TheBanyanTree: On Being 50

Sun May 15 06:06:44 PDT 2005

I’ve lived for a half century.  Unbelievable!  I’m the same age as
Disneyland.  When I was a little girl, going to Disneyland was for the
wealthy, now it’s something almost everyone does, but it’s usually going to
Disney World in Orlando.

I grew up in a “Leave it to Beaver” white middle class suburban neighborhood
where most of the mothers stayed home with their kids.  Some of the mothers
would coffee klatch in the morning and my mother wasn’t a part of that group
and I know it irked her.  She was social by nature and it became a goal of
hers to win acceptance in that group.   And by the time my younger sister
was in high school, my mother was a card carrying member of the Gerald
Avenue “friends” as I liked to call them.

These moms weren't’t “soccer moms.”  They didn't’t haul their kids around
from activity to the next.  They stayed home and cleaned and cooked and
sewed and gardened and worked on some creative activities.  If we wanted to
go somewhere, we rode our bikes or walked.  I took piano lessons and I was
in band and church choir and Girl Scouts, but if I wanted to get there, I
had my trusty bike.  I read like crazy during the summer and my trusty bike
always took me to the library to get my books.  Our parents weren't’t that
involved in or obsessed about our lives in the ways parents are now.

TV was limited back then.  I watched Captain Kangaroo and Romper Room and if
I didn't’t have school, I was kicked out of the house to play outside after
those shows were over.  We watched TV together as a family in the evening.
There was no remote, so we had to get up and change the channel if we wanted
to watch something else.  In fact, we only had five channels to pick from,
so it was pretty easy to decide what to watch.  And TV shows ended around
midnight.  There was no 24 hours a day TV.  It was rare for a family to have
more than one TV and owning a color TV meant your family had a little bit
more money than most.

Phones were dial.  Our phone number was Spring 7-3425 or SP7-3425 and then
became 777-3425.  We didn't’t have a party line, but they were still fairly
common when I was in grade school.  My mother never called my dad at work
unless it was absolute emergency.

My parents smoked.  There were no smoking bans.  You could walk through a
store and smoke at the same time.  I began smoking, too, when I was 21.  I
could smoke in the library at the U of M and I could smoke at my desk when I
got my first “real” job out of college.  I remember flying to Europe when I
was 21 and chain smoking all the way there.

We had a small family with just three children.  Most of the families around
us had four, five, six, seven, and the largest had 10.

We were a white neighborhood.  There were a few black families moving out to
the suburbs from the inner city of St. Paul by the time I got into fifth and
sixth grades.  It wasn’t a big deal to anyone.  In fact, when I was in
seventh grade, one of my classmate’s parents were mixed – father black and
mother white.  Carmen was beautiful as well as her sisters and smart, and no
one thought anything of it.  Carmen was one of the most popular people in
our class.  Some of us began to date interracially in high school.

However, I wasn’t really exposed to multi-cultures until college, and then
it exploded all around me.  My alma mater is the University of Minnesota, a
monstrous campus which attracts students from all over the world.  I’ve
traveled to Europe and now Central America and have learned people are just
people.  We all want the same basic things.  I have no fear of people who
have darker skin than I do.  In fact, I want to move deeper into the city to
experience that multi-ethnic edge rather than running as far away as I can
to the outer suburbs where I’ll be “safe” with my fellow white suburbanites.

I didn't’t know what sexual intercourse was until I was in seventh grade.
It seemed to me it was a dirty, nasty thing that married couples did only
because they wanted to have children.  You see, I grew up watching “I Love
Lucy” with Desi and Lucy sleeping in separate beds.  Sex was non-existent in
the 50s, at least, publicly.  Of course, learning about gays and lesbians
was far away in the future.

I’m a little too young to have participated in the Vietnam War protests.
The 60s were the passionate years.  People cared about civil rights, the
slaughter in Vietnam, and doing the right thing.  Now we’re a generation of
people who allow a moron to be president, tear apart our environment, create
ethnic tensions between Muslims and Christians, and watch from a distance
while our fellow Americans get slaughtered in Iraq.

My generation has gone from the simple hippy lifestyle to materialistic
mavens, who own homes that are way too big, drive SUVs which drink up
gallons of gas, are obese, and spend hours watching TV instead of being
outside.  What happened to us?

As for me, I feel a need to begin down-sizing myself.  I don’t care if my
car is getting old.  I want to begin using public transportation and now our
legislature is trying to think of ways to cut it.  I want to live in a
smaller house.  I want to have less stuff.  I have too many clothes and I’m
trying not to buy more.  I have too many books.

I have a job that demands more and more of my time.  I can put up with this,
because the job gives me incredible learning opportunities, but I can see a
time in the not too distant future, that I’ll want a job stocking shelves at
Target.  When I punch out, the job stays there until I punch in the next
day.  My current job follows me around like a spooky shadow no matter where
I am.

I was miserable in high school and in fact, I tried to kill myself.  I was
fat and ugly and an introvert, which doomed me in my high school years.  But
as my life kept moving along, it got better.  I blossomed in college and
lost my weight.  I fell in love a million times and found good friends.  I
became part of a group.  I’ve been able to have financially rewarding jobs.
I’ve been married and had a child and now have two grandsons.  I own a home.
I quit smoking.  And I found what real love is all about through Ray.

So I’m 50.  50 more years to go?  I know darn well I’ll never be able to
retire at 65.  I won’t have the money.  I’ll keep working until I drop over.
I want to go back to school and get a master’s degree in something.  I want
a smaller house.  I want to stay healthy and at relatively acceptable weight
and in relatively good shape.  I want more time for my hobbies and
interests.  I want to be passionate about what goes on around me.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

They say that age is all in your mind.  The trick is keeping it from
creeping down into your body.  ~Author Unknown