I guess you could say I’ve always been a late bloomer. Adolescence for me lasted well into my 30s. I was in my late 30s when I finally graduated from law school; pushing forty when I married my darlin’ wife Laura; and now, mid-fifties for becoming a first-time dad!

Not that we didn’t want or try to have children sooner; procreational success just seemed to elude us. In fact, we spent the better part of a decade on the emotional roller-coaster ride of infertility treatments, trying every new procedure known to science, with no luck.

There we were, two healthy, otherwise happy, successful professionals with everything in the world going for us, except no apparent ability to do what most people probably take for granted: producing children. When Laura hit age forty, we finally gave up. Our fifteen-year marriage had produced no children. We were a couple of baby boomer empty-nesters who’d never had the privilege of actually experiencing a full nest.

To combat our disappointment over being childless, we made a list of fantasy goals and resolved to accomplish everything on the list. We bought a very kid-unfriendly beach bungalow with magnificent white-water views of the California coastline with waves crashing on the shore just outside our door, but zero backyard; a ridiculously expensive and impractical two-seater sports car that had long been my dream vehicle; several acres in California’s lush wine country where we planned one day to build our dream house, raise grapes, make vino, and retire early to the good life; and, we began traveling the world.

We spent a wonderful month touring the wine regions of France and Italy, number four on our fantasy goal list, with Paris serving as home base. Ahhh, Paris! The City of Lights was brimming with a spirit of romance, and we were as two young lovers once again. We had no idea how much our frolic through France would forever change our lives. As near as we can tell, it was probably Paris where we must have conceived.

Back in California, relaxing on the front deck of our home, sipping wine purchased in Tuscany, watching the sun set gloriously into the Pacific, the shiny sports car parked in the driveway, we might have seemed to all the world as possessing the perfect baby boomer lifestyle. But it wasn’t what we had envisioned when we first walked down the aisle to become husband and wife all those years ago. We both thought by now there would be a house filled with kids.

It was a week or so later that Laura took a home pregnancy test, unbeknownst to me until she shared the results. “I think I might be pregnant,” she told me with a tone of indifference reflecting that there was no way the test could be correct. Not after all the years we’d tried so hard with no success. This was surely a false alarm. She took a blood test later that same afternoon at a doctor’s office just to prove the home test wrong.

A nurse called the next day: “Congratulations! You are pregnant.” My wife and I spent several moments just looking at one another, mouths agape. The nurse interrupted our telephone silence by suggesting a visit with the doctor the next day, “Just to be absolutely certain.”

The doctor did an ultrasound and pronounced us definitely with child. “A nice strong heartbeat,” he announced.

Laura and I smiled lovingly at each other.

“Wait,” he excitedly added, “make that two strong heartbeats!”

At that, my wife burst into uncontrollable tears and I felt the need to grab a chair to keep from losing balance and toppling over. “That’s impossible,” Laura sobbed, “there are no twins in either of our families.”

“Well, it looks like there soon will be,” the doctor responded gleefully.

At ages forty-something and fifty-something respectively, the doctor’s advice was to approach this pregnancy with the utmost care, especially since we were expecting twins. For Laura there would be no more travel, no more working . . . no more anything for the next nine months. My job would be to see to it that my wife was pampered and did not exert herself. We were more than happy to comply. Laura spent the first trimester feeling sick most of the time, so-called “morning sickness” that lasted all morning, all afternoon, and well into the night. It was not an easy pregnancy for her.

As for me? It’s weird. I’ve never really been much of a morning person, but ever since impending parenthood, I began literally “popping” out of bed around 5 AM almost every morning. For some reason, I also had more energy than I’d had in years. Lots of mornings by 9 o’clock I’d already run several miles on the beach, surfed a few waves, had breakfast, read the newspaper, fed the dogs, brought Laura breakfast in bed, cleaned the kitchen, gotten dressed, and arrived at work with a spring in my step and whistling whatever was the last tune I heard on my drive. Amazingly, this energizer-bunny condition continues even today, nearly three years after the birth of our twins. Perhaps this is nature’s way of endowing an aging dad to cope with the rigors of child-rearing. Whatever the source, it feels great. For any guy looking for the true fountain of youth, I would highly recommend having a baby after age fifty!

So, the two-seater sports car has been traded for a seven-seater van, and in short order we began eagerly looking to buy a house with less view and more yard. As for that notion of early retirement to wine country? Forget it! The word “retirement” has been purged from our vernacular. But none of that matters in the least. Our twins are now almost three years old. Watching the world anew through their eyes is truly our greatest fantasy goal come true.

Liz Kitchens with Joe

Looking for life after kids? Maybe you shouldn’t, because if you have kids, they might be boomerang kids. Liz Kitchens has those, which is why she had to figure out how to have Life After Boomerang Kids.

Boomerang Kids: young adults who leave home with youthful idealism and excitement about the adventures awaiting them, only to ricochet back to their rooms when life out of the nest, with its pesky responsibilities, thwarts their efforts at independence. All three of my children, after departing with much fanfare and excitement, boomeranged home at one time or another. Now that they have truly all been launched, I can share a story about them.

My husband and I had deposited our youngest son on the doorstep of George Washington University in mid-August of 2001. We were empty-nested for the first time in 11 years of our re-marriage. My daughter already was in her third year of college in North Carolina. We like to say we were empty-nested for less than an hour when my daughter called to say, “I’m coming home, Mom, I’ve decided to drop out of school. This way you won’t have to worry about having an empty nest.” This conversation occurred as we were driving back to our Florida home. All I could say was, “Let me call you back, honey.” We pulled over at a rest stop, and I bought a pack of cigarettes.

As it turned out, my daughter was suffering from a love affair gone bad. Her panic about her future and ours over the Al-Qaeda attacks on 9/11 already had made for a stressful Fall that year. In the midst of this upheaval, my son, newly ensconced in his freshman dorm in Washington, was kicked out of school on the first day of classes for smoking pot. In spite of appeals, he was sent home for three semesters.

This is a testimonial from a boomer mom who is here to say, you can live through and even flourish in the midst of these emotional traumas, and an increasingly crowded nest.

During that Fall of 2001, I needed a survival kit, as was the case with many of my boomer friends. So, as I was spending time in bed with the covers pulled over my head, I conceived of the Jeremiah Project. It is an after-school and Summer pottery and digital arts program targeted to reach at-risk middle school kids. This program has now become the arts education program for Boys and Girls Clubs in Central Florida.

I am art director of the Jeremiah Project. I realized I needed something positive to focus on in the midst of an extremely negative and fearful time. The pottery part of Jeremiah emphasizes self esteem building through art. The medium of clay is a wonderful teacher. It comes from the ground and grounds the people it touches. Many of these kids come from very dysfunctional families.

While it would appear we are helping the kids, they are really the ones healing us on the staff; a number are aging boomers. Working with these kids fulfills the nurturing instinct, since our own kids really do eventually leave the nest.

One of my own clay sculptures is entitled, “What’s in Your Empty Nest?” It’s a question we all should ask ourselves as we rebuild our nests and make room for our own dreams. And sure, there will still be a “room” (although perhaps a shared one alongside your guitar, art supplies, and exercise equipment) for the kids to come home on the weekends.

Thus, I am here to testify, it is possible to create a fun, interesting life after the nest empties, fills back up, and empties out again.

Liz Kitchens is an empty nester, artist, sculptor and she blogs at http://lizkitchens.wordpress.com.

Her company is Idealizms – http://www.idealizms.com.

Here are a few points to consider when you are trying to help someone who is grieving:

1. First and very important: talk about the person who has died. It seems that we never want to mention their name. I know it comes from a desire not to upset someone you care about. However, that approach is misguided because people love to speak the name of the person who has died, and talk about them. To not talk about them as if they never existed is what’s distressing. The conversation may produce tears, but it is often more comforting than acting like the person’s name can never be mentioned again.
2. Ask people how they feel-– I mean really ask. Don’t let them get away with “I’m fine,” because they’re probably not. We are so polite in our society that we don’t want to burden others with our problems. Even when the problems are obvious to all the world. And it’s good to ask again months after the death occurs. In the beginning, people are in shock and the pain sometimes takes months to really start to hit people. By then the world feels you should be “getting over it.” So ask not just when you see someone at work or at a social function. Pick up the phone. When you are afraid to talk or don’t know what to say to someone who is grieving, you end up isolating them by not keeping in touch. Death often is a tragedy, but it is not a contagious disease.
3. It takes an enormous amount of energy to “be strong” or look “normal.” Many who grieve would win Oscars for their performances, looking and acting like they’re just fine so their friends will not be uncomfortable. In actuality they are trying to discover what their new “normal” is and that takes a considerable amount of time. Just because people look good doesn’t mean they feel good. Don’t let the façade fool you. People don’t need the added pressure to put up a good front for others when they are struggling with all the emotional, physical, cognitive, and sometimes behavioral effects of grief. They just need someone to acknowledge that this is a difficult time for them.
4. The clichés that people hear such as “getting on with life” and “getting over it” irritate those who are grieving, as they know that these expressions do not represent the reality. They will not get over it; they will learn to live with it or get used to the new world into which they have been plunged. It is not just the absence of the person they loved but also how that person affected their lives and the loss of future plans and possibly dreams. They will never be the same people they were before, and now is the painful time when they have to start determining what their life will look like without that person in it. So continue to love them as they change and adapt to their new world.
5. I’m sure we have all said to someone at a funeral, “Call if you need anything, I’ll be there.” Well, I bet they didn’t call. The phrase is said with the best of intentions but the grieving don’t know what they need and trying to figure it out would take more energy than they have available. So it would be better if you figure out what your friend needs and just do it! If it is an invitation to go somewhere, don’t be offended if you are turned down. Keep asking. Every day is different and by continuing to ask, you are staying in touch and connecting with someone who is in pain. You are letting him or her know you are there, and you care.

The common theme through these tips is that you have to let the person who is grieving know that you care, that you are trying to understand what life is like for them and you will not abandon them.

People often feel very alone and think they are “going crazy” through this difficult and confusing time. In many aspects of their lives they are off balance. Having a stable friend there, regardless of the reception, will be appreciated.

I know we don’t want people to cry, but sometimes that is what is needed. Hopefully we will learn how to put our words into action.

© 2009 Jane Galbraith

Jane Galbraith, BScN, R.N., is the author of “Baby Boomers Face Grief – Survival and Recovery”. Her book is available through the author directly at jane.galbraith@sympatico.ca or Amazon, or Trafford Publishing. More information about the book can be found at www.trafford.com. Jane conducts information presentations and workshops to organizations on grief and it’s affects on the workplace.

On the same day that we officially became empty nesters, the very day our youngest started college, we got on a plane headed for Switzerland. We didn’t really plan for the two events to happen on the same day, it just worked out that way.

What was planned was to spend time together and to do the things that obligations had pushed aside before. The three years between our older girls leaving the house and the boy flapping his wings gave us plenty of time to decide how we wanted to spend, or at least start, this new phase of our lives.

We spent the time, before our nest completely emptied, planning to have no plans. That may sound strange and contradictory, but we really have planned to have no plans. Child rearing is nothing BUT plans. Long range plans like providing a good home, saving for college, raising a solid adult, etc. and massive short term, everyday planning of ballet lessons, dentist appointments, baseball games… anyone who has kids gets the picture all too well. So we set out ahead of time to have no set long term plans and let the short term, daily variety be fluid and adaptable to each new day.

Sounds simple, but in reality it takes some planning to have no plans. We knew that we would need some income. After all, we still have one left in college and we’ve grown fond of food and shelter, so we took steps in that direction.

After squirreling away nuts in various holes for years, the time had come to dig up a few. We decided to sell our condo and buy some rental property for income as well as providing a place for our youngest to live while in school. It turns out that this is a fairly common method of providing housing for students and it seems to work out well as long as they don’t go all Animal House on it. The no plans part popped up when the properties that we could get good deals on needed work. No problem, we simply became handymen for a couple of months and got to know a college town…. no plans and some new experiences to share.

We also thought we ‘d like to see the world from the deck of a catamaran but new opportunities in Europe came up. So now we are seeing the world from planes, trains and automobiles. That’s OK… no plans and new places to see. At some point in the future, when we really aren’t expecting it, the boat idea might fall back into our laps. That’s the way life is. Certainly things come up, but now we take them as they come instead of worrying ahead of time. Then we simply adjust our lack of plans.

We are still in the early stages of this lifestyle adjustment but it’s working because my wife and I are on the same page. We spend almost all of our time together, something that may not be right for everyone, but it works for us. In the eloquent words of Kurt Vonnegut, we are a nation of two.

This isn’t something that we started just as our kids were leaving. We have been laying the groundwork for over 26 years. Back when we had barely evolved into human beings ourselves, Veronica squeezed out a few yard apes (how did that happen?) and we had to become responsible adults. While raising the kids, we always tried to remember that a huge part of being good parents is being a good couple. When the time came to get back to just the two of us, it wasn’t hard to remember what brought us together in the first place. Part of the beauty of our new no plans plan is that now we get to be the kids for a change.

In addition, we have found that it is very important for us to keep learning. Try new things together. Try things that neither of us has any previous experience with. That way, we’re in the same boat. Explore. Examine. Investigate. Inquire. Enjoy. No plan. That’s the plan.

Prof Peter Wallace

If you have a son or daughter who’s graduating from college in a few months, chances are you’re a Baby Boomer, writes Paul Briand in The Examiner.

And chances are you’re wondering what advice you might give them if indeed they don’t have much of a clue as to how to approach a retrenching job market.

And chances are this task might be especially difficult if you’ve lost your own job because of downsizing and you too are looking at a slim job market.

So, what to tell a graduating college senior?

“Basically the effort to find a job in this economy will require a great deal of networking, creativity and perseverance,” said Peter Wallace, an associate professor of business administration at Stonehill College in Massachusetts.

Wallace is author of “Life 101: Real-World Advice for Graduating College Seniors.”

In an email interview with Examiner, he breaks down his advice into the following categories:

Graduate school

“Professional graduate schools make some sense (medical profession, legal profession, teaching profession) if the individual is committed to that career track. Graduate Business School makes little sense as most of the good schools require several years of business experience before admission. Individuals with little clarity of a career track, which in my experience is most graduating seniors, are better to dive into life and get their feet wet.”

Networking

“Job hunting in today’s environment is all about networking. Parents know this if they have lost their job. Make networking a family affair, everyone attempts to find new contacts and allows each member of the family to contact them as appropriate. I recall a story from the recession in the early 2000s, where a father who was out of work, found a good job networking with his daughter’s college roommate’s father. Networking is the most effective form of job hunting; why not make it a family affair.”

Temporary employment

“When the recovery started after the early 2000s recession, cautious employers started adding temporary workers to avoid potential lay off costs if the economy did not improve. For college graduates this not only gives them experience, but provides them with a sample of different kinds of work perhaps allowing them to hone in on a profession that they enjoy. Temporary work also provides a significant opportunity to improve self esteem.”

Volunteer

“Use your time effectively to help others. Contributing in this way while you are job hunting will increase you appeal to employers, and improve your skills and discipline.”

The trash truck outside just shifted into another gear and woke me from this silly musing on the Rockwell painting I remember. No, not in my lifetime as a baby boomer; I mean the Rockwell illustration that we look to as the apex of American Thanksgiving. Do you know anyone who celebrates like that?

As the political minority at the table and the single mother of a teen who has recently left reason, I dreaded this year’s gathering. I worried, and yes, complained to anyone within earshot, that I felt compelled to keep a balance of so many competing obligations and good manners that there would be no room for feeling thankful myself.

Maybe, like me, you sat around a table full of people you do not see on other days of the year. In my case half were relatives far too old to be boomers, and the rest were their friends or neighbors. Yes, they allowed ‘others’ at this allegedly family-centric holiday. We talked, some yelled, about politics and yes, honest, someone retrieved a blood pressure cuff. Some ignored each other. I drank in the funny stories about those who used to join us but are now deceased.

Some of you may have spent the day alone. Some may have loved the freedom of sweat pants and football. Some may have spent the day quietly, perhaps enjoying a crisp walk in the woods when the deer seem annoyed at the imposition on their holiday. I hope those quiet celebrations were everything you expected.

I don’t think it matters what you did as long as you did it well and with some bit of contentment. I thought I envied those of you who stayed home. But now, home from the highway, I am glad I followed compulsion and ditched the sweats. I am happy to have received hugs from those who would have removed my yard signs before the election. I am thankful that I kept some connection to the world that does not agree with me but values, as much as I do, this gathering each year.

And now, here comes ‘the holidays’ (she says ominously). Can we spend another day thinking about connections and forgetting our 401(k)s? Can we stop circulating emails about bankrupt stores, or inept politicians, doing nothing about it but spreading the gloom like some grease mark on our glasses?

We are literate; someone taught us the value of the written word as expression. We have our computers. We have our memories of music and, if we look, delights anew. We have enough things that I think we can sleep past five a.m., even on Black Friday. We are fine.

For my part, if we disagree, I’ll still take your heartfelt hugs. The greatest poverty I fear is the one of lost connections, which may be the one over which I have the most control.

Indeed, some of us do have natural gray hair (although most of us need that monthly touch-up of auburn or blonde), some of us wear Juicy Couture, some of us refuse to be called grandma (and definitely not granny), and some of us redo our entire house as a playroom, including a trampoline and several king-sized beds lined up! And many of us keep close through video chats instead of weekly visits complete with chocolate chip cookies. We were, many of us, the Supermoms of our generation — and the Ubermoms. In our time, we were at the top of our games, raising kids, feeding kids, shopping, balancing our mothering with full-time careers as lawyers, accountants, teachers, even diplomats — and yet our lives were expanded by those soccer games, dance classes, and homework.

So it’s no surprise that lots of us have just slipped right into being Ubergrandmas. We help raise the grandkids, we shop for the grandkids, we go to their dance recitals and their soccer games, some of us even fly weekly from state to state to be there for our own Ubermom daughters and daughters-in-law… and, at the same time, have jobs. One grandma I know appears regularly in TV commercials and takes parts in movies. We are even now taking care of our own elderly parents, the great-grandparents. We embrace the challenge. We weren’t stay-at-home mamas and we are not stay-at-home grandmas now.

Of course, lots of grandmas are happy to be stay-at-home grandmas. But we’re hardly “The Goodnight Moon” grandma, with all her white hair tucked into a bun. (That truly confuses my granddaughter.) And we’re not like Grandma Rose either — we wear Spanx and not corsets. And while some grandmas continue to make chicken noodle soup, many prefer tofu burgers. So while today “grandmotherness” can be “grand-otherness,” we all give love and give ourselves.

It’s a small world after all.

Read more at MomLogic.com

Those who’ve never married. Those who’ve never had children. Those whose spouses are gone because of death or divorce. Those who may not even have siblings they can rely on in old age.

Click here to read the whole story.

If you’re an empty nester now, you’ll appreciate this! The home of Prudence Baird, a contributor to the Blogazine, “From Fifty is the New…

I stand just inside the front door, unable to move. Unwilling to hang up my keys. Incapable of addressing this morning’s breakfast dishes, still in the sink.

I am paralyzed by the sudden realization that all too soon there will be no more first days of school. No more carpools to drive, after-school games to attend or fundraisers to plan. In that not-too-distant future, what will autumn be like without the noise, commotion and companionship children bring to a home, to a life—to my life?

My eardrums ache, searching to pick up even the faintest of noises. In the distance, I hear my neighbor’s chainsaw cutting wood for the winter. Upstairs, a gentle snore tells me the cat is curled up in a warm shaft of morning sun.

As my ears adjust to the heaviness of this newly hatched solitude, I realize that the sounds I’m hearing, and those that are absent, are an auditory foreshadowing of life after and beyond school-aged children.

Ethan, 15, is already preparing us for the inevitable separation by spending most of his days and evenings at school or out with friends. But my youngest, Casey, is still very much at home.

At 13 years, with his 85 pounds stretched over a 5’3” frame, Casey is thin and taut like an old-fashioned car antennae. And like that obsolete car part, he picks up signals the rest of us cannot receive. He broadcasts these in an ongoing stream-of-consciousness that morphs into a (mostly) one-way conversation; his volume stuck on “loud” – the only variation being “really loud.”

If Casey is in the house, you feel his presence the way you feel electricity building before a thunderstorm. Intervals of stillness are punctuated by the scritch-scratching of his colored pencils as he draws. Paper rustles; the pencil-sharpener grinds. Soon, his pregnant hush gives birth to another singular portrait and a verbal onslaught of insights and endless inquiry.

“Who is this?” he demands, sticking an 8 ½ x 11-inch piece of paper five inches from my nose.

“Hmmm,” is my customary response as I back away to gain perspective. “Ho Chi Minh?” I venture.

“How did you know?!” Casey cries, delighted.

“It looks like him.”

“How? How does it look like him?”

And thus begins another lesson in the ancient art of physiognomy, or “face reading”… something children like my son are supposed to be unable to do. Like a cat that senses he’s not supposed to trespass on certain laps, however, Casey ventures there anyway, attempting to capture with his portraits the very essence that drives unique individuals who push society forward, haul civilization backwards, or simply create a wake with their unkempt or munificent lives. Samuel Johnson, Spinoza, Gandhi, James Brown – no one escapes his scrutiny.

He forces my somnambulant brain to awaken, to dust off forgotten lessons in history, geography, cultural trivia. He makes connections, hauls me along untrodden pathways, bumping into long-forgotten factoids or stumbling over new information. The impact of war, greed, poverty, and education on a person are examined and parsed; all part of a borderless jigsaw puzzle Casey has constructed, starting point unknown.

“Who was the president of South Viet Nam?” Casey demands.

I’m stumped.

“It’s Ngo Dinh Diem!” he crows.

Eventually, I deduce that Casey’s Vietnam War obsession began with an overheard comment on NPR days ago.

Figuring out Casey’s inspirations is a Sherlock Holmesian exercise; I congratulate myself on solving the mystery. Casey, however, has moved on to another portrait, another obsession. The pencil scratches furiously.

Now, with the boys back in school, I have a whole six hours to myself every day, five days a week – plenty of time to catch up on just about everything I ignored all summer.

But instead of feeling relieved, free of Casey’s strenuous curiosity, I feel adrift in a fitful silence.

Somewhere, I wonder, is he asking someone else, “How? How does it look like him?”

Wishing I were Marlo Thomas or Mary Tyler Moore, I took to wearing a cheap dynel “fall”, a wig that fell straight to my shoulders from a black velvet headband, curling at the ends into a neat flip. Purchased with a postdated check, without my mother’s permission, I snuck it out of the house every morning in a brown paper bag, furtively bobby-pinning it to my scalp in the school bathroom.

Flinging the shiny strands of fake hair from my shoulders and puffing with mannered gestures on my cigarettes, I sat long hours at the donut shop with my friends from the Drama Club, bragging that someday I was getting out of this town, I was going to Broadway and hitting it big. I drank innumerable cups of coffee, extra light with two packs of sugar, and wrote Rod McKuen rip-off poetry on paper napkins.

Out of the corner
of my eye
i see myself
in that dark corner
huddled all curled up afraid
of all the people and the light

but when i turn to face myself
my image disappears
and i stand looking
into empty corners
all the time …

The postdated check cleared the bank prior to the automatic deposit from my part-time job at Woolco. When the check bounced, the bank phoned my mother. I found this out after I was yanked out of history class and hauled down to the nurse’s office to take my mother’s call. My heart pounded and my hand went clammy on the receiver as I said hello. Having been told only that it was an emergency, I expected to hear that Pam had been rushed to the hospital. Instead my mother began to rant that young women who bounced checks to purchase forbidden hairpieces were headed for a life of crime. I gritted my teeth. She had a good mind to call the police, she said, and send them right over to arrest me. My eyes turned hot and wet.

“Is there anything wrong?” asked the nurse when I hung up.

“It’s my sister,” I lied.

“Oh dear. I hope she’ll be all right.”

By the time I got home from school a modicum of reason had prevailed, and my parents settled for house arrest. My reaction was by now, standard.

“I HATE you,” I screamed, blasting up the stairs to my room in tears, slamming the door in my usual fashion, this time so hard it blew through the frame and stuck so that I couldn’t get back out.

“Good,” said my father, surveying the damage from the other side of the door, “you can stay in there ‘til you’ve had a chance to think things through.”

My sister understood better than anyone what had happened and why, and it was she who rescued me, prying the door open with a screwdriver.

“I don’t know why you bought that stupid wig in the first place.”

“Because, I’m ugly.”

“No you’re not,” she said. “You just think you are.”

Available at Amazon: Sixtyfive Roses: A Sister’s Memoir