interesting transitions?

Dear blog reader;

I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. "Dear blog reader" is my 4th favorite weekly salutation. Number 1 through 3? Well, number one is "hey Bevo" - pronounced Beavo. This salutation is used daily during a lunch time phone call where Bev and I catch up and support each other through whatever challenges have presented themselves during the forenoon.

Number 2 and number 3 are a tie. They are;

Dearest Ben;
Dearest Grace;
I hope this letter finds you doing well. Actually for Grace in Ghana, I shortened it to "I hope this letter finds you." These are weekly handwritten misives that I send to Ben and Grace. A practice that I started when Ben went to college; a practice that, because of its self-therapeutic benefits, appears to be established any time they aren't in my house for the foreseeable future.

The therapy is all mine. I believe that my imagination gets me much closer to their personhood than calling or texting. In my mind, the technical intermediaries, while instant, only testify to the distance that separates us. No matter how fast or clear, we are disconnected. The technology passes the disembodied self. Once delivered, it disappears, left to memories that fade. In my mind at least, part of me is transported in the paper. The paper that I scrawled over is the paper they pull out, un-crease, turn toward the light and read. In this regard, I am a Luddite.

So you are number four. Not bad. While out of the medal ceremony, my desire to communicate with you wins in hundreds and hundreds of competitions held daily for my time. Brush my teeth vs the blog? You win. The blog vs clean the toilet? You win.  The laundry vs the blog? For two weeks you win then crisis sets in and I either have to buy another package of underwear or postpone the blog for a week. You get the picture. The problem is that we have entered a time of transition; that awkward time between summer and fall. September is that time every year when there is the lawn to cut and, at our house, firewood season is starting. It’s that time of year when our hemisphere is getting serious about tilting away from the sun. Consequently, those 8:00 p.m. bike rides in July with plenty of daylight are now started at dusk and finished in the dark.

Yes, we are transitioning and I am finding it difficult to have my cake and eat it too. So writing you is number four in the salutation parade, the only real problem with that is I am experiencing several 3 1/2 salutations-per-week weeks recently.

Transitions are difficult. New things tempt you. Yet, you can't abandon the old things. Both are important. However, I have found that I am an old hand at these transitions. The wood will get cut. I will be driven inside by the cold and dark. The grass will stop growing. I will be able to spend those 6 hours crafting weekly salutations. It is all good.

I suppose that age has made it easier to handle the transitions. The advantage of age was brought home to me recently. One of our nieces has been living with us for the past month as she starts her work career. She has just moved to the area and the apartment she found is unavailable for another week. Bev and I really have enjoyed her time here.

I personally have a standing rule that no child is interesting to me until they reach their 18th birthday. Until then, they have no real opinions of their own. Their parents make all of their decisions for them. Even the rebellious children let their parents make all of their decisions. They are so hooked into being rebellious that they do the opposite no matter the advice given.

Once they are 18 they become intensely interesting to me. So our niece is living with us during her time of interestingness. She was up early for her first day of work. I was getting my breakfast and I asked her if she was looking forward to the first work day of the next fifty years of work. I think that everyone should be faced with that question when they start work. All of those pictures taken on the first day of kindergarten; wasted. Elementary graduation wasted. That valedictory address useless. No, we need to support the youth as they become interesting and start their work lives.

We, specifically the baby boomers, have skin in the game on this one. As a representative at the very tail-end of this failed generation, I need my niece to work all fifty of those years if I want to get my social security for the first 35 years of my 75 years of retirement. (See launching pad from June.) If that math is correct, I need to encourage her to have about a dozen children along with that 50 year work career. No wonder her eyes got very wide as she thought about 50 years of work. I suppose the twelve kids would make it easier for her. With six weeks of maternity leave each time she will only have a 48 1/2 year career; bargain.

Fifty is a daunting number when looking at it from the starting line. The thought of doing that so someone else (even your favorite uncle) won't have to work is even more unappealing. Work and the desire not to work is a complicated issue. Hopefully, she won't try to un-complicate things with a pillow in the middle of the night. That would be interesting.

Take care.

Roger.