CLOSING THE GAP

I am writing this from the family room of my daughter's spacious home in the hills at the edge of Austin, Texas. My wife and I are making one of our regular visits to our grandchildren, who go whizzing by us in pursuit of their own youthful ends. They barely stop long enough to acknowledge our presence, except with a perfunctory "Hi papa, Hi Nana - lova ya." And they're gone.

I think about what I wrote in "Don't be Blindsided By Retirement." I hoped that the book would be of some comfort to other retirees trying to give some shape to their lives, but more inmportant, that the grandchildren would want to know what made their grandparents move. What do we care about? How meaningful is life for us?

A year or so ago I told my oldest grandson, now a hulking 21, that if he wanted to know "who" Papa was, he should Google my name. (I am sorry that the Google entries do not begin to tell readers about my life, and contain countless entries about my "career" in film and my years in radio, but precious little about other things I have done. But hey - sic trasnsit gloria mundi.) My grandson gave the Google stuff a cursory look and went on to other things. It isn't that they don't care. They have lives to live and I get the impression that they think I have already lived mine, so what's the big deal?

Sorry if that sounds a bit weepy and self-pitying. The last thing you want in the
"twilight" years, is self-pity.

My best feelings rise up when, as we did yesterday, we went for brunch with our daughter and son-in-law and with their neighbours. He is a wealthy entrepreneur with a "how to" busines sbook in circulation. He spoke as one who is genuinely interested in what i have to say. Because I was, for many years after my public life evaporated, a media trainer, he was especially drawn to my comments about his book and about how he would appear to the general business reader.

Because my wife and I continue to actively pursue new learning and new experiences, we get the sometimes gratuitous but mostly complimentary comment that "You two are remarkably unlike MY parents. You are still alive and ticking." They are especially impressed when they hear of our plans to "live" in Paris for four months, and to improve our fluency in the language. I am sure that behind the praise, there is the puzzling over why, at our age, we want to improve our language skills. The young have the notion that age brings with it a need to sinply "smell the roses." Hell, I know what a rose smells like!

I am not sure what their parents must be like, The truth is that we have friends who are the same age as we are, most a bit younger, who continue to pursue active lives -extensive travel, organized study, and above all, a consuming interest in the world around them. Some continue to work. One who is two or three years older that me, still goes to his Press Council office every day. Another is still seen regularly on television news commenting about the world around us, and still visiting many of the world's hot spots. My very best and oldest friend, (we were highv school buddies and he was best man at my wedding) is now touring India with his wife. They continue to learn, taking university courses and writing essays. He, who was a psychologist with a PhD now produces superb documentary creations. His travels are exciting and he spend hours at his editing suite making his tapes as as professional as possible.

For active older people our interests are current, not of the "I don't know what the world is coming to" type, who seems always to be looking back to when times were better and life was not so complicated.

Why do I continue to write for this blog believing that there must be people who want to share some of my ideas? Exactly that. We have things to say to each other. I can't survive by having my children's generation marvel at my energy. It's simply not enough.