What I Know For Sure

Older Like many women, I subscribed to O, The Oprah Magazine from its inaugural issue in 2000 to its last two decades later. Along the way, I tore out and saved a four-inch-high stack of articles and ads that has been sitting on an upstairs bookshelf ever since.

That stack included the ad pictured here. It was part of Chico’s 2018 “Growing Bolder Not Older” campaign designed to celebrate women and their desire for style at every age.”

I saved the ad because its headline proclaimed exactly what I expected to be doing as I aged…growing bolder, not older. 

One reason for my optimism was my grandmother, Valeria Szczech. Born in 1902, she lived most of her life on a Benton County farm and died in her sleep at age 92.

In between, she had no choice but to grow bolder. Life circumstances required it. Valeria’s mother had died of a heart attack on Valeria’s wedding day, leaving her partially responsible for several members of her extended family, including a brother who was unable to work due to a heart condition.

Then, in 1952, her husband, my grandfather, died a few weeks after the tractor he was working on exploded, leaving him severely burned on 90% of his body.

Despite his death, Valeria continued to live on the farm, milking cows, feeding chickens, canning vegetables and doing whatever else was needed, thankfully with the help of their son who lived only a farm-field away.

After her son’s too-early death, she sold the farm and moved to the small town of Foley, where she attended mass, made new friends, grew a large garden and provided full-time care for a brother made infirm by a stroke. 

I was in awe of her and her independence and assumed my grandmother’s get-up-and-go—and the get-up-and-go that I thrived on in my 40s and 50s—would continue through my 70s, 80s and even my 90s.

Unfortunately, at 66, I’m already finding that much of that get-up-and-go has gotten up and gone. At least temporarily. And although I do not think of myself as old, and some days not even as older, I am definitely not bolder. Nor do I strive to be.

Yes, I still enjoy meeting friends for coffee or a walk, but I’m no longer willing to drive in rush hour traffic to make it happen. Yes, I still travel, but not as often or as vigorously as I once did. And yes, I still walk, but more often solo in my own neighborhood rather than around the lakes with a friend.

At first, I blamed Covid. After all, where was there to go when nowhere was safe? But while fears of the virus have eased, my desire to go, go, go has not returned. Instead, I’m content being at home, purging files, clearing clutter, organizing cupboards and completing projects.

Does that make me less bold? Perhaps, but in keeping with one of Oprah’s signature phrases, “what I know for sure” is that I am growing older…and for that I am truly grateful.

Seeing Forward and Back

I’ve cared for enough older women in my family to see the frailties I may have in the coming years. I’ve learned to be patient with their slower pace. I accept the extra steps they take to stay in charge of their lives—switching glasses and putting them away carefully and doublechecking locks. I already do that. I’m accustomed to the effort invested in maintaining dignity—looking where I’m walking, dressing comfortably, but well. So far, I’ve managed to avoid the flat bedhead spot so many older women seem unaware of!

Some days I feel exactly how old I am. My hip twinges a little. Or I can’t think of a word and it comes back five minutes later. I have a wealth of experiences and insights but the wisdom to know I should refrain from giving too much unasked-for advice. At this stage of life, my outlook is measured. Realistic.

Other days I feel like I’m fifty. Nothing aches. I’m energetic, ready to tackle big projects, and confident they’ll turn out well. The future is off in the distance and looks bright. I’m optimistic.

My thirties are also vivid—relived through the lives of my daughters-in-law. Revived by their pregnancies and new motherhood. I remember how fascinating my changing body was and how much it mattered to have a few maternity clothes I really liked. 

1989

I haven’t forgotten the fog and overwhelm of life with a newborn. How every little thing worries you. I also know you can grow bored by the long repetitive days, no matter how much you love your child. How ready you can be to use your brain for something besides calculating the hours since the last feeding. But the sweetness of cuddling a sleeping baby tempers that restlessness.

When my son hands me his baby, our past, present, and future converge.

Gotcha Day

Ani, Rosa, Juan, Aryanna (Juan’s girlfriend)

“We missed Juan’s Coming Home Day,” Jody said. Jody and I were doing our usual morning routine with her sitting on the dog bed, her back to the furnace. Buddy and Sadie next to her. Jody and the dogs love the furnace heat in the early morning hours. I reclined with a blanket on the couch. Her memory was jogged by reading a Facebook post about a family celebrating their child’s Gotcha day.   

“I don’t mind,” I said. “I’m not sure that it’s important to them. Maybe it just brings up trauma.”

Jody nodded. An unspoken agreement that we weren’t going to raise the issue.

Coming Home Day, as we have termed it, was the day that Juan and Crystel came home to us from Guatemala. Born six weeks apart, they came home within weeks of each other.

When they were young, we celebrated as if it were another birthday. Cakes, presents, MOA visits, concerts, and waterparks.

It was a day to recognize us coming together as a family and to acknowledge their birth moms.

“Oh, your kids are so lucky,” people often say to us. Even Jody will say, “When I come back, I want to come back as your child.” The last time she said it, which wasn’t that long ago, I said, “You do realize that you’re not saying that you want to come back as my partner.” She laughed and laughed at the truth of it.

It would be so easy to not complicate Juan and Crystel’s adoption and rest with the belief that they are so fortunate.

Recently, I had a dream where I was at a large extended family gathering. Aunts and uncles. Cousins. I was in my twenties. I chatted with relatives, played with the youngsters. I kept an eye out for my birth family. They were late. Delayed. Then, I realized they weren’t coming. There was always so much going on in my home that plans often got waylaid. Or it just wasn’t important for them to come even though the celebration was for me.

I felt this void. This loss. This emptiness. A hole where blood family should be.

I woke up wondering about this empty space for Juan and Crystel. Do they have a dream where their birth family doesn’t make it to their celebration?

Crystel’s birth family

There is trauma in being abandoned. Given up. Relinquished.

Jody and I have done what we could to make them whole with travels to Guatemala, birth family meetings, and name changes.

At five-years-old, they asked, “Whose belly did I come from, yours or Mama Jody’s?” Jody and I explained that there was a third mama in Guatemala. The kids persisted, “No! Mama Bef or Mama Jody!?!”

A hole where blood family should be.

Home and Away

College recruiting, corporate management and consulting carried me across much of the United States. Although some of that travel prompted future visits, a suitcase in one hand, briefcase in the other wasn’t the most satisfying way to explore cities and countryside. There are cities I enjoy, mountains worth the travel, lovely ocean sides. Driving across the plains or open lands remind me how different our life experiences are from fellow citizens.

The Midwest continues to be where I am comfortable living my life. Green spaces, cities, the Great Lakes, agriculture, forests blend well. We considered moving during our careers, imagining our lives in desert lands or other river cities, even one Canadian possibility. Except for Canada, I don’t regret passing up those changes.

Something moved me in the childhood lands of Pat Conroy and Flannery O’Connor. The charm of old Savannah and the Lowcountry areas of Georgia and South Carolina felt homey. I wanted to stay for a year, maybe two, and learn about the rhythm of that region’s residents. To walk where azaleas and trees blossomed in March, to witness the loggerhead turtle’s journey, to try Sunday church once more, to celebrate holidays differently.  Biscuits tasted better, seafood fresher, crayfish better than a slab of whitefish. 

Weeks in Maine challenged my Midwest assumptions that farms were farms, days on the shore universal, that New England was an area of wealth and education. Spending weeks in a London flat introduced reality to daydreams of living in a congested metropolitan area. Nearly two weeks in a small Irish community felt nice, but I wanted to go home. This stretch of the south felt like it could be home as if the slower movement of my mature life would be acceptable in a place that has nurtured so many artistic folks.

When the roof needs repair, spring returns to stormy winter, property taxes increase, daydreams happen about a mythical life in a charming setting where all seems lovely. But roofs deteriorate there, summer temps and humidity can be high, history and today’s politics lean away from my values. Best to keep Savannah on my writing retreat list and my home in the Midwest. I’ll be back with a notebook, laptop, and good walking shoes during azalea season.

Baggage

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