50th High School Reunion Here We come

Hi, Boomers

I've been having a wonderful experience lately. My fiftieth high school reunion is coming up in 2011. I found this out from an email sent to me by a high school friend and the organizer of the reunion, class of 1961, Marin Catholic High School in San Rafael, CA. My friend was also the high school principal of Marin Catholic for many years. Well, the guy was always a straight shooter and one of the guys you always remember when you think of high school. Oh, yeah, the boyfriends come first, but the friends are right up there with "make out" moments at the San Rafael Harbor or under the Golden Gate Bridge.

I was encouraged to sign up on a Facebook page, an idea I have put off thinking about for as long as there was Facebook, and before the My Space age. I didn't want to have people connect with me because I suspected that I wouldn't remember many people from my past. But I did sign up; I did remember most of the people; I did have a good time doing the task. Then my friend began to post high school pictures, even grammar school pictures (most of us went to one of two Catholic elementary schools), and even the announcement of my engagement and marriage to my ex-husband. Blast from the past! Oh, my God, did I really wear that Jackie Kennedy pill box hat. Astounding!

So, I put my picture on my Facebook page and then, with all due haste, I put my book title under it - SIXTY, SEX & TANGO, Confessions of a Beatnik Boomer - with the notification that I am blogging.

One classmate, I remember him well because he was the boyfriend of my best friend in high school, read my blog the other day. I think he thought I was sad or unhappy or in too much pain. I think he might not have gotten my my self-effacing humor and thought that I was really lonely or was still struggling with some kind of past pain. It was a good email to me; it made me think again about the state of my being. My response to him is below:

Dear Frank,

How nice of you to take the time to read some of my blogs. I am a writer and writing for me is a way of staying conscious about my life. I try daily get to get in touch with myself is through yoga and meditation. I teach yoga all day, every day and am blessed with my work. I am also a drug counselor and have attended to the spiritual needs of people in recovery.

I have embraced my struggles, find humor in them and take each day with grace. I carry no regrets. My pain is my joy. As the yogis say, "It's all good." I have many gifts which I am grateful for every day. I am grateful, too, that I have used my gifts well, have had positive influences on my students, friends and family. My journey has been unique, fun, loving and welcoming. And I am not sad or lonely. I am at peace.

The direction in my writing is derived from (and this is in my book) the strangeness of waking up at 64 and finding surprises in life that I had not actually prepared for or thought of. It has been a process of re-discovering, re-thinking, and re-learning the truth of my life without the playbook or script that in other decades had been somewhat predictible. I've always used humor to cope with the many changes that life has brought me, and that humor in turn, has brought much joy to my living experience.

So, my friend, don't worry about my state of being. My place in the universe, although not static, is quite wonderful.

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