Today I Am 71

Holy cow! How did that happen?

I am in a beautiful rental house on Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands with my friend Kizzie. We are on a writing retreat which doesn’t stop us from touring the island and enjoying all the sights and shops and eateries. Lopez has a wonderful bakery where they should know us by name already. We visited Agate Beach and hiked out to Shark Reef. We ate Halibut tacos with mango salsa and went to a jazz concert at a local winery. Today we took the ferry to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island and wandered around the shops there. I had a delicious crab BLT at the Downriggers restaurant with a view of the harbor and marina. What a wonderful life they live here. The pace is slow and everyone seems to have time to wave and take time to talk.

We have a lovely view from our rental and have converted the kitchen table into our computer desk. I can write and look up to see the ferry go by as well as numerous small boats and sail ships. The water is a lovely shade of blue and calm with just enough of a breeze to fill the sails of the little ships tacking around the bay. The only sound is the quiet lap of water below our perch on the cliff and the occasional toot from an arriving ferry.

I think I could get used to this. I suppose the charm would diminish when winter arrives and the storms roll in, but even then the view would be beautiful. A quick look at the local real estate magazine reveals that I can only live here if I win the lottery so I will have to settle for an occasional visit and store up sweet island memories of a slower, friendlier life.
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My Grandson is Rated "M"

I visited my grandson Douglas in sunny Arizona last week and got to thinking about all the things kids are exposed to today that we never even imagined when I was young. Kids today hear things and see things that were either forbidden or beyond the imagination of most of my contemporaries—at least until they went to Viet Nam. There’s more blood, violence, sex and verbal trash than I can get my old mind around. And don’t even start with the piercings and tattoos. (Not that Douglas has any--yet.)

When I was 19, my husband went to the San Francisco airport to buy a copy of "Peyton Place" which wasn’t available any place else. It was titillating and everyone was reading it. I found it shocking but now it would be laughable, even to me!

I think “old folks” have been complaining about the youth of the day ever since we lived in caves. “Yeah, the mastodons were bigger when I was learning to hunt. We had to drive them over the cliffs with sticks and now the modern kids have spears. They have no respect for what we went through and no appreciation for us inventing spears. Lazy, darn good for nothings…”

They complained in ancient Rome and American settlers did their share of complaining too. “Oh, yeah, I walked from Boston to Oregon territory and now these kids just want to loaf and live off the fat of the land. Always off fishing or chasing some Indian girl. They don’t know what real hardship is.”

Well, I could go on, but you get the idea. It’s a built-in mechanism that seems as sure as joint deterioration and forgetfulness. Maybe we don’t die of old age but just get sick of our own obsolescence. We need to make way for a new generation of complainers.

Meanwhile, my grandson still enjoys a spirited game of UNO and so all is not lost.

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