Welcome to my Later Years!

          Like many of the families who begin early in life, we had our share of disagreements, arguments and fights.  The fighting process is a method that youth utilizes for the purpose of venting off steam and unused energy.  It seems like we fought over everything and anything.  We must have been awfully embarrassing to some of our neighbors at times.  A long time ago, I had the crazy idea that life might be better if I were to be on my own.  I told the Queen that I wished she’d move out so I could be in control of things.  She went on a working vacation to Hawaii and came back, packed up her stuff and moved into an apartment around the corner.  I never imagined she’d have done it.  I don’t think it was two weeks before I was asking her to come back home.  Nothing seemed right.  She didn’t take me up on it for two or three weeks though.  I was very glad when she told me she would.  I would never ask her to do that again.  We have been together so long; I depend on her to be around.  Once during one of our disagreements, I remember my dad telling me that life is too short to spend that much time fighting over nothing stuff, and that we should be enjoying ourselves and our kids more, instead.  At the time, that didn’t make a whole bunch of sense to me, but a little later on, I could see that he was right about it, exactly.  Before you know it, you turn into little round globs of flesh that don’t seem to really care about anything at all (except for relatives, kids, money, cats, food and retirement).  As time went on, we slowed down a lot.  Our major differences now days are nothing more than that.  We may not speak to each other for a day or two but neither one of us has the energy to speak loudly or throw tacos or bananas on the walls anymore.

I don’t think that either of us noticed it at the time but our own kids changed into adults in front of our very eyes, in less time (I believe) than it took Queen and I.  They say that kids are maturing at an earlier age these days.  It wasn’t a purely 100% smooth transition all of the time, but was for most of it.  As our kids got older, they would do a lot of the normal things that teenagers might do and get into trouble.  They never did anything that I hadn’t done or tried as a kid, but it seemed to bother me a lot when my kids did it, thinking some day they might get in real trouble or get hurt.  Some of the times I didn’t wait to hear both sides of the story before jumping the gun and tearing up a driver’s license or hollering a lot.  I later figured out that everybody doesn’t always tell the truth or know all the facts, so I began trying to give our kids the benefit of the doubt (whenever possible).

I think probably the worst mistake that I ever made in my life happened when I found out that our son had been messing around with alcohol and his car at the same time.  Without thinking at all, I told him that I wanted him out of the house.  I guess it made me feel big at the time, but ever since, I feel it was the dumbest thing that I could have done.  Before that day was over, I tried to think of a manly way to tell him that I really didn’t mean it and didn’t want him to move out of the house, but couldn’t just come out and say it to him.  The next day, we walked by each other but didn’t speak.  I was hoping he would ask me if I was serious or not and I would have told him the truth.  He looked a little like he might have though that I hated him.  That made me feel even worse but I couldn’t seem to get the nerve to tell him that I just got carried away.  When I was a teenager, I made the same mistakes but my dad never told me to get out.  I don’t know how I could have done that to my own son.  I always tried to protect him and now I had actually thrown him out.  He ended up moving into an older mobile home in a park and was eventually joined by his girlfriend.  This crumby story actually came out better than I would have thought.  They ended up getting married and we now have two (rapidly growing) granddaughters, ages 9 and 5.  I don’t think that I caused any deterioration to our son’s future welfare or outlook, but I will never forget how rotten I must have been back then.  I don’t get the feeling that he hates me for it, but I’m sure he’s thought about it once or twice.

Our daughter met her man and got married a few years later.  They have one boy, who is now 6.  I think our family is as large now as it is going to be.  No plans for more grandchildren, but who knows for sure (there was never supposed to be a me).  From what I’ve seen, my own kids make better parents than I ever was.  I am glad about that part anyway.  I’m sure that our kids realize that it is harder to raise children than you imagine it being.  It’s extremely difficult on a parent, watching their sons and daughters slam their tiny thumbs in car doors, land on their heads after falling off the top of playground equipment, tipping over on their bicycle and breaking collar bones, and riding dirt bikes carelessly and splitting their faces open.  It’s also difficult watching your own kids and grand kids getting older.  We tried to have our babies early so we wouldn’t be old farts when they were still young and I always though it would be nice to watch them grow up with us, and being able to be around for grand kids a while longer.  That part was nice but now I’m seeing us all getting old.  I guess that too is better than not having the chance to get old in the first place, or not having anyone to get old with.  The part I like about getting old is you naturally calm down some and you tend to enjoy things more.  A part that I don’t like is the increased spending you have to make just to hold your body and teeth together.  I am now able to imagine retirement.  Only two and a half years to go before I have some time for myself and to be able to do more of the things that I enjoy doing.  If I get tired of shooting targets or messing with my puter, I can always take an afternoon nap.  It will also be easier for me to go to the local post office to mail the Queen’s E-bay sales.  Right now, I’m thinking that I may want to be a Wal*Mart greeter for two or three days a week, just for extra spending money; we’ll see.         

Although I’ve only touched on a very few things from the last half century, I think I’ve briefly included most of the important things, that I am able to remember.  I also wanted to keep it short so that my entire life history would fit within my web site and also leave some room for other, more important and current information and maybe a few pictures.  If anyone were to ask me for two of the greatest bits of advice I could offer, I do have those two tips on the tip of my tongue…  life IS too short for fighting with each other all the time; and, don’t ask for anything you DON’T really want, because you just might get it anyway….