Holiday Letters

This blog is written by Lee Gale Gruen to help Baby Boomers, seniors, retirees, and those soon to retire find joy, excitement, and satisfaction in life after retirement. Her public lecture on this subject is titled: “Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement.” Her memoir, Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class, is available by clicking here Amazon.com. Click here for her website:  http://AdventuresWithDadTheBook.com

Now, on to my blog:

This time of year, I usually receive a plethora of holiday letters via email or snail mail from various family members, friends, or even acquaintances.  The contents usually follow a formula: recapping the sender’s year with snippets of what they and their loved ones have done during that time.  I don’t know how or when this practice started, but I don’t remember it in the first half of my life.

I usually hate those missives because, more often than not, they’re filled with fairy-tale wonderfulness making my life pale in comparison.   Everything seems to have a positive spin.  It might read: “Hyacinth is loving her new college.”  Of course, I know that Hyacinth was expelled from her old college for having drugs in her dorm room, and that she did a short stint in the local jail with some follow-up community service as a result.  Maybe it informs us:  “Maxwell finally fulfilled his longtime dream of leaving his old firm of Smith, Jones, and McGillicuddy and starting his own company.”  Unwritten is that Maxwell was booted out from SJ&M for shoddy work, and his new company headquarters  is located behind the house in a 6×8 metal shed furnished with a card table and cinder block bookcase.

We all have our ups and downs–our positives and negatives.  A full dose launched in our direction of just one or the other is a turnoff, no matter in what form it is delivered.  We all compare ourselves to each other, and when one constantly presents as wonderful, blessed, and fortunate, it becomes tiresome and boring.  Conversely, when one bemoans and whines about most things, it becomes tiresome and boring.

Those two extremes, everything is wonderful or everything is terrible, are usually performed with a hidden motive.  The former is a type of one-upmanship.  At its essence, it is bragging–mine is better than yours.  The latter is a form of victimhood to suck more than the practitioner’s share from the attention pool.

If you must send or email a holiday letter, tell us what really happened, not just the Pollyanna version, but be careful not to overload it with poor-me isms.  We can see through it all, and we may repay you in kind.

Remember to enjoy your holiday season like a guileless child without an agenda and not use it as a tool to manipulate.  With that, I leave you with my holiday letter:

****LEE GALE GRUEN’S  2019  HOLIDAY  LETTER****

Happy and Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Posadas Navideñas, Solstice, or (fill in the holiday of your choice.)  Just want to bring you up-to-speed on how wonderful, terrific, amazing, incredible, and (fill in any positive adjective) my life has been this past year. 

In January, I completed blah, blah, blah!

In February, my son was elected blah, blah, blah!

In March, my oldest grandchild started blah, blah, blah!

In April, my dog learned blah, blah, blah!

In May, I was awarded blah, blah, blah!

In June, my youngest grandchild was chosen blah, blah, blah!

In July, my daughter finished blah, blah, blah!

In August, I traveled to blah, blah, blah!

In September, my middle grandchild mastered blah, blah, blah!

In October, my friends threw me a blah, blah, blah!

In November, I bought a blah, blah, blah!

And this month, December, I’m finally able to tell you all about it and make you drool.

Have a stupendous holiday season, but not as good as mine, of course!

***

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The Day I Became Ma’am

This blog is written by Lee Gale Gruen to help Baby Boomers, seniors, retirees, and those soon to retire find joy, excitement, and satisfaction in life after retirement. Her public lecture on this subject is titled: “Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement.” Her memoir, Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class, is available by clicking here Amazon.com. Click here for her website: http://AdventuresWithDadTheBook.com

CHITCHAT:  I have changed my banner photo on this blog website as I’m sure my regular followers have noticed.  For those of you who receive my blog in other forms, click here to see the new banner photo: LeeGaleGruen.wordpress.com.  It is now a picture of me at a book fair selling my memoir, Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class.  However, that is the only thing that has changed.  The blog and its theme are the same.

Now, on to my blog:

Some events make an immediate and abrupt change in our lives.  When you have a baby, one moment you’re not the parent of (insert the long pondered name you gave your adorable offspring), and the next moment you are, and your life is never the same. When you’re involved in a major accident, one moment you don’t have four broken limbs and a fractured skull, and the next moment you do, and your life is never the same.

Most changes to our lives, however, come on minutely with the aging process. We don’t notice it as the progression is so gradual.  It’s only over months or more likely years that we clock the transformations.

Of course, you evolve from instant to instant.  But, what is the exact moment that you morphed from one major phase of your life to the next? I remember the day someone first called me ma’am. I was in my late teens and still felt like a kid. I was crossing a busy intersection directed by a police officer who was hurrying people along.

“Move it, ma’am,” he yelled in an irritated voice.

I didn’t even know who he was talking to, but I was sure it wasn’t me.  After all, I certainly wasn’t old enough to be a ma’am. I glanced at him and saw that he was glaring at me impatiently as he waved his arms directing the traffic.  It shocked me; I’d never been called ma’am before. When did I go from being a miss to a ma’am?

I’m now asking that question in my senior years. When was the day, the hour, the minute, the second that I actually became a senior? I’m not sure? I look in the mirror and wonder who that is gazing back at me pondering the same question.

It’s hard passing through the stages of our lives.  However, we have no choice.  If we’re alive, we can only move forward toward the inescapable, like it or not.  The takeaway here is that our mental thoughts and emotional identity often lag behind our physical strength and appearance. What we think of ourselves is not necessarily how the world views us. We must be aware of the difference between the two.  That leaves the only consideration: how we deal with it.

Some rail against aging, trying as hard as they can to avoid it, reject it, disguise it.  You may convince yourself that you’ve done so, but it’s not true.  Others can see through your little guise even if you can’t or choose not to.

Being a ma’am didn’t make me any different than I was the day before.  It’s just a word, not a description of my character, personality, lifestyle, and beliefs.  I’m no longer the immature young woman I was then having transformed ever so slowly into the mature senior I am now.  That process was going to happen no matter my machinations along the journey.

So, one alternative is to accept and embrace your age whatever it may be at any moment.  Stop fighting the process and go with the flow as the kids say.  It will make your life easier, richer, and more enjoyable as you amble along that inevitable path.

***

Please forward my blog to anyone who might be interested and post it on your Facebook, Twitter and other social media. To reprint any material, contact me for permission at:  gowergulch@yahoo.com. If you want to be automatically notified when I post a new blog, click on the “Follow” button in the upper right corner of this page and fill in the information. To read my other blog posts, scroll down on this page or click on “Recent Posts” or “Archives” under the Follow button. To opt out of receiving this blog, contact me at the aforementioned email address, let me know, and I’ll remove you from the list.

Photo credit: Björn Söderqvist via VisualHunt.com /  CC BY-SA