have come to think of this stage as the 5th Chapter. This is mostly due to the widely acclaimed book by Gail Sheehy, Passages.  Ms. Sheehy admirably calls attention to four stages of adulthood - predictable crisis points - which had not been adequately covered in developmental psychology.  Even so, in this book, it is almost as if menopause ends the adult life passage. There is no fifth stage or chapter to cover how to handle the ultimate adult crisis, the decline of adult functions, hence, the 5th Chapter.

        But here is the problem. There is no certain cut off age.  There is no specific time when we will know we need to hand over the car keys or ask others to pay our bills. It slips up on us. For some, this loss of independence comes over them all at once through a major health crisis. For others, the loss of independence and ability to care for Self, creeps in quietly, slowly and almost imperceptibly.

        Yet, there are more people hitting 100 years of age these days. According to the U.S. census the number of people turning 100 in 1990 was 37,000.  Ten years later this number had come close to doubling as 72,000 people turned 100 in the 2000 census.  There are aging “heros”, like Frances Perenon of Oakland.  She was on the pitcher’s mound on June 18th to throw out the first pitch of the Oakland A’s game in honor of her 100th birthday.  See the article by Suzanne Bohan, published on June 27, 2011,in the Contra Costa Times www.contracostatimes.com.  What do you want to be doing for you 100th birthday?