Lifestyle

Be Nice

/ Ann Coleman / 24 Comments

IMG_0048My husband and I tried a new restaurant the other night, and at first, we liked it very much.  Our waitress was friendly and knowledgable, the food was very good, and the atmosphere was great, as long as you ignored the young man in the chef’s jacket who occasionally wandered around the dining room, scowling at everything and everyone he saw.   After we had paid our bill, we stopped in the bar area to watch the last inning of the Cardinal game on the TV, and my husband chatted briefly with a few people who were also watching the game.  It all seemed friendly enough until the guy in the chef’s jacket walked by, rolled his eyes at us and muttered something under his breath.  I couldn’t catch exactly what he said, but I certainly caught that it wasn’t anything nice.

I thought it was odd that a restaurant would employ someone who was so surly to its customers until I checked its website and discovered that the man was actually a co-owner.   And that’s too bad, because even though we really liked the food and atmosphere at his restaurant, the co-owner’s rude behavior made such a bad impression that I doubt seriously if we will ever go back.  Maybe he was having a bad day, or maybe he was annoyed because his restaurant was only half full, or maybe he was offended that we were simply standing in the bar, watching the game, rather than ordering more drinks.  I honestly don’t know.  But I do know that, if he had just made the effort to be even a little bit nice, we would definitely have been repeat customers.

Because being nice matters.  If we want people to shop at our stores, eat at our restaurants, join in our groups,  help our causes, and or simply be our friends, we have to be nice to them.  If we want to draw people to us, we have to show them the same common decency and courtesy that we want others to show us.   Rudeness, anger and hostility, even when we believe it’s justified, does nothing more than drive people away.  Always has and always will.

I believe that something as simple as being nice can help build the bridges that are so desperately needed to help people with different values and beliefs connect and communicate.  I know I am always willing to listen to someone else’s point of view, even a point of view that I believe is absolutely wrong, as long as the speaker isn’t resorting to ridicule or verbal attacks to make his or her point.  Being nice doesn’t mean not being passionate about our beliefs; it just means not using our beliefs as an excuse to be cruel to people who don’t happen to share them.

Being nice is about connecting with other people.  It’s about living peacefully with those who are different from us.  It’s about creating a life for ourselves full of interesting and diverse people who can support us, our families, our businesses, our causes, etc., if we can just remember to treat them the same way we want to be treated.  We all lose our tempers sometimes, and we all have our bad days, but that doesn’t mean we can’t always, always try to do better.  So please, let’s just be nice……

I’ve Got This

/ Ann Coleman / 11 Comments

family photWhen I was a child, I hated it when I would ask my parents to do something for me, and they would insist on teaching me to do it myself.   I remember asking my father to make me some scrambled eggs, and his response was to whip out the cast iron skillet and proceed to teach me how to scramble an egg, so I could do it myself the next time.  If I dared to complain, he would just say, “You’ll never learn how to do it any younger!”  My mother was even worse, since she was a kindergarten teacher, and therefore tended to explain things very slowly, step by step, just to make sure I was following along.  My thought was that if I had wanted them to show me how to do something, I would have said so, rather than simply asking them to do it for me.  But I was smart enough not to say that out loud.

Now that I’m on the upper end of middle age, I find that I am much more willing to learn something new than I ever was before.  I have learned quite a few home improvement skills (despite what my husband thinks, but he’s never forgiven me for that crowbar incident…you can read about it in:  What Did You Say?), my gardening skills are much improved (most of what I plant lives, which is new for me) and I’m thinking about taking a wood working class.  Despite what my kids think, I really do try to learn how to use new technology and spend quite a bit of time and energy trying to figure things out.  My constant questions to them about my cell phone and my computer are simply because, despite my best efforts, there are some times I still have to throw in the towel and ask for help.

But I have had some success learning how to do things on my computer without my children’s help, and “exhibit A” is my blog.  I remember when I first heard of blogging, my initial thought was, “What kind of idiot would keep a personal journal on the internet?”  (Apparently, the same idiot who looks back at me from the mirror each day.)  But eventually, with the steady encouragement of a good friend, I did start my blog, despite my deep misgivings about sending my writing out into cyberspace where perfect strangers all over the world could not only read it, but comment about it as well.  Frankly, I still find that part a little bit intimidating.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in this blog (if you use WordPress, check out the entirely random pictures I was horrified to see added to some of my posts in the Reader section), but I’m also having a lot of fun and my list of followers is growing steadily.  And as much as I enjoy blogging, I do miss fiction writing, so I’m planning to learn all I can about e-publishing and see if I can figure out how to do that as well.  And who knows where that might lead?

It pains me to say this, but I have come to realize that my parents were right.  There is so much I want to know, so much I want to do, and learning to do it for myself is the best way.  And I’m not getting any younger…..

I’m Still Here

/ Ann Coleman / 10 Comments

Sometimes it seems as if middle age is all about coping with change.  There are the physical changes:  fading eyesight, graying hair, spreading mid-section and facial hair where it absolutely doesn’t belong.  Then there are the changes in our families:  children growing up to become independent adults, aging parents (if we are lucky enough to still have them) who become increasingly dependent on us, and relatives we knew as babies having babies of their own.  And finally, there are the changes in the world around us:  new and confusing technologies, strange new fads in food and decorating (with all due respect to HGTV, who really needs a barn door in their house?) and global politics that are shifting so quickly we can hardly keep track of it all.

Still, I have finally realized that there really is one constant in my life, and that’s…..me.  Obviously,  I’m not talking about my body, as that’s much more saggy and wrinkly that it ever was, and of course I know that I have grown in maturity and knowledge as I’ve lived my life.  But I do believe that, underneath it all, I am still basically the same person I have always been.

Ann and SandyI can’t remember a time when I didn’t love animals, particularly dogs and horses.  One of my earliest memories is watching Westerns on our family’s old black and white television set, and how frustrated I’d get when the cowboys would get off their horses and the cameras would follow the cowboys, not the horses.  Because I didn’t care about the cowboys; I wanted to watch the horses!  So it’s no surprise that one of the nicest gifts I ever got in my life was my very own horse, and I still love horses, even though Prince died a long time ago.   And one of the saddest times in my young life was when we had to give our family dog away because we were moving to an apartment where she wasn’t allowed.  We gave her to family friends who I knew would take good care of her and let us see her often, but I still cried about it for days.  And if I had to give up my dog today, I’m pretty sure I’d react the exact same way.

I loved to write stories when I was a child, so it was natural that I became an English major in college and worked hard at a free-lance writing career as an adult.  My favorite color is still blue; I’m still an introvert who spends way too much time day-dreaming; and I still hate loud noises and seeing anyone’s feelings hurt, even the feelings of people I don’t particularly like.  I know the reason why I can go years without seeing a close friend and yet feel instantly connected and comfortable when we do meet up again.  It’s because both of us still have the same basic personality traits that first formed the friendship all those years ago.

It may sound odd, but at a time in my life when I seem to be dealing with so many changes, I take the time now and then to remind myself that essentially, I am the same person I have always been, and probably always will be.   Because I think everybody needs something to stay the same.

Judge Not

/ Ann Coleman / 10 Comments

IMG_0371I was talking to a friend the other day about her decision to retire from teaching at the end of this school year.  This is a big change for her, and naturally she is a little apprehensive about exactly how retiring from a full-time job will impact her life and her family.  I was listening to her concerns with genuine sympathy right up to the moment when she looked at me and suddenly said, “You haven’t worked full time in years, and I’ve always wanted to ask you….what exactly do you DO all day?”

Now I can be just a wee bit of a snarky bitch at times, so the immediate answer that sprang to my mind was, “Nothing much.  I spend my days sitting in the recliner, watching TV and drinking Diet Coke.  Every few hours I get up to go the bathroom, but that’s about it.”  Of course, I didn’t actually say that, but I was definitely taken back by her question.  I honestly didn’t know how to answer.  I could recite a list of the things I am doing with my days or remind her that it is quite possible to work very hard without actually being paid, but I was afraid  that would sound defensive, and I know she didn’t mean to offend me.  But if I didn’t explain exactly how I spent my time,  then I risked confirming the implication that I was simply wasting my days away.  I felt judged, and not in a good way.

I remember a young woman who lived in my college dorm, who was very pretty in that Farrah Fawcett style that was all the rage back then.  She always hurried past me when I met her in the hallway, barely acknowledging my presence, even though most of the other women were usually willing to stop for a chat.  Frankly, I thought she was stuck-up.  But then one day I met an obviously confused, middle-aged woman in the lobby who was asking for her, and later heard the young woman on the phone, patiently repeating the same information over and over again.  I found out that the confused middle-aged woman was her mother, who had suffered brain damage in a bad car accident years before.  And the young woman I thought was a snob was really just too busy to stop and talk, what with constantly dealing with her mother’s issues while she was trying to earn a college degree.  I had judged her very harshly, and I was completely wrong.

And I think that’s the problem with judgement:  it is so often completely wrong.  We don’t know what other people are going through; we don’t know what their hopes and dreams are; we don’t know why they make the choices they make.  And as long as they aren’t hurting anyone, we don’t need to know.

I’m sure the fact that I don’t have a real job anymore does strike some people as odd, but I know that I am living a life that is both productive and worthwhile, and the arrangement works for my husband and me.  I also know that as a former stay-at-home mom who spent a lot of time and effort on books that were never published, I am a bit sensitive to questions about how I spend my days.  But that’s beside the point:  I really shouldn’t have to explain my life choices to anyone.  And I don’t have the right to judge other people’s choices, even when what they are doing makes no sense to me whatsoever.  As long as there is no neglect or abuse involved, I really do think that the old “live and let live” advice is right on target.

Where The Heart Is

/ Ann Coleman / 10 Comments

IMG_3566I admit that I spend way too much time watching HGTV’s “House Hunters International.”  I think there’s something so intriguing about the idea of moving to a whole new country and getting to change my life in such a dramatic and profound way.  Leaving the Midwest behind to live near a Caribbean beach, in a charming apartment in Paris, or in a house among the vineyards of Tuscany sounds like a wonderful way to jolt me out of my middle-age routine.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to wake up each morning to a view of the Mediterranean Sea or the Swiss Alps?

But no matter how attractive it sounds,  I’ll never actually make the move.  As much as I would like to live somewhere new and exotic, I know I am far too attached to the life I have created for myself in St. Louis to be able to pick up and leave it all behind.  My husband’s job is here, my kids have both settled in this area and most of my relatives (on both sides of our family) live within a five-hour’s drive.  Almost all of my friends are here, or at least close enough to visit easily without having to hop on a plane.  The simple truth is that I have put down roots here that are so deep that they can’t be pulled up without a profound sense of loss and more than a little pain.

And I’m not complaining, because I know that this is a situation that I’ve created by the choices I’ve made in my life up to this point.  When I was growing up, my family moved every few years, which meant that I was lucky enough to experience living in several different types of communities, from large cities to small towns.  But the downside was that I also didn’t have one place that ever truly felt like home.  I don’t think it was an accident that right after graduating from college, I moved back to St. Louis, the community in which I was born.  I think I wanted to have that sense of living in my “home town,” and the chance to feel that I really belonged somewhere.  My husband and I have lived here ever since, and honestly, we don’t have any regrets about it.

I think that we each have to choose what kind of life suits us best, and there is no right or wrong in either the choice to move to different places and get the chance to experience different cultures first-hand, or the choice to stay put in the community that feels the most like home.  For me, I like knowing that most of the people I love are close by, and living in a city that I know so well.  So I think I will just have to keep “living vicariously” through the people who do have the ability to pull up stakes and move to another continent, and a small part of me will always understand why they want to do that.

But if I ever win the lottery, you can bet that I’m buying a vacation home in the English countryside.  Or Provence. Or maybe even somewhere along the Spanish coast……IMG_5619

Go Your Own Way

/ Ann Coleman / 12 Comments

IMG_0237A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to join my neighborhood book club.  The women, who are mostly middle aged like me, are friendly and the discussion is lively and interesting.  But I have to admit that, while I enjoy being with this group, I don’t really feel as if I fit in.  We’re never going to read any of my favorite books because they aren’t popular, which means there aren’t enough available copies at the library.  (Most of my favorite books are also out of print.)  I almost always have a different opinion about the books we read than the rest of the group; I’m one of the few women who can’t easily and quickly look up potential book selections on her phone; I am often the only one in the room not wearing comfort shoes (my feet are too big), and I don’t have any grandchildren yet.  But I don’t care.  I don’t need to “fit in” to enjoy my book club; I enjoy it because it gives me the chance to read books I’ve never heard of, to get to know my neighbors a bit better and to hear new and interesting points of view.

Admittedly, I’ve spent most of my life paying very careful attention to what the other women in my age group were doing, what they were wearing, what they thought, etc.  It started in grade school, when fitting in was extremely important, and I remember the distinct and rigid groups of my high school years, and how it seemed that everyone tried to belong to at least one of them.  When I was a younger adult, I know I tried to fit in with my co-workers, with the other mothers, with my neighbors, etc.   Of course I had my own tastes and ideas, but they were always tempered with what I thought was expected of me, and what was the “right thing” to be doing and thinking.

Then I hit middle age, and gradually the old rules of conformity just slipped away, and not just for me. The issues of middle age may be universal:  the physical decline, the changing family dynamics, knowing that retirement and the “golden years” are just around the corner. But from what I’ve seen, the way we cope with those issues are as unique as they are varied. I know middle aged women who are happy to let their hair go grey, and I know others who dye their hair every three weeks just to make sure they don’t have grey roots.  (I’m in the second category.)  I know women who feel their sags and wrinkles are a sign of a life fully lived, and others who have had plastic surgery to smooth the wrinkles away.  I know people who are reveling in the freedom of the “empty nest,” and others who are spending their days helping to raise their grandchildren.  Some people are using their middle years as a time to slow down from the hectic pace of their lives, while others are busier than ever as they juggle the demands of a career, their children and caring for aging parents.

And I think that is exactly as it should be, because  there is no right or wrong way to live out our middle years.  Each of us gets to make the choices that work best for our unique situation and our unique personalities, and the pressure to conform seems to be over and done with.  Personally, I love the freedom to follow my own path, and the diversity that I see in my middle age contemporaries.  I’m just sorry that it took us so long to realize that it really is okay to be different, and wish that we had all figured this out a long time ago.  Just think how much easier high school would have been…..

When Did Everyone Become So Young?

/ Ann Coleman / 7 Comments

I remember the first time I went to a new doctor’s office, and the doctor who came in to treat me looked as though he had graduated from high school last week.  I actually thought, “Who let this teenager in here?  And where’s my doctor?” before it sunk in that the young man standing in front of me was a real doctor.  But I couldn’t get past the fact that he was obviously at least a decade younger than I was at the time.  It just didn’t seem right.  Doctors had always been at least my age, and most of them much older.

That was many years ago, and since then it’s only gotten worse.  Now I deal with all sorts of professionals who are younger than me, and who rarely look old enough to be doing their job:  dentists, repairmen, pharmacists, salespeople, you name it.  The other day I saw a neighbor out watering his lawn, and thought, “Why is that kid messing with my neighbor’s sprinkler?” Then I took a closer look and realized that wasn’t some kid, that was my neighbor, who is a grown man with a wife, a baby, and a full-time job.  But he looked like a teenager to me.

I know, especially after reading so many other blogs about middle age that are written by people in their early forties, that I am, at age 57, on the “upper end” of middle age.  Which means that the kids I used to babysit are now grown up and have kids of their own…and some of those kids are also grown up.  Ditto for most of my nieces and nephews. (Thank you, Chris, for at least still being in college!  Please do me a favor, and stay there a few more years, and never mind the tuition.)

The problem is that I still feel young.  Not teenage or twenty-something young, but definitely younger than I actually am.  As long as I can avoid a magnifying mirror (fading eyesight is both a curse and a blessing), I can cling to a mental self image of myself as I used to be.  So it still isn’t pleasant to have to be jolted back to reality by walking into a doctor’s office, as I did last Monday, and seeing someone who looks as if she can’t be over twenty introducing herself as my doctor.  Because then I have to admit that she probably isn’t a genius whom managed to get her medical degree at age eighteen, she is simply what a young doctor looks like these days.  And I haven’t looked like that for years.

I think being surprised that we have become old is a universal life experience.  Maybe our own aging is like the concept of our own mortality; something that we just naturally avoid thinking about.  I remember when I was young and my then middle-aged parents told me that they still felt young on the inside.  At the time, I wondered how they could be so out of touch with their reality.  But now that I’m middle age, I have discovered exactly what they were talking about.   It’s just like the sign a co-worker used to have on her office wall that said, “Inside every old person, there’s young person wondering what the hell happened.”  And that’s the truth.

But I May Wear That Someday…..

/ Ann Coleman / 3 Comments

IMG_0150I admit to being one those people who still believes in giving her house a good, old-fashioned spring cleaning each year.  I wash windows, paint baseboards, clean out junk drawers, etc., and then turn my attention to my closet.  Cleaning my closet means packing away my winter clothes, and then hauling the bins filled with my spring and summer clothes out of the basement to place in my closet and dresser.   As I do, I try to look at each piece of clothing and make sure it’s something I actually still want, and the clothes that don’t make the cut get placed in the donation bag.  In theory, it’s a rather efficient system designed to keep only the clothes that fit, are flattering, and that I actually intend to wear.  And the key words in that sentence are “in theory.”

Because the reality is that I have lots of clothes in my closet that I don’t need or particularly want.  It’s completely against my character, as in all other areas of my life, I have no problems getting rid of things.  I can fill a donation bag, or even a trash bag, in record time and without a second thought.  But for some reason, I’m still hanging onto that pink t-shirt I bought at the outlet mall four years ago, which I’ve worn exactly once.  I also still have the tank top I wore to a neighborhood reunion in 2005, and the sweater that I am wearing in the photo of my husband’s 43rd birthday dinner is still in my dresser.  My husband will be 60 this year.

It’s not that I have these clothes stashed away, where they can be “out of sight and out of mind.” (That’s how we managed to keep my husband’s green leisure suit for the first ten years of our marriage.  It was in a bag of his old clothes which he moved from house to house, but never actually opened.)  My closet is a bit small, so I store out-of-season clothes in bins and I actually go through them each spring and fall, and I do designate several items each time for the Goodwill.  Yet I still manage to keep far too many tops, sweaters and dresses that I don’t wear, or at least that I haven’t worn in the past decade.

Maybe the problem is that I didn’t have very many clothes during my teenage years, when I was very self-conscious about such things.  Or maybe it’s that I believe in reusing and recycling things whenever possible, as I am all too aware of the growing problem of too much trash in our local landfills.  But I have to remember that clothes can’t be kept forever, even if I am still wearing them.  I should have figured that out after the time I wore a pair of jeans to the point where they were so frayed that they ripped right up the back seam.  I didn’t know the rip was there until my son pointed it out at dinner time, and I had worn those jeans all day.

I just have to let go of the idea that I may actually want to wear that black velvet jacket to a party someday, or that I am going to look at a blouse that I haven’t worn in six years and suddenly think, “That’s exactly what I want to wear today!” It seems that my wardrobe is my personal and final hurdle in my goal to living a simplified and clutter-free existence. And it’s way past time to clean out that closet, once and for all.IMG_0148

Middle Aged Birthdays

/ Ann Coleman / 10 Comments

Ann's 6th bday 2Ever since I hit the wrong side of fifty, I’ve been a little confused about how I should celebrate my birthday.  When I was a child, birthdays were simple:  I got a cake (in the flavor of my choice), a nice party with my friends and family, and best of all, a pile of presents to open.  I couldn’t even imagine anything nicer, except perhaps getting my very own pony.  Later came the teen-age parties, the obligatory booze-soaked twenty-first birthday, and of course, my “over-the-hill” thirtieth birthday party.

But as a middle-aged woman, birthday cakes, parties, and presents no longer hold much attraction for me.  I know that no matter how good a cake tastes, it’s just going to end up on my hips.  These days, I can throw a party anytime I want to, and don’t need to wait for my birthday to come around as an excuse.  And when someone asks me what I’d like for my birthday this year, the answer that springs to mind is that I’d like my eyesight, my memory, and my youthful energy back.  I’d also like some things I’ve never had, such as coordination, common sense and strikingly good looks, but no one can give me those, either.  I have friends who don’t really want to have their birthdays acknowledged or celebrated any more, and I understand where they’re coming from.

Still, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to ignore my birthday altogether, even if I’m at the stage where being another year older doesn’t sound like such a good thing.   But like all middle-aged people, I’ve seen too much death and serious illness to not want to celebrate the fact that I have, indeed, lived through another year that was blessed with good health, family and friends.  My life is far from perfect, but I know that I have a lot to be thankful for, and I am.

So while I won’t be having a big birthday party this year, and probably won’t be eating any birthday cake, I will still celebrate my birthday this weekend.  I’ll have the usual birthday dinner with my family and get a few presents and cards.  But mostly, I’ll try to remember to be grateful for the year I just had, (the good and the bad), and to promise myself that my next year will be as meaningful and positive as I can make it.  Middle-aged birthdays are more about celebrating the milestones of our life than parties and presents, and that’s as it should be.  But I still wouldn’t mind if someone gave me that pony…

Middle Age Selectivity

/ Ann Coleman / 4 Comments

Every once in a while, usually after schlepping up and down the two flights of stairs between our master bedroom and our basement while doing laundry, I think seriously about moving to single-level house.  Moving to a house with a small yard also sounds like a good idea after I’ve spent an afternoon raking leaves or pulling weeds in our large yard.  Sometimes I browse the realtor websites, and I’ve even checked out a few Sunday afternoon open houses.  So far, though, I haven’t seen a single house that has tempted me to actually buy it.

back of houseAnd that’s a huge change for me, since my husband and I have a history of buying, and moving into, houses that could best be described as “fixer-uppers.” (We usually referred to them as dumps.)  Basically, if we found a house that we could afford in an area we wanted to live in, we just figured we could turn the house into what we wanted with a “little bit of work.”  When we bought our first fixer-upper, we didn’t have any particular rehabbing skills, but we did have a strong desire to become home owners, lots of youthful energy and that special kind of optimism that comes only with complete and total cluelessness. We weren’t put off by kitchens with no cabinets, living rooms with orange carpeting, bathrooms with blue toilets or peach-colored tile, basements that leaked each time it rained, or even a dining room with “I love you Mary” painted in huge letters across the wall.

Luckily, we had friends who did have rehabbing skills and were more than generous with their time and expertise.  We spent a lot of time in hardware stores; my husband learned to hang drywall and lay flooring, and I learned that I was a good painter but a bit dangerous with a sledge hammer.  We found a few good handymen to do the work that was truly beyond us.  And we learned to shrug it off when we would tell people which house we had just bought and they responded with, “That house? Seriously?  Is it too late to get out of the contract?”

So I was surprised to realize that I’ve become so picky when it comes to even thinking about buying our next house.  For the first time, I seem to be looking for the perfect house.  These days I’m put off by ugly fireplaces, a master bathroom that’s too small, basement stairs that are too steep…things I probably wouldn’t even have noticed before.  And if I had noticed, I would have simply assumed that it was something we could fix. Where I used to look at fixer-uppers and see only potential, now I just see work, and lots of it.

I guess I no longer have the desire to deal with a rehabbing another house, even if we hired someone else to do it.  I like to think that I’m just burned out after all those years of constantly working on our houses, or that I’ve become more selective in my middle age.  But between you and me, I think the truth is that this particular middle-aged woman is just plain too old to want to fix up another house.