It's About the Ordinary

Hi, Boomers,

Yesterday, one of my yoga students causally said:, "Hey, Joan, I was riding the bus the other day and I saw someone reading your book." '

I hardly knew what to say, so I blurted out a medium scream of delight. I immediately understood the unexpected, the surprise and almost shock of that moment. I will cherish that moment for a very long time.

Today, there was another extraordinary moment. I was sitting with my best friend, John after our Friday tango lesson as we drank our margaritas and listening to him tell me that I just had to continue to write. He thought my book was full of important life issues that I could expound about in other books and he hoped that I would continue my writing journey. I was watching him talk to me, looking at his lips, and trying to understand why he felt so committed to my writing. "Darling, you just don't know what you have here."

It is very true that I haven't yet understood what SIXTY, SEX, & TANGO, Confessions of a Beatnik Boomer means in the long run of my life. I'm too busy worrying about my reading and signing event on Monday. I keep thinking how I'll trip up on the words, whether I can keep the rhythm going throughout the reading, how the audience will react. I don't really know what I have wrought with this book. I haven't had time to make an assessment or to distance myself from events unfolding.

This moment of launching my book feels surreal. What continues to feel real, however, is the ordinary, the daily activities - my yoga teaching, preparing for my book signing and reading in Corte Madera (northern California) on Nov. 14, which will be a kick off for my 50th high school reunion and all the beautiful moments I am sharing with old classmates who have become so very dear to me. I saw several yoga students outside the Wooden Center this afternoon who told me how happy they were because my level 2/3 class at 4:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays was going to begin next week. They were smiling and happy and so was I. The ordinary. 'And every class I teach is a joy.

There was pure joy sitting with John at our favorite Mexican cantina recapping our tango lesson and reveling in our friendship - a very old and respectful and loving coupling that will endure for a lifetime. And I await with excitement the moment when I will talk to my grandsons tomorrow morning while they eat breakfast before their soccer games and then I will find find out after the games what transpired. I love Saturdays.

The ordinary brings us joy; the extraordinary brings surprises. And its the balance we strive for.

Namaste

Joan

The Dog Days Are Over

Hi, Boomers,

It's the eve of August 31st, 2010. It's technically the beginning of the end of the dog days of summer. The end of the week marks Labor Day and the beginning of a fall cycle - back to school, back from vacation, back to work, back to back responsibilities.

In the days when I taught drama in high school, I loved this time of year. I loved going back to a crop of new students, mostly dysfunctional, pop smoking, LDS taking strangers living in the alternative universe of Las Vegas. It was Clark High School, Las Vegas, Nevada, an outpost of mostly dispossessed kids, with one parent, maybe two but they worked shifts on the Strip - some graveyard, some early morning, some split shifts. But they loved coming into my class because they knew I truly thought they were special. Our dog days were times of experimenting with improvisation and reading and acting in the new and exciting scripts from Off Broadway's golden years in the late 60's and early 70's. The weather didn't quit snap into fall mode because it was still hot as hell in Vegas until October. Yet, we sweat through that first month getting to know each other and allowing the senior thespians show the way to the newbies, the wanna-bes who took drama/theater to find a refuge against their adolescent angst.

Dog Days were days of optimism and hope in my life and they still are. Now my grandsons go back to school and I still get a thrill of hearing about their teachers and books and friends.

I love the fall weather. It's my favorite time of year. Los Angeles can provide that fall weather snap, cooler nights and less warm days in the shade. Sometimes there is a bout of heat around Labor Day, but I can still smell football season and see the band practice outside my yoga room at the John Wooden Center on the UCLA campus and sometimes catch a glimpse of the football team warming up on the field as I walk to my car.

As the feeling of renewal comes over me, I am cognizant of old memories from grammar school and high school when I was part of campus excitement and new classes and old friends returning to our familiar posts.

I'm feeing nostalgic for my parents, particularly my father because he drove me to St. Raphael's grammar school for so many years. I was so very happy growing up, and I loved sitting next to my dad in the car as we listened to Don McNeill's Breakfast Club on the radio. We would sit in the car and watch the Dominican nuns get out their taxis on the side of the school while my dad and I continued to listen to the radio. I wouldn't get out of the car until the nuns entered the building.

Every end of August and beginning of September memories come back with a vengeance and take me back deep into my past - a past that gave me my values, my sense of direction, my loyalties, and my sense of self.

Namaste

Joan

Penelope Sweet

Hi, Boomers,

I never even gave being a grandmother a thought until one day five and a half years ago, I became a grandmother to Jordan Mac. And then two years later, Luc Daniel was born. Okay, two grandsons. That's great, really great. But the moniker "grandmother" was still kind of a foreign concept. After all, I was still living la vida loca, and my mostly monthly visits to my family in Las Vegas were keeping me connected but not especially engrossed.

Oh, but I had another son and he and my daughter-in-law were about to have Greyson Ambrose. And now, this little ball of energy a little over two years ago and making a deeper impression on my psyche. Okay, three grandsons. Doable.

I continued on with my yoga/tango life and buried myself in writing my book, Sixty, Sex, & Tango, Confessions of a Beatnik Boomer, continued my visits, divided my time between homes in Las Vegas, and never gave the grandma game another thought. Until...

Here comes Jude Love entering the world in January of this year. Happy new year, Jude Love and welcome to a growing family. Jude is the most chill of the grandchildren. He smiles all the time and loves the action in the house. He's straight out of central casting. Big, beautiful and bold.

I'm trying to keep this grandma scenario straight. I love them all equally. I love their energy and unconditional love and it's kind of fun being a quasi parent again - that is, when my sons aren't around to parent me parenting my grandsons.

"Mom, we talked about this...leave him alone." But it's about the filthy dirty Linus blanket dragging along the floor filled with dog hairs and ground in food and the thumb ever-present hanging from Luc's mouth so he can't speak let alone answer a question. Okay, I'll shut up.

This week I have another grandchild. A girl - my first girl - Penelope Sweet. She was 34 weeks at birth, 5 pounds 6 ounces of the most beautiful tinniness I have ever seen. Not bad for a premie - a fighting, feisty Leo premie who let's everyone know in the NicU that she is hungry and wants her dropper of milk.

I lovingly watched my sweet pea sleep in her plastic bubble attached to so many lines and monitors that I lost count. I can still feel the emotional connection to her lightness, to her divine being.

A girl. A real live girl. I had boys; my brother had boys. We missed the experience of having a girl. Suddenly, and without provocation, we have righted the confluences of the universe in our family.

I wonder at the miracle of birth, of a mother's love and her unconditional, immediate devotion to her offspring. I saw my daughter-in -law lovingly connect to Penelope with such finality that I was moved to tears. There are still miracles in the world to experience. I wouldn't have missed this grandma thing for anything.

Namaste

Joan

The 40 Percent Solution

Hi, Boomers,

Yesterday, I had the privilege of having lunch with a classmate of mine from high school. I hadn't seen Frank in 51 years. He was coming into the Los Angeles area with his wife to visit family and friends and then to head off with a couple or two in their RV's to sightsee some national parks.

Now, really, I didn't know Frank well at all in high school. He went to St. Anselm's grammer school in San Anselmo while I came from St. Raphael's in San Rafael. The two schools were only about ten miles from each other, but us Catholic kids were all going to end up in the same Catholic high school. He was a handsome, rather shy fellow who ended up dating my best friend whose energy was the spark plug for our clique.

Shortly after I signed up for my high school's Facebook page and subsequent web page, Frank was one of the first to contact me. I was surprised. And I was pleased because I don't think we said much to each other in the three years he attended Marin Catholic High School. He probably got some gossip from my boyfriend in junior year because they were best friends and I think we probably double dated for awhile. Of course, I wondered why he contacted me but after a few chatty emails about family and life and grandchildren, we were instantly connected. I think people in our class are curious as to how we all turned out.

As I walked around a corner of the Third Street Promenade on Saturday on the way to the entrance of the restaurant, I suddenly realized that I might not recognize Frank. Come on, fifty years, so much gray hair, glasses, widening of the girth, wrinkles, more wrinkles. But when I started to walk toward the entrance, I would have recognized Frank anywhere.

Three hours later, I began to know and understand this kind, generous, embracing human being. What we hit upon as former students together in high school was how the values we learned in our school, at home, and in our social environment have carried us through our lives with strength and generosity.

Here's how Frank put it: he is a man devoted to time management and making room for all the important things in life that are crucial to his happiness. In order to create his happiness, Frank devotes 30% of his day to work (which includes helping other people and finding time to still be on the emergency ski patrol in his home town), 30% to his wife, three adult children and grandchildren (he created a family blog and they check in with each other once a day, and, most important, Frank gives over 40% of his day to being surprised at what life will bring him. I am impressed with Frank's very balanced and conscious life.

How Frank arrived at this blissful state is a miracle. He had to overcome a difficult family situation, a mentally ill mother, moving constantly, changing schools, living in an orphanage, and surviving a life that would have done most young men in by the age of 15 when he finally landed at Marin Catholic High School. Frank told me that the turning point for him in was in his sophomore year when a few of the boys in our class offered him a daily ride to school in their car pool. And then he met and started dating my best friend whose humor and warmth gave him confidence. Frank began to come out of his shell and discover the kind and caring man he was going to be . High school was never hell for Frank. He excelled at sports, became quite popular and was able to withstand the sadness of having to move again - this time across the country to New Jersey to face his senior year without his gang of friends. But Frank had grown into a man by then and this time he brought along his self-confidence.

I have been given many gifts in life, but one of the special gifts turns out to be a man whose exemplary life inspired me with his friendship and honesty. I'll see Frank again next year at our 50th high school reunion, along with other fine men and woman who shared life together at a special time and place.

It strikes me that we should all take a piece of Frank's journey and find out 40% solution to happiness.

Namaste

Joan

It's A Girl

Hi, Boomers,

Well, finally, after thirty-eight years of trying, my family came is about to produce a girl baby. It's a miracle! And it was random, of course. My oldest son and his wife gave birth four months ago to a perfect baby boy, Jude Love. It was their third boy. Oh, there was the usual, "Are we ever going to get a girl in this family" remarks, but everyone was happy because Jude was a healthy and a happy baby. My youngest son produced a male heir the first time. And now: Here comes the girl.

My last blog was about being a grandmother and its miraculous joys. It's still a mind-bender to me. However, it brings me around full center to living in my 60's and finding surprises and unexpected moments.

I was speaking to the marketing consultant from my publishing company this morning. The call was by way of introducing himself to me and getting my ideas on how to market my book, Sixty, Sex & Tango. Now, if I had to choose a marketing mentor for me vis a vis my book, it would not be a forty year-old male. And yet, the voice of this forty year-old male captured my attention. He actually was familiar with the themes in my book about living joyfully in the decade of the 60's, finding passion in life and love, and was going to recommend my book to his mother-in-law.

I posed the question to him about his interest in my book's topics. He thought that life brought a variety of experience to each decade and it was always worth reading about what other's have gone through.

"I get your book," he said. "While it is not specifically a self-help book, it is a book with experiences of a woman who has lived fully in her sixties and has insights and opinions and experiences that might help others."

Wow! Did he really say that. He's forty; he's a male; he's so far away from my sensibilities.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you," I was raised with three older sisters."

How did I get so lucky today? I can't wait to hear his marketing suggestions and work with him after the book comes out. Mr. Marketing Consultant was fun, humorous, intelligent and randomly assigned to me by the publisher. It's a good thing no thought went into the selection.

On the bad news side: I just found out that my beloved therapist made so much money investing in a prostate cancer drug that he is retiring. When I say so much money, I'm referring into the 20 to 30 million range. He bought the drug at $2.00. I had a chance to buy stock in Dendreon, the company that brought the drug to market. But what would a schlepper beatnik/hippie yoga teacher do with a millions of dollars? I actually contemplated that thought in my 7 am yoga class this morning. And I actually couldn't think of how I wanted to alter my life. Sad, but true.

Namaste

Joan

Mother Nature - Alive and Well at Sixty-Six

Hi, Boomers,

I traveled to Las Vegas last weekend to make my monthly visit to my adult sons and my grandsons. I have made this trek for over three years, beginning with the birth of my first grandson, Jordan Mac, about 5 years ago and a particularly pointed call from my brother who urged me to share visits with my mother more frequently. I had been kind of hiding out, working my tail off for years in Los Angeles, and completely oblivious to sharing mother responsibilities with him. He gave me a needed wake up call.

Two years later, Luc Daniel was born; then a year later Greyson Ambrose was born; and recently Jude Love came into our lives. It's absolutely amazing to me how a mother's love can morph into a grandmother's love for her grandchildren. Being in love with family is beyond verbal description. I was waking up and doing the 1 am feedings with Jude and giving him his bottle and thinking nothing of the time or the effort it takes to nurture a baby, especially a baby that is so darn fun and happy. I wasn't even tired the next day. In fact, my mother's instinct so kicked in that I awoke about five to ten minutes before the baby did, anticipating his hunger.

The weekend brought a whole new set of needs for my growing grandsons. Jordan dresses himself now and Luc is learning the process. With Baby Jude on my hip, I went from room to room attending to clothes selection, to face washing to brushing of teeth to starting breakfast. All in a morning's work for a mother and I was ready set to take on the tasks.

I am astounded at the flood of love and emotion I experience with my grandsons. Who knew being a grandmother was going to be like that. Who knew the unending joys of taking care of young children. Soccer games, swimming classes, basketball practice, birthday parties - the whole wonder of kids.

If I ever thought I would loose my mother nature, I have been proved wrong time after time in the course of the last five years. I'm thrilled that at my age love is easy to provide and the care-taking is effortless for my family. It's so rewarding that later in life we are given so many surprises.

In yoga/meditation, we learn to take time out at least once a day to offer gratitude for our gifts and our joys. It's so easy for me to do that because I teach yoga many times a day and I have a built in gratitude machine within my open heart. But I never take my teaching or practice for granted because it feeds my soul.

Namaste

Joan

CAN WE REALLY FALL IN LOVE AGAIN?

Hi, Boomers,

At the moment, I am surrounded by my 4 grandsons and thinking about falling in love again.

How does all this love energy work together? I have no idea, and I am trying to figure it out.

I've been keeping a secret to almost everyone in my life. I met a man last Saturday night who is enlightened, more evolved than most men, dances tango as elegantly and as passionately anyone I have ever danced with, plays tangos on his guitar beautifully, is looking for a mate, makes love like an angel, and maybe is falling for me. Besides that, we have a strong connection with our professional work. More importantly, we want to make a relationship.

What man puts it out there like that to a woman? What woman could walk away from this man without serious consideration.

Oh, and I forgot to say that he lives in Montreal six months out of the year; winter is spent in Los Angeles where he hangs out with his two adult children and grandchildren.

Long distance relationships. They are a plague. They mostly don't work. How do we do this and keep the emotional connection? I tried it before. It lasted 7 months, which is pretty good, I think. But now I'm older and wiser and have settled into singleness with joy - finally.

I didn't get enough face time with this man. He's complicated in a good way. I'm settled in a good way. But we are both looking for companionship. And I think we could be right for each other.

I'm wrestling with how to do this and we have just left each other. Do I really want to fall in love again? Big question after all this work on myself. I think I do but I don't know if I can.

I thought I would never fall in love again after my last relationship. After almost 4 and a half years of his running away and coming back, I ended it. He broke my heart and my heart is still broken. I think I'm on the mend and then I'm not. My therapist would say: "Sit with it, be with it, let the emotions embrace you."

I am and I'm trying. In the meantime, I have enough testosterone around me to last a lifetime. Tonight I'm going out to dinner with my 2 sons and their wives to celebrate family.

I'm full of joy.

Namaste

Joan

Slogging Through 60

Dear Boomers,

  I haven't blogged since April 26th.  I feel a bit remiss but not necessarily guilty...until now.

I've been in a general malaise outside of my yoga teaching.  Oh, I love my work and am grateful every day for my students, my private clients and my friends.  

I guess it has to do with adult children this week and the end of the old lover comeback.  Let me start with the old lover comeback:  there wasn't one; it was a non-started, a fake and phony attempt to reconnect with heart or devotion and with a dedication to carelessness;  Moving on (although I didn't move on all week), the other issues revolve around my sons and their inattention.  I guess it's great not to have sons that have a mother complex - the tiny voice inside of a man that says to a woman - No! No! don't come any closer to my heart because I really cannot love you with my total being.  That's the inner mother.  The outer mother is a symbol of the inner mother.  Too complicated, huh?

Anyway, whenever I try to connect to one or the other of my sons, I get, "Mom, didn't I tell you not to call my home phone," or "Mom, I'm on my way to work, getting Starbucks, call you later."  No call later. One is chewing me out while the other just ignores.  What's the brain process here.  We live in different cities.  I try to come into Vegas once a month to see everyone, be with my grandchildren, be available, yada, yada, yada.  

What is family connection, anyway?  What does it mean to be connected to family?  Family asks after you, as in, are you happy, feeling good, depressed, or are you doing all right with finances, work, dating.  Sometimes I think a mother/grandmother should just take off for Tibet for six months and let everyone wonder what happened to "Mom."  She used to be around a lot and now she just doesn't care about us anymore.

I won't leave.  It's just not in my nature to leave my family.  I almost did once in Buenos Aires when I could have had a job teaching English as a second language.  I thought long and hard about it.  I'd dance tango all night at the milongas and then I'd get home about 3 am and get up at 7 and teach English to those peacock Argentine men in their high rise buildings.  I'd last about one week.  I wonder if women who are a couple feel this kind of lonelinessor is it because I am single that I sometimes excess being ignored.  

Anyway, I had a great weekend despite kissing off the old lover with an epic Beowolf poem exhaustedly, meticulously composed over a three day marathon.  I was obsessed to get it perfectly written, and, if I do say so myself, it was a masterpiece of irony.  And I already know the old lover won't even get it, let alone read it.  But it doesn't matter because I feel fabulous today at 65.  Oh, but you see, I also had a marvelous date with a much younger man this Sunday and all went right with the world.  After the walk on the Venice boardwalk, which resulted in my buying T-shirts for my grandsons (oh, yes, I don't hide much), we went to an exquisite move called "Examined Life - Philosophy is in the Streets."  Age didn't seem to matter much.

The day and my date reminded me of the best of times in Berkeley in the 60's at the beatnik coffee houses along Broadway and Columbus Avenue with jazz puncturing the cold night air.  WOW!  I felt like 19 again.

Namaste

     Joan

FINDING MY INNER ELMO

Good Morning, Boomers,

      I love being a grandmother in my 60's.  I'm headed to Las Vegas tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn to take care of my 2 grandsons and attend the 1st birthday of my third grandson.  My daughter in law will be away attending a college reunion of friends from her Tulane days.  My son, Jonathan, and I will take care of the kids.  This is the best part of being 60.

     Text message last night from my daughter in law, Carli:  "I know you'll be so excited to know I got tickets to see the Elmo show at the Thomas and Mack Center."  Carli knows I won't be excited.  She was laughing at me when she sent it.  I went into a deep depression when I read it just before teaching my 4 pm yoga class at UCLA.  Way to mentally prepare myself for a positive yoga practice.  

     I've done lots of things as a grandmother, some good and some not so good.  The bad things are related to losing my temper when my grandsons begin to play with food and I get the stern witch voice going so I scare the holly crap out of them.  But I do love to hunt for books at Barnes and Noble with my oldest grandson, 4 year old Jordan, and we do like to play in the part and swim together and those are part of the great fun of hanging out with the boys. 

 

     But Elmo!!!!!   I hate Elmo!  I don't like the way he looks or talks or moves.  I don't like anything about Elmo.   Both my grandsons love Elmo and so I have to look interested in their fascination with the creep.  Thank God Jordan is on his way of love with the guy, but Luc is right on track developing an addiction to him or it.  

     I can endure the birthday parties this weekend, especially Greyson's 1st birthday party; I can endure eating out with them and watching them play with their food.  I can endure the craziness at bedtime and the screaming when they don't know how to share toys.  But I cannot endure Elmo and, yet it seems I have to.  This is my inner child screaming for a way out and there is no out.  There is a way out of cleaning poppy diapers, a way of sleepless night, waking a baby grandson for an hour at 2 am, a way out of coaching them to eat when they have no interest in food, a way out of distracting them from dangerous behavior, but I believe with all my heart, there will be no way out of my Friday night meet and greet with Elmo or my name, Gran, will be mud.

     I don't feel bad about this negative feeling even though I am a yogini and teach yoga all day in the positive light of the universe.   You see, Elmo isn't real.  Elmo is a made up character in Seasame Street so he doesn't have to touch my heart or my mind.  This really gets me off the hook because it doesn't relate to my karma in past lives or on earth.  Now, I'm free to really despise the big guy.  Take that, Elmo!

     Now I feel better.

     Namaste

     Joan