Living on the Back Nine

By Susan Whisnand

Living on the Back Nine is a collection of essays about the challenges, changes, and choices a woman faces after her fiftieth birthday. Each essay is a memoir from the authors personal experiences that are shared to encourage and inspire all women who desire to better understand what it means to live on this later course of life. Personal lessons learned from life are not individualistic. Lifes lessons are common to all women, as they learn together that life after fifty is a time to take good care of themselves, to participate in what is personally meaningful, to be strong in their own womanhood, and to enjoy life along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 5, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465315854

Susan Whisnand

Susan Whisnand is living on the back nine with her husband in California. She has five children and one son-in-law. Susan’s first grandbaby and another son-in-law will be joining her family in the near future. She is also the author of Living with a Lighter Load, a publication of Xlibris.

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Copyright © 2008 by Susan Whisnand.

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Contents

Introduction

1

Does a House Cat Have to Explain What She Does All Day

2

Be Independent . . . From Your Children

3

Raise Your Hand If You Have Ever Had A Four-Handed Massage In Las Vegas

4

If You Lose Your Uterus . . . Bake Cookies

5

What Ducks, A Catholic Monastery, And Bingo Have In Common

6

If You Can’t Get Your Ass Out Of The Water . . . Stay In The Boat

7

Why I Need To Exercise Four Times A Day

8

Standing Alone . . . Without My Pillars

9

Body Treatments For The Vintage Vehicle

10

The When, How, And Why Of Emotional Growth

11

Why I Believe Tuesdays Are Special

Conclusion

Introduction

I remember the excitement I felt the year I turned thirty. I thought it was the best birthday ever, because I felt like a grown up for the first time in my life. I was thrilled that I had finally entered into what I considered to be official adulthood with the arrival of my 30th year. When I turned forty, I wasn’t as excited as my 30th birthday, but I did welcome it with pride as the birthday of maturity. I was no longer just an adult woman in her 30’s, I was now a mature adult woman, due to the fact that my birthday had brought with it an addition decade. So, if my 30th birthday was the arrival of adulthood, and my 40th birthday was the arrival of maturity, what does my 50th birthday mean? I wasn’t quite sure what it meant to me as the year I turned fifty was approaching. I knew it had to mean the arrival of something in my life, but I didn’t know what that was yet. But I didn’t have to wonder too long. My dad told me what it meant the day I turned fifty.

My dad was sitting in his recliner and I was sitting across from him as we were enjoying the celebration of another birthday in the family. It was a typical birthday get-together and nothing out of the ordinary was going on. But then, in the midst of a regular family conversation, I had an extraordinary moment. It was one of those moments that I will never forget. My dad turned his head toward me, looked at me in the eye, paused for a moment, and then spoke these words, Well, you’re living on the back nine now.

I just stared at him and nodded. It didn’t sound like good news to me. His statement sounded as though I was crossing over some invisible dividing line of life. My dad was saying that turning 50 meant I was being transported from the front of life to the back. I was a little nervous about what he said, because when does the back of anything sound good?

Since my dad was in his seventies at the time I turned 50, I knew he was passing on an observation about age and life from having already lived through what was just the beginning for me. So, to better understand what he was communicating to me, I looked up a golf website and entered the term back nine to see if it would give me a definition. According to golf terminology, the back nine refers to "the final nine holes of an 18 hole golf course. Did you notice the word final" in the definition? No wonder I was feeling nervous. According to my dad, turning 50 means I have entered the final section within the course of life. Nine holes completed, and if all goes well, nine holes to go.

Now that I have experienced a few more birthdays since my 50th, I am beginning to recognize my dad’s statement as truth. Yes, from what I am currently experiencing, I have definitely entered the later years of my life. The mirror shows it, my slower mind testifies to it, and my lower energy level is exposing it. And with my reading glasses on, I can see the sands of the hour glass less on the top than on the bottom.

It doesn’t take long to find out it feels different on the back nine than on the front nine. So much of life as I have known it is changing. My children are moving away and my parents are passing away. I find myself standing at the center of my life and I am crying out, Where did everybody go? And talk about leaving, where is my mind going? I went to write peanut butter on my grocery list the other day and I forgot how to spell peanut. My body is also involved with what is changing. It does this daily thing I call the pull of skin to ground concept. It’s lovely. And what about the change of all changes called THE Change, which brings along hot flashes, insomnia, dry skin, night sweats, headaches, and emotional vomiting? And do I have any cheers for the decrease in energy, the stiffness after sitting in a chair longer than five minutes, or for the worries and seriousness of what could be in store during the last years of life for myself or for those I love?

There are a lot of questions I have about life as I enter the beginning of the back nine. The first one is how do I handle all of the changes? What can I do now that will help me through this time in my life and prepare me for what is yet to come? I have felt such a great sense of responsibility to myself and to those I love as I have entered the beginning of the back nine. I feel it’s up to me to work with the changes I am going through, to make the necessary adjustments, and to not allow the changes to defeat me. How do I do this? I do it by looking at what has been true and constant within my changing life and to see what is still there. I can see two. One, the God of the Universe, He will still be present long after I play my 18th hole. And two, I see that I am still a woman.

I am a woman who has a changing mind and body. A woman who has fewer roles in life to fulfill and less capable years left to live. And I am a woman needing to work harder than before to maintain what used to come easier. What I need now is to stand on and draw from the one thing that will never change about me, and that is my womanhood.

During the first half of my life, I was heavily dependent upon my roles of being a wife, mother, daughter, employee, Christian, and friend. Those roles were wonderful and necessary for that time in my life. But now, so much has changed and so have my roles, some of which no longer exist. I see very clearly that the way to live healthy, whole, and strong during these later years is for me to depend mostly on being the woman that I am, and not on my previous roles. I need to be someone who lives firmly within her own womanhood, in the presence of the God who created me and who is always with me.

All of the nurturing, soft side, inner strength, gentleness, perspective, thoughtfulness, caring, and how I love; flow from my womanhood. These are the qualities that will help me to handle the changes that I am facing during this time of life. And these are the same qualities that I definitely need to apply and give to myself. This is the time in my life that I need to nurture, care for, and be thoughtful towards myself. Being an older woman, I believe, requires more sense of self than ever before. The roles I had during the first half of my life filled me up and I had a lot of draw from. Since those roles have changed or no longer exist, I have more of an opportunity to draw from my womanhood for what I will need during my life on the back nine.

I have discovered that this time in life requires work,