This Is Getting Old: Exploring the Road Ahead

By Marian King Herreid

How do you feel about becoming a senior?
Will you face your elder years with confidence?
Looking for services for seniors?
Do you enjoy reminiscing?
Have you prepared your end of life documents?
What is your non-money legacy?
Are you caring for elderly parents?
THEN THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483450186

Book preview

This is Getting

OLD

Exploring the Road Ahead

MARIAN KING

HERREID

Copyright © 2016 Cara Schmaljohn

Executive Director

Senior Coastsiders.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5019-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5018-6 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 7/8/2016

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Autobiography

Memories

The Prince and Princess

Birthday Ballet

For Want Of An Eraser

Christmas On The Farm

Memories of Christmas Past

Up On The Roof Top

Popcorn, Lard and Other Depression Items

Am I A Middle Child?

The Importance of Friendship

Life Moves In Mysterious Ways

My Mother, The Rebel

Mother What Am I to Believe?

The Parental Teeter-Totter

A Gift To Treasure

A Moment of Truth

My Grandmother

The Day My Grandmother Died

Home Coming

Journaling My Way Through

Starr’s Last Poem

Starr’s Ashes

Healing Moments

Messages

Senior Coastsiders Celebrates 30 Years

Opportunities for Successful Aging

Celebrating National Volunteer Week

Happy Interdependence Day

Wisdom Happens

A Visit to the Dragon Slayers

The Year of the Ninety Year Olds

New Age Women in Old Age Bodies

The Importance of Inner Fitness

What Is Normal

Crones and Capital Campaigns

I Have A Dream

You Are Appreciated

What If You Had Never Met Senior Coastsiders

Sixteen Years Ago

Creating Rituals for the New Year

Putting Our House In Order

On Turning Eighty-four

Ninety Going On Ninety-five

Remembering Dorothy

Ode To Senior Coastsiders

Genevieve’s Flowers

Musings

It Takes a Long Time to Become Young

What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up?

I’m In Charge Of Celebrations

Massage

Aging on the Coastside

Solitude

Words In The Night

A Letter To My Daughters

The Joy Of Giving

Thoughts As Thanksgiving Approaches

When Is Your Personal New Year?

Different Kinds of Legacies

The Disposal Of Our Bodies

Something to Think About

Haiku

Epilogue

Excerpts from Memories

Father presented us with a tricycle. It was red; the handlebars had black rubber grips, red ribbon dangling enticingly from the ends… I immediately began to demand my turn to drive the tricycle. I did not like it at all that he was having the first turn. After all wasn’t I the biggest and the oldest? Jack would not get off the tricycle. So I bit him on the bottom.

Excerpts from Messages

A short walk and we arranged ourselves on the bales of straw thoughtfully placed in a semi-circle in the shade. Jose Rivers, Program Director, enthralled us from the start. A few welcoming remarks and we were invited to ask questions. First question, Why do you call this place the Dragon Slayers?

Excerpts from Musings

Carl Jung taught, For a young person it is almost a sin – and certainly a danger – to be too much occupied with himself. But for the aging person it is a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself. This end stage of life, it seems, has to do with making sense out of everything that has gone on before in order to prepare for what is to come…dying and death. I’m not afraid of death. It is the dying part that troubles me.

Dedicated to my children

Ann, Rob, Bob, Barb and Thom

from whom I have learned so much.

"As parents raise their children,

the children are raising their parents."

Erik H. Erickson

Have I loved and been loved?

Have I lived my life or someone else’s?

Have I left the world in a better place than when I found it?

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Foreword

I hold in my hand a locket made of silver. It once belonged to my mother. So begins just one of the extraordinary columns that Marian Herreid has gifted the Half Moon Bay Review over the years. She goes on to write that the dented heirloom has a place in her family dating back more than 100 years, yet she wonders what will become of it when she’s gone. Will her daughters continue to cherish it, or will it end up at the Senior Coastsiders Thrift Store?

Such questions represent a theme for Marian. Again and again, she pulls back that dark curtain and peers into neverland. Most of us prefer not to think about what happens when we’re gone. Marian is a fearless writer.

If that were all, it would be a sufficient gift to readers. But Marian’s spare, spry prose stands out from the page as if it were penned in embossed ink. Marian never wastes a word. Consequently, reading her words is never a waste of time.

Clay Lambert, Editor

Half Moon Bay Review

Acknowledgments

I thank Cara Schmaljohn, the Executive Director of Senior Coastsiders, who had the idea for the book and to her Board of Directors, and Staff with whom I have spent over twenty-five years gathering the words and experiences that have gone into the making of this project.

I thank Colleen Riley Haupt, Project Manager, for volunteering her time to getting this book published by finding solutions to problems, converting files, editing photographs, working with the publisher on my behalf, getting answers to questions and keeping me on track. And all the while keeping it fun.

I thank Clay Lambert, editor of the Half Moon Bay Review, for providing me with the encouragement and support that kept me writing. What an opportunity for successful aging this has been for me to have to limit my writings to 750 words. It meant writing and rewriting, counting and recounting, keeping my focus on the message.

I am especially thankful to Fran Acciardi and Siobhan Smith who spend long hours editing the manuscript and making suggestions that were very helpful.

Thanks to Barbara Masek Photography for the beautiful cover photo and her skilled assistance with the photo editing.

Thanks to Jim Leising, whose computer skills came to my rescue on many occasions and left me feeling so capable.

Thanks to Sharon Maggert, my partner, on call gopher and editor for putting up with me and keeping the household running in spite of my obsessing.

I loved the writing, but getting it ready for the publisher was hard work and very time consuming. If you plan on writing a book, be sure you do it before you are ninety-five and that you have to have a Colleen at your side.

Preface

The book, This Is Getting Old…exploring the road ahead, came into being as a result of an idea Cara Schmaljohn, Executive Director of Senior Coastsiders, and her Board of Directors wished to discuss with me…would I be interested in Senior Coastsiders publishing my writings?

In the 1990’s when I was the volunteer coordinator for the then Coastside Independent Elders Coalition, we established the Home Rehabilitation Program and the Positive Images of Aging Calendar. Writings about these activities were my first articles to appear in the Half Moon Bay Review. Senior Coastsiders picked up these programs when the Coastside Independent Elders Coalition disbanded.

From then on it wasn’t unusual for me to be asked to write an article for the Senior Page. I continue to be active in Senior Coastsiders and to write. Often my writing focuses on Senior Coastsiders’ activities, sometimes sharing my childhood memories and sometimes I write what Clay Lambert, editor of Half Moon Bay Review, calls musings.

The more I thought about the publishing of my writing, the more I realized how appropriate they were, not only for people like me who are growing older, but for adult children who have elderly parents, and their adult children…people involved in geriatric studies…people involved in programs for seniors…those who, being not yet seniors, are already interested in exploring what’s down the road for them.

Senior Coastsiders is publishing This Is Getting Old…exploring the road ahead. Proceeds from the sales of the book will go to Senior Coastsiders to support its programs. This is my legacy to Senior Coastsiders.

Marian King Herreid

Half Moon Bay, CaliforniaSeptember, 2015

Introduction

The sub-title for This Is Getting Old could be Memories, Messages and Musings for that is what it contains. Memories Section has articles, which were first written to share with my immediate family as Christmas gifts in the form of small booklets.

Memories are, of course, looking back, a central focus for the elderly, as they relive, share and come to terms with their lives. As I age I count them as an important part of my coming to terms with my past. Many of these articles have appeared over the years on the Senior Page of the Half Moon Bay Review.

Messages Section draws upon writings that were originally written for Senior Coastsiders and have appeared either in The Half Moon Bay Review Senior Page or Dignity, a magazine sent to Senior Coastsiders’ donors twice a year. Some are responses to would you, please, say a few words for… Senior Coastsiders has information about programs and services for the not so old, the old and for the adult children of aging parents. You will find many things to think about for yourself and your parents imbedded in these writings.

Musings Section is just that. It is my favorite kind of writing. It is writing down my day dreams, imaginary talks with myself, my family and my friends. Most of these focus on my thoughts about aging and life’s big questions. Many a question and many an answer has come to me by writing down my musings. Most of this section also first appeared in the Half Moon Bay Review on the Senior Page.

All of these – Memories, Messages and Musings – are based on my life experiences but also they have been affected by the fact I have had such a long life, age ninety-six and counting. A great deal of what has been written here and the way it has been written has to do with my almost thirty years in Half Moon Bay. I have had the influence of a special community. In this community, as an aging senior, I have not been put on a shelf or otherwise isolated. Here, I have had many opportunities to voice my strong conviction that it takes a village to raise a human being to death’s door. We all need each other.

Autobiography

Marian King Herreid

Born January 30, 1920

I was born and raised in a middle class family in the university city of Madison, Wisconsin; The middle child, the only girl between two brothers. I loved school and the out-of-doors, wrote poetry, played the violin and sang in the school choir. In other words, I proceeded to live out the expected stereotype of my place in history.

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Mom and Dad in their younger years.

Upon completing high school at age sixteen father told me he could only afford college for the boys, but he would pay for a year of business school for me. I remember being very disappointed, but accepted without question that it was more important for boys to have an education. Perhaps it was then. At least father felt women should be educated to be able to support themselves financially should the need arise. This was 1937. It would be a very long time before the Equal Rights Amendment, which was first introduced in Congress in 1923, would be passed by Congress and years for the thirty-nine states required to ratify it…which never happened.

Following a year at Groves Barnhardt School for Secretaries, I began working in the business office of Manchesters Department Store. Now I had some money of my own. I didn’t have to account to anyone on how I spent it. I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. After several sessions, I decided this wasn’t the kind of help I was looking for - just get married and in time everything will work out. This was 1938. Homosexuality was considered an illness. After many long years Same Sex Marriage passed the Supreme Court in 2015.

After another year I met someone at work. He was working part time and going to college. He wanted to teach English and he hoped someday to be a writer. Before the year was over we were married. Then along came Pearl Harbor. My husband decided to enlist in the Navy rather than wait to be drafted into the Army. He was trained as a Pharmacist Mate, assigned to the Marine Corp and shipped to the South Pacific, where he took part in three battles: Guadalcanal, Bouganville and Guam. When he returned he was never the same person. We didn’t know about Post Tramatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) then and there were no programs to help us.

By the time I was twenty-nine, I had put a husband through college and had four children. Feeling the lack of information for parenting, I sought out workshops, classes and readings. I also began working with the Sunday morning church programs for three, four and five year olds. I loved it. Over the next fifteen years I attended and organized many workshops for people like me who wanted help with parenting. I established four parent/child centers in churches, not church related, however. This was where we could find the space and it turned out to be a happy arrangement because it meant these enhanced spaces were used by the churches on Sunday mornings.

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Marian, husband and children circa 1950

After seventeen years of marriage and the children moving into the teen years, I felt there was no choice but to divorce. I moved with my children to Long Beach, California to establish another preschool program. This time for a church that wanted to integrate weekday and Sunday morning programs. We called it Extended Church School. And then it happened – I fell in love, as I had never loved before, with a woman. Starr was the Minister of Religious Education for this church. She had her education behind her and her career path set. How I wished I had a college education. It was a tough time for us. This was 1957. What options did we have?

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Starr Williams circa 1957

Three years later I remarried. Hindsight being better than foresight, I married for all the wrong reasons. I loved my children. They were the love of my life. I thought I needed a father for my children and I was having trouble accepting the role of a lesbian and a bit of financial security wouldn’t hurt. We moved to Indiana, where my new husband was a professor of Modern Languages at Purdue University. Our first year together he was on sabbatical leave. We took the three children (Ann was married by this time) and spent the year traveling in the countries where the languages he taught were spoken.

My husband invited Starr and her son to house-sit for us while we were in Europe. She had been talking about returning to college for a master’s degree in counseling and guidance to add to her seminary education. She accepted his offer and enrolled at Purdue. When the neighbors across the street went on sabbatical the next year, she moved across the street to house-sit for them.

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Starr with son Rob

After we returned from Europe I established another preschool program in our local church and later began training teachers for the new Head Start Program. Growing tired of my flippant response to Where did you get your training? which was, I never had any. I just give it, I began my college education.

After Starr completed her degree, she worked in the Counseling and Guidance Department at Purdue. Later on she took a position as Minister of Religious Education for the local Methodist Church and bought a house a few blocks from us. Four years later she was called to be the Minister of Religious Education for the large First Unitarian Church in Chicago. Interestingly, my grandfather was a Unitarian Minister. My mother use to say, when she and daddy died they wanted Starr to do their services, and she did in 1973. If I went with Starr, theologically this would be like returning home for me.

If I went with Starr, turned to When I go with Starr. I finally faced who I was and where I wanted to be. It was time to live my own life, not someone else’s. Another divorce. I moved in with Starr and found a position with the Chicago Catholic Arch Diocese Head Start program as Curriculum Consultant. Thom went to live with Ann and family. He graduated from San Bernadino High School and returned to Chicago to attend Loyola University. All of us were now in college. I had a partner to share my life and we were all involved in a common endeavor, education.

In 1970 I received my bachelors degree in Psychology and Social Studies for Teachers from Mundelein College in Chicago. In 1972 I received my masters degree in Early Childhood Education and Human Development from Erikson Institute, then an affiliate of Loyola University in Chicago, now a well-known Institute on its own. I established and directed a Child Care and Kindergarten Program for the First Unitarian Church of Chicago, where Starr was the Minister of Education. I completed course work for my doctorate at Loyola in 1976, but I never completed a dissertation.

I began teaching at Mundelein College in 1972. While there I established its laboratory Preschool and Kindergarten. While teaching at Mundelein, I was a visiting professor at Sir George Washington University in Montreal, Canada summer sessions of 1974 and 1975.

Now this was life to the full – plays, concerts, lectures, museums, church participation, but always squeezing out time for retreats into nature, birding, biking and camping. A course in Journal Writing made us aware of how much we longed for more access to nature.

This opportunity for another change came in 1976, when Starr was offered the position of Head of the Department of Ministry and Education for the Unitarian Universalist Denominational Headquarters in Boston. She