Trouble Again

Hi All,
I am having problems with the feed that gets my new blog posts out to email subscribers. As I am  new to this and not super tech savvy it's taking time. I published a new post yesterday but it did not make it out to your email inboxes.  I will continue working on the issue and hope that things work next week. In the mean time please check out my blog for my latest post.
Thanks,
Faye

The Path of Least Resistance

My life is a very good life by all the usual standards.  I bushwhacked through the jungle of youth, hacked out a path over the years, widened and smoothed that path, trimmed up the edges, planted flowers for colour and now I walk back and forth on it with the realization that it isn’t really leading me anywhere. There is nothing wrong with this path, it’s perfectly acceptable, I suppose.  The epitome of the path of least resistance.  With very little effort I can continue to keep it in good workable shape and never need anything more. But….there is a but and it’s a pebble in my shoe as I tromp back and forth on my path. In the past I have been able to shake the pebble about in my shoe to a more comfortable spot where I hardly notice it but lately it won’t stay there, it keeps coming back to poke me in the heel. A rock under your heel will not be ignored, it demands attention. So, I am sitting down on my path and removing that rock from my shoe.  In fact, I may take the shoes off altogether. 

When I talk of a new path I’m not talking about traveling the world with a backpack or leaving my husband and family behind for an ashram in India.  I’m a firm believer in the old adage that “wherever you go, there you are”.  Self-exploration can be done from home, in fact, being in that ashram might just be a great diversion and I don’t need more diversions.  Decades of caring for a family have left me so attuned to other people’s needs that I have forgotten how to listen to my own.  Getting diverted by other people has become my fallback position.  It feels good to help and can be rewarding and for some it is enough.  This doesn’t mean I will be ignoring my old path, merely adding to it.

Maybe it is my age, the ever speeding up of the passing years. I am at the end of a decade, I’ll be sixty next year and I think that the end of a decade is a touchstone for many people.  A time to look back on the previous ten years and do a summing up. I believe some of us do it unconsciously and end up suddenly leaving a marriage or a long career behind in an effort to make the next decade look different.  Others like me do it much more slowly, with a great deal of thought and consideration for the people in our lives it may affect.  Tiny steps, carefully taken.  This blog is my first step.  With it I have tentatively taken my machete out and started to whack away at the jungle beside my tidy, old path in the hope that a new path will slowly emerge.  Every person that views my blog adds a little power to my machete.  So, thank you, I’m grateful. 

Taking a New Path by Jill Charuk
www.jillcharuk.com

Love in The Fast Lane

Are you over 75, single and looking for love?  Are you interested in finding that love online?  Well, I may be the right person to talk to.  For a woman my age I know way more about seniors online dating that I should have to.  And let me tell you, there is far more going on there than you can imagine.

When my mother, June (hi Mom!) was widowed seven years ago at the age of 80, she was devastated to find herself left alone when she had counted on my father to outlive her. He was eight years her senior so the odds weren’t with her plan but she had invested in magical thinking that she would die first. Fast forward a year and she could see that there was no going back, only moving forward, so she decided to try and find a new mate and online dating seemed the way to go.  June was, and still is, healthy, active and attractive and had enough money to take care of herself.  In short, a catch.  New photos were taken of her and I was recruited to write up a bio.                                              

                                                    My beautiful mother, June

An overly lengthy bio was written by yours truly (more about that later) and okayed by June.  Up went her profile and her preferences in a man.  It became apparent mighty fast that 80 year old men thought themselves a good match for a 55 year old woman. Their parameters for age seemed to be 55-79 so we decided that June needed to lie about her age. We quickly made her 79.  Who would we be hurting? I mean, really?  Women I know who are 55 and looking for love online are running into the flip side of the same problem, 75 year old men want to date them and the women are not interested. Women are a bit more realistic about the age thing, most 55 year old women would set their parameters at 50-65, not 30 -55 but hey, that’s life.

There are just as many seniors that post out-of-date pictures of themselves as people in other age categories do.  We saw pictures of men in tank tops looking manly, men standing in front of boats or RV’s, hooked up to oxygen tanks, one gent posted a picture of himself ironing…in a tank top. There was one nude shot of a young man proudly displaying his erection that managed to get by the filters but I deleted it before my mom saw it so his dream of having an older woman’s eyes on him was dashed. Poor guy.  So many times the men my mom met were so much older and frailer than their pictures that when my aunt was concerned about the dangers of my mother going off alone to meet a strange man for coffee or a meal, June scoffed at her and said, “ for god’s sakes, I could kick them over and make a run for it any time. There’s no danger!”  My mom is pretty fearless …and in pretty good shape.

Through it all my mom was a good sport, telling anyone who would listen about her escapades and laughing at herself. In the end she did meet a man, a couple of years younger than herself with whom she had a relationship for two years. The never lived together but spent a great deal of with each other. He died, unfortunately, but that is the downside of dating over 80. Everything is accelerated, the dating phase is brief, the commitment quick and it can be over in the time it takes a younger person to decide if they really are in love. There literally is no time to waste.

After the death of her man-friend (you just can’t say boyfriend about an 80 year old man) my mom picked herself up quite quickly and wanted back on the dating websites. The clock of life was ticking. This time around though she was more in control.  “Just put in a nice current picture of me and say how many kids I have, the men don’t care about anything else”, she told me. Okay then, so men don’t change much as they get older.  I complied with the directives and within a couple of months my mother had met a very nice man.  A few months later they were living together and are still together several years later.  Happy ending.

                                  June and Frank in September, 2015

The whole experience has been very illuminating.  I know the odds are that I may end up alone, outliving my spouse.  For some the release from marriage is a blessing, for others it’s a lonely place.  My mother is brave and forthright, clear in what she wants and she got it. Forging a new relationship after 60 years of marriage is not easy, its takes effort and compromise and fearlessness.  So if you are out there, trying online dating and not getting the results you want just think about June.  The ratio of men to women over the age of 75 is pretty unbalanced.  The odds were against her but she managed to find someone not once, but twice.  Despite the grey hair, the glasses and the wrinkles the actors in this play are all the same as their younger counterparts with one exception, they feel the passing of time.  Intensely.  Relationships are appreciated, not expected to be perfect and taken one day at time.  Today could be all they have. We would all be wise to carry that in our hearts.  Get on with it.

In The Grey Zone

I have recently accomplished what many women my age have only dreamt of….I have stopped colouring my hair. Oh, you were expecting something more daring, more interesting?. If you think this is not a big deal then you have not tried to be a woman in this society that has coloured her hair for thirty or forty years to maintain a façade of youth.  Our head of sometimes impossibly unnaturally coloured hair is our shield, our defense against aging. When we squint into mirrors, catch a glimpse of ourselves in a passing window or see a photo of ourselves, an illusion of youth is maintained by the colour of our crowning glory. How do we often describe someone to a stranger? By their height and hair colour. Its an important feature.  I was always a tall blonde, that made it simple to pick me out of a crowd.  My husband has been blessed by the gods of genetics with a lush head of mostly dark brown curls. He is the envy of his peer group and has been often accused of dying his hair. He does not and has the attractive touches of silver threads weaving through the brown to prove it.  So the desire for and envy of the hair colour of our youth runs through both sexes.    

                                                                                                                        ...aren't I cute?

I’m a natural blonde, white haired as a child.  As with most blondes, my hair darkened as I aged and I began adding highlights as a teenager. For years I had the long straight hair so admired by the sixties generation but it required a bit of lemon juice or the new favourite spray,“Sun In”, to maintain a “natural” streaky look. 

..."sun-kissed" in '74

Through my twenties and thirties those highlights were courtesy of my hairdresser at the salon.  Time consuming and expensive to keep up but necessary I felt, particularly as the grey hairs started to creep in.  At thirty-nine I lost all my hair to chemotherapy and when it grew back the colour was a uniformly depressing shade of medium-blah. Look it up, it's not nice. As tough as it was being bald, having an inch of medium- blah hair isn’t much easier when you are trying to recover your health and feel   positive about the world.  So off to the drugstore I went and on went the blonde dye when I got home.

Fast forward through another fifteen years of home colouring, salon colouring, highlights,etc.  Month after month, right before colouring it, I peered along the part in my hair and watched as the medium-blah shade changed to light-blah and then silver as the years passed.  When that half inch of roots was light enough I decided to take the plunge. That was over eighteen months ago and I quick cold turkey.  I knew that by fifty-seven I wasn’t fooling anyone with my blonde hair, no one would take me for a forty year old anymore so why bother trying to pretend?  I had read many stories of women who went through the same process.  One formerly dark-haired woman wrote that watching the grey hair grow in was like watching a glacier slowly creeping down her head. I loved the imagery, hated the idea but was curious to have the experience.

The good news is that for me it was a pretty painless process.  My hair is now a mix of very light blonde, silver, white, all shades of grey and some dark ash blonde. I like to call it Arctic Blonde.  Other than one semi-permanent colouring right at the three month mark  before I wedding I had to attend, there hasn’t been any need for additional highlights or gradual colour changes. I am free!  I have crossed one item off of the seemingly endless To Do list of maintenance on my middle aged body.  It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.  On the days when I get out of bed and see a grey haired hag staring back at me in the mirror I shake it off and remind myself of all the upside, including the hours I have gained back from the chore of colouring my hair.

Honey blonde at 50
 Men proudly wear the badge of Silver Fox when they go all grey and I have decided on the title of Silver Siren. So if you dare, put down the bottle of dye and the rubber gloves and give in to the call of the Siren.  You know you want to.

     Silver Siren at 58

 

Trying to Make it Work!

Hi All,

Just a short post to see if my email subscription gadget is working. I've been having a problem getting my posts delivered to anyone who signed up on my blog site. I've made a change and hope this will work!

My Superpower

I have a superpower. Yes, I do. I didn’t acquire it until a few years ago but it might have been there all along. It just took a certain, ahem, maturity to bring it out.  I am a COW.  A Confident Older Woman.  It may not sound like much to you but it for me it ranks up with there the ability to fly or having laser vision.  Sometimes I am a Cranky Older Woman but the results are the same.  I get more of what I want.  Plain and simple and it’s wonderful. Here’s how my particular superpower works.  When one of those  young, sexy, svelte hostesses that are everywhere these days leads me to a table in the restaurant that is right opposite the restrooms or beside the bussing station and asks “is this alright?”, I say, pleasantly,  “No, is it possible to have that table over there?”  And I make eye contact with her and smile.  One must use one’s powers with great geniality.  Sometimes she quickly grabs up the menus she has laid down and says, “of course, no problem”.   Other times she pauses, goes back to the hostess station, consults her lists, confers with another staff member and then turns to me and says  “ Sorry for the wait, of course, no problem ”,  then she removes a ‘reserved’ sign and seats me.  It’s a beautiful thing.

A cow...

That is a very minor example of the use of the power.  I have used it for obtaining reimbursements that were at first denied, refunds that are tough to get, entrance into areas where I shouldn’t be, to get the use of something I need or simply for getting free things or discounts.  I am always pleasant, smiling and polite. Otherwise the superpower doesn’t work.  That’s just being rude or a bully. And if the power isn’t with me that day and I am denied, I accept that graciously. There will be another time.

                                                                                                            A "COW"

You may already have this power and think I’m an idiot for waiting so long to use mine but I was always a good girl. Took what I was given, didn’t ask for too much, didn’t make a scene.  But I’m getting older and I’m losing patience with other people determining things for me.  My husband was at times embarrassed by the use of my superpower but he is starting to really enjoy its benefits and will often employ me to make the requests that he cannot.  The power works best on all the younger people in the service industry, male and female, those young enough to be my children.  It is hard to say no to a woman who might remind you of your mother.  It’s the gift that you get with the thickening middle and the thinning hair.  Use it.

                                                                                                    

Once when seated in a upscale restaurant with friends, our party of four was then ignored for ten to fifteen minutes. Finally the young male host rushed over and apologized for the delay.  My friend gave him her dazzling smile and suggested that a complimentary bottle of Prosecco would help us overlook it. The young man paused for just a moment, trying to resist the power of the COW and then said, “of course, I can do that” and returned with the requested bottle.  My friend would not have made that request fifteen years ago.  There is a time between the years of youth and beauty, when flirtation is very helpful, and the era when the mature COW superpower kicks in and it’s not an easy one. The tired mother with two children in tow is not always well catered to or feels able to ask for what she wants.  She is too busy answering the demands of others.  But that time is behind me now. I am standing my ground, perfecting my pleasant but unwavering eye contact and not backing down.  When someone is heard to mutter, “what a cow” as I walk away I think to myself, “ yes, I am a COW and loving it. “

In The Vortex

I am sitting in a bar, the Cowgirl Bar, talking with a half-Persian, half-Native American young man named  Dakota.  He is trying to explain to me why he can’t seem to leave Santa Fe even though he wants to. We are in Santa Fe, a city where he has lived for five years and can’t seem to get away from. He tells me that there is a vortex here, a pull that keeps you and you just have to give into it until its ready to let you go.  He would like to travel, he really wants to get to Korea but until Santa Fe lets him go he will just have to relax and go with it. Swirl in the vortex. I get that.

Adobe curves...

I have been to Santa Fe six times in the last twenty years.  The City Different as it calls itself grabbed me from the get go. Everything about it is different from the area I live in. The elevation to start with, its at about 7000 feet and I live at sea level. Its all different up there! The rough dusky adobe buildings with their sensuous, rounded curves stand in painterly contrast to the huge deep blue sky that seems so much more intense than the insipid pale blue I gaze at out my window at home… when the blue is even there. The air is dry and smells of pine needles and dust, pinon fires and cooking chilis, both green and red.

Every time I am in Santa Fe wandering in and out of jewelry and clothing stores, staring at gorgeous art in the galleries, or in a bar sipping a green chili infused margarita, I always wonder whether I was an Indian or a cowboy in a previous life.  I am so drawn to the whole culture yet have no connection to it in my actual family history and daily life. I’ve been on a horse five or six times and own a pair of cowboy boots that I rarely wear.  That’s about it for the western lifestyle.  I’m leaning more towards the Native American side mostly because I love the jewelry! I could drape myself in rows of silver beads and turquoise of every shade and happily stagger around under its weight, rings on every finger, earlobes dragging with the weight of the beautiful stones.  Much more appealing to me than a cowboy hat and belt buckle.

My trinkets...

Or maybe it’s just the vortex, as my new friend Dakota says, that keeps pulling me back, trying to get me to stay. It's power reaching out to me through the richly veined stones and silver beads, the bright colours of the hand woven blankets and intricately tooled concha belts. Perhaps it’s not the things themselves, perhaps the pull is from somewhere deeper, the earth itself, the sapphire sky, the scent of the air. All I know is that I will be back and just maybe Dakota will still be there, swirling.