Life’s Decades - The Sixth 10 Years

Today I am focused on the sixth decade of life. For me - it was mostly in the 2000s and included the melded joys of career transitioning to post career and the growing independence of my daughter.

My sixth decade started with my daughter still in high school. The family enjoyed vacations - trying to see as many states as possible before she graduated. After she got her learner’s permit for driving, we made a big loop road trip from Maryland to Chicago. She handled a driving experience I had never encountered: a blown out tire on the freeway. I suppose a child learning to drive is a ‘white knuckle’ time for most parents. The only technology that might change the scenario in the future would be self-driving cars.

Visits to college campuses with my daughter were a vicarious treat. Being part of her decision making process helped my husband and I realize just how ready she was to be independent - not financially but in the way she took ownership for decisions about her future. She applied to 4 colleges and was accepted to all 4 - and went off to Cornell.

Some parents may suffer from ‘empty nest syndrome’ but I didn’t. I was still too busy with work and my daughter called us frequently enough (using time when she was walking some distance on campus) that we knew quite a few details about her college life. The advent of cell phones (and ‘plans’ that have unlimited minutes) have made a huge difference for families that want to communicate via telephone. Long distance used to be an expensive luxury. Now easy and inexpensive telephone calls are transitioning from a luxury (a ‘want’) to a need; it is coming close to being part of basic infrastructure in the developed world. They continued past her graduation from Cornell.

Pretty soon my daughter established a relationship with the young man she would marry before the end of my sixth decade. They were in the same dorm building and then apartment. When it came time for graduate school applications - they both applied to some of the same schools and decided to go to University of Arizona. As soon as they were financially independent (with graduate student funding), they got married. It seems that my daughter’s experience finding a life partner was very similar to my own; it happened early and marriage became the obvious choice very quickly.

Shortly after my daughter become financially independent it because obvious that I could retire and my husband phase down on his workload too. We both rekindled interests we’d left behind in our 20s: biology for me and astronomy for him. It took me a year to settle on some volunteer activities that were focused on areas I where I wanted to make a tangible difference in my community: Neighbor Ride to provide transportation to senior citizens and environmental education offered to students by the Howard Country Conservancy. I also realized just how much I enjoy being a student; the advent of Coursera was perfect for me.

Life’s Decades - The Fifth 10 Years

Today I am focused on the fifth decade of life. For me - it was mostly in the 1990s and included the melded joys of motherhood and career.

My career required long hours and some travel. Most of the time I could adjust the attention and time for the job to mesh with the needs of my family. There was always an underlying tension between the different aspects of my life but it didn’t seem to escalate to unhealthy levels of stress. I had decided to keep a journal when I first became pregnant in my fourth decade; the original motivation was to record what was happening to me…but a side benefit was that l inadvertently learned to ‘write it down, let stressful aspects go.’ In retrospect - journaling was a key part of my maintenance of well-bing in the most stressful time of my life: the fifth and sixth decades. I still do it (in my seventh decade now) but its primary importance is as a record of my life.

Do people always learn a lot from their children? I certainly did. When my daughter was in kindergarten and first grade, I realized that I was holding her to higher standard of learning than I was myself….and I made some changes. Being a linear thinker (inclination and education), I started using tools like mindmaps to change my pattern. I started reading a wider variety of books and taking notes. The growing content available through the Internet over the decade helped too. In the end, I don’t know that I ever did reach the delta that we expect of children as they learn to read, write and compute in their early school years. It is awesome how much they change in a few short years.

While every working mother probably experiences guilt from not being in the right place at the right time for some incident in her child’s life - the incidents where my daughter made her acceptance loud and clear stand out in my mind more. One such incident was when she was in first grade and there was a parent visit day in her classroom. I told her I was leaving work early to come home and change clothes to be dressed like the other moms rather than in my business suit by the time I arrived at her school (I was working for IBM and wearing a lot of dark blue suits/white shirts at the time). She told me to come in the suit! I did…and looked different than the other parents…but she was accepting (maybe even pleased) with the difference.

The decade seems like a blur of kite festivals, aquariums, museums, national parks, hikes, gardens, ice shows, and music lessons….there were times that we all decided a weekend at home was absolutely required. There were projects to. We finished our basement which was quite a learning experience for us all.

The activity level of my fifth decade was driven by having a child in my fourth decade. Women that have children earlier - or later - could have a different trajectory because of where they are in their career and their level of health. It surprises me to realize that I happened upon very good timing for me!