SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: A JOURNAL OF MY SON'S FIRST SON by Anne Lamott with Sam Lamott

My 9-month-old grandson is indubitably the cutest, sweetest, smartest, most amazing baby in the whole world. These traits must run in our family: the same adjectives could be (and often are) applied to my three other grandchildren, now extraordinary teenagers. Here, let me show you pictures ...

Well, at least Anne Lamott didn't include photos in this sequel to her 1993 best-seller, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year. Apart from that unaccountable omission, Some Assembly Required is a pure outpouring of grandmotherly fervor, adoration, obsession, and--in Lamott's inimitable (but often parroted) style--neurosis. I first learned of this book in an airport bookstore, en route to see my most recent prodigious grandbaby. How could I resist?

Lamott, who became a single parent in 1989, was startled to learn that her son, Sam, was going to become a parent in 2009, shortly before his 20th birthday. Sam's partner, Amy, was a year older. They were not sure if they were going to stay together.

If you are an Anne Lamott fan, you are no doubt eager to know what happens to this precarious young family. If you have yet to get acquainted with Ms. Lamott's simultaneously self-absorbed and self-deprecating nonfiction, however, don't start here. Opt rather for Operating Instructions or Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, fine essay-memoirs that lay the necessary groundwork for appreciating Lamott's singular foibles and quirks.

I especially liked two things about Some Assembly Required. First, in an extended aside (pages 126 to 160), Lamott describes her trip to India. It has little to do with baby Jax, but I love the way she depicts how it feels for a relatively privileged introverted Californian (I identify) to plunge into the very different world of Delhi:

People were going about their day: Brahmans, vendors, beggars, rickshaw drivers, schoolchildren in eentsy-beentsy buses. Some people were waking up under blankets: families who lived on the streets in this soft fever dream, with temporary homes built against low walls and fences. A kitchen materializes when the mother produces two bricks and some dung and someone has found pieces of coal or wood from packing crates; they have a rice pot and a minimal amount of grains to cook. In the market stalls were great vats of milk boiling, and clay pots in which yogurt would be made, from warm milk and yesterday's curds. Everywhere, people were doing their daily puja, their offering of flowers, fruit, devotions: in their stalls, on their blankets, in their rickshaws, in their fleeting homes on the street.

The second thing I really liked about the book struck me at first as annoying. Throughout the entire year, Lamott is on a constant cycle of trying to control the lives of Sam, Amy, and Jax; complaining to her friends when things don't go her way; getting told that this isn't about her; and eventually feeling all contrite and wise. But then I realized that she is describing the fundamental task of grandparents and, indeed, of all of us of grandparent age. Unless we're the Queen of England, the time comes when we have to let go and turn the running of the world over to the next generation.

It isn't easy. It takes a lot of practice and plenty of forgiveness on both sides. And even if we think we've left the stage and are now in the audience wildly applauding the current crop of actors, our kids may not see it that way. Here's some of Lamott's wisdom, in a chastened moment:

It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it's painful--just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them.
    Whose life was I living? I was living Annie's life (and maybe a bit of the dogs'). And it was complex enough. I had enough to wrestle, wrangle, and settle back into, with this one life of mine. Besides, I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that if something was not my problem, I probably did not have the solution.
     There are no words for how much I hate, resent, and resist this.

The fact that Anne's son Sam contributed a great deal to this book tells me she must be doing a  good-enough job of letting go. And anyway, Jax is about to turn three. I suspect he has been asserting his own generational rights for at least a year now.

Why old dogs NEED new tricks

"Retirement should involve re-tiring, or putting on new tires and doing even more than before."

--Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who gives credit for this thought to Rabbi Menachem Schneerson

A friend posted this on Facebook recently. He, like my husband and me, is rushing headlong toward what Social Security calls  "full (normal) retirement age." No doubt his mailbox, like ours, is regularly replenished with offers for hearing aids, Medigap insurance, and free lunches sponsored by financial planners. No doubt he too has seen those chirpy birthday cards asking "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?" or assuring us that "Age is just a number" or, heaven help us, promising us that "The best is yet to be."

I suppose that depends on how you define "best."

Muffin and Tiggy contemplate retirement

In any case, let me tell you about my two little dogs, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Muffin. They do not know how old they are. For that matter, I don't know how old they are: both were young adults when they came to live with us 9 or 10 years ago. Both dogs need new tires, but since they don't know where to find them, the best is probably not yet to be.

Yesterday the three of us took a two-mile walk down the Prairie Path to Lincoln Marsh and back. We've been taking this walk for years, and we all love it. Sometimes we turn it into a three-mile walk by continuing to Jewell Road before turning around. Once this spring we turned right when we reached Jewell and walked four miles.

Except that yesterday afternoon, which was cool and pleasant, Muffin couldn't keep up. She didn't complain, but she started dragging behind Tiggy and me. She looked like she was working hard. Eventually I picked her up and carried her. Her heart was beating very fast.

Muffin looks great. Her health is good. She still enjoys a game of tug-a-toy with Tiggy, and she still wants to take walks. She's not an ancient dog, but she's nearing full retirement age. According to this chart that correlates a dog's age in human years with her size, she's probably between 60 and 68. In other words, she's my age.

I would like to point out that Rabbi Boteach, who believes in "doing more than before" in retirement, is 45 years old. When Robert Browning wrote "Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be," he was, at most, 52. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of youngsters - or even rare oldsters, like my 91-year-old friend who cross-country skis around her 15-acre farm - setting the bar for the rest of us.

Fact: Muffin can't do today what she could do last year, and this is not because she's depressed or lazy or conforming to society's low expectations for aging dogs. It's because most dogs, like most people, quite naturally slow down as the years go by, and no matter how strenuous our denial, we will not be puppies again.

A lot of us silly boomers think we're going to reinvent old age (and why not? didn't we invent sex back in the 1960s?), when all we're really doing is lapsing into nostalgia. Afraid to enter a new phase of life, we double down on what we already know: overwork, multitasking, constant activity. Those were the days, my friend, / We thought they'd never end.

But maybe we should be thinking forward, not backward. Maybe we should be looking at new ways of living, ways we haven't yet had time to try, ways uniquely suited to people with more life experience than health and vigor.

For Muffin, whose life purpose is to sit on laps and hang around her peeps, the future looks bright. Especially if she can persuade me to buy her a doggy jogger...

MAD WOMEN by Jane Maas

"Was it really like that?"

As soon as people find out I actually worked at an advertising agency in the Mad Men era, they pepper me with questions. "Was there really that much drinking?" "Were women really treated that badly?" And then they lean in and ask confidentially: "Was there really that much sex?"

The answer is yes. And no. Mad Men gets a lot of things right, but it gets some things wrong, too. So I thought I'd give you a typical day in my life on Madison Avenue in 1967, three years after I began working at Ogilvy & Mather as a copywriter.

--from Chapter 1, "A Day on Madison Avenue, 1967"

If you enjoy Mad Men, you really should read Mad Women. 

From a lifetime on Madison Avenue, Jane Maas knows advertising better than anyone, and she cheerfully dishes about the agencies and individuals she worked with. Her portrayal of boozing, tomcatting, money-obsessed ad men is pretty close to what you see on the TV show, and often funnier.

Having been a teenager in the 60s, I especially appreciated her deft evocations of how it felt to be a female in those days. Uncomfortable, actually, what with girdles and garters, nylon stockings with seams, pointy bras, hats, and little white gloves. And uncomfortable in a more serious way, as women were patronized or ignored, passed over for promotion, paid considerably less than their male counterparts, constantly and thoughtlessly harassed, and fired if they got pregnant. (My first full-time job, in 1968, had a three-tiered pay scale: highest for married men, middle for single people, lowest for married women.)

Maas is now about 80, and she's seen a lot of changes in her industry and in women's lives. Though many of the changes are for the better, she's not sure that today's working women have it any easier than their foremothers. Maybe she's right--balancing work and family is extremely difficult in any era. Still, I wouldn't want to turn the clock back 50 years. Reading or watching TV shows about the 60s is fun. But being an ambitious working woman back then--or a traditional housewife, for that matter--was often fun only on TV.

Uh oh. Will we be able to afford Medicare?

We'll be hearing a lot about Medicare between now and November. Obama wants to tweak it. Romney wants to reinvent it. Everyone who wants to get elected, however, agrees on one thing: nothing will change for the current crop of seniors and soon-to-be seniors.

Whew. Six months and Mr Neff will be home free! Less than a year and a half and we'll both have free health care! And then we can afford to retire, right?

Wrong.

Last week a friend and I - let's call her Dorothy - compared health-care costs. We have a lot in common. Both of us are married. In both couples, one spouse's medical expenses are low while the other spouse's are high. We both live in Wheaton, Illinois, and have access to the same hospitals and doctors and pharmacies. We both are compulsive record keepers. Here's the difference: Dorothy and her husband - let's call him Dale - are retired and on Medicare. My husband and I have a Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO through his employer.

Last year Dorothy and Dale paid $8,874.60 for health insurance. That included Medicare plans A, B, and D ($2988), plus a Medigap policy, plan F, to handle what Medicare doesn't cover ($5,886.60). In addition, they paid $1588 for dental care, vision care, and prescription co-pays. Add those expenses to their insurance costs, and Dorothy and Dale paid $10,462.60 for health care in 2011.

For comparison, last year my husband and I paid $3,185 for health insurance. In addition, we paid $4,447.51 for co-pays, deductibles, vision care, and the percentage that Blue Cross doesn't cover. Add these expenses to our insurance costs, and my husband and I paid $7,632.51 for health care in 2011.

That is, my retired friends on Medicare paid $871.88 a month on health care compared to our $636.04 - a difference of $235.84 a month. In fact, health care costs eat up about 30% of their Social Security income. Something to look forward to!

Still, I'm thankful for Medicare. Once my husband retires and the company contribution stops - another $12,740 beyond our own payments - there's no way we could pay for private insurance plus out-of-pocket expenses. Half a loaf is better than none. But do keep us geezers in mind when you go to the polls in November. Most retired folks have less income than they did when they were working. They also often have much higher medical expenses, even if their health status has not changed.

Yes, I know that health-care costs have spiraled out of control. Yes, I understand that the government will not be able to afford Medicare much longer, especially since the ratio of workers to retired people has dramatically shifted. Clearly something has to be done - but what?

A government website touts the Affordable Care Act's provisions to fight waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare, and to slow cost growth - worthy goals all, but inadequate to the task of reforming senior health care. Mr. Romney offers a private-enterprise-based solution that could actually make the situation worse. Our current for-profit health-care system has made U.S. health care more expensive than health care in all other developed nations, twice as expensive as most. Allowing it to take over an even greater percentage of our health care system seems foolhardy at best.

The truth is that we won't solve Medicare until we solve health care for everybody.

Meanwhile, why do politicians of every persuasion promise not to touch Medicare for Boomers and seniors, even as they suggest overhauling the program? Because we don't know what we'd do without it, and they don't know what they'd do without our votes.

But if our lawmakers don't start ignoring their pet lobbyists and corporate sponsors pretty darn soon and come up with a really workable health-care plan for young and old alike, we're going to find out exactly what we'll do without Medicare: If we or our children can afford to pay several thousand dollars a month for health care, we'll live as long as our European friends. If not, well, too bad.

QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN'T STOP TALKING by Susan Cain

I almost wish they hadn't added that "New York Times bestseller" strip across the top of the book jacket - it disturbs the cool, mineral quiet of the original cover. I fully understand why Susan Cain's Quiet is selling so well, though. Of all the books I've read so far this year - and last year too, for that matter - this is the one about which I've most often told my friends, "You've got to read it."

Here's the book's premise, from the Introduction:

We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal - the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight. The archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. He favors quick decisions, even at the risk of being wrong. She works well in teams and socializes in groups. We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual - the kind who's comfortable "putting himself out there." Sure, we allow technologically gifted loners who launch companies in garages to have any personality they please, but they are the exceptions, not the rule, and our tolerance extends mainly to those who get fabulously wealthy or hold the promise of doing so.

Introversion - along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness - is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.

Introverts, take heart - Cain is riding to your rescue (or perhaps just quietly sidling up beside you), providing more cures for your feelings of guilt, inadequacy, shame, or discomfort than you'd get from a year of therapy. Extroversion hasn't always been as highly valued as it is in contemporary America, she points out, giving a brief history of Dale Carnegie and others who helped make us a nation of self-marketers. And while extroversion is important, too much Groupthink can dampen creativity and impede progress. Introverts have gifts we ignore at our peril (Cain links the Wall Street crash, for example, to a shortage of introverted thinking).

Cain's observations range widely, from office space (down with the open plan!) to brain chemistry to education. She offers practical advice for the hypersensitive, for those panicked by public speaking, for parents of introverted children, for spouses of opposite personality types. Along the way she reports on research and tells fascinating stories. Though a lawyer by profession, Cain is an excellent journalist.

But much as I enjoyed Cain's writing style, the reason I've been telling everybody to read this book is because so many of my friends are introverts. If they're anything like me, they'll find Cain wonderfully affirming next time they find themselves at coffee hour in a strange church, or next time they have to navigate a giant get-acquainted reception at a convention, or next time the in-service education director brightly says, "OK, folks, let's break into small groups and share ..."

Oh, and it's OK if you blush when everyone turns to look at you. Embarrassment, says a researcher whose work Cain describes, "is a moral emotion. It shows humility, modesty, and a desire to avoid aggression and make peace. It's not about isolating the person who feels ashamed ..., but about bringing people together." A blush signifies concern for others.

Shame on Aunt Millie's. Shame on Whole Foods.

I just discovered I've been duped.

This is painful, because I like to think I know how to read labels. I also like to trust products named Aunt Millie and stores named Whole Foods.

Alas, I forgot one of my basic shopping principles:
Never trust food that calls itself "natural."

In label language, natural means nothing at all. Companies who use the term in their marketing are usually trying to hide something. I should have looked more carefully at Aunt Minnie's Hearth Fiber for Life 12 Whole Grains bread.

Here, I'll show you the inset up close. I read it as "100% natural whole grain," never stopping to wonder why the marketers bothered to point out that whole grains are natural (isn't that obvious?). But no. This bread is not 100% whole grain. It is 100% natural, whatever that means, and it contains whole grains. Twelve of them, in fact. But its third listed ingredient, after water and whole grain wheat flour, is unbleached wheat flour.

Translation: white flour.

Now I have nothing against eating white flour now and then. I make a mean challah whose flour component is 100% white. But I do dislike (hate, abominate) labels that bend over backward to make me think I'm buying 100% whole grain bread when in reality I'm not. I call that "lying."

And I don't like being told that "Aunt Millie's Hearth breads ... contain no color additive, artificial substances, or synthetic compounds, only pure and fresh ingredients, just like those found in your kitchen cupboard." I don't know ... does your kitchen cupboard contain resistant corn starch, resistant dextrin, sodium gluconate, potassium chloride, guar gum, wheat starch, calcium sulfate, ferrous sulfate, thiamine hydrochloride, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid, and ascorbic acid? Mine neither.

So from now on when I buy sandwich bread, I'm going to get it at Trader Joe's. Their multigrain bread is, in fact, 100% whole grain. It has only two bizarre ingredients: natural mold inhibitor (cultured whey and wheat starch or flour) and natural dough conditioner (wheat flour, enzymes). There's that word "natural" again, but at least it's in the small type.

Interestingly, a slice (43g) of Trader Joe's bread has half the sugars of a slice (53g) of Aunt Millie's. It also has 30mg less sodium, 5mg more potassium, and 1g more protein. Aunt Millie's has more iron, because she adds ferrous sulfate (and other vitamins) to the mix. Strip out the truly natural food value, add the equivalent of vitamin pills, and call your product natural: it's the American way.

Gotta give the madmen at Aunt Millie's credit, though. Rarely can one find so much schmalz per square inch as on their website. "At Aunt Millie's," they croon, "we bake more than bread - we bake memories." Good Lord, deliver us.

ALMOST AMISH by Nancy Sleeth

If I had seen just the title of Almost Amish, I probably wouldn't have been attracted to it: I'm not a fan of Amish fiction, and I've heard too much about Amish puppy mills.

If I'd also noticed the name of the author, however, I might have picked it up: several years ago I met the Sleeths at the home of mutual friends, and I greatly respect the choices they have made about a simpler, more hospitable lifestyle.

But it was Michelle Van Loon's review/interview in Christianity Today's women's blog that caught my attention and made me think, I need to read this book. From Van Loon's article:

When she was in her early 40s, Sleeth came to faith in Christ along with her husband Matthew, an emergency room physician, and their two preteen children. Energized by their faith, the deep concern about the state of the decaying world around them led the family to make significant lifestyle changes. They gave away half of their possessions and moved to a home the size of their old garage. They reduced their energy usage by two-thirds, discovering a deep sense of family unity and purpose in the process.

Sleeth isn't asking her readers to imitate her. As she tells Van Loon:

I’m not saying, “You need to cut back your energy use,” or, “You need to hang your clothes on the line,” or, “You need to stop watching television.” I simply want people to examine their lives. Learn to continually ask yourself two questions: Will this thing (this possession, decision, or action) bring me closer to God? Will it help me love my neighbor? We get in a blur and don’t always stop to ask those questions. What I am asking is to get people to stop and to live a conscious life.

Though of course Sleeth really is doing more than asking us to think. She hopes our self-examination will lead us to make at least a few changes in the way we live: get rid of clutter, for instance, or start living within our means; buy local, or spend more time with friends and family. And she offers practical suggestions to help us simplify our lives, including easy recipes for breads, soups, and salads.

You need to have an evangelical ear to appreciate Sleeth's book: it's full of Scripture and God talk. You also need to have a rosy view of Amish community life, which (as some of the comments following Van Loon's review point out) has a hidden and sometimes extremely dark side that Sleeth never acknowledges. And you'd better be able to tolerate Sleeth's mild adherence to gender roles.

That said, Almost Amish is an inspirational book, full of gentle wisdom. Oh, and Sleeth's challah recipe rocks. It's almost as good as my own, which you can read here.