On turning 70 and looking for wisdom

A decade ago I published my Top 10 on turning 60. Most of the items on my list are truer now than ever. Septuagenarians are much less likely than sexagenarians to die young, for example.

Still, I'm finding it hard to come up with a new Top 10 list. I don't much care for the biblical description of this decade: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away"(Psalm 90:10).

Some of my friends have already flown.

It's not that I want to relive my 60s. I'm glad to be done with the Great Recession, heart surgery (I hope), retiring, figuring out Social Security and Medicare, moving 750 miles from my home and friends of 33 years, saying goodbye to two sweet dogs, remodeling my new old house, and learning how not to get lost in a state none of whose roads are straight. Good things came out of that tumultuous decade, however: I like my new neighborhood, friends, and small dog, and I'm happy that many of my longtime friends have come to visit.

It would be nice to think that my 70s will be a more peaceful decade than my 60s, but I hear that's highly unlikely. Another recession, most economists say, is just around the corner. Good health may or may not last the decade. Social Security and Medicare are under attack. The house needs a new roof. We'll probably want to move again before 2028. Still, new friendships are likely to increase and deepen, and my new dog, who just turned two, will probably last awhile.

The psalmist advises numbering our days, "that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom" (Psalm 90:12). The Social Security Life Expectancy Calculator numbers my remaining days at 17.4 years, though retirement planners advise making savings last to age 100 or 105, just in case. So what wisdom should I apply to the next 15, 25, 35 years? I'd love to hear your ideas, especially if you've lived even longer than I have.

About leaving comments: Some friends have told me they can't get this site to accept their comments. Others have  no problem. I don't know what the difference is, but Blogger sites sometimes do strange things. Please be patient, because no comment is posted until I've read and approved it. That can take anywhere from a minute to a day. I weed out bots, spammers, and trolls, not good people like you. Blogger will tell you if your comment is awaiting moderation. If your comment simply disappears into the ether with no comment, Blogger is misbehaving again.

2014: My Year in Books

[A wall in my office]

I started keeping a reading list in 1997 when I began commuting by train to work. I've been keeping a list ever since.

Because I rarely remember what I've been reading once I've gone on to the next book, the list comes in handy whenever someone asks, "So, have you read any good books lately?"

Yes, of course. Here is a short list of my favorites from this year, in order from the ridiculous to the sublime:

What I read

Jeanne Ray, Calling Invisible Women, is a delightful comic novel in which a middle-aged woman becomes literally invisible, and her family doesn't notice. The author, a retired nurse, is author Ann Patchett's mother. She was in her 60s when she wrote her first novel, Julie and Romeo. I love Patchett's novels, but Ray's are more fun.

Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (newly published in paperback) is a comic novel likely to appeal to my friends in the book business and other bibliophiles. It features a curmudgeonly bookstore owner, a publisher's sales rep, a book tour that goes hilariously wrong, and a precocious child who loves to read.

Laura Lippman has written a slew of detective stories based in Baltimore, my new home. I began reading her in Illinois in preparation for my move and kept on reading her once I got here. Lippman's detective, like Lippman herself, formerly wrote for the Baltimore Sun; her books might appeal to readers of Sue Grafton's alphabet series.

When a new Baltimore friend told me Lippman is married to David Simon, creator of The Wire, I ordered a copy of his nonfiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. First published in 1991, Homicide reads like fast-paced detective fiction. This means I do a double-take whenever I hear the name of Jay Landsman, my local police captain, the real-life son and namesake of one of the book's main characters who was transmuted into a fictional character in The Wire.

If you are planning to visit me, however, and want to bone up on Baltimore, it might be more reassuring to skip Lippman and Simon and go directly to Anne Tyler. Before moving here, I reread my old favorite Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Once installed in Baltimore, I got a review copy of Tyler's forthcoming novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, which takes place in a Baltimore neighborhood only 10 minutes from my house. I love Tyler for her unsentimental yet kindly way of describing family life. And even though all her books are set in Baltimore, her characters do not generally get murdered.

Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, edited by Terrie Dopp Aamodt, Gary Land, and Ronald L. Numbers, is a fascinating collection of articles about probably the most important female 19th-century religious leader and reformer you've barely heard of--unless, like me, you were raised Seventh-day Adventist. Here's my review in the September/October issue of Books and Culture.

Finally, here's the book I've recommended to more people this year than any other: Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. Gawande, a surgeon, has written an impassioned plea for how end-of-life medicine and end-of-life care in general should be practiced. Gawande is also a regular contributor to New Yorker magazine, which tells you something about the quality of his writing.

Why I read

Like everyone else I read Marilynne Robinson's Lila, just as in earlier years I read Housekeeping and Gilead and Home. Robinson is brilliant at character portrayal, and she knows how to turn a phrase. She's also gifted at stuffing her books with Christian theology and still gathering accolades from the New York Times (by Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce, no less). I recommend her to all my friends whose brows are higher than mine.

But I guess this year I was just more interested in invisible middle-aged women and the floundering publishing industry and my present life in Baltimore and my past life as a Seventh-day Adventist and my future life as it winds down. Which leads me to think about the books I've loved at any given time.

2014 was stressful: I sold a house I'd lived in for 26 years, moved into an apartment, bought a house, moved into it, and lived through renovations. In the midst of all that change, I preferred books that closely connected to some aspect of my life--past, present, or future.

In more humdrum years, I've chosen books that took me out of my environment and introduced me to new times, places, and ideas. Three years ago when recovering from open-heart surgery, I read dozens of completely mindless but diverting mysteries.

I thought I just liked to read, but apparently I also use books as therapy. (I'm sure there's a reason that no matter what kind of year I've had, I adore Harry Potter.) What books did you read this year? Do your selections say anything about the kind of year you had?

Liminal Living vs The Impossible Dream

[A. Casolani, 16th century]

We are househunting.

Will our new place be a relatively new condo with no exterior maintenance, plenty of storage, an open floor plan, lots of bathrooms, and no stairs?

Will it be a city rowhouse that is older than we are, has arches and built-in cabinets and red oak plank floors, and is walking distance from a university, bookstores, and libraries?

Whatever we dream of, will our retirement income be sufficient for both the house and, say, groceries?

And will we still be able to live in it when we're crippled, incontinent, and demented?

I've been asking myself that last question with every house I inspect, which is probably why I've been getting more and more depressed. Medieval folk kept cheerfulness at bay by contemplating skulls. An afternoon of looking at potential retirement homes, I've found, also works.

Last week I blogged about our liminal lodging - the apartment we've rented for a few months to tide us over until we find our, um, final resting place. (Snap out of it, LaVonne!) This morning I had one of those blindingly obvious insights that you sensible people have understood all along: Life itself is liminal.

As I mentioned last week, it's good to put a threshold between one phase of life and another. Living in our  rented apartment is allowing us to do that. But I'm deluding myself if I think our next house is going to be permanent - just as suitable to our life in 30 years, when we're 95 and 96, as it is to our life today. I'm glad I figured that out, because I'm not all that excited by houses that would presumably appeal to nonagenarians.

In my search for the permanently perfect place, I've been driving my realtor to distraction ("I keep getting mixed messages from you," she says, and then five minutes later she says, "But you have such specific requirements"). Bless her, she persists in spite of me. She's even cheerful, or at least pleasantly resigned.

However, she did tell me about a friend of hers who made himself miserable for years because he wanted so badly to give up smoking and thereby live forever, and he simply couldn't do it. At age 42, having stopped to help a stranded motorist, he was struck and killed by a drunk driver.

The threshold : making space for the new

[Our former living room]

It has been three months since I posted on Lively Dust or wrote a book review. I was not ill. I did not die. But I did exchange one life for another, and that took all the energy I could muster.

This is a picture of the living room of the house I lived in for nearly 26 years. When I moved into that house, the floor was covered with a dog-stained gray carpet and the walls were light blue. The fireplace was surrounded with shiny gray bathroom tiles. My daughters were 15 and 17.

When I moved out 17 days ago, the floor was hardwood, the walls were Benjamin Moore's Manchester Tan, and the fireplace was surrounded with marble tiles and a hand-crafted oak mantle. My grandchildren are 15, 17, almost 19--and two-and-a-half.

Benedictines use the word threshold a lot. They say it's a good idea not to plunge directly from one experience into another, but rather to pause, recollect, and gather strength before moving on. A threshhold allows each situation to be what it is. It gives a person space to take a deep breath and let go.

We are now living in a threshold apartment while we look for a more permanent place.

In our liminal lodging we don't have a lot of space, but that's OK because we don't have a lot of things either. (Well, a few miles away there's a book-packed storage unit with our lock on it. We don't plan to stay on the threshold forever.) We gave away and threw out a lot of stuff before leaving Illinois. To our surprise, we have also given away and thrown out a lot of stuff after arriving in Maryland. Downsizing is easier when you have no place to put things.

As it turns out, we still have more than we need. Under what scary circumstances would two people need three bathrooms?

I am not a pack rat--I can and do throw things away. I am not a shopaholic, I do not collect things, and I fancy that I live simply. In 65 years of living, 46 years of marriage, and 26 years of being in one house, however, I still managed to accumulate thousands of pounds of unnecessary stuff. How?

• By hanging on to things I didn't really want. Did I wear that orange sweater in 2013? Yes, once. Did I enjoy wearing it? Not at all. Do I plan to wear it in 2014? No. Out, out, orange sweater!
• By buying something new without tossing whatever old thing it was supposed to replace. Do I need several dozen mismatched drinks glasses, the unbroken remnants of long-forgotten sets? Only if I plan to invite 30 people for cocktails. Out, out, old glasses!

  

  [Our threshold living room]

• By buying a specialized item when I already owned a general item that served the same purpose. Do I need an apple corer, a mandolin, and a food processor when I already have knives? Well, maybe need is too strong a word, but I do enjoy using them...

Right. Even we downsizers don't have to toss everything that isn't strictly necessary. Some non-utilitarian things--my framed French posters, for instance--seem even more important as the old inexorably recedes.

It feels wonderfully light, though, to be free of so much unwanted stuff as we stand on the threshold, looking back at the cherished old and ahead to the exciting new.

On becoming a senior citizen: morning-after thoughts

[A toast to a new era]

Yesterday I turned 65.
Twelve days ago my Medicare insurance (parts A, B, D, and supplemental) took effect. Any day now my RTA Reduced Fare Permit will arrive in the mail. On Friday my husband, who is also 65, will be officially retired from the job he held for 28 years.

It feels like adolescence all over again, but with less energy.
Like our three teen-aged grandchildren, we are making big decisions that will affect the rest of our lives. Should we stay in our familiar environment or move to a different part of the country? Our granddaughters have opted to move: Katie is beginning college nearly 2000 miles from home, Susan is considering colleges all over the country. We've been involved in a wide variety of work and extracurricular activities: is it time to refocus and choose the one(s) that interest us most? Our grandson Chris, about to start high school, is making similar choices.

It also feels like being two years old, but with less cuteness.
Our grandson Max, who is impossibly cute and universally adored, still has daily trials that seem a lot like ours. How do we deal with the frustration of knowing what we want to do but not being able to do it? Do we want to be independent ("Baby self!"), or do we want the security of nearby family ("Mommy come!")? The answer, of course, is both, and when we can't have both at once, we might fuss just a little.

Or is it more like a midlife crisis, but with fewer distractions?
Our middle-aged children's lives are in as much transition as ours. One daughter has recently gone back to work after a 16-year hiatus, and it won't be long before her nest is empty. The other daughter has, in only three years, become a tenured professor, gotten married, had a baby, and bought her first house. One son-in-law's company and the other son-in-law's industry are undergoing major changes. And they're all starting to think about how to help their aging parents make good decisions ("Move closer to us!" "Don't buy a house with stairs!").

Well, as C.S. Lewis wrote in an entirely different context,

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

--Mere Christianity

Note to self when, overwhelmed by change, I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall: maybe I'm just banging my beak against a permeable shell.