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I AM A SONIC BOOMER, NOT A SENIOR... In this blog, I am writing to and for those who believe that the Boomers will change what the word Senior means. I also believe that Boomers will change what retirement means in our society. The blog is also for those who are interested in what life after retirement may look like for them. In this blog, I highlight and write about issues that I believe to be important both for Seniors and working Boomers.
Saturday, May 18, 2019
Do overs
Thursday, May 16, 2019
What a year
In early December my brother told me that his son had decided to do a DNA test with a company called 23 and me. My response was that should be interesting. I have from time to time taken an interest but have not done very much in tracing family history. I did start on a site called Family Search and had found some interesting links on a site called a Billion Graves. However, I had not added any information or looked at these sites for at least 7 or 8 months. It might be interesting to find out some of the things my brother's son found out, so I said when he gets the results maybe he would be willing to share some information. My brother said he would ask.
In late December my brother phoned at said that his son had received his results, and he shared. It was interesting in that it confirmed an Irish connection and confirmed a Polish (now) but at the time an Austrian Hungarian connection along with a British and French connection. My brother also said that there were 1080 third and fourth cousins listed for my nephew with connections. As I listened to some of the names I recognized many but not all. I thought if my Nephew wins the lottery he will have all these people in contact with him.
About two weeks after Christmas, my brother phoned to say that a person had been in touch with my nephew and wanted to know if my nephew had a connection to a family from the town my father was from. This person had been looking, along with another person for two years and my nephew was a link they hoped would lead to more information on their family. It did for both people. After some phoning and talking to an elderly aunt, we were able to confirm that one of the people was a long lost cousin from an aunt who had died in childbirth in the '50s. So arrangements are being made for the reunion of the great aunt and her nephew and we hope that the story has a happy ending.
The other person engaged in the search did contact me via FamilySearch but I ignored the message because I had not been on the site for at least six months. With the investigation going on about my long lost cousin I went back to FamilySearch and finally saw the message in mid-January. I responded and after much investigation, it appears that I have a half brother who is three years older than I am and who was born in England during the war years. My brothers and I find it (after our initial shock) interesting.
Since January I have been in contact with my half brother and we have shared our stories both via email and by phone. He led an interesting life. One question he asked me was "Did our father know about his child in England?" I said, "No because if he did, I and my brothers would not be here." I hope one day to meet my half brother, but he has not shared the revelation of his birth father with his daughters, sons or any of his mom's relatives who did not know of his situation. He did share with his sister, who was as surprised as he was. 2019 is shaping up to be a very interesting and exciting year.
Since January I have been in contact with my half brother and we have shared our stories both via email and by phone. He led an interesting life. One question he asked me was "Did our father know about his child in England?" I said, "No because if he did, I and my brothers would not be here." I hope one day to meet my half brother, but he has not shared the revelation of his birth father with his daughters, sons or any of his mom's relatives who did not know of his situation. He did share with his sister, who was as surprised as he was. 2019 is shaping up to be a very interesting and exciting year.
Ageism
I don't usually post writing from others but this was sent to me by a cousin and I thought I would share.
A one-woman assault on condescension.
The insults of age had been piling up for so long that I was almost numb to them. The husband (when I still had one): “You’re not going out in that sleeveless top?” The grandchild: “Nanna, why are your teeth grey?” The pretty young publisher tottering along in her stilettos: “Are you right on these stairs, Helen?” The flight attendant at the boarding gate: “And when you do reach your seat, madam, remember to stow that little backpack riiiight under the seat in front of you!” The grinning red-faced bloke who mutters to the young man taking the seat beside me: “Bad luck, mate.” The armed child behind the police station counter unable to conceal her boredom as I describe the man in a balaclava, brandishing a baton, who leapt roaring out of the dark near the station underpass and chased me and my friend all the way home: “And what were you scared of? Did you think he might hit you with his umbrella?”
Really, it is astonishing how much shit a woman will cop in the interests of civic and domestic order.
But last spring I got a fright. I was speaking about my new book to a university lecture theatre full of journalism students. I had their attention. Everything was rolling along nicely. Somebody asked me a question and I looked down to collect my thoughts. Cut to the young lecturer’s face surprisingly close to mine. “Helen,” he murmured, “we’re going to take you to the medical clinic.” What? Me?
Apparently, in those few absent moments, of which I still have no memory, I had become confused and distressed; I didn’t know where I was or why I was there. He thought I might be having a stroke.
The rest of that afternoon I lay at my ease in an Emergency cubicle at the Royal Melbourne, feeling strangely light-hearted. I kept thinking in wonder, I’ve dropped my bundle. All scans and tests came up clear. Somebody asked me if I’d ever heard of transient global amnesia. I was home in time for dinner.
Next morning I took the hospital report to my GP. “I’ve been worried about you,” she said. “It’s stress. You are severely depleted. Cancel the rest of your publicity tour, and don’t go on any planes. You need a serious rest.” I must have looked sceptical. She leant across the desk, narrowed her eyes, and laid it on the line: “Helen. You. Are. 71.”
I went home and sulked on the couch for a week, surveying my lengthening past and shortening future.
I had known for years, of course, that beyond a certain age women become invisible in public spaces. The famous erotic gaze is withdrawn. You are no longer, in the eyes of the world, a sexual being. In my experience, though, this forlornness is a passing phase. The sadness of the loss fades and fades. You pass through loneliness and out into a balmy freedom from the heavy labour of self-presentation. Oh, the relief! You have nothing to prove. You can saunter about the world in overalls. Because a lifetime as a woman has taught you to listen, you know how to strike up long, meaty conversations with strangers on trams and trains.
But there is a downside, which, from my convalescent sofa, I dwelt upon with growing irritation. Hard-chargers in a hurry begin to patronise you. Your face is lined and your hair is grey, so they think you are weak, deaf, helpless, ignorant and stupid. When they address you they tilt their heads and bare their teeth and adopt a tuneful intonation. It is assumed that you have no opinions and no standards of behaviour, that nothing that happens in your vicinity is any of your business. By the time I had got bored with resting and returned to ordinary life, I found that the shield of feminine passivity I had been holding up against this routine peppering of affronts had splintered into shards.
One warm December evening, a friend and I were strolling along Swanston Street on our way out to dinner. The pavement was packed and our progress was slow. Ahead of us in the crowd we observed with nostalgic pleasure a trio of teenagers striding along, lanky white Australian schoolgirls in gingham dresses and blazers, their ponytails tied high with white ribbons.
One of the girls kept dropping behind her companions to dash about in the moving crowd, causing mysterious jolts and flurries. Parallel with my friend and me, an Asian woman of our age was walking by herself, composed and thoughtful. The revved-up schoolgirl came romping back against the flow of pedestrians and with a manic grimace thrust her face right into the older woman’s. The woman reared back in shock. The girl skipped nimbly across the stream of people and bounded towards her next mark, a woman sitting on a bench – also Asian, also alone and minding her own business. The schoolgirl stopped in front of her and did a little dance of derision, flapping both hands in mocking parody of greeting. I saw the Asian woman look up in fear, and something in me went berserk.
In two strides I was behind the schoolgirl. I reached up, seized her ponytail at the roots and gave it a sharp downward yank. Her head snapped back. In a voice I didn’t recognise I snarled, “Give it a rest, darling.” She twisted to look behind her. Her eyes were bulging, her mouth agape. I let go and she bolted away to her friends. The three of them set off at a run. Their white ribbons went bobbing through the crowd all the way along the City Square and up the steps of the Melbourne Town Hall, where a famous private school was holding its speech night. The whole thing happened so fast that when I fell into step beside my friend she hadn’t even noticed I was gone.
Everyone to whom I described the incident became convulsed with laughter, even lawyers, once they’d pointed out that technically I had assaulted the girl. Only my 14-year-old granddaughter was shocked. “Don’t you think you should have spoken to her? Explained why what she was doing was wrong?” As if. My only regret is that I couldn’t see the Asian woman’s face at the moment the schoolgirl’s head jerked back and her insolent grin turned into a rictus. Now that I would really, really like to have seen.
By now my blood was up. At Qantas I approached a check-in kiosk and examined the screen. A busybody in uniform barged up to me, one bossy forefinger extended. “Are you sure you’re flying Qantas and not Jetstar?” Once I would have bitten my lip and said politely, “Thanks. I’m OK, I think.” Now I turned and raked him with a glare. “Do I look like somebody who doesn’t know which airline they’re flying?”
A young publicist from a literary award phoned me to deliver tidings that her tragic tone indicated I would find devastating: alas, my book had not been short-listed. “Thanks for letting me know,” I said in the stoical voice writers have ready for these occasions. But to my astonishment she poured out a stream of the soft, tongue-clicking, cooing noises one makes to a howling toddler whose balloon has popped. I was obliged to cut across her: “And you can stop making those sounds.”
After these trivial but bracing exchanges, my pulse rate was normal, my cheeks were not red, I was not trembling. I hadn’t thought direct action would be so much fun. Habits of a lifetime peeled away. The world bristled with opportunities for a woman in her 70s to take a stand. I shouted on planes. I fought for my place in queues. I talked to myself out loud in public. I walked along the street singing a little song under my breath: “Back off. How dare you? Make my day.” I wouldn’t say I was on a hair-trigger. I was just primed for action.
I invited an old friend to meet me after work at a certain city bar, a place no longer super-fashionable but always reliable. We came down the stairs at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon. Her silver hair shone in the dim room, advertising our low status. The large space was empty except for a small bunch of quiet drinkers near the door. Many couches and armchairs stood in appealing configurations. We walked confidently towards one of them. But a smiling young waiter stepped out from behind the bar and put out one arm. “Over here.” He urged us away from the comfortable centre of the room, with its gentle lamps and cushions, towards the darkest part at the back, where several tiny cafe tables and hard, upright chairs were jammed side-on against a dusty curtain.
I asked, “Why are you putting us way back here?”
“It’s our policy,” he said, “when pairs come in. We put them at tables for two.”
Pairs? Bullshit. “But we don’t want to sit at the back,” I said. “There’s hardly anybody here. We’d like to sit on one of those nice couches.”
“I’m sorry, madam,” said the waiter. “It’s policy.”
“Come on,” said my pacific friend. “Let’s just sit here.”
I subsided. We chose a slightly less punitive table and laid our satchels on the floor beside us. With tilted head and toothy smile the waiter said, “How’s your day been, ladies?”
“Not bad, thanks,” I said. “We’re looking forward to a drink.”
He leant his head and shoulders right into our personal space. “And how was your shopping?”
That was when I lost it.
“Listen,” I said with a slow, savage calm. “We don’t want you to ask us these questions. We want you to be cool, and silent, like a real cocktail waiter.”
The insult rolled off my tongue as smooth as poison. The waiter’s smile withered. Then he made a surprising move. He put out his hand to me and said pleasantly, “My name’s Hugh.”
I shook his hand. “I’m Helen. This is Anne. Now, in the shortest possible time, will you please get two very dry martinis onto this table?”
He shot away to the bar. My friend with the shining silver hair pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at me. We waited in silence. Soon young Master Hugh skidded back with the drinks and placed them before us deftly, without further attempts at small talk. We thanked him. The gin worked its magic. For an hour my friend and I talked merrily in our ugly, isolated corner. We declined Hugh’s subdued offer of another round, and he brought me the bill. He met my eye. Neither of us smiled, let alone apologised, but between us flickered something benign. His apparent lack of resentment moved me to leave him a rather large tip.
On the tram home I thought of the young waiter with a chastened respect. It came to me that to turn the other cheek, as he had done, was not simply to apply an ancient Christian precept but also to engage in a highly sophisticated psychological manoeuvre. When I got home, I picked up Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead where I’d left off and came upon a remark made by Reverend Ames, the stoical Midwestern Calvinist preacher whose character sweetens and strengthens as he approaches death: “It is worth living long enough,” he writes, in a letter to the son born to him in his old age, “to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.”
I take his point. But my warning stands. Let blood technicians look me in the eye and wish me good morning before they sink a needle into my arm. Let no schoolchild in a gallery stroll between me and the painting I’m gazing at as if I were only air. And let no one, ever again, under any circumstances, put to me or any other woman the moronic question, “And how was your shopping?”
HELEN GARNER
Helen Garner is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Her books include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, The Spare Room and This House of Grief.
A one-woman assault on condescension.
The insults of age had been piling up for so long that I was almost numb to them. The husband (when I still had one): “You’re not going out in that sleeveless top?” The grandchild: “Nanna, why are your teeth grey?” The pretty young publisher tottering along in her stilettos: “Are you right on these stairs, Helen?” The flight attendant at the boarding gate: “And when you do reach your seat, madam, remember to stow that little backpack riiiight under the seat in front of you!” The grinning red-faced bloke who mutters to the young man taking the seat beside me: “Bad luck, mate.” The armed child behind the police station counter unable to conceal her boredom as I describe the man in a balaclava, brandishing a baton, who leapt roaring out of the dark near the station underpass and chased me and my friend all the way home: “And what were you scared of? Did you think he might hit you with his umbrella?”
Really, it is astonishing how much shit a woman will cop in the interests of civic and domestic order.
But last spring I got a fright. I was speaking about my new book to a university lecture theatre full of journalism students. I had their attention. Everything was rolling along nicely. Somebody asked me a question and I looked down to collect my thoughts. Cut to the young lecturer’s face surprisingly close to mine. “Helen,” he murmured, “we’re going to take you to the medical clinic.” What? Me?
Apparently, in those few absent moments, of which I still have no memory, I had become confused and distressed; I didn’t know where I was or why I was there. He thought I might be having a stroke.
The rest of that afternoon I lay at my ease in an Emergency cubicle at the Royal Melbourne, feeling strangely light-hearted. I kept thinking in wonder, I’ve dropped my bundle. All scans and tests came up clear. Somebody asked me if I’d ever heard of transient global amnesia. I was home in time for dinner.
Next morning I took the hospital report to my GP. “I’ve been worried about you,” she said. “It’s stress. You are severely depleted. Cancel the rest of your publicity tour, and don’t go on any planes. You need a serious rest.” I must have looked sceptical. She leant across the desk, narrowed her eyes, and laid it on the line: “Helen. You. Are. 71.”
I went home and sulked on the couch for a week, surveying my lengthening past and shortening future.
I had known for years, of course, that beyond a certain age women become invisible in public spaces. The famous erotic gaze is withdrawn. You are no longer, in the eyes of the world, a sexual being. In my experience, though, this forlornness is a passing phase. The sadness of the loss fades and fades. You pass through loneliness and out into a balmy freedom from the heavy labour of self-presentation. Oh, the relief! You have nothing to prove. You can saunter about the world in overalls. Because a lifetime as a woman has taught you to listen, you know how to strike up long, meaty conversations with strangers on trams and trains.
But there is a downside, which, from my convalescent sofa, I dwelt upon with growing irritation. Hard-chargers in a hurry begin to patronise you. Your face is lined and your hair is grey, so they think you are weak, deaf, helpless, ignorant and stupid. When they address you they tilt their heads and bare their teeth and adopt a tuneful intonation. It is assumed that you have no opinions and no standards of behaviour, that nothing that happens in your vicinity is any of your business. By the time I had got bored with resting and returned to ordinary life, I found that the shield of feminine passivity I had been holding up against this routine peppering of affronts had splintered into shards.
One warm December evening, a friend and I were strolling along Swanston Street on our way out to dinner. The pavement was packed and our progress was slow. Ahead of us in the crowd we observed with nostalgic pleasure a trio of teenagers striding along, lanky white Australian schoolgirls in gingham dresses and blazers, their ponytails tied high with white ribbons.
One of the girls kept dropping behind her companions to dash about in the moving crowd, causing mysterious jolts and flurries. Parallel with my friend and me, an Asian woman of our age was walking by herself, composed and thoughtful. The revved-up schoolgirl came romping back against the flow of pedestrians and with a manic grimace thrust her face right into the older woman’s. The woman reared back in shock. The girl skipped nimbly across the stream of people and bounded towards her next mark, a woman sitting on a bench – also Asian, also alone and minding her own business. The schoolgirl stopped in front of her and did a little dance of derision, flapping both hands in mocking parody of greeting. I saw the Asian woman look up in fear, and something in me went berserk.
In two strides I was behind the schoolgirl. I reached up, seized her ponytail at the roots and gave it a sharp downward yank. Her head snapped back. In a voice I didn’t recognise I snarled, “Give it a rest, darling.” She twisted to look behind her. Her eyes were bulging, her mouth agape. I let go and she bolted away to her friends. The three of them set off at a run. Their white ribbons went bobbing through the crowd all the way along the City Square and up the steps of the Melbourne Town Hall, where a famous private school was holding its speech night. The whole thing happened so fast that when I fell into step beside my friend she hadn’t even noticed I was gone.
Everyone to whom I described the incident became convulsed with laughter, even lawyers, once they’d pointed out that technically I had assaulted the girl. Only my 14-year-old granddaughter was shocked. “Don’t you think you should have spoken to her? Explained why what she was doing was wrong?” As if. My only regret is that I couldn’t see the Asian woman’s face at the moment the schoolgirl’s head jerked back and her insolent grin turned into a rictus. Now that I would really, really like to have seen.
By now my blood was up. At Qantas I approached a check-in kiosk and examined the screen. A busybody in uniform barged up to me, one bossy forefinger extended. “Are you sure you’re flying Qantas and not Jetstar?” Once I would have bitten my lip and said politely, “Thanks. I’m OK, I think.” Now I turned and raked him with a glare. “Do I look like somebody who doesn’t know which airline they’re flying?”
A young publicist from a literary award phoned me to deliver tidings that her tragic tone indicated I would find devastating: alas, my book had not been short-listed. “Thanks for letting me know,” I said in the stoical voice writers have ready for these occasions. But to my astonishment she poured out a stream of the soft, tongue-clicking, cooing noises one makes to a howling toddler whose balloon has popped. I was obliged to cut across her: “And you can stop making those sounds.”
After these trivial but bracing exchanges, my pulse rate was normal, my cheeks were not red, I was not trembling. I hadn’t thought direct action would be so much fun. Habits of a lifetime peeled away. The world bristled with opportunities for a woman in her 70s to take a stand. I shouted on planes. I fought for my place in queues. I talked to myself out loud in public. I walked along the street singing a little song under my breath: “Back off. How dare you? Make my day.” I wouldn’t say I was on a hair-trigger. I was just primed for action.
I invited an old friend to meet me after work at a certain city bar, a place no longer super-fashionable but always reliable. We came down the stairs at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon. Her silver hair shone in the dim room, advertising our low status. The large space was empty except for a small bunch of quiet drinkers near the door. Many couches and armchairs stood in appealing configurations. We walked confidently towards one of them. But a smiling young waiter stepped out from behind the bar and put out one arm. “Over here.” He urged us away from the comfortable centre of the room, with its gentle lamps and cushions, towards the darkest part at the back, where several tiny cafe tables and hard, upright chairs were jammed side-on against a dusty curtain.
I asked, “Why are you putting us way back here?”
“It’s our policy,” he said, “when pairs come in. We put them at tables for two.”
Pairs? Bullshit. “But we don’t want to sit at the back,” I said. “There’s hardly anybody here. We’d like to sit on one of those nice couches.”
“I’m sorry, madam,” said the waiter. “It’s policy.”
“Come on,” said my pacific friend. “Let’s just sit here.”
I subsided. We chose a slightly less punitive table and laid our satchels on the floor beside us. With tilted head and toothy smile the waiter said, “How’s your day been, ladies?”
“Not bad, thanks,” I said. “We’re looking forward to a drink.”
He leant his head and shoulders right into our personal space. “And how was your shopping?”
That was when I lost it.
“Listen,” I said with a slow, savage calm. “We don’t want you to ask us these questions. We want you to be cool, and silent, like a real cocktail waiter.”
The insult rolled off my tongue as smooth as poison. The waiter’s smile withered. Then he made a surprising move. He put out his hand to me and said pleasantly, “My name’s Hugh.”
I shook his hand. “I’m Helen. This is Anne. Now, in the shortest possible time, will you please get two very dry martinis onto this table?”
He shot away to the bar. My friend with the shining silver hair pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at me. We waited in silence. Soon young Master Hugh skidded back with the drinks and placed them before us deftly, without further attempts at small talk. We thanked him. The gin worked its magic. For an hour my friend and I talked merrily in our ugly, isolated corner. We declined Hugh’s subdued offer of another round, and he brought me the bill. He met my eye. Neither of us smiled, let alone apologised, but between us flickered something benign. His apparent lack of resentment moved me to leave him a rather large tip.
On the tram home I thought of the young waiter with a chastened respect. It came to me that to turn the other cheek, as he had done, was not simply to apply an ancient Christian precept but also to engage in a highly sophisticated psychological manoeuvre. When I got home, I picked up Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead where I’d left off and came upon a remark made by Reverend Ames, the stoical Midwestern Calvinist preacher whose character sweetens and strengthens as he approaches death: “It is worth living long enough,” he writes, in a letter to the son born to him in his old age, “to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.”
I take his point. But my warning stands. Let blood technicians look me in the eye and wish me good morning before they sink a needle into my arm. Let no schoolchild in a gallery stroll between me and the painting I’m gazing at as if I were only air. And let no one, ever again, under any circumstances, put to me or any other woman the moronic question, “And how was your shopping?”
HELEN GARNER
Helen Garner is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Her books include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, The Spare Room and This House of Grief.
Feeling smug, think again.
I have several friends who are very happy that they did not invest in the stock market. They tell me that they sleep very well at night, knowing their money is safe and protected in their saving accounts in the bank. Yes, the stock market can be volatile, and if you pay attention to the market in times of volatility you may not sleep well. I know that I am guilty of that. My investment advisor told me to not check the market every day. She said to trust the research that lead me to invest in the companies I invested in and to trust her to watch the market and alert me if I need to make any changes.
High volatility rates characterize the stock market. Market volatility is the tendency of the market to either rise or fall sharply when responding to several variables in the market. The higher the volatility, the riskier is the market.
However, as I have been told, doing nothing is often the best course of action when it comes to a volatile stock market. Having said that it is a good idea to have a backup plan just in case the market takes a downturn by taking advantage of favourable fluctuations. For example, you can consider selling some of your stocks if they rise sharply before they bounce back down. You can make some profits in this period of uncertainty, and your broker should be able to offer you solid advice.
Financial inertia can cost us in other ways. I have friends who could not save $50 a month to save for retirement, yet they were willing to pay $15 a month or more in bank fees. They also were not willing to give up their Tim Horton's or Starbuck habit of $5.00 to $10.00 a day. They would not drive half-a-block to save money on gas or groceries and don’t bother returning items of clothing that don’t fit. There are good excuses for this behaviour and they justify their actions very well.
Other examples of this type of action or complacency are when people don’t take advantage of their employer matching RRSP program. Or when their mortgage comes due, they don’t shop around for a better rate or they continue to pay high fees on their investments.
They are approaching retirement and are worried that they won't have any extra income when they retire, and they blame the system for not providing opportunities to invest.
Sometimes a wake-up call is needed. For some, it may be a major life event before they start taking their finances seriously. If we can see how much complacency is costing us that’s usually enough to motivate a person into taking action. If not they will end up not having enough retirement income to continue with their current lifestyle.
High volatility rates characterize the stock market. Market volatility is the tendency of the market to either rise or fall sharply when responding to several variables in the market. The higher the volatility, the riskier is the market.
However, as I have been told, doing nothing is often the best course of action when it comes to a volatile stock market. Having said that it is a good idea to have a backup plan just in case the market takes a downturn by taking advantage of favourable fluctuations. For example, you can consider selling some of your stocks if they rise sharply before they bounce back down. You can make some profits in this period of uncertainty, and your broker should be able to offer you solid advice.
Financial inertia can cost us in other ways. I have friends who could not save $50 a month to save for retirement, yet they were willing to pay $15 a month or more in bank fees. They also were not willing to give up their Tim Horton's or Starbuck habit of $5.00 to $10.00 a day. They would not drive half-a-block to save money on gas or groceries and don’t bother returning items of clothing that don’t fit. There are good excuses for this behaviour and they justify their actions very well.
Other examples of this type of action or complacency are when people don’t take advantage of their employer matching RRSP program. Or when their mortgage comes due, they don’t shop around for a better rate or they continue to pay high fees on their investments.
They are approaching retirement and are worried that they won't have any extra income when they retire, and they blame the system for not providing opportunities to invest.
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