Young Adulting

 Lately, I've been involved in a series of conversations with our recently graduated daughter about budgeting and unhappy realities like insurance. She needs to get her own car insurances, since she is now on her own.  Only one of her 3 older brothers has his own car. The other two are now in Boston using public transport.  I didn't walk through the options for deductibles, collision and comprehensive coverage, and liability with the oldest, although perhaps I should have. How do you learn that it hurts to have a $1000 deductible when you have a couple car incidences in a row? (hence we once again are paying more for the $500 deductible, which I am grateful for as we just bought a new windshield for the new car after a rock created a chip that grew much too quickly and aggressively in the Texas heat vs. a/c combo.) 

I've been promising a life skills tutorial. I'm envisioning crafting something like a power point +video narration for all the young adults, but it's one of those projects that I've started and never finished because it grew too complex. I did make a really great video about how to clean a toilet and a bathtub WELL - not just a swab with a Clorox wipe. Think heavy duty cleansers, wiry scrubbers, and a lot of elbow grease. 

I do intend to finish this powerpoint at some point. I've started one that divides adult skills into the four pillars of formation - mind, body, soul, and community.  In the "mind" category, I have finances and lifelong learning. In "body," I have health care information and living space care ideas - because where else do I put that?  Then I made a couple slides for "faith" - one for personal and one for communal practices. And then I have a random assortment of  "community" topics - voting, taxes, keeping up with current events - to an extent, volunteering/giving back, hospitality. But here's where it gets complicated = taxes are really with finances.  House keeping could grow too large.  I haven't included car care yet. Beautifying the home could actually fall under mind or soul or finances. 

And really, I need to share the marriage resources I have compiled over the years with all the kids. I have all these thoughts and articles and another powerpoint somewhere that we used to use with marriage prep that now my own kids are ready for. But I haven't ever sat down with them as we have with engaged couples we aren't related to. 

And what other information do I want to tell them? There is so much to learn in a short lifetime; surely, I should give my kids some shortcuts to wisdom?

The reality is that they will figure out their own way of doing things - just like they have in the kitchen.  They'll share laughs about mom's housekeeping videos when she was no great shakes at house cleaning. I have thoughts; I just haven't acted on them all! 

Would it be great to have a resource to turn to when starting out in life? Or is it more fun to figure it out on your own? I don't remember getting much advice from my parents about how to do taxes and buy insurance - I just was aware that they did these things, so we should, too. I remember my mom teaching me to use a toilet bowl brush, but I don't remember having to scrub the shower tile grout - she did that.

And maybe that's all kids need: an example of action. Here's hoping we've modeled those ideals and practices we wrote about in our marriage prep presentations and patched together as we went along. 

Early Summer at the Lake

 You know, I never did finish my travelogue about spring break. And since then, we've been on several other trips. 

To review: we finished our spring break vacation with a short stay in Boston with family. I rented a car, and we drove to Providence, RI, to check out Providence College with our HS junior before heading north to MA. We also stopped at Holy Cross in Worcester, which has beautiful buildings, but no one was around, and we didn't stay to tour. College decisions are looming. Boston College was our third college visit of the trip, but most of that stay was centered around reconnecting with our son, cousins, and some old friends from our home schooling days in Norfolk, VA, who also now live in Massachussetts.  It was a delight to reconnect with them. We've seen them a few times since moving from Virginia in 2009, but we always pick up right where we left off. 

The same thing happened earlier in the month when met up first with family and then with friends from graduate school in Michigan.  We spent the first week of June soaking in sunny, mild days on Crystal Lake with my extended family. The weather was perfect.  There were some ups and downs with as many people were there wanting to do different things, but overall the memories we will hold on to are good - a bonfire with s'mores and a beautiful sunset, skipping stones at the Point Betsie lighthouse, bike rides around the lake with lunch at the Jewish deli in the middle of the ride, beach time and canoe trips, a short hike to the dunes, racing up Sleeping Bear dunes, ice cream at the Cool Spot and beach volleyball at the Frankfort pier, lots of pickle ball and communal suppers, a trip to the Farmer's Market and some souvenir shopping. In addition to all these activities, there was time to remember trips to the lake in childhood. E. B. White's essay echoed in my mind. I still gnawed on the question of what direction to take in this next stage in life - not just about whether to take the middle school job (which I have turned down, but keep thinking about), but about where to live and what to do with the years we have left. What are the values and activities I want to give time and thought to?)

Following the family reunion week, we spent a couple additional days with other cousins and the graduate school friends. The kids all got along well after the initial awkwardness of introductions. The 7-10 year old girls (4 of them) were immediate best friends, while the teenagers took a little longer to warm up. Pickle ball was a great equalizer and source of entertainment. Since the weather was messy, we also played cards, drank a lot of coffee, ate pastries and fruit, and took some misty hikes to Lake Michigan on the Old Indian Trail and to Empire Dunes. There was quiet time for reading in the mornings as the teens slept in, and the adults engaged in meaningful conversation to our hearts' content - also about what gives life meaning in this second half. How do we live out our callings? 

Over Memorial Day weekend, in celebration of my 50th birthday, I also had the opportunity to reunite with a couple of college friends and a cousin who is a nun in Nashville. We were a bit surprised by the skankiness of downtown Nashville - I'm not sure what we were expecting, but it was not the alcohol drenched, sweaty mess of the bars on Broadway. After our initial exposure, we avoided the area as much as we could since our hotel was downtown, and instead made trips to bookstores, cute coffee shops, a winery, a state park for a long hike, and to the convent where my cousin lives for a visit and historical tour. Again, lots of opportunity for deep conversations and sharing successes and struggles. Again, opportunity for reflection on where I am going in life and on how I can serve. 

As a travelogue, this is not providing much in the way of recommendations for destinations and good restaurants. I can cross travel writer off my list of potential careers.  After all of these long talks and opportunities for contemplation, reading, and discussion while on the road, I feel fairly sure that teaching is where my skill set lies, and that relationships are what bring salt and light to life, and that teaching allows me to form relationships with the world, as well as to continue to nurture my family in whatever way that looks as a parent to adult children - and a nine year old.  I still feel unsettled about whether I continue pursue teaching in higher ed or move to primary/secondary. My thoughts on where I serve best continue to shift. I just finished a book that provided a lot to cogitate upon, A Sacred Voice is Calling by John Neafsey, a Catholic psychologist, a discussion of which I'll save for another post, 

Instead a few photos: 

  

Turning 50 and celebrating 27 years of marriage

Happy Birthday to me! And Happy Anniversary to us!

Last week, I crossed the half century mark.  This feels much more momentous than turning 40.  I thought I wrote a bucket list on this blog about turning 40, but I can't find it just now - I didn't label it birthdays and I didn't write it in April, May or June 2013, around the time I would have turned 40. So I don't know if I did those things I thought I might do - I didn't run another marathon or do more writing. However, looking for it reminded me of those blessed years in Guam. What an experience! I know I complained about the hardships, but I am so, so thankful we said yes to those orders despite the fear.

(Thought: Would I feel the same way if I said yes to the job offer? Saying yes is usually more rewarding than saying no - I have never been good at saying no, and I usually look a little askance at articles that encourage nay saying.)

Side note: Those posts also reminded me to share the request for prayers for the island of Guam after it was walloped by a typhoon earlier this week. Thanks be, there were no deaths, but the destruction was overwhelming.  It will take years to recover. 

And yet, no doubt Guam will recover.  It is truly a testimony to the human spirit that so human beings have lived for so long on islands where natural disasters occur at regular intervals. ***

To celebrate our midcentury birthdays, a couple friends and I met up in Nashville this past weekend.  We picked Nashville as a central location and because it has a reputation for being a fun place to visit - we had a great visit with each other, but downtown Nashville caters to drunken bridal parties, drunken birthday parties, and drunken partiers. No wonder my young adult children teased me for going to Nashville for a "Girls' weekend." Opportunities for drinking abound, but we are not those kind of girls. We had to hunt to find places for a quiet dinner with delicious food near our hotel where we didn't have to shout at each other.  Our days were more pleasant: we visited book stores, strolled through Centennial park and the Parthenon and the campus of Vanderbilt, went for a long hike on the outskirts of town, and visited the convent where my cousin the Nashville Dominican lives. Not your traditional girls' weekend itinerary. We did, admittedly, visit a winery on the grounds of what was a plantation - we strolled the grounds and tasted wine and spent about 3 hours over lunch. It was a beautiful day. 

Had we done any research, we probably would have realized we weren't Nashville's typical tourists, but we all were busy, and it's hard to get a feel for a place without actually being there. 

This is the first time I've done anything like this with friends. Something new every decade! I can't come up with a bucket list right now, but I hope it includes more time with adult children, family, and with friends and finding a place to finally settle down where those adult kids and friends and family want to come to visit.

To celebrate our anniversary, we are talking about going out to eat and then dancing at the Broken Spoke, the two stepping place that is family friendly.  But we also had the neighbors over last night to celebrate our neighbor's bday - also 50 - and we visited a lot later than I expected, so we'll see if we have the energy when 7 pm rolls around.  We haven't done much entertaining this spring, so socializing has been a treat.  I feel like I've read a few articles and/or book reviews lately about entertaining. It certainly was a lot easier in our old neighborhood where we could walk a block or two to a friends' house to visit, and we belonged to groups that socialized - work, book club, parish groups, etc.  It's harder in the suburbs both to join those kinds of groups and to socialize. There has been one work event in two years - a reception for an artist doing a project on campus - although we talked about hosting a Christmas party, but never pulled it off. I think people would be relish the opportunity to connect outside of work, at least based on what these recent columns have written. 

I feel I should set some goals or review some memories to mark these events - twenty-seven years of marriage is not a milestone, but it is something to celebrate. Marriage in some ways has gotten easier over the years - we know each other pretty well, we share a lot of wonderful memories, we trust each other even more implicitly than we did before. But there are still challenges we are learning to navigate in this season of life - those challenges are still often about parenting and our relationships with adult children.  We struggle to find time to have meaningful conversations, not just listing to-do items or recounting the day's agenda, and sometimes those conversations are difficult when they are about the future. We still grate on each other over issues we've rarely agreed about - frequently money: how much money to spend and how much to save. But at least we know I'll be the frugal voice and he'll be the enjoy life voice. And often we meet in the middle.  I know my indecisiveness and anxiety can drive him crazy, and our sleep habits still don't often align - I'm still a night owl while he still gets up early. So we both could use more sleep. 

But we both also appreciate each other more. We both are thankful for this life we've built, even if it looks nothing like we imagined, as the cliches suggest.  Being comfortable with each other is a great gift that I didn't realize I would value so much.  And I imagine that comfort with each other will continuue to ripen into a richer relationship as the years roll on. 

And that also goes for these relationships with my college friends. We picked up right where we were last - a short visit a couple years ago when we first decided we needed more time, a whole weekend, to spend together revisiting the happy days of the past, sharing current struggles, being grateful for our friendships and marriages and children, and looking forward to what's to come and how to make the most of life. 

This is all very sentimental - birthdays and anniversaries can bring that on. So here's to many more!