When texts and Facebook aren’t enough

I needed some face time with my children.

It happens sometimes - phone calls, texts, Facebook updates and Instagram photos aren't enough.

Elizabeth and David, all growed up

Even though they're grown, I need to see them, to have some hug time. I need to see them as they talk about their jobs and Elizabeth's efforts with husband John to buy a house and the fact that David is moving into a new apartment in Brooklyn

I like the empty nest, like the fact that my and wife Jane's blended family is doing well out there in the real world. But every now and then the emptiness echoes.

My day-to-day rattling around in my home office/music conservatory/secondary guest bedroom  is my way of life - my working retired life - these days.

I like the commute into work in the morning - down the hall and to the right. I like to be able to pull Martha or one of my other guitars onto my lap to play music while I contemplate work or, more likely, contemplate my navel. I like the dress code at work, very relaxed, to the point of underwear and a tee shirt some summer mornings (I know, TMI). I like that my boss - me - doesn't mind if I take an afternoon nap.

But every now and again I need to see my kids.

They were here for my  birthday and Father's Day in June, but that was two long months ago. So I arranged a weekend with Elizabeth and John at their Connecticut home and was joined by David who took the train from New York City.

We drank a little beer. And we ate a lot of food. We visited John’s parents. And we did a lot of talking. I got my face time. And I got my hugs.

Trust me, at 60 at 70 at 80 at 90 ... you will never, ever tire of hugs from your children. And sometimes you'll need to make the effort to go and get them.

Too much sitting on my lazy angst

I’ve been a bad, bad Boomer about my angst.

I haven’t written in this space for weeks.

I can chalk it up to a number of factors: being busy with other things, both professional and personal, and being just plain lazy about getting these words on paper (or words online, as the case may be).

I’ve learned, in the almost five years since I retired from my newspaper job, that my priorities about being retired and working - working retired -- haven’t changed all that much.

I prioritize my day and my freelance work according to an earnings hierarchy: The best paying jobs have the highest priority, the lesser-paying jobs have mid-level priority, and the no-paying work have the least priority.

Writing my Boomer Angst falls into the no-paying category.

And sandwiched in there -- in a rambling, no-set-criteria kind of way -- is my need to just load the car with the gear necessary to spend some time skiing or at the beach surfing or playing golf or just traveling to change the scenery.

It’s not that there isn’t some angst to write about.

I’m approaching my 60th birthday, and I’ve been processing the idea of being 60 years old more heavily than I did at 30 or 40 or 50.

Sixty, when I was 20 and 30, seemed old. It’s not helped by the fact that my Dad started falling into failing health in his 60s, dying at 64 from a respiratory ailment. (Thank goodness my Mom is still chugging away at 87 plus to convince me -- rightly or wrongly -- that I have her longevity genes.)

At 60, I don’t perceive myself as being old, but perception, as we know, can be illusion. We Baby Boomers tell ourselves that 60 is the new 50. But, in fact, 60 is 60 no matter how much of a time warp you might want to try to create.

 Issues of physical and mental health carry more weight

Why is it, for example and speaking of weight, did I gain a lot of the weight back that I lost a couple of years ago? My diet didn’t change appreciably. My exercise regimen didn’t change. Is my metabolism, like an old furnace, just not burning the fuel the way it used to?

And why is it that my 7 iron results in only about 100 yards on the gold course when it used to produce 120 yards? I feel fit, but am I getting less flexible as I get a little more achy in the joints?

Fortunately, there are many, many more positives these days to approaching 60 to counterweight any agnst..

My wife and I are happy empty nesters who revel in the opportunities to come and go, travel to and fro.

My daughter and her husband are looking for a house to buy.

My son is happily engaged in wonderful work at Columbia University.

My stepdaughter is pregnant with child No. 2 while her daughter (granddaughter Rylin) is the source of endless amusement (and the occasional bug du jour that happens to be going around her daycare).

In sum, everyone that I care about is doing just fine.

Every age has to be tempered by attitude. My attitude at 60, while contemplative, is upbeat.

May the best chef win, which he did

David and me during the throwdown.

My son David and I had a kitchen throwdown last weekend.

Family was in town for my granddaughter Rylin’s christening, and I wanted to serve something that would appeal to the crowd we anticipated for dinner on Saturday night.

Cooking, especially for family gatherings, has become one of my great loves as a Baby Boomer empty nester.

It’s feeding the nest again, but not as a full-time gig, plus I can get some help, as was the case for this family dinner.

A little bit of research into my recipe collection led me to a Chicken Marsala Stew with Spring Vegetables, which I featured on my recipe site -- Eats@Home -- back in April 2010.

I needed to double the recipe, which, as listed feeds four. So I bought double the ingredients, and invited my son, who is quite accomplished in the kitchen (per his Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts), to cook one pot of the stew while I cooked the other..

The rules of the throwdown were pretty simple: We had to follow the recipe except for one ingredient that he or I could throw into the pot.

He chose Old Bay Seasoning.

I chose red pepper flakes.

David won.

There are some strong flavors in this stew, which I originally picked up from an Associated Press story. Unlike a normal stew, doesn’t really take that long to cook.

The Marsala wine needs to come through, as does the balsamic vinegar.

My use of red pepper flakes was meant to add a bit of a back bite to the dish, but not overpower the Marsala and vinegar. It didn’t quite work out that way, and it’s probably because I don’t think I used enough flake. The back bite was barely discernable.

The Old Bay, on the other hand, complemented the Marsala and vinegar.

The seasoning is best known as an important ingredient for crab cakes, but it can be used to help flavor all kinds of recipes from fish to chicken to potatoes. I use Old Bay sometimes when I make roasted potatoes or my own Sweet Potato Fries.

Both pots of stew were cleaned out, but David’s version was clearly the crowd favorite. As it was with me, too.

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.

The dilemma of the empty nest

Lots of Baby Boomers have an empty nest.

But I have a real empty nest -- one once occupied by a family of Cardinals in the large bush outside my home office window.

It's an empty nest and, frankly, I'm a little worried.

It's not too unlike being a parent. You have a house full of children one day then suddenly, or so it seems, they're gone -- off to college, off to jobs, off to lives that don't require mom and dad as much. And you worry: Is everyone OK flying around out there on their own?

It was actually kind of exciting there for a while, to be watching as a grandparent might over the progression of the three Cardinal babies, from eggs to little hatchlings with mouths wide open in their constant plea for food.

Daddy Cardinal looked like the one bringing home the bacon, or whatever it was that the babies clamored for mouths agape. I'm no expert when it comes to ornithology but it looked like he was arriving home with the food, discharging whatever it was from his beak into the mouths of babes.

They got the constant attention of Dad, resplendent in his red coat and black piping, and from Mom, more muted in her brownish tones. And they got my attention. I was able to snap a few pictures for the family album (see photo above).

Then I went away for a couple of days and when I got back the nest was empty.

Had the kids grown enough to fly the nest already? Had there been a problem -- an attack by a predator, perhaps? -- that I wasn't here to prevent?

My concern heightened when Mother Cardinal came flying into the bush on my first day back, looking in the nest, looking in various parts of the bush, even looking on the ground as if she was searching for her brood.

Nothing. No one. I went and checked around myself. No one. Nothing that indicated a struggle, no feathers, no body parts and yes I've been watching way too much "CSI".

Today, many days later, the nest is just there. It now has no purpose, it is just a hollowed collection of twigs, pine needles and mud in the crook of the bush.

The empty nest in the bush serves as a reminder of my own empty nest. Hey, when you write for a living, you find metaphors just about everywhere you go, even if it's no further than your house.

The upside of empty nester angst

Part of the Baby Boomer angst is the empty nest.

The house that once chirped with the activity of children is suddenly quiet.

Yesterday, it seems, it was filled with chatter and clatter – a cacophony of homework and phone calls and running out the door for school or soccer practice or socializing.

And suddenly today it’s quiet.

Of course, Baby Boomers who are empty nesters had years to prepare for the fact that their children would go off on their own, but there was never time really to be ready. You can think it through as many times as you want and it’ll still surprise you how quickly it all happened.

Yesterday the nest was full. Today it is empty.

But we Boomers can look forward to the happy task of helping the children who have flown the coop start to feather nests of their own.

That was my fortunate chore this week, giving daughter Elizabeth a hand as she moved into an apartment in Connecticut.

The new home gives her a sense of permanence that no other place had while she was an undergraduate student and graduate student; the other places were stops along the way as she earned her doctor of physical therapy after six and a half years of study and clinical experience.

Now, with a job waiting for her at Yale-New Haven Hospital, she’s moving on and moving in to the grown up part of her life.

And a big part of that is a place she can truly call her home.

While on her final three-month clinical in Ohio, she stored much of her stuff at my home and the home of her mother.

Now all that stuff is making its way from storage to actual use. My part was to transport the stuff I had stored in New Hampshire to her in Connecticut, then helping unload and unpack.

She unpacked dishes and linen and pots and pans. She inspected framed pictures to find their correct display space on walls. Coats went into the closet, books into the bookcases. We put together a rocking chair that she bought and shipped home while doing a humanitarian medical visit to Nicaragua.

She is finding a place and a use for the several items donated to her by family – a lamp here, a teapot there. Everything is finding a home within the home.

When many of the family gathered in New Jersey for Thanksgiving Elizabeth (pictured above) and her cousin Sara, who also now has a job after many years of undergraduate/graduate schooling, received their Christmas angels.

These are a tradition in my family, handmade by my sister Ella. They can go on a mantle as a decoration or as a topper for the Christmas tree. You get one when you have a home.

In the end empty nesting isn't so empty after all because you realize that several pieces of you have moved in with them.

Can we slow it down just a bit?

What is it about growing older that time seems to speed up just when we want it to slow down?

I got to thinking about this the other morning with the arrival of spring. Its arrival brings on a parade of important birthdays -- my wife's, my daughter's, my son's and my own.

It's the fact that my daughter Elizabeth is going to be 24 and son David is going to be 21 that is freaking me out. (And I'm not going to even try to venture into my mental state over the fact that I'll be 55, and I'll stay away from public discussion of Jane's age to maintain peace and tranquility at home.)

When the kids were little, time took its time, it seemed. Yes, they had their birthdays and their First Communions and their first days of school, and life as a young parent had a certain, predictable rhythm. For the longest time they seemed forever locked in as just being little kids.

And every morning for what seemed years on end I could wake up and look myself in the mirror and look into a face that wasn't any older than, say, 30 … 35 at the oldest.

There was Little League to look forward to and gymnastics camp and all those things they needed from you because you were the parent and they were the kids.

But then they weren't little kids anymore, and I'm thinking it started when they learned to drive. I remember it being weird at the time that my babies were actually allowed to drive a car. It didn't matter that by virtue of their birth dates they were 16 and therefore allowed by law to begin driving. But they were still my babies and babies aren't allowed to drive.

And they weren't around as much. And they were around even less as they became high school upperclassmen. And they were around even less when they packed off to college.

It's as if the distance of having the children around less often has created some inverse refraction of time. The kids move away, and time seems to shorten.

I'm not the 30 year old in the mirror anymore: the gray will attest to that, and so will the wear lines under the eyes and the folds under the chin and the creakiness of getting out of bed in the morning. It's tough on the psyche to look yourself in that mirror and acknowledge you're the parent of two adult kids.

My daughter Elizabeth will mark her 24th birthday in late April, just shy of her completion of her doctoral graduate work in physical therapy. It's amazing to still think of her as a kid when at 24 I was already two years into a job as a newspaper reporter.

My son David birthday marks his being 21 -- an adult in every way, shape and form. And yet he's the Little Leaguer I want to play catch with now that winter has given way to spring.

Make no mistake -- it's great having adult children. We really enjoy each other's company when we can span time and distance to do it. I just wish the time part of it wasn't speeding by me as quickly as it is.