She really does like her solitude and it’s okay.

Reassuring article, New York Times; Aging’s Misunderstood Virtues  explains that as we age our so do our tastes, preferences and what interested us at 45 or 50 may not be of interest in later years, as we mature so do our interests, we are continually evolving.    I have worried that my mother seems to spend more time alone than I think is healthy.  Perhaps not; quoting from the article;

“We develop and change; we mature,” he told me in a phone interview from his home in Uppsala, Sweden. “It’s a process that goes on all our lives, and it doesn’t ever end. The mistake we make in middle age is thinking that good aging means continuing to be the way we were at 50. Maybe it’s not.”

An increased need for solitude, and for the company of only a few intimates, is one of the traits Dr. Tornstam attributes to this continuing maturation. So that elderly mother isn’t deteriorating, necessarily — she’s evolving.

“People tell us they are different people at 80,” Dr. Tornstam explained. “They have new interests, and they have left some things behind.”

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Is the ‘Favorite’ child going to take care of Mom?

I know, I know..my mom says it too, she doesn’t have favorites, she loves us all the same.   Actually, I have come to recognize that I don’t want to be loved ‘the same’ as my siblings, because somehow it denudes my specialness, and I am then just one of the brood.  My mother would never admit to having a favorite among her four children.  I like to believe that I don’t have a favorite among my three children.  Yet this article in the New York Times; Mom Always Like You Best (a well known routine from the Smothers Brothers) points out the significance of  who is going to care for mom and how that relates to mom’s sense of  her favorite child. 

Quoting from the article, and for more, read the article here.

Further studies revealed that middle-aged children often recognized that their parents felt closer to one child than another — but were off-base about who ranked highest. “They typically choose themselves,” Dr. Pillemer said, “and they’re typically wrong.”

One might file this under “Stuff I’d Just as Soon Not Know,” except that the care of the elderly falls mostly to their children and that one child usually shoulders the bulk of the responsibility. Mothers also express clear ideas about whom they want and expect to take on that role, it turns out, so their partiality has consequences.

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Developmental Stages 7 and 8

On the eight stages of the ladder of life as defined by Eric Erikson it seems I have reached Middle Adulthood, and am looking at Stages 7 and 8.

Two conflicting issues fight within to be resolved; Generativity versus Stagnation.    Eric Erickson developed a ladder of life stages theory that seems to my reading to make sense, particularly this stage of 7 and 8.    Better told in the words of byjane in her blog article at MidLife Bloggers, take a read to see where you are in the process.

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It happened when I wasn't looking

One day I still considered myself as in my young years, knowing the dreaded Big M was just ahead.  It seemed ahead though, not something to worry myself with until Boom!   It hit, I rolled with it, it was over and then the next thing I know I have droops I never saw before, dips where there shouldn't be, OMG rolls where none had existed before, and my body just seemed to take a gravity plunge downward.    Who was I, who am I, where did the person I know go and how could I disappear turning into someone else before my very eyes?  

One day I'm 55 and on top of the world, and then the axis shifts and I've slipped from my vantage point having aged when I wasn't looking.  How did it happen, and so suddenly, so dramatically, so determinedly?   How am I to relate to myself, define myself, wear my identity when I don't know who I am or what happened.  I spent the next 4 years reading, researching, trying to learn, and coming to grips with my new reality, my sense of identity.  

It happens to everyone, that process of aging.  It happens to every woman, that cycling of life from girl, to young woman, to woman, to mother, to mature woman, to _____________  (fill in the blank with some nice name for this era of a woman's life).

Kicking this blog off, bemoaning what was, and also ready to embrace what is, mid-life in this era when people live longer.  I'm 59 years old as of my birthday this summer past.  Next year I will be 60.  Hearing that number astounds me because my mind doesn't realize I've come that far in years.  My mind thinks I'm still 40,30 or 20, or younger and can remember when I thought anyone age 60 must be coming on the end of their time here on earth.

I've decided to join other Mid-Life bloggers to try to grapple with my new reality, my identity, my sense of self and look forward to the years ahead with enthusiasm, anticipation - of course- and also with practical aspects of retirement years stage of life.  Retirement used to mean from career, work, employment, and seemed to symbolize having reached 55 years old, the age of  Senior Discounts, Social Security, Retirement Travel.  Times have changed, socio-economic landscape has changed, and the Great Era of Baby Boomers are now at retirement age.  I join with the massive swell of the generation of Baby Boomers who are facing the same uncertainties that I face as we move into aging gracefully or not so gracefully.   

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