Tag Archives: middle age

June 15, 2012 · 2:05 pm

The Lock Keeper and the Sailor

From Stan Rogers, the great Canadian singer-songwriter:

You say, “Well-met again, Lock-keeper!
We’re laden even deeper that the time before,
Oriental oils and tea brought down from Singapore.”
As we wait for my lock to cycle
I say, “My wife has given me a son.”
“A son!” you cry, “Is that all that you’ve done?”

She wears bougainvillea blossoms.
You pluck ‘em from her hair and toss ‘em in the tide,
Sweep her in your arms and carry her inside.
Her sighs catch on your shoulder;
Her moonlit eyes grow bold and wiser through her tears
And I say, “How could you stand to leave her for a year?”

“Then come with me,” you say, “to where the Southern Cross
Rides high upon your shoulder.”
“Come with me!” you cry,
“Each day you tend this lock, you’re one day older,
While your blood grows colder.”

But that anchor chain’s a fetter
And with it you are tethered to the foam,
And I wouldn’t trade your life for one hour of home.

Sure I’m stuck here on the Seaway
While you compensate for leeway through the Trades;
And you shoot the stars to see the miles you’ve made.
And you laugh at hearts you’ve riven,
But which of these has given us more love or life:
You, your tropic maids, or me, my wife.

“Then come with me,” you say, “to where the Southern Cross
Rides high upon your shoulder.”
“Ah come with me!” you cry,
“Each day you tend this lock, you’re one day older,
While your blood grows colder.”

But that anchor chain’s a fetter
And with it you are tethered to the foam,
And I wouldn’t trade your life for one hour of home.
Ah, your anchor chain’s a fetter
And with it you are tethered to the foam,
And I wouldn’t trade your whole life for one hour of home.

It seems regardless of if I want to or not, that I’m entering into a period of forced reflection as the anniversaries of events in my life begin to accumulate impressive numbers behind them. This week in particular one came up and passed, my 25th anniversary at the business of lock keeping.

Hang up the phone mother, Metaphor I haven’t made a career change.

I would defy anyone to pass a quarter century milestone without taking at least a moment to reflect and consider.

-       Did I make the right choices in life?

-       Am I happy where I am?

-       What could have been?

I know, for the regular readers this is getting a bit tiresome, the verbose fat man is pontificating on life again and frankly, it’s a bit droll. I hear ya, I’d rather read about toilet humor and dumb things my kids say, but this is important to me. Which, in this space, is uh, as they say, all that matters..

Now that I’ve weeded out the shallow readers, indulge me a bit.

The circumstances my introspective emotional rent here has to do this the above song, a Stan Rogers beauty which was also recorded by my hero Gordon Bok on one of his many folk albums with nautical bents. The song just happened to come up on my iPod this week. Coincidence? Song hasn’t come up in 3 or 4 years near as I can remember, but now on my 25th anniversary, there it was.

I shared it with a few friends and they found expressed some concern about my mental health. Not to worry. I don’t see this is a depressing ode to lost opportunity.

I see it as a legitimate conversation between two approaches to life. A conversation that especially resonates for me because I have been a lock keeper for an awfully long time.

My Father in Law, he was clearly a sailor. Risk, travel for weeks at a time… and it’s poignant to point out that the only an only thing that he ever mentioned to me, when it came to telling me  about things he was disappointed about, was that I was safe. I was always on the seaway, and that I will never see the Southern Cross, a constellation he pursued with great vigor.

Safe.

I have three kids who are in various stages of moving on in their lives to the point where the choices they make will set them on the path of being a a sailor or lock keeper. My inclination and what I’ve found myself telling them is; “don’t be like me, get out there and change the world.”

Not without a bit of mist in my eyes to be honest.

But being Jewish and thus predisposed to turn text and ideas in my head around and around, a metaphor for the scrolls we read from, same scrolls, year after year, same words with unlimited lessons,  I realize that my advice of not being like me may not have been correct.

My Father in Law, the last few years or so especially, had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my kids, one on one. He got to see his oldest Grandson become a scientist in a fast moving and exiting field. He saw his second grandson embrace an in interest in biotech research and, once the shock of actually going to school in Alabama wore off, was extremely proud of the man he was becoming. And he enjoyed his granddaughter, especially her artistic gifts, his office had pieces of work carefully framed and on display. And in those years he made a point of pulling me aside from time to time and telling me “you really have a great family, you’ve done a terrific job”. Which makes me a little misty now thinking about it to be honest.

But, like every one I can’t help but wonder: The grass is always greener.. A truism, which along with no good deed unpunished I have yet to see proven wrong.. but that’s a different blog.

Thinking about that stupid song-

And I wouldn’t trade your whole life for one hour of home.

I’ve had about a half dozen opportunities over the years to make a career change, go into consulting, go into pre-sales, work in the field.. all of which would get me off the seaway and onto the deck of a fast moving ship flying through the open water.

These jobs would have let me take advantage of my intellect and keep me at what I love to do best, THINK.. but all of them involved travel, more travel that I was interested in doing.

And I like what I do, the only advantage consulting would have provided might have been more money and a bigger title and maybe… working for myself. Which exactly how I always envisioned myself shooting the stars and navigating the trades. But again, self employment; not so safe.

So, I will not see the Southern Cross.

And to be honest I couldn’t stand to leave my wife for year, a day or two here and there we can talk, but to not have her there day after day, supporting and nurturing with a mere presence.. would be a dark existence.

I’d like to complain more, it’s fun and makes good bar talk, but really I’ve had the best of both worlds standing on seaway cycling ships through locks.  And when I ask myself; what has given me the my love of life, I have to say my wife.

Which is yet another G-damned anniversary on the way where I’m going to have to whip out that stupid emotional snot rag and do this all over again…

Stupid G-d damn songs.

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June 2, 2012 · 10:52 am

A Mountain Climber Reaches 50

Dear readers- I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, one of those pieces that wrote in my head about 10 times before I was able to get it down. Think if it as Deep Thoughts brought on by another milestone passed, or as the piece would say, another hill summited.

The great state of Hawai’i where our president was supposed to have been born, [sic] has the tallest mountain on the planet, if measured from base to top, Mauna Kea. Measured from the ocean floor to it’s peak at over 13,000 feet, it would be 10,000 feet taller than Everest if it started on dry land. Next door the volcano Mauna Loa, which though 120 feet shorter than Mauna Kea, is the most massive shield volcano on the planet in terms of area covered. The weight of these two massive mountains is literally compressing the earths crust beneath them.

West and north of these two the Hawaiian islands get smaller and and smaller, the islands older and older, the volcanic activity further and further in the past  and by the time you pass Kauai and Niihau the Hawaiian Island chain becomes isolated rocks, reefs, atolls and finally the Emperor sea mounts which stretch all the way to Russia. All of these were once mountains.

I was chatting with an old friend yesterday, a person about the same stage in life I am, same place with kids, same age, and one who knows me pretty well despite our relationship being more on the professional side than personal. But this is one of those guys who, were circumstances different I would want to spend more social time with, he’s a bucket filler as I told my son yesterday.

We were reminiscing a bit, talking about the kids, the career and about being at a stage in life where things seem a little weird.

His word.

But the more I think about it, it’s dead on. This is a weird time, 50. The proverbial halfway point.

I can go Bing and pull up a dozen different clichés about what you’re supposed to go through in each decade of your life. Inevitably they all say the same thing, at 20 be wild and find a partner, at 30 work on you career and your family, at 40 work on success, a euphemism for money in most cases,  at 50 work on your legacy and 60 work on your, shit I don’t know, your legacy some more. And most of them end at 70 or 80 when you work on your memory and your sex drive, and passing gas, many of them have something about wearing purple for some reason.

Purple, like prince. Personally I want to wear blaze orange when I’m 80 so they can find me easier out in the street when snow melts in the spring.

But I digress.

50 seems to be the stage in life where the number of new opportunities and paths which manifest themselves at any given time is no longer greater than the number of those which are no longer possible.

There’s just things I won’t or can’t do anymore, paths blocked by the things I no longer have; time, willingness to take risk, and a certain clarity of vision brought on by age and experience.

And that I think, is what makes it weird.

The good news is, age and experience provide a wonderful internal compass, which really does enable me to see the best in the things available and helps me to avoid the ones that are not so great. It also means that things I find now, I’m able to take far more pleasure in and they’re far richer experiences than most of the opportunities I had even a few years ago.

Now I’ve been extremely fortunate to never have had to face any kind of great hurdles, my path has been easy, and perhaps of my own making. I recently read a sales pitch some stupid seminar “are you living life to it’s fullest or taking the path of least resistance.”

That thought makes me a little uncomfortable to be honest.

Here’s how I’m thinking about, being an analogy kind of guy-

When you’re young the world looks like a series of mountains to climb. There’s always one right in front of you and a hundreds more around you.  If I’ve learned anything over the years it’s this- there is a unbreakable rule in mountain climbing, the fastest way to tops of all the peaks in a range is take them one at a time. While you can start many at once you can only arrive at the top, one peak at a time.

Along the way of course every mountain has several paths to the top, some easy and some hard. Some peaks are higher than others, some routes require pitons and equipment and help from a team, some peaks you can climb in a day in a pair of sandals. Sometimes there’s rock slides some times storms come up and hinder your progress.

What I like about this stage of life…and time, and the experience that comes with time, is the understanding of how erosion works. Like the Hawaiian islands, today massive seemingly immovable mountains, sturdy as a rock so to speak, will one day be gone. I won’t live to see it, but even the great Mauna Kea, all 13,000 feet of her, towering over the oceans around her, will one day slip back beneath the waves, replaced by the next generation of volcano’s to pass over the hole in the earths crust that gave birth to the entire chain. Assuming of course it they weren’t born in Kenya or Indonesia and have appropriate long form birth certificates and meet the criteria of the Secretary of State of the not so great State of Arizona. Just say’n.

Even the might Everest, still growing as the Indian plate slides under China, will one day begin shrinking and will become a steppe.

 

So here we are at 50.  I get to stand on the peaks I’ve climbed, and I’ve found that they’re  not nearly as high as I thought they were. I’m not completely satisfied with my progress or the accomplishment of reaching, not “the” top, but rather “A” top. I found that for the most part the path to the top was not as bad as it looked when I was at the bottom looking up. And I’ve found that the view from up here, is like the view from the top of Everest, a vast horizon of other peaks and mountains.

But at 50ish I realize I ain’t going to get them all, and the best part is, I’m totally cool with that.

Thanks for your indulgence.

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April 21, 2012 · 6:17 am

Midlife Crises-Revisited

As I was sitting on the bus yesterday, I saw an article that the Minneapolis Police Department is auctioning off all of their motorcycles. They’re disbanding the motorcycle unit. Which is only about 6 bikes but you know. Now that I think about it after 18 years of living here in the Land of the Loon, it hit me that I really don’t see motorcycle cops, I guess someone decided that since the season here is about 4 months at best maybe it was better that the constabulary conduct their business from the safety and warmth of late model American automobiles.

As I read the article two things struck me, 1) Harley to 2) Loaded. So they’re auctioning them all off. These are some nice bikes. And they’re “cop” bikes.

This started the following train of thought:

- I’m nearly 50 years old.
- The kid are just about gone. True I have a 14 year old but she spends all her time in her room and I never see her anyway so, she’s kinda gone.
- I could live on the open road, grow a beard, care not about anything and get by on like $1100 a year. I have family members that make it on that.
- I’ve never really done anything in the last 28 years where I’ve answered the mental question “What would my wife say” with the rebellious answer “Fuck it”.

BTW just thinking that way kinda scared me because to be honest, because A0 she has proven to be able to read my mind more times that I can count and B)  I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything where at some point I’ve said to myself “what would my wife say?” Yes I am owned.

How long did I expect to be married anyway? My second wife, who I haven’t met yet, is probably just graduating from college somewhere and if I don’t get out there and look for her I may never find her.

Wow

Talk about walking right to the edge of the cliff. Where did all this come from?

Now, for the first time, I “get” the midlife crises old fat guys experience. They act on their impulses.

Relax, I’m not going to act on my impulses, had I don’t that we’d be panning gold in British Columbia about now. I’m not leaving my 1st and current wife, but I gotta tell ya the thought of one them Harley’s sure sounds cool. I would absolutely ROCKET up the cool ladder, one last explosion of testosterone laced old-guy super cool, devil may care, rebellious coolness. I get a little weepy just thinking about it.

IMG_0695And like a Super Nova of dudedeness it would all fade away and just like I’m sure I’ll be wearing crocs and black socks and umbrella hats and Mrs S will have to execute the standing order I have in our marriage contract that when I start wearing shit like that, she is to put a bullet in the back of my head, or smother me with my pillow. My younger lucid self would not me living like that.

Harley. Cop Harley. Imagine pulling up to a drawbridge opening and saying to no one in particular, “It’s got cop suspension, cop tires, cop shocks..”

Can’t stop a fella from dreaming.

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September 20, 2011 · 8:33 pm

Hurling towards the Mid Life Crisis, with a certain lack of grace

I had a chance to have coffee last night with a great friend of mine whom I’d lost contact with over the course of the last year or so. My friend, recently retired and out of the workforce has better things to do that network with local professionals, and for that, I’m a bit jealous. She’s filling her time working for a church a few days a week, hanging out with family… all good. She looked, after a year of retirement, fantastic. Seriously, she looked radient, happy, the dark circles the eyes were gone, the tired aura that folks trying to keep afloat in the corporate world seem have as missing, she was great.

Today I ran into another dear friend, a guy who retired two or three years ago, he looks like a different guy after stepping off the corporate carousel.

And I was um..

I’m trying to manage my way through the midlife crisis that I’ve been coached on for the last 10 years or so. Two years south of 50 I don’t know if this is the time or not, but it does feel a bit like the we’re approaching something new and different. Late 40’s, for me has seen some plans and hopes get snuffed out, like I’m never going to bungee jump now, I’d probably dislocate a hip. Never mind the part about overcoming step one in my bungee jumping plan, overcoming a horrible fear of heights.

It’s also a time when new plans start take shape.

Like, now that were empty nesters I’d like to start thinking about that condo somewhere in St. Paul, on a busy street with access to restaurants and theatre and the lifestyle I’ve always wanted but never could have living on my personal Wisteria Lane, here in Agrestic Valley.

Imagine never mowing the lawn again. Imagine no pruning, no snow removal…

Imagine how sweet it would be to roll out of bed to the local coffee shop, setup with a scone, laptop, blog, come home for lunch with my hottie wife, (the current model mind you, I’m not mid-lifing with an au pair or anything) jumping on the motorcycle in the afternoon cruise along the river, dinner out and a show.

The imagine realizing, with some help, the following-

1)     We’re not empty nesters yet, only one is gone. The second leaves next fall, the last one… Fall 2015, or never. In my mind we’re already there, in my brides mind, there’s still some child rearing to do. Argh.

2)     Coffee shop and scone, what’s the plan for day two? One day at a time dear, haven’t planned that far out.

3)     When I come homo to the “hottie” wife, what’s the plan ‘cause I’m not that great a conversationalist as it is. And if all I’ve accomplished in a given week is 7 lattes, 5 blog posts and a motorcycle trip.. we’re going to need a new script.

4)     Speaking of motorcycles, the former nurse, aka Mrs S, uses this opportunity to re-tell the story of the fellow who lost both his feet in a motorcycle accident back in California and now walks on pegs. Just say’n, we’re not all down for the Easy Rider retirement. And she is never going to get on the back of it. I’ve planned for that with the “If you can read this the b’ch fell off” t-shirt I bought at Sturgis 5 years ago when took the family there for vacation, not paying attention to what other activities might be going on in that part of the world the first week in August.  Oops. It did seem like there a lot of motorcycles on the highway.

5)     I haven’t actually mowed the home yard, at least with a push mower in 3 years. I have done it with the neighborhood rider mower, the 650HP monster we bought this spring when the $150 Craigs list special died after 17 solid weeks of service. I do mow the lake place, half acre, from the back of a lawn mower, but for day to day mowing, I make the kids do it.

  1. And just for the record, haven’t pruned in years, MRs S does that. Allergies and all, you know how it is.
    So change this one to the following: Imagine not feeling guilty about not mowing or pruning because my $300.00 a month homeowners fees are paying for it.
  2. For the record, I haven’t done much snow removal either. I have boys for that, at least through this winter. Next winter we’ll have to see.

6)     Finally describing Mrs S as a “hottie”, did not get the anticipated kudos or hoped for result. Nuff said.

 

On the other hand, retirement is now at hand and I think we need to embrace it.

I get a little notice from the company that my employer has hired to manage the 401K’s  and benefits. On that quarterly report, right above the part that says because I’ve invested in “cash” my risk of retirement shortfall is “high” it says “Years to retirement” and next to that the number 17.

Which means from a work standpoint, I’m just past halfway there.

 

 

 

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June 12, 2011 · 8:14 am

Next up, My Mid-LIfe Crisis

Now that the Bat Miztvah is over we Sankarys, or rather this Sankary, can focus on my next major milestone. The Mid Life Crisis. I’ve been putting this off for several years now because I’m neurotic enough with my hypochondria, healthy sense of doom and bouts of melancholy I’ve been plagued with since my parents first told me that I was a wonderful baseball player in spite of going Oh for the Third grade and being the first seven year old to happily ride the pine for last 9/10ths of the Jr Babe Ruth baseball season.

Lesson was, people lie, even parents lie and if they lie G-d only knows what else they’re capable off, and therefore, I always sleep with one eye open. Which probably has more to do with my sleep apnea issues that anything else.

What’s prompting all this introspection of late? Could be this morning as I was staring at the ass end of a weevil sticking out of my shredded wheat as it sat on my spoon, a thought that came to mind, how did I get to this? Not the bug in the cereal, how did it get to the point that I’m happily gobbling down the worlds worst cereal in order to increase my fiber intake.

Fiber being just one of list of things I never thought much about back the good old days.

Achieving middle age brings on a lot of new, and not always positive or beneficial thoughts. I don’t remember thinking about stuff in my 20’s, no brains/no headaches was one recipe for joy. The morons I know seem to be having more fun in life than the thinkers. Harsh truth.

I have more time on my hands to think about shit these days it seems. Hell, just waiting for my birth year to scroll up while filling in online forms is good for about a half hour a day.

So, what does an old guy think about? Well, there’s always the Big Chill Syndrome. The first time an acquaintance, no matter how distant, goes down with a heart attack or some serious cancer, especially the back door variety for men, it seems to set into motion a self destructive chain of thinking that makes getting up every morning and every trip to the can an exercise in self diagnostics, even if the answer is “whew, all clear”.

I remember when I didn’t even know there was an obituary page in the paper much less find myself pissed off reading it because some obit for some stranger who just happened to be about my age failed to include cause of death in the copy. When did I start obsessing about cause of death? When I started thinking about my own, that’s when.

I wanna check off causes of death that I don’t think I need to worry about. There’s some solace in learning that most people my age are cacking from something other then something I can get. “Died of Ebola after a trip to Congo”.. I’m safe from that.. it’s been ages since I shared an elevator with anyone who was bleeding out through every orifice.  However, I hear about the neighbors brothers neighbor in Iowa who collapsed after shoveling the driveway some winter day and BAM.. I gotta sit down ‘cause the room is swirling.

Whenever I read about heart attacks or the dreaded ass cancer, it’s like the reaper’s already at the front door. Clearly it’s a control issue, those hidden diseases are like a thief in the night, you never see them coming. Ironically “was killed in car accident”, a cause of death for people my age that occurs at a much higher rate than either heart attack, cancer or ebola, doesn’t even phase me because, well the middle aged brain can easily rationalize that one away because I’m a good driver and that’s never going to happen to me.

Have another bowl of fiber I think I feel something growing…

Here’s another Middle Age Curse- I’ll call it the curse of wisdom. Wisdom that comes from experience is curse when you’re dealing with people who haven’t benefited from years of experience. I hate to be right sometimes all the time, especially when the only possible outcome of a given situation is bad.

Case in point, kid bought himself an Audi. Being old and wise I knew two bad things were going to come of this. 1) He would buy the car no matter what I said or did and 2) it would be an expensive car for a college kid with no job to afford. So I said the three magic words of wisdom; “Please. Don’t. Stop.”

I said them quietly so as not to get myself in trouble because nobody’s going to listen anyway, but for the sake of my eternal soul I have to pretend to make an effort sometimes. And then when the kid finds out an oil change is $503.00 and new sparkplugs are $106 each and that they can only be installed by guys named Dieter who make more in a minute than dear old dad does in week, it’s so very hard to suck it up look down and offer the other three magic words wisdom “I was right”.

Which sound a lot like “I told you so”, a phrase that Mrs S has some genetic modification which enables her to sense those words from a mile away, EVEN before I can even form them on my lips.

And the reaction is always swift and terrible.

However, here’s an interesting benefit I found in Middle Age, the Marital Power Shift. I’ve learned two things about marriage and power. There’s a lot of power in marriage and I don’t much of it. Almost no one my gender does, and according to my father, never will except.. the moron crowd. And since I’ve already established that they’re happier than the rest of us..

But in our middle age we can hope, cautiously for course, to achieve détente.

Here’s how this typically happens. There’s only a couple things in a marriage that folks consistently fight about I’ve noticed, sex and money. And typically one partner is very concerned about one, and the other partner is very concerned about the other, and no one is good at both. Not that I’m suggesting anything about my marriage, but I’ve done an enormous amount of field research in this area, typically employing alcohol to ensure accuracy. The data I’ve accumulated has come through countless interviews and surveys I’ve conducted over the years. It would be my pleasure to share with you what I’ve observed.

There is 99.05% correlation between gender and thing a partner cares about, sex or money. I don’t want to give away the results ‘cause you might stop reading, it might be a surprise for someone.

The Power Shift as I call it, typically occurs in ones mid 40’s. In one seminal moment the marriage changes completely. It happens like this, the female partner will, as they say “make a move”, initiate whoppie what ever you want to call it, and the male partner will say some version of the following

“not tonight, I’m getting up early” or some other excuse.

And you thought you felt the earth move before.

For the dude words I’ve heard to describe this are “emancipated”, “free”, my friend Eric said “the shackles came off”. In his case I’m not sure we were talking about the same thing as he’d been drinking and I’m pretty sure I saw fur lined handcuffs under his sofa years ago.

For women the experience is very different. Most of them haven’t been turned down since before they were married, and this event is often the trigger for their own little mid-life crises. Where as we men look for motorcycles, fast cars or au pairs with poor eyesight and expensive tastes to regain the feelings of our youth, the female mid life crisis is different. It involves a lot of glances at their behinds and upper arms in the mirror and engaging intense study of their upper lips for some reason. That and they start calling their mothers for advice for the first time in 20 years.

What’s the big deal? One of the subjects I interviewed noted, “we spend 25 years working out a perfectly good system of rewards and all of a sudden HE decides he wants to go for a bike ride instead?” Another one of my wives friends summed her feelings on her first “not tonight” event; all I could think was how in the hell am I going to get anything done around here anymore.

You’re going to get things done the same way we men have done it, through open and honest negotiations. This could be one of the few benefits of getting older.

 

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