Kathleen Norton March 25, 2011 -
Boomer Times: Thanks to Robert RedfordAs beefcake photos go, it was not the most revealing.
The subject was covered from the neck down in pants, a winter coat and a scarf.
He also sported minor jowls, a head of hair that is surely dyed and lines around his eyes that crinkled like tissue paper. Still.
Robert Redford looked so good that I did not mind if my neighbors saw me standing at the mailbox gawking at the AARP Magazine cover boy.
Normally, I would stuff the magazine under my jacket, run into the house and say loudly, "Look! They put this stupid thing in our box again by accident!''
Then my husband would say, "Guess that AARP card in your wallet is there by accident, too.''
But not this time. There was no discussion at all. Not with those blue eyes staring back at me from the front page.
Who cared if anybody saw me at the box as the music swelled inside my head and Barbra Streisand began the lyrics to "The Way We Were.''
Me and Bob were in a time warp, and there was no escape.
It was the 1970s and I was one of three teenage girls huddled in a tiny bedroom, plotting a huge undertaking:
Convincing our mothers that we were old enough to see the new Redford-Streisand movie.
Our Plan B was the usual – fib to our mothers, sneak in and see the movie anyway.
It was rated "M'' for mature audiences, which meant you didn't have to show any proof of age but you had to be ''mature,'' which was up to your parents.
Up to then, we were seeing movies that featured cartoon characters, talking or flying cars and singing nuns.
Now we were asking to see a movie that might have a scene where a man and woman were in a room with a bed.
Our mothers surely did not think we were "mature'' enough to handle that and they were already mad about one thing or another.
They did the worst thing that mothers can do. They conferred with each other.
There's only one thing a teenage girls fears more than a suspicious mother: A suspicious mother who calls in reinforcements.
We don't know what they said to each other, but our imaginations ran wild.
One mother mould say she'd heard there were love scenes involving Robert Redford. The second mother would confirm this. The third mother could say girls were forbidden but the three of them should go and not tell.
We were in a panic. What if that really happened? Now we were afraid of Plan B (fibbing and sneaking) because we may run into our mothers.
Talk about a pickle.
As expected, we were told we could not go. We enacted Plan B anyway. We figured Redford was worth the risk. And he was. That smile practically melted the theater screen.
Whether our mothers snuck around on us, too, we never found out. But I sure hope so now that I know what it's like to raise teenagers.
Today, everyone in this story is on the AARP mailing list – mothers and daughters alike – and history is repeating itself.
We're all in a trance, this time at our mailboxes, thanks to Robert Redford.
Copyright 2010 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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October 1, 2010 -
Boomer Times: It's hard to quit when you were born to bossI am trying to quit.
But it's not what you're thinking.
This is not about the usual stuff. Drinking. Smoking. Collecting garden gnomes.
What I'm trying to quit is my birth order. I want to resign my position as Firstborn.
Or, as my three younger sisters used to call me (and probably still do when they are texting about me): The Queen of Bossy Island.
My sisters may not believe this - and neither will any of the middle and youngest children out there - but we First Borns get tired of being in charge.
Do you think we like telling everyone what to do all the time?
Do you think it makes us happy that we will always know more than you do because we have more time on this planet?
We do not. It is exhausting.
Besides, at least in my case, the younger ones don't listen to me like they used to.
As kids they had no choice.
I was put in charge of the backyard and if they wanted a push on the swing, they had to fetch me snacks as payment.
And now? Well, I can't remember the last time one of them needed a push, or got me a Ring Ding on command.
"Get your own Ring Ding!" they sniffed at the last family reunion.
My powers over them have been significantly diminished.
To make matters worse, they've started examining my face for aging signs so they can see how theirs will look in a couple of years.
"Ouch!'' is a common reaction.
This is from the younger sisters who once swooned over my grownup lipstick and begged to beg to borrow my sweaters.
The same sisters who needed me to tie their shoes and were once at my beck and call now consider me their own personal version of Back to the Future.
Being the First Born pretty much stinks these days. But quitting the behavior that comes with it turns out to be no picnic, either.
I spent a half a century (has it been that long?) telling younger siblings what to do. Putting on the brakes is painful.
My first idea was to find somebody else's siblings to boss instead. This was a bust. Not a single person obeyed when I yelled, "Get me a Yoo-hoo and make it snappy!'' on the street the other day.
One woman did pause briefly.
She was probably a middle child, which means she would have gone for the Yoo-hoo to make peace and shut me up. But then she moved on.
She must have a good therapist, whom I may have to borrow at some point to overcome my behavior.
My best friends have been absolutely no help. Most of them are firstborns, too, and together we morph into a big, bossy blob.
Changing myself may turn out to be the hardest thing I've ever done - including when I went cold turkey in the middle of a TV Land "Happy Days'' marathon.
It was not pretty. Weaning yourself off the Fonz never is.
But resigning as Queen of Bossy Island?
Hallucinations about Potsie, Ralph and Richie are going to seem like a hoot after this.
Copyright 2010 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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August 27, 2010 -
Boomer Times: To menopause and beyond!In the drugstore, I cringe at all the creams that say "ANTI-AGING,'' "ANTI-WRINKLE'' and "REVITALIZING.''
I cringe because women of a certain age hate one thing above all else - a reminder that they are women of a certain age. And as I stand there, I declare: "The only things that are gonna 'revitalize' me are an appletini and a hunk of chocolate.''
But then I look both ways to see if anybody's around and proceed to fill my basket with these empty promises-in-a-tube.
They go right next to my year's supply of "NUCLEAR STRENGTH ESTRO TABS.''
I It irks me to no end that names of all these creams are so obnoxious, and that they are in big print, but I won't admit that I couldn't see them otherwise. Despite the fantasy in my mind, I am not 25 years old. Or 35 or 45 - and 55 is frighteningly close on the horizon. My sister came upon one of these ill-named beauty creams on a trip out of town last week. She went into the bathroom of her guest and saw a bottle of moisturizer called "MENOPAUSE AND BEYOND."
This make her think of two things.
No. 1. Cartoon space guy Buzz Lightyear, who shouts, "TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!''
No. 2. The marketing twit who made up the name of the cream.
These thoughts made her want to hurt something. Badly. So she went to grab her Raging Hormone Toolkit, which contains a nifty, mini hatchet. She planned to do a Lizzie Borden on that beauty cream bottle and chop it up to bits.
But she had left the kit back home. So she did the next best thing.
She called me on her cell to report the discovery of "MENOPAUSE AND BEYOND'' so we could laugh about it.
Me: How stupid! Why do they think anyone would buy something with that name?
Her: Really! Why not call it "LAST DITCH MOISTURIZER?'
Me: I bet a 30-year-old guy thought of it!
Her: Thirty? He had to be 20!
Me: Hahahaha!
"Oh,'' we both said, "We are sooo clever! How do we stand ourselves!?''
Then there was a pause.
Me: Umm...do you think that stuff works?
Her: I'll let you know. I just slathered it on from head to foot.
She did not call back. I can only take that to mean there was no good news. I don't know why that surprises me because where all these creams are concerned, there never is any good news.
They might as well all have one name, "GOOD LUCK SUCKER!''
Still, we keep buying and hoping. Buying and hoping.
I suppose if any of these face cream people were smart enough to turn back the clock for good, they'd be working for NASA. Not making useless face cream.
So my sister and I have a message for the makers of "MENOPAUSE AND BEYOND'' if they want to sell more of their product: Take a cue from ol' Buzz Lightyear. On your bottle, put a picture of a perspiring, agitated, middle-age woman. Make sure she wears a superhero outfit that looks like it fit her better 10 years ago.
She should raise her fist in the air, and have a balloon over her head that says:
"TO MENOPAUSE AND BEYOND! NEXT STOP, THE MORGUE!''
Then we will know that your cream, like all the others, won't make us young. But at least we'll get a laugh out of it. And that, as they say, is priceless.
Copyright 2010 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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May 28, 2010 -
Boomer Times: WELCOME TO LITTLE ALCATRAZAh, lovely spring. Birds sing with joy. Buds burst all over. Shovels make a soft "shush'' as they slip into soft earth.
Ya, right.
Here in the Hudson Valley, we gardeners only dream of that "shush.'' All we get is the ugly "CLANK'' of metal against rock. No matter how many clumps of earth we dig into, it is always the same. CLANK. CLANK. CLANK.
That's because beneath the surface of one of the prettiest places on earth is nothing but a big ol' nasty quarry - the calling card of the Ice Age. "Those blankety-blank glaciers!'' my husband cries out from the yard as his shovel strikes rock after rock after rock.
It's his way of blowing off a little steam because by the time he's done digging up a square of dirt for a few daylilies, he'll have also produced a rock pile worthy of a 1940s movie about thugs in the slammer.
We've even started calling our yard "The Little Rock.''
The worst was the day he tried to dig a puny hole for a little rose bush.
He'd been out there for a while when I glanced out the window, spotted a growing pile of rocks off to one side and the rose bush still in the bucket on the other side.
There he stood, a fist raised to the sky.
"With God as my witness,'' he shouted. "I'll never dig in this yard again!''
He looked just like Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind'' except he's a strapping Yankee with a Long Island accent who'd rather die than wear a hoop skirt.
Other than that, they looked exactly the same.
"Hang in there, Miss Scarlett,'' I yelled. "Help is on the way.''
When we finished, the rose bush was in, but we realized we'd need to build a patio, a walkway and a replica of the Great Wall of China in order to get rid of all the rocks that had come out of the ground.
It was either that or call in our friends who live in flatter, sandier places and seem to value us more for the boulders than for our company. They visit every fall so they can pick apples, sip cider and lug whatever they want from our rock piles to their trunks.
"This stuff would cost a fortune if we called a landscaper!'' they yell as they drive away. If we weren't so tired from a season of digging rocks, we would pick up a few and throw them at the car.
As this point, you might be wondering why we don't abandon the idea of turning our yard into a botanical wonderland."
The answer is simple: Garden fever. It's an incurable disease that has doomed us to this flowery and rocky path to hell. We've tried to get off the path. But we can't. So from spring straight through to November, we plow ahead.
And we zigzag like crazy around all the big rocks that we find in the ground.
Copyright 2010 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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March 26, 2010 -
Boomer Times: Mid Life Crisis With a ParachuteLook up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a mid-life crisis in a parachute!
THIS is no laughing matter. It is an issue of public safety.
There are 78 million middle-aged baby boomers and lots of them are skydiving, swimming with sharks, climbing into volcanoes and all kinds of crazy stuff so they can forget they're getting old. Better keep a helmet handy because odds are one of the flying boomers could land on your head at any moment.
Don't you think there's a TV show here? We'll call it Boomers Gone Wild! Each week you'd see boomers in dangerous activities, all the while smiling and waving to the people who are videotaping their adventures.
They want videos so they can show them off at their parties. Or at their funerals should things not go so well.
"At least he died having fun!"' they'd want people to say.
It's gotten so the worst thing a boomer can be is afraid. You have to hide it from the other boomers or they call you names and tie you up with their parachute straps.
I should know. It has happened to me.
My biggest thrill recently was finishing a book for book club night. I couldn't wait to get to the meeting and tell my big news. "I finished the book!" I exclaimed. "Big deal," a fellow boomer said. "I jumped from a plane. Get over here and see the video, you big Wienie.
I don't even tell other boomers when I'm going on a trip because they want to point out all the incredibly dangerous situations I should be putting myself into.
For example, my husband and I are going to Denver this summer.
He wants to watch mountain birds. I want to see the Old Doll and Antiquated Toy Museum. Afterward, we will both need naps.
Some of our boomer friends insist there is more to do out there in Denver. Like whitewater rafting on ferocious rivers and climbing the snow-covered peaks in the sky.
We are too embarrassed to tell them that I am afraid of heights. We are mortified to admit that he doesn't even like the bathtub filled to the top. So yes, of course it is safer being a Wienie Boomer.
And smarter. More logical. Reasonable. And all of those things.
Oh, but the shame! The shame!
Copyright 2010 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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November 30, 2009 -
Boomer Times: Memories of a commode commandoMy grandmother lived through nearly the entire 20th century, and she saw some incredible inventions.
Spaceships. Color TV. Dishwashers. Microwaves. Ring Dings.
But she did not live long enough to see the one thing I think she might have appreciated the most: A toilet seat with an automatic covering. I discovered them last week at O'Hare Airport in Chicago and the first thing I could think of was: Boy, would my grandmother love this! She was a commode commando of the highest order and we weren't allowed to enter a public restroom until she had covered every surface with reams of paper.
The new device is a toilet whose seat is completely covered with plastic. With a wave of your hand at a sensor, the plastic rotates around to new, clean covering for every startled user.
And that's exactly what I was when I rushed into the ladies room at O'Hare, having spent the flight from Albany guzzling down my diet soda and every single available ice cube on the plane.
I opened a stall door, waved my hand and presto! I had a sanitary and germ-free commode - in an airport bathroom of all places!
Don't believe me? All you have to do is a quick search on YouTube and about a dozen videos will pop up from O'Hare. My extensive investigation into this matter, another six seconds on Google, could find no other locations.
I can only hope that these devices catch on because thanks to my grandmother , I can't use even the most elegant public restroom without fondly thinking of her, while cringing with fear at the same time.
Not exactly a Hallmark moment.
She'd pick her granddaughters up on a Saturday for some shopping back in the days when you wore your best dress, white gloves and patent leather shoes for such an outing. At some point, she'd lead us into a public bathroom, burst into a stall like she was on Dragnet and go to town with her roll of toilet paper.
With four of us lined up to use the facilities, this could take awhile. My poor grandfather waited outside. "If you're not back in two hours, I'll send in a search team,'' he would say. And he was serious.
My grandmother's routine may have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of trees, but she didn't care. She was saving her granddaughters from yucky toilet seats.
It's no wonder that on driving trips, I make my poor husband hopscotch from rest stop to rest stop looking for one that passes the grandma test.
On that note, listeners, the Molly Pitcher rest area near Exit 8 on the Jersey Turnpike gets four stars.
Molly Pitcher was a revolutionary war heroine but that's a minor detail. All you need to know is that for her bravery, her name is on Jersey's cleanest public bathroom.
The only way it can be improved is if they installed the gizmos like the ones at O'Hare.
I guess I should tell you that eventually, I did pull myself away from the bathrooms at O'Hare and enjoyed the rest of my first trip to to the windy city. But I would have gone there year ago if I'd known what awaited me at the airport.
So if you're going there sometime soon and you fly into O'Hare, check out the bathrooms.
Wave your hand. Watch the plastic cover go around. Thank goodness that you live in such amazing times. Then think of me, And my grandmother, too.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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October 26, 2009 -
Boomer Times: 30th ReunionIf you were a fly on the wall at my recent 30th college reunion here's what you heard:
Whispers about who else had some "work'' done on their face.
Lots of punchlines about Viagra.
Shock over what's happened to our 401K's. Some more shock over Geico TV commercials starring our rocker Peter Frampton.
The ludicrous things our own kids have done in college, topped only by the ludicrous things we did when we were in college.
The reunion weekend began with lots of pleasantries among alumni who were all born at the peak of the baby boom in 1957.
Some of us are now grandparents though a few of us are even new parents for the first time.
In the group were bankers and lawyers and postmen. There were teachers and journalists, salesmen and social workers. We pulled out the yearbooks, looked at the thinner, shaggier-haired versions of ourselves and came to a major conclusion:
We never thought we'd turn into our parents. But somehow, we have.
After that sobering reality check, we moved on to how much things had changed since we put on our caps and gowns and walked down the aisle in 1979.
Back then, somebody joked, it was a Britney Spears-free world and when you said the word "text,'' you were talking about a book.
We all laughed at that, except for the guy who had stepped aside to look at his Blackberry.
Finally, we got down to what we really had all showed up for: A chance to relive the good ol' days and to feel like we were still 19. Boy, there were some wild tales to tell.
There were lots of stories about road trips taken in big 1970's sedans in which seat belts were never worn and a dorm full of people could squeeze in for a ride to the beer store or the pizzeria.
There was the story about the 12-foot Christmas tree that was hoisted with ropes seven stories up the outside of a dorm because the tree wouldn't fit up the inside stairs.
There was also the one about the students who accepted a dare to climb outside a window and do pull-ups on a window frame, about 80 feet in the air. Why? Because it was more fun than homework, I suppose.
And what reunion of this group would be complete without the retelling of the Great Train Heist.
As the story goes, a boxcar loaded with cases of beer broke down on the tracks near the campus. When a campus full of students made this discovery let's just say the Olympics have never seen people move that fast.
The cast of Animal House had nothing on this group. Yes, there was hell to pay later on. But that somehow gets downplayed in the retelling and the story has become a classic in the annals of college folklore.
Especially the part where the students who found the beer marched into the campus cafeteria the next morning singing, "We've been working on the railroad!''
All these stories prove the point that college is an educating experience, but it's not always about the kind of education you think.
At the end of the weekend, we put away our college sweatshirts and our stories until they next time we can get together and dust them off. And even though it's only been a few weeks, I can't wait to hear some of those tales again.
We may not get better with age, but stories like the Great Train Heist always do.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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August 28, 2009 -
Boomer Times: Hanging by a threadOk, all you middle-aged women out there: Listen up!
Disaster may be lurking at your local mall. I know because I ran right smack into it and my tale of woe can be a lesson for us all.
It began with something sprouting from my chin.
It's a cruel fact of middle age life for the female gender. You turn 50 and suddenly, there are hairy intruders on your face and you spent way too much time experimenting with tweezers, wax, or whatever it takes to do the job.
So it's no wonder that the little kiosk in the middle of the mall caught my attention. It advertised a procedure called threading.
Yes, you heard me right. T-h-r-e-a-d-i-n-g - a middle eastern technique where they take a length of thread, roll and twist it quick as lightning around unwanted facial hair and pull it out by the root.
It's a major league ouch, but as they say, "No pain, no gain,'' and I was willing to try.
As I stepped up to the kiosk, I thought, "Hmm. There is no screen or curtain. Maybe this isn't such a great idea.''
As a girlfriend of mine later put it so delicately: "What are you an idiot?''
But one of those darn chin hairs was growing longer by the minute. I looked both ways, saw no one, jumped into the chair and let the threading lady get to work.
She was halfway done when out of nowhere, some people wearing athletic shoes and spandex outfits came upon us.
They were mall walkers. Very nosy mall walkers. Some of the women headed to the kiosk then leaned in so close to get a look that I could count their cavities.
"Hey Betty,'' one yelled to another. "Squeeze in here. You gotta see this.''
That's when the men mall walkers came over for a look-see.
"Well, I'll be darned!'' one said.
"Is she sewing hair on that poor gal?'' said his friend.
I wanted to scream: "The hair's coming off, not going on, moron!''
A few more people stopped by and pretty soon we had a mini crowd control problem on our hands.
Now, for the threading lady, this spectacle was great marketing. For me, it was the single most embarrassing moment of my life, and that's even counting the time I gave birth in a room full of nursing students on an obstetrics field trip.
"Are you OK?'' the threading lady whispered when I started to sweat and twitch.
"Thread faster, would ya?'' I hissed while plotting to take a mall walker hostage and fight my way out.
That idea got ditched because it would cause more attention and I could see the headlines: Lady at mall detained in chin hair debacle. I stayed quiet and just screamed inside my head.
Finally, the procedure was over but the ordeal was not.
The walkers-turned-gawkers strode after me. "Did it hurt? Was it expensive? Would I do it again?" they wanted to know.
As I tried and failed to outrun them, I called out my answers:
Yes, it hurt.
No, it wasn't expensive.
And sure, I'd do it again, but only if the threading lady sets up shop in a dark underground cave. Until then, I don't care if I turn into the bearded lady in the circus and people stare.
After all, I've had plenty of experience in that department.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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July 24, 2009 -
Boomer Times: On the road again….a boomer retrospectiveMaybe it was all those family cars going by with DVD players entertaining the kids in the back seat.
Maybe it was the fact that they could go through EZ-Pass and pay tolls without cracking a window and barely slowing down. Whatever the reason, the people we saw on a driving vacation this summer made me think of the differences between family road trips now, and the family road trips of my childhood.
Those boomer-era trips were 40 years ago, but the memories are as sharp as the elbow my brother used to shove in my ribs as we scrapped in a crowded backseat, with not a seatbelt or airbag in sight.
Every June, my parents would lock up the house, give the neighbor a number for our hotel and drive for three hours from northern New Jersey to the Jersey shore.
We kids were crammed in, but not so tight that we couldn't climb over each other to throw coins out the window and into the tollbooth baskets on the Garden State Parkway.
The coin toss competition was the highlight of the trip, second only to holding up goofy signs to the strangers in other cars, our early version of social networking.
"Whose turn is it?'' my father would shout as he approached each toll.
One time, the coins hit the edge of the basket, bounced off and shot back into the car like little silver missiles. "Be careful!'' my father yelled. "You'll poke somebody's eye out!''
Of course, one of us could have slammed our heads into the bunker-like concrete tollbooths. We could have been propelled like rockets if the car had stopped short.
But my parents didn't think about those things back then. It was the 1960s. Nobody did.
One year, my father got a promotion and bought a big sedan that had power windows, air conditioning and built in ashtrays for the comfort of our chain-smoking relatives.
Other kids on the block used to come around to watch the windows go up and down.
In this car, the road trips were a bit more comfy, though still not safe by today's standards. The car had seatbelts, but we never saw them. They were shoved between the seats, which is exactly where they belonged, according to my grandmother.
She pronounced that seatbelts would wrinkle your clothes AND keep you from escaping a car when it was about to explode, safety tips she would impart on us while puffing on a cigarette.
Every once in a while, a fight would break out in the back seat and my father would reach around to blindly swat at us.
He didn't care if he got the instigator. If you got a swat meant for somebody else this time, they took one meant for you the next time.
The swatting evened out in the end.
Occasionally, our grandparents would squeeze in as well and my grandmother was apt to break out into a song and make us all join in to pass the time.
So there we were: Nine unrestrained people hurdling down the highway, singing a rousing chorus of random Irish folk songs and throwing change out the window at a toll booth.
DVD players and EZ-Pass be damned. It doesn't get any better than that.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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June 26, 2009 -
Boomer Times - Mom was rightToday is my mother's birthday, and boy, have I got a surprise for her.
It did not from a store or an online catalog. It can't be wrapped or even held in your hand.
My gift is a personal message that she's been waiting for since my first day of kindergarten in 1962 when she insisted I wear a pretty plaid dress with a white Peter Pan collar even though I wanted to wear an ensemble of striped pajamas, red rain boots and my straw Easter bonnet.
On that day, the battle lines of a lifetime were drawn. She would advise one thing and I would do the opposite.
To put it mildly, I was NOT prone to obedience, though to be fair, this is partly because I am a baby boomer.
After all, there were a gazillion of us crammed into schools and playgrounds in the 1960s. Under our own roof, there were five boomer kids born within nine years, and each of us desperately looked for a way to steal a bit of the spotlight.
Being a good little girl didn't get you much attention under those conditions; so on that fateful day of the showdown over the pajamas, the boots and the bonnet, I forged my own path.
From then on, I made my mom and dad really work to earn their parenting stripes.
But today is Mom's payback. Today, her phone will ring, she will pick it up and she will hear my voice at the other end proclaiming: "Happy Birthday, Mom! You were right!''
At first, She'll pretend she has no idea what I'm talking about.
"I was right about what, dear?'' she'll say in a fake gesture.
But she'll know darn well that I'm talking about the red boots, the Easter bonnet and about much, much more.
For example, when I hit high school, Mom was right about my Catholic school uniform. Hitching up the skirt, practically around my neck, was a bad idea. It was a very bad idea.
As Mom predicted, this put me squarely at the top of the nun's hit list.
Every week, Sister Agnes pulled me out of line in the hall and made me kneel down to prove my hem was long enough to touch the floor.
On top of that humiliation, I had to come home and explain to my father why I was disrespecting the school clothes he had "worked his fingers to the bone to pay for.''
His fingers didn't look all that worked to the bone to me, but mom was also right when she said I should keep that observation to myself.
Mom was right about studying. It turned out better when I actually did the work. Not only did I get good grades because I could identify an isosceles triangle, it also saved on bribe money I had been paying my sister to do my assignments.
Mom was right about her super powers. Her specialty was figuring out exactly when one of her four daughters was sneaking out with a boy. She also had ex-ray vision that could find our forbidden makeup.
I swear she could see through the wood of my dresser drawers, through the balled up gym socks and straight through to the sky blue eye shadow stuffed in the back.
Mom was right about college. I didn't appreciate it until years after it was over.
Mom was right about marriage. If it has enough doses of good times to balance out the bad times, it will work out OK.
And Mom was right about my own kids. As she predicted, and I'm sure she hoped, they gave me the same kinds of challenges I gave her.
Yes. Mom was right about everything.
I suppose this is the reward of motherhood. Your kids eventually come back with their tails between their legs and tell you it turns out that you knew what you were talking about.
So here I am Mom, tail and all, to say it for the world to hear: You were right back then. You're right now, and I hope you'll be right about plenty more things in the future. It's not the most glamorous birthday gift. But it's the one you deserve the most.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley. She teaches at Vassar and Marist Colleges, and at SUNY New Paltz.
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May 22, 2009 -
Boomer Times - It's a dog's life for the unemployedThe big thrill in my life this week was emptying sugar from the sugar bowl, scrubbing the bowl until it gleamed and then putting all the sugar back.
Last week, the big thrill was a Mayberry RFD marathon on TV.
And the week before that, it was the news that I had been turned down for a speaking role in a children's play about animals. Instead, I was offered the part of a background dog. A silent background dog. The director did not let me down gently.
"You're no Meryl Streep,'' she sniffed.
"But you're my sister!'' I howled. "You can't give me a lousy bark?''
"Wag your tail,'' she conceded. "That's as far as I'll go.''
What has happened to my life?
How'd my formerly busy, bustling days change so much that now I'm cleaning stuff nobody should ever clean and I'm going into rehearsal for the role of a nonbarking background dog.
In a nutshell, here's what went down.
Exactly 30 years ago, I walked out of a college classroom, into a newsroom and that's where I thought I'd be until retirement came knocking. But the Internet, and the economy, wreaked havoc on the news business, especially at newspapers, and among the casualties were lifelong journalists like me who parachuted out.
The landing on my insecure middle-aged keyster has been a bit bumpy, at least from an emotional standpoint.
I've done some teaching and distracted myself with our delicious new grandbaby. But when I try to conjure up a vision of a new dream job, all I come up with is a big, blank canvas.
I've also been on the lookout for a therapist who can fix a middle age crisis on steroids.
There has been a bright side, however. The job loss experience has been filled with unexpected life lessons.
I've learned that the right accessories can put a positive spin on any bad situation.
For example, on my last day or work, I nixed the pathetic cardboard box routine and carried out my stuff in a bright bag that matched my red power sweater. My career was going south, but my outfit said I was going places.
I've learned that no matter how bad your life is, it's always worse in Pine Valley. This is the town on the soap opera All My Children and I must admit I've been visiting Pine Valley almost as often as I've been visiting Mayberry.
In Pine Valley, the loss of a job is not important because nobody really has a job. They're all too busy dealing with evil twin sisters coming back from the dead, cheating husbands and rare and incurable diseases.
I've also learned that after a job loss, you should hang up on anybody who calls say: Now you can live out all your dreams! These people have got to be kidding.
If I were living my real dreams, Donald Trump would be picking up my tab and George Clooney would want to be my Facebook friend. Perhaps most importantly, I've learned that being a dog in a play is truly nothing to be ashamed of.
But next time, I'm insisting on a barking role.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley. She teaches at Vassar and Marist Colleges, and at SUNY New Paltz.
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April 27, 2009 -
Boomer TimesThere is a reason that human beings have heads - they keep thoughts inside our brains so nobody else knows what we're thinking as we move about the planet.
As a matter of fact, I used to love to try and guess what people were thinking as they walked by.
"That cranky-looking guy,'' I'd say. "He hates his boss AND his wife and is plotting to run off to Rio de Janeiro ASAP.'' "And that woman over there? She's thinking about going home and eating a pint of ice cream after the day she's having.'' But then the cell phone was invented. Goodbye guessing game. Hello compulsory eavesdropping.
The cell allows people to be in touch with anybody they want, any time they want, and almost any place they want. Everybody else gets to listen in, whether we like it or not, as people share their private thoughts and lives with whoever else is at the other end of the cell phone.
There's probably not a single secret left on earth because we're all talking about our business every second of the day in front of everybody else.
Example No. 1. There were two young women in the restroom with me in a public building recently. These two were total strangers to me otherwise, but I can tell you that one of them is NOT in a good relationship right now, that her mother is giving her a hard time about finishing college and that she thinks her former best friend is a, well, let's just say the name she called her rhymes with itch. The other young woman was worried about paying her rent. She's got a massive sinus infection. And she bought the most adorable and expensive boots in a shoe shop yesterday.
The boots, I couldn't help thinking while I waited in line, may explain why she can't pay her rent.
They walked out the door yakking away as if they both had invisible bubbles around their heads that would keep their conversations private.
Except there were no bubbles and there was no way for me to escape hearing what they had to say.
Example No 2. I don't know what the guy sitting next to me in a hospital waiting room did to make his wife so angry. All I know is he was on his cell, apologizing to her over and over before he glanced up and realized I was listening and smirking at the same time. He gave me a dirty look and stepped into the hallway to finish the call. I could still hear every single word. Hey, I wasn't trying to listen in. But we were only five feet away from each other at the most.
What CAN you do when somebody on a cell near you? Not react at all? Keep a straight face? Stare straight ahead? Pretend you didn't hear?
I don't know about you, but that is way beyond my acting ability.
Ah, how I long for the old days when public spaces were quiet spaces.
When people in restrooms, waiting rooms, elevators and even sidewalks kept all their thoughts inside their heads.
But it's wishful thinking to imagine we'll go back. After all, who in this day and age wants to give up their cell? Certainly not me.
I may begin wearing earplugs, however, whenever I'm out in public. It won't be the safest way to get from one side of the street to another.
But it may be the only way to get there in peace.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton 
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