A few years ago, I was sitting in the kitchen eating lunch with the girls when I looked up and saw the neighbors' large, old oak tree fall over. It was not a stormy or windy day, and the tree looked healthy with a full crown of leaves. Yet it simply collapsed, like an antebellum belle in full swoon, the rustle of leave hitting the house replacing the whisper of skirts and crinoline.

I'm not sure where I am going with this, but I was thinking of that tree fall tonight on my walk. Thinking of how something can go from appearing sturdy to becoming frail in the blink of a firefly.

While waiting to pick up the girls from their community theatre play rehearsal tonight, I was talking with another member of the group. Gloria is in her eighties, and physically, she is becoming much more frail than sturdy. Yet she adores the theatre and is an active member of the guild, acting in many productions. I was knitting a sock while waiting for the girls and she started talking about how she took up knitting when her children were younger, knitting soakers for them. Funny how life twists, as, after a couple decades of throw away diaper use in our society, I had used soakers for my children, and my neighbor recently knit some adorable ones for her baby-to-be. Gloria went on to talk about crochet and how she tried to teach herself that "oh, in the sixties sometime." I loved the offhanded way she referred to it. As a lifetime spans decades, individual years matter less.

I have been noticing that as I work my way through my fourth decade. A firefly flashes, another day passes, a year flits by. A little boy gets his drivers license, a toddler becomes a young woman, a newborn learns to walk and talk. I age, crystallizing into the woman I am, growing comfortable in my skin.

This thing called life is an interesting journey.

Unbeing dead isn't being alive. ~e.e. cummings

The Year of the Bucky Book

For the last few years, Luis has come home with a Bucky Book every fall. Bucky Books are fund raising coupon books. They cost about $35, and if used, they will save the purchaser many times that amount.

The one problem with Bucky Books, in my opinion, is that we live an hour away from Madison and most of the coupons are for Madison businesses.

The first year Luis purchased one, we were in the middle of Simon's car screaming year. We didn't travel up to Madison very often. The book languished in the drawer, completely used.

The second year, we remembered to use some of the local coupons. The third year, I got smart. I put the book into the van, which is the primary vehicle we use to go to the city. We actually used some of the coupon that year and recouped the costs of the book at least.

This winter, I pulled the Bucky Book out and told Luis I was christening this "The Year of the Bucky Book." Every time we traveled up to Madison, I pulled the book out on the way and started reading through all the coupons. Free pizza for the kids at Sole Sapori, a wonderful Italian restaurant in Mount Horeb, along with buy one, get one espresso drinks a Crossroads Coffee in Cross Plains started our Year of the Bucky Book off with a bang.

On our recent "vacation in our backyard" (an overnight trip to Madison), we had a free entree at Bellinni's (amazing Sicilian food and fab service), free supplies from University Book Store, free latte from Victor Allen's, freebies at PDQ, and free $10 from Tellus Mater and more. We should have had a free ice cream cone at The Chocolate Shoppe, but I forget to pull out the coupon. Oops.

For Father's Day yesterday, Luis stepbped up to the "#1 Papa" title and chose to celebrate at Little A-Merrick-A*. Out came the Bucky Book. Two buy one, get one coupons along with their Father's Day special (fathers ride free with a paid child) resulted in a half price trip. The Bucky Book paid for itself yesterday alone.

I like The Year of the Bucky Book so far, but we have a lot of coupons to use up before September 30. Anyone going to the Dells? There a bunch of coupons for there that we probably won't use this year.


* For those of you not familiar with the area, Little A-Merrick-A is a delightfully cheesy small amusement park. It is a fun place for the younger set, though angsty teens would certainly pronounce is lame. Carousel, roller coasters perfect for the 6-12 year olds, toddler rides with fire trucks and helicopters, monorail, train ride through the country, bumper cars and bumper boats, a ferris wheel. It is a fun time, and even without the coupons, the price is reasonable.

Spread some mayo on me; I'm facing the sandwich years

Apparently I am thinking a great deal about the elderly lately because the idea of the "sandwich generation" is on my mind.

To be perfectly honest and blunt, I find the idea of a sandwich generation to be a creation straight out of the egos of the baby boomer generation.

It seems like the baby boomers have always had the idea that their generation is the first to deal with issues. That is a load of horse pucky. Sex? Drugs? Strange music? Weird lifestyles? Redefining roles of women? Sorry, boomers. Generations before you also dealt with these issues in many ways. The suffragettes were trailblazers too. Drugs were a cultural issue one hundred years before the boomers came of age. Sex, well, that has been experimented with for centuries. Alternative lifestyles have always been around too.

It seems like every time the baby boomer generation encounters something new for them, it is suddenly new altogether and requires a name, a definition and advice on how to deal with it.

The idea of caring for aging parents as well as children is nothing new. For goodness sake, in 1936, my grandmother got married and moved in with her new husband to start their life together. She immediately began caring for her new father-in-law and sister-in-law, and she was their caretaker about the next twenty years, throughout the years of raising her family too. This wasn't anything she defined, anything that she went to support groups on, anything that was written articles about. It was part of being a family, it was what people did. Was it easy? No. Mom asked her about it once, and grandma clearly replied that some days were very, very hard.

Here's the thing, though. Life is not meant to be easy all the time. Doing the right thing isn't always fun. Sometimes in life, you have to suck it up, doing what it takes for the people that you love, and keep moving forward. Period.

We can keep on doing that things that our foremothers did without having to resort to self-help books and fancy labels (Club sandwich? Open face sandwich? Oh yes, people are even defining different demographics within the new idea of a sandwich generation). Smaller family sizes and being spread out geographically are added challenges, but this is also nothing new. I guarantee you that pioneer families or immigrant families were spread out, and even if a family had six kids survive to adulthood, only one or two cared for the the aging parents.

I'm not looking forward to having to care for my in laws or my parents some day, but you know, I'm prepared for the idea because I know it is going to happen. It is kind of a no-brainer, people. People age, they need help in the end of their lives.

I think we need to stop looking for what makes us so very special in our place in time and look instead at historical connections and similarities. The idea that the generations currently alive in the US are so very special is kind of like the idea that more than half of the kids in a school are "gifted". Sorry, not buying it.

A few years ago, my uncle was telling me a story about his mother. She was at the very end of her life, days before she passed. He was visiting with her, and she questioned him about his jacket. She felt it was not warm enough for the day, and she wanted him to put on a thicker one.

I was reminded of that story yesterday when I was driving through downtown. I saw a woman who appeared to be in her mid-80s. She was walking with what I assume was her grown granddaughter. The younger woman was in her late 20s or early 30s. As they approached the corner, the older woman reached out to grasp the younger woman's elbow and restrained her at the corner until it was safe to cross.

Maternal instincts never go away.