A time for every purpose

Every Christmas I look forward to that Moment that helps redefine and remind me what the season is all about.

It didn’t happen this year, and that’s okay because instead of a Moment helping remind me of the meaning of the season, various events of the season reminded me of the importance of family.

And when I talk of family, I’m talking about family in the broadest, most extended of terms.

Our extended family in the course of eight days experienced a death and a funeral, a Christmas open house for 30 people, and a birth.

And through each emotional phase, family leaned on family for support and it didn’t matter if it was child or stepchild, husband or ex-husband, wife or ex-wife, husband of ex-wife, or wife of ex-husband, mother or mother-in-law, father or father-in-law.

The extended family has been redefined by marriages, divorces and remarriages. Families become a blended blend of far-reaching ingredients.

As it was, this was going to be a Perfect Storm Christmas.

My very large family gets together every other year to celebrate the holiday, usually at my mother’s in Maine with the opening of presents and feasting on roast beast.

This year, however, my wife Jane’s family was also gathering here in anticipation of a Jan. 1 due date of a first granddaughter.

So Jane and I volunteered to make our home Christmas Day Central for an open house and buffet for about 30 people.

But, during the run-up in our preparations, Jane’s ex-husband’s wife Cheryl passed away, fighting the good fight against cancer for as long as she could.

Focus shifted. Emotional strength marshaled. We cried at the loss. Celebrated the life.

All this against the backdrop that Cheryl’s daughter Jenn is getting married on New Year’s Day.

And then we immediately upshifted to celebrate Christmas Day with food, drink, the din of conversation and the merriment of Christmas songs.

And wouldn’t you know? The baby that wasn’t due until New Year’s Day decided she wanted to be born on the day after Christmas.

Stepdaughter Kelsey and her husband Jeremy headed to the hospital within a few hours after our party ended.

So focus shifted again. More emotional strength was marshaled. And family gathered at the hospital to await the birth of Rylin Anne, the newest member of our extended family.

Now Rylin shares the same birthday as her aunt, Reilly, Jane’s daughter and Kelsey’s sister.

Through the week, as events shifted and emotions ran from high to low and low to high, the song “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds kept spinning around in my head:

To everything Turn, Turn, Turn

There is a season Turn, Turn, Turn

And a time to every purpose, under Heaven.

Taken from Ecclesiastes it was one of the readings at Cheryl’s funeral mass.

And I guess if there was a Christmas Moment, that was at close as it came:

… A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

… A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

We did it all in the course of eight days.

We are what’s on our feet

It’s said we are what we eat.

We are also what we wear on our feet.

I was thinking about this the other day -- why it caught my attention, I have no idea -- and started counting up the shoes, boots, etc. that I wear on a regular and fairly regular basis:

17.

That’s right, 17.

To me, that seems like a lot because I don’t consider myself a shoe person, at least not in the manner of Imelda Marcos, the wife of the former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. It was rumored she had up to 3,000 pairs of shoes.

I break my shoes down into three categories: the Everyday shoes, the Athletic Shoes, and the Specialty Shoes.

Now that I am among the legion of Baby Boomers who are retired but still working, they reflect a person who leans more toward the casual and athletic.

That wasn’t the case when I was a full-time professional. That person was definitely more business, reflected in the shined dress shoes of greater formality.

Today’s Everyday shoes are a simple treaded leather lace-up for the fall, winter and early spring. They are replaced by a deck-shoe type slip-on for the late spring, summer and early fall.

It’s on the rare occasion these days that I’ll wear the cordovan or black dress shoes.

Around the house I’ll wear my Adidas flip-flops when it’s warm, my L.L Bean slipper mocs when it’s cold.

The Athletic shoes cover a wide range of activities, and have grown in number now that I have the time to devote to and concentrate on my physical well being.

I have shoes for running, shoes for cycling and shoes for walking. I have booties that I wear to surf when the Atlantic Ocean is too cold for my piggies. I have shoes that I wear to the beach. I have boots for skiing and boots for apres-ski eating and drinking. I have shoes for tennis -- I’d like to think I’ll pick up a racket again, but I probably won’t.

My Speciality shoes also cover a wide-range of activities.

A pair of trail shoes that I bought for hiking are actually used more for mowing the lawn and assorted yard work.

I have fleece-lined boots from Columbia for snowblowing the driveway. And I have steel-toed work boots for any occasion that requires steel-toed work boots. I needed them several years ago for a project I managed; I guess I hope there will be another project like it to manage some day.

In the meantime, it’s the working retired casual look for me on my feet.

If you give a mouse a cookie

One book I loved to read to my kids when they were little -- and one they loved to have read to them -- was “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.”

The story, if you don’t know already, revolves around a mouse who wants a cookie. And if you give him a cookie, he’ll want some milk to drink with the cookie. And if you give him some milk, he’ll want a straw to drink the milk. And so on.

My Baby Boomer version of that book is called “If You Buy New Appliances For The Kitchen.”

My wife and I are empty-nesters and reached that stage where the kitchen appliances -- the fridge, the dishwasher, and the cook-top stove and range -- needed replacing.

We think we’ll probably age in place here for a while, but our appliances age back to the Pleistocene era.

Being frugal New Englanders, we lived for a long time with a fridge that had a broken condenser, at least I think that’s what it was. Water was dripping on the inside of the unit and collecting at the bottom under the crisper drawers. Putting a towel under the crisper drawers to collect the water was getting old.

Our dishwasher was something that was loud enough to drown out the television in the living room plus any hope of conversation.

Three of four burners worked on the cook-top stove. There are basically two settings for the burners -- boiling hot or simmer hot. The idea of medium-high heat seems to get lost in the translation.

We have to slam the door of our oven in order to activate the electronics to set the cooking temperature, and I really question just how accurate the temperature is.

And we lost the heat resistant glass on the oven door about four Thanksgivings ago.

So now that the kitchen appliance make-over is in full operation -- just in time for a houseful of people at Christmas -- we’re thinking that now that we have a cookie, we might need a glass of milk.

The appliances are stainless steel. The hardware to our cabinets is gold colored. We need replacements to match the appliances.

And the kitchen counter is just contrary to the new look.

We need some nice New Hampshire granite, right?

And the kitchen abuts what is now the living room, but we’re thinking with such a nice kitchen it would be nice to have a dining room for those big family dinners we like to host when the kids are around.

But if we turn the living room into a dining room, we need a new living room, which we could do if we create an addition off the back of the house where the deck is now.

And so on ...

Oh, and my mother says if we get a new flat cook-top stove we’ll need all new cookware.

I’m not sure that’s true, but if you give a mouse a cookie, after all.

Where was I?

So, where was I? The last time we spoke a few weeks ago I was processing the fact that my baby daughter had somehow aged enough to be engaged to be married.

If that doesn’t validate the “time flies” theory, then nothing does.

Time is a funny thing to someone like me -- the working retired.

I retired from a job that I held for a time long, but I haven’t retired from work, and my time is as much a jumble of tasks and responsibilities as it ever was, perhaps more so in some ways.

I’m like a lot of aging Baby Boomers, who are filing for their Social Security benefits at a rate of 10,000 per day.

We may be getting a retirement check (whether from Social Security or some defined benefit plan from work), but we’re still working … mostly out of financial need, partly out of an emotional need to have structure and purpose.

It doesn’t suit us to do nothing.

I was talking not too long ago to Peter Francese, a widely recognized demographer who has researched and written about Baby Boomer issues.

I told him that I wasn’t the kind of guy who could just stop working altogether. He knew where I was coming from: He said he’s now 70 and has worked every day and plans to continue to work everyday at his craft.

There is still the substance of living that occupies a lot of time and energy. That doesn’t -- and shouldn’t -- change just because you’ve “retired.”

I don’t sleep in. In fact, that’s near impossible. My brain usually starts engaging at about 5 a.m. with the items on the to-do list, and the schedule of the day, and ideas for freelance work.

I haven’t visited this space in a while because other tasks, other responsibilities took priority.

Yes, there’s the matter of Elizabeth getting married next summer. She’s carrying the load of the planning, but there are ancillary tasks that have needed -- and will need -- attention. Some of our Thanksgiving traveling was related to that.

The holidays in general crowd the schedule.

For me and my wife Jane, our Christmas prep is into overdrive because we are hosting both her extended family and my extended family for Christmas dinner.

There’s not only Elizabeth’s engagement to celebrate with everyone, but there’s the pending arrival of a grandchild -- my wife Jane’s daughter Kelsey is due Jan. 1.

So we’ll host about 40 people on Christmas Day. And, oh yeah, we decided to do a kitchen make-over in time for Christmas with all new appliances.

Busy like everyone else, for sure. But a different kind of busy. A retiree, but a different kind of retiree.

I think of it as the new normal.