I think I finally figured it out...

Saturday, Jun. 28, 2008 - 3:59 p.m.

Is it something to do with middle age?

Several of my friends and acquaintances have recently been commenting about feeling the need to clean house, to let go of things. (OK, more than several. Maybe as high as 50% of the diarists I read regularly, which, granted, isn’t a whole lot.) I’ve been wondering, is it something in the air???

Having no idea that so many others were going through the same thing, Mom and I slowly began talking more and more about the burden of possessions and letting go. It was sort of triggered by the mess my brother left when he died, but I can’t blame it on that, because even though at the time Mom vowed out loud and I vowed to myself that I did not want to leave anybody with the kind of mess Dallas left us with, neither of us really did a thing about it till we started gradually thinking and talking more and more about it maybe a couple years ago. I started the Organizing Project, but then life got in the way. Now I’m determined to make some headway despite life.

So, anyway, reading all those diary entries and talking to people made me wonder what was going on. And I think I finally came up with an answer, and it’s really very simple. I guess I never really thought about it before, but most of my buddies are around my age, or at least close enough to be in the same “generation” (tail-end baby boomers). I think we’re hitting a “transition age” in our lives. We are old enough to have the wisdom to understand the lack of value in “just things.” We are old enough to realize we have accumulated way too many meaningless “things.” We are old enough to start having health issues and are beginning to have to face our own mortality. But we are young enough (barely) to still have hope for improvement, for change and still strong enough (barely) to carry out the effort involved in working towards a better life. And we realize it’s now or never. Those of us who have parents still living see that they are getting elderly. We witness their accomplishments, or their regrets, and we measure ourselves against them. And they are naturally at a stage of divesting themselves of possessions, and I’m sure that’s rubbing off on us.

But getting back to the more personal and less general… We are also at the age where we are turning into caregivers for our parents, whether we want to or not. You would think, being a professional caregiver, that this would be a natural transition for me. It’s not. I’m fighting it with every fiber of my being. Every instinct screams that Mom’s my mom and she’s supposed to be taking care of me. (I’m afraid her instincts scream the same thing.) It’s different with Dad. We have always taken care of Dad. Mom, primarily, and we kids filled in as needed. Dad has always had a caretaker. He has never truly needed to be responsible for anything in his life but his cattle. (And I can’t fault his care of them. It just would have been nice if the family had received equal priority.) But Mom’s always taken care of everybody. She is relieved to the point of tears when somebody else takes over something, but she certainly doesn’t expect anybody to help her even now. She’s been the calm, level-headed one. It’s been so strange to have her calling me in tears when Dad has landed in the hospital. She only ever cried on the phone when she called to tell me somebody in the family had died. But she’s been in tears a lot lately, between my aunt’s cancer (which, BTW, they discovered isn’t as bad as they had thought, thank God), the stress of feeling like she had to choose between Dad and my aunt, and even the wonderful news of Brenda’s pregnancy. But, anyway, Mom is supposed to be around forever, and everything in me is protesting the realization that she won’t be. It’s hard to have the discussions of what we will need to do depending on who goes first, Mom or Dad. I can’t imagine life without either one of them. I think I will hurt almost as much for whichever of them survives as I will for myself. Sometimes I wonder how I could go on without Mom. My sisters all have husbands and families. I only have Mom and Dad. Once they’re gone, I’ll have nobody. Is it selfish of me to wish I could be a priority in somebody’s life? I know my sisters love me, but I fit into their lives somewhere behind husbands, kids, and jobs. I’m not resentful of that—it’s as it should be. I would never want to come between my sisters and their families. It’s just that I’m lonesome in anticipation… Talk about borrowing trouble!

Now that I’ve mentally committed to moving out to the farm, I don’t want to wait two years. I would move this summer if I could. But there is no way on earth I could come up with that kind of money. Right now two years seems to stretch into eternity, although I did notice one thing on my consolidation loan that made me feel slightly better. When I started paying on it two years ago, I rounded up the amount due by maybe a buck to make it an even hundred figure. But I’ve been paying that rounded-up amount the entire time. I noticed on the last statement that the amount due had dropped. So it was only by $10 or so over two years, but that’s still an extra $10 a month I’m paying on the loan now, compared to a buck two years ago. That’s going to increase exponentially as the principal (and hence the interest) drops as I continue to overpay. Sure, never by a whopping amount, but it’s still a great feeling to look at my statement and see tangible evidence of my shrinking debt.

I’m rearranging priorities again, too. I decided I am not going to put the trim boards on my trailer. They would look really nice, but, if I’m going to get rid of the thing in two years, it’s not worth the time investment. My time would be better spent working inside the place. I’m not going to paint the garage, either, unless Roberta makes me. She said it was OK last year so long as I painted the trim, and I did, and I don’t it’s going to look any worse this year. Why should I bother painting the garage if I’m going to tear it down or sell it? I do have to put my security light back up—it’s hanging from the wires, and I know it’s not safe. I can’t believe Roberta hasn’t yelled at me for that yet. Anyway, I decided I cannot handle another summer like last summer, spending my precious time at home frantically painting. Um, no. Mow the lawn, mess with the gardens… Those are chores I generally enjoy. (The mowing depends on my mood.) And they are going very well this year, actually. Nobody, including Roberta herself, is mowing their lawn as frequently this year, so when I skip a week, my lawn doesn’t look any worse than the neighbors’. So… Now I have a bunch of 1x4s taking up room in my garage that I need to deal with. I’ll have to get some sawhorses or something to get them off the ground and stack them better. I don’t have a way to haul them out to the farm where they might get used.

The summer is already a third gone, and I don’t have a thing to show for it but work. That’s depressing. On the plus side… I keep forgetting that I am not bound by the “traditional” months of summer, like I was back during my school days. Summer lasts for me as long as the weather stays nice, and September is usually the nicest month of the year. I won’t have any more or less time then than I’ll have had at any point during the summer. And, really, I should be proud of myself. The last “vacation”—as in scheduled “down” time, not just not happening to be working—was in December when I brought Cloudy home, and I had to field calls every day begging me to work. And, despite having too little work all May, I got by, and planned two more weeks of vacation! I took close to a full week off a bit ago, and now Tuesday I’m starting another week, although it’s technically a working vacation. (I chose not to work any night shifts, like I thought I might. I really do need a break.) I’ve made a big deal to Mom and Dad about it being a vacation for me, because Mom’s been so worried about me taking the time off. But I really do need the time to get stuff done!

I’ve also started on my plan to spend fewer nights at the farm, since that is the only way to give my cats more time. Instead of coming out the night before I plan to spend a day at the farm, I’ve been just going out the next day as early as I can, and staying one night instead of two. It isn’t much, but it makes me feel a bit better, and, night owl that I am, it does give me more time to get stuff done, even though it means even less sleep in the long run. But I’ve also been giving in and picking up extra shifts as needed. It hasn’t been excessive, maybe one night a week, and I do need to restock both my Brownie points and my bank balance.

Overall, I’m pleased. I’m satisfied that, if I’m not on the right track yet, at least I’m heading in the right direction. I keep wishing that I’d gotten started sooner, but there’s no point in regrets, and, how do I know I wasn’t meant to be doing all the other things I’ve done? Maybe I’ve finally paid my dues and it is time for me to start making my own life a priority.

I have no idea where my life is heading. I have a general idea where I want it to go, a goal to point myself towards, but I have no clue how I’ll get there. And that’s OK. I’ve lived enough to know that it’s possible my destination will change completely and halfway there I’ll switch to a completely different path. I have a plan, but plans can be changed. Still, I feel like I can see the road ahead much more clearly than I could have when I was younger. And, you know, I think maybe that’s the thing about this age. When a person is young, life stretches out ahead in an endless, vague path that can take any number of twists and turns. I think by the time a person hits 40, the path starts to become more clear. Some forks become no longer available. Other forks are still there, but no longer appeal to us. Still other forks appeal to us more than they ever would have twenty years ago. I think maybe this clarity is helping us to straighten out our priorities. And so, we want to clean house and get rid of “stuff” that’s only weighing us down, really, slowing us down.

And that is why we are all in downsizing and housecleaning (physical and mental) mode. I do love it when I finally figure something out! (But if you have a different theory, I’d be interested to hear it.)

BTW, the Wyndspirit’s Wanderings essay below is a copy of an entry I did here for Father’s Day. I showed it to Mom last week and she asked me to post it as an essay. I didn’t get around to it till today when I was test-driving HTML editors with my different websites.

Currently reading: Prince of Dogs, by Kate Elliott

Number of books read this year: 45 Pages: 9,690