I lost a childhood hero ... or did I? Certainly the creator, but not the creation?  Imaginary characters never die, do they?  After all, that's part of the purpose of creating: to leave something of your soul behind.  On the other hand, one more protective layer between me and infinity is gone.  That's how you know you're an elder ... when the hard questions come, and there's no one wiser or more experienced to ask, so all eyes turn to you.

Then this came up on the 'net, and made it even sadder.  Getting lonely here in Trekland:

Musings on Aging and Winter

Its been interesting winter so far, and I've got to say I've been loving it. I enjoy the seasonal travel by boat, exploring new places, but at the same time, its been lovely staying in one place and watching the landscape gradually change with the seasons. I feel just a bit more in touch with nature this way - ironic, since in fact we've spent the last 3 months in a plastic bubble rarely able to look outside except to the east, but in fact, feeling a bit chill, hearing the hiss of snow or the pat of rain, and the shift of wind and tide, *does* make me feel in tune with the seasons. When we went south, we stayed in a little bubble, a zone of 70-degree weather (20 C, I think?) for months on end, moving south then north again as that temperate zone moved, and it was disorienting. But here, its been cozy, we've spent a lot of time cooking, and hanging out just the two of us, as there is little activity on the dock.

But not totally antisocial ... we had an absolutely awesome superbowl party, connected up with a lot of new folks, and of course it was nice that the local team won. At one point Dan & I realized that we were the oldest people there, and the second-most experienced cruisers. Most of the folks we'd learned from had moved back ashore, if they were still interested in traveling, they did so by car and plane. We were able to advise the next group of younger, newer boaters, which is very cool ... but was making us feel old. I remember visiting the American Indian museum in Washington DC and they had a videoed conversation with an elder, and at one point s/he was asked, "How do you become an elder?" and the answer was something like, "There is no ceremony, no declaration. You become an elder when there is a question, and there is no one older or wiser to ask." Suddenly, at our superbowl party, while we were chatting with K & D about boat insulation for winter, we realized that *we* were the elders. Both exciting, and humbling. Becsuse yes, we have a lot of info, but there's still so much we *don't* know. It feels like a responsibility, what if while we're talking with them, we leave out something important? And that causes problems for them? Back in September, we had sent them an email warning that (certain kind of heater) doesn't work in cold water, and most of us use oil-filled electric heaters in Jan & Feb. But that was in September, and during the last cold snap, they had long forgotten that advice, and tried to use the other heater, which didn't work, as predicted. She'd acknowledged that when she went back to the email, everyhting she needed to know was there, but she hadn't remembered. So now we're going to get together later this week, and go over again with them everyhting we can think of about living on a boat in winter ... and I'm really hoping that its not my turn to forget something. [Special bonus for me, is that some of what we discuss will help me organize my thoughts for my part of the book I've been invited to coauthor]

In contrast to being the elders on Sunday, yesterday we went to an awesome science lecture on legal & regulatory issues about water pollution. I know, that doesn't sound exciting, but for me it was. They talked about issues that almost exactly spanned the timing of my professional career, and on the intersection of science with public policy in writing rules that worked. (yeah, okay, sounds dorky, I get it. Bear with me, okay? I really miss getting deep into the science - as I mentioned in a blog post a couple of months ago, I no longer *work* as a scientist, but I never stopped *being* one - science is still the way I look at the world, I still want to know "why" things are the way they are.) That evening, we were chatting about the event and some of the audience questions, and side conversations. Many of the latter were about things like identifying people in old photos from approx 1920s and 1930s, and how the people were gone, and in many cases even the children were gone. And some of the audience questions sounded like people were a bit desperate to prove that they were still relevant, that they still had a grasp of the science or that their old work was still relevant. And I thought, uh-oh, will I sound like that too, in some years? Right now, we're the rock stars of this group - people are fascinated by our stories of life on the boat, and Dan pointed out that I was the youngest person in the room. And maybe, just being aware that you can come across that way, will prevent it happening. But I realized that that was one of the reasons I didn't want to do anything science-related in retirement, I wanted to focus on *new* things - maritime history and sailing - so that I wouldn't be tempted to live in my own past. And don't get me wrong - I'm incredibly happy doing what I'm doing now. Just thinking about future, a little bit.

Some of this musing has been brought on by our discussions of what I call our "reentry fund." Someday, we too will need to move back to land somewhere. We're keeping some money set aside to remodel our condo or buy or build a new home, when that day comes, and buy some furniture and a new(er) car. [We're still discussing how much that should be, and how much we can spend now. Which of course depends on a whole bunch of things we can't answer, like, when and where we'll move ashore. We haven't found our perfect place, yet.]

Summary: 2012

Got this great list of questions from friend RoseAnn's blog.

1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before? Learned swordfighting!
2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I only made one resolution last year - to read at least one nonfiction book every month to keep my brain from turning to jello in retirement.  (Mostly kept, I read 11 nonfiction books last year) No resolutions this year, but see the preceding post.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No, but 3 acquaintances gave birth within a few weeks of each other in the spring
4. Did anyone close to you die? No one close, but with online connectivity our circle is wider, so we heard about the loss of more people we knew only slightly.  The sinking of the tallship Bounty in Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy affected me quite a lot.
5. What places did you visit? We started the year docked in St Augustine, FL, visited Aruba in February and March and traveled back up the U.S. East Coast to Annapolis in April and May.  After those miles we were delighted to stay close to home for the rest of the year.
6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012? More opportunities to explore the Chesapeake Bay by boat.  We spent two full months of last summer on the hard working on the new copper bottom paint.
7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Dan's surgery June 11; a talk I gave on Nov 5 that I'd been wanting to do for some time.
8. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year? Amping up my writing.  My "public" blog Life Afloat Archives got a lot more visibility and I think my writing has improved.
9. What was your biggest failure? Not a "failure" in the sense of something I did, but I'm deeply frustrated at being unable to resolve formatting issues that prevent my work posting properly at the newspaper I've been writing for.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? No.
11. What was the best thing you bought? Our pirate garb has led to many new adventures and meeting interesting people!
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? .
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Congressional Republicans and Tea Partiers.
14. Where did most of your money go? Boat improvements like the copper bottom paint; and a new roof on the Arizona rental house.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? really improving our diets/cooking
16. What song(s) will always remind you of 2012? Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen; Gangnam Style by PSY; and the wonderful spinoff YouTube videos of Naval Academy midshipmen spoofing the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader version of #1 and both the Naval Academy mids and West Point cadets spoofing #2
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? happier
b) thinner or fatter? same
c) richer or poorer? poorer
18. What do you wish you’d done more of? sailing in the Chesapeake, see #6
19. What do you wish you’d done less of? alcohol - a couple of really over-the-top parties
20. How did you spend Christmas in 2012? quietly and privately aboard our shrinkwrapped boat
21. Did you fall in love in 2012? I stayed in love in 2012, which at times feels just as significant. (this is RoseAnn's answer and I love it!)
22. What was your favorite TV program? n/a; haven't had a TV for a long time
23. What did you do for your birthday in 2012? met friends Donna and John in Rock Hall for the "pirate festival."
24. What was the best book you read? the Sparrowhawk series; historical fiction set around the time of the American Revolution
25. What did you want and get? continued improvement of my back/walking issues with physical therapy; Obama's reelection
26. What did you want and not get? completely out of debt, thanks to the Arizona house roof
27. What was your favorite film of this year? n/a
28. Did you make some new friends this year? Yes, in the historical reenacting and pirate communities
29.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? totally conquering my back/walking problems
30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012? For the first few years after retiring, I was consciously rebelling and wore only t-shirts and jeans.  After the 3-year anniversary I started wanting to class it up just slightly, though still pretty casual.  A few posts in our blogging Raft Up about laundry last August - especially Tammy's - inspired me.
31. What kept you sane? watching sunlight on water ... as always
32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Kate Middleton.  She knew what she was getting into and never seems to lose her poise.
33. What political issue stirred you the most? The whole concept of fighting over raising taxes.  I think the place to start is to decide what government should do (take care of the poor and sick and elderly?  national defense? regulate behavior between two consenting adults?) and then decide how much that will cost, not start with how much you want to pay, or not, and then react to that imposed budget.

New Year's Un-Resolutions

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions – at least, not the “this year I’m going to lose 20 lbs, exercise more, drink less, organize the basement, and be nicer to my sister” kind of resolutions that everyone makes  in January and everyone breaks by March.  But still, I find the new year's eve a time for reflection -- not resolutions, but a time to think about priorities, “What will I write in the blank book that is my life, 2013?”

In my 20s, when the possibilities were infinite and future was wide an green and forever stretching before me, I had definite goals for my life; things like “Have a meaningful career,” “Find a forever lover,” “Raise a child,” “Live in a great place.” Some were achieved, some fell away.

Now in my late 50s, after retiring from a satisfying career and well past the age when I could have a kid if I wanted to, I realized that although I don’t have big life “goals” there is still definitely some big stuff I want in my life.  So instead of wearing a funny paper hat last night while drinking champagne, I drank cherry lemonade and sat with a pencil and my thoughts.  Below is the list I came up with, trying to articulate what big stuff I want in my life.  Getting up of course to watch the fireworks at 7:30 and at midnight; I’m not too old to love magic lights in the sky at night!

Big stuff I want in my life. The items on this list aren’t finely worded or for publication, they are not in order, they’re just for me (and you if you are interested).  I’ll probably come back and tweak this list from time to time. It intrigues me to see how many of the things I’ve prioritized are linked and intertwined.

• Dan!!!
• No worries about money, i.e., living below our means.  I feel wealthiest when I balance the checkbook and have a bit left over for charity and for being able to overtip my server at a restaurant.
• Opportunities for engagement with people in stimulating conversation – time for friends old and new, in ‘real life’ and online.  True to my Leo horoscope, I’m an unabashed extrovert.
• Health, being able to go for long leisurely walks and maintaining my physical therapy exercise regimen.
• Building the world I want to live in, and leaving the world better than I found it – volunteering and giving back, charity, having an impact, being mindful of our environmental footprint.  Writing something that leaves an impression.
• Opportunities for continued learning.
• Being in touch with Nature and seasons.
• Small space living, part of both having a great home, and creating a small footprint.  
• A home that works for me.  This includes both a great town, and a great house.  A great town would be on that is literate, politically moderate to liberal, lots of educational and cultural opportunities, probably a college town with both seasons and scenery. When I was shopping for my first house I told the realtor that what I wanted, the only requirements, were lots of wood, lots of sunshine, a great view and a great kitchen.    That list has never changed.  Although the sizes of the homes have varied for many reasons, there has always been a strong preference for small space living. from the massive Victorian we owned in Wyoming to the little sailboat. Settle somewhere I could have a cozy home and be in touch with nature and the change of seasons (a stone cottage on a bluff beside the ocean in New England, maybe, or a cabin in the Colorado mountains).  Most important, I need a feeling of safety at home. 
• Seasons, change, and newness.
• Time for hobbies, and growth, lifelong and new – cooking, reading, travel, history, maybe some art. Writing.

As interesting to me as what I put in the list, is what I left out.  Traveling by sailboat isn’t on the list. (!!??)  I love our life afloat and don’t have any plans to change it in the near or moderate future; it’s a perfect platform for getting everything on my list into my life.  It’s just that sailing, in and of itself, isn’t a goal; the things on my list could be accomplished in other ways.  I don’t necessarily want to be a great sailor.  I want to have a great life, while sailing.

In Quest of Ordinary

October 2012; better living through chemistry 

When you're a kid, all you want to do is fit in, be unremarkable, ordinary.

I look Caucasian and identify as Caucasian, although there's a tiny touch of Africa in my dad's heredity.  It manifests in me in great skin that at almost 60 years old still has few wrinkles, and I can  get a gorgeous bronze-gold tan with minimal effort.  I joke that I can look at a lightbulb and get tan.  The price of that skin is hair that has an (*ahem*) "ethnic" texture.  Hair that earned me my unfortunate elementary school nickname "Brillo." Every day of my young life was a bad hair day with my kind of hair.

Junior high school was an endless struggle of chemicals and rollers, never letting my hair get wet so it wouldn't frizz, never jumping in the swimming pool or going to the beach or walking in the rain, all in the quest to look like everyone else.  Ordinary, unremarkable, because that is the age when, more than anything else, kids wish to fit in.  Straight, shiny, swingy hair that moves was it, in the 1960s.  And the rituals continued through high school, college, and my 20s, periodic trips to the salon for chemical straightening and several hours of combing and roller setting and sitting under a dryer every time I washed my hair.  My fantasy was to have straight hair and that needed nothing more than to let it air dry any time I washed it and it would stay straight, you know, like every one of my friends could do; instead of the incredible effort it took me to achieve an imperfect approximation of that same look.

Fast forward to 2009 ... and there is a process that would do exactly what I had fantasized.  Expensive, but for $700 every 3 or 4 months, I could have the hair of my dreams, silky, shiny, straight, and no maintenance except wash and wear.  I think it truly would have changed my life had it been available when I was in junior high, I might have had the self-confidence to become one of the popular kids.  Heck, it changed my life when I did it as an adult. I loved it, I had to do it if for no other reason than vindication of all the grief my younger self had put up with.  When it was done, it was just like you would expect me to look, blue eyes and pale blond hair.  I grew my hair halfway down my back and let it shine and flipped it over my shoulder and never had a bad hair day.

But then I realized.  I was still spending huge amounts (of money, now, instead of time, because I'm a grownup and can do what I want) to look ... ordinary.  Just as I felt compelled to do in junior high school. See me on the street and you wouldn't think anything of it - ordinary middle-aged woman who's got a decent hair cut but not doing anything special with her hair.  Here's the giant irony: now that it was in my grasp to have unremarkable hair, as an adult, "ordinary" wasn't really what I wanted any more.  If I was going to spend that much money and effort, I wanted to look outstanding, amazing.  Or, conversely, if I was going to end up looking ordinary anyway, I might as well do it for free.

So I'm letting my straight, shiny hair grow back out, and I'll cut it short and curly for our next cruise.  I'll go wash-and-wear, and just be my unfiltered self.  (and save both money and water, too!)

Before we left Michigan, our stylist taught Dan how to cut my hair the way she did, so we could maintain ourselves when we went cruising.  This is my "natural" hair, circa 2006.

Light and Darkness

A friend is an anti-death-penalty activist; her guy was executed today.  It's complicated.

Do not think you didn't make a difference.

In the unchanged world, he lived, and he died, that is all.  Because of you, he was loved before he died.  That is everything.

You cannot fight darkness with more darkness.  You can only fight darkness with light.  You cannot fight death with more death.  You can only fight death with love.

"Perhaps he deserved to die.  But there are those that die, that deserved to live.  Do not be so quick to grant the one, unless you can grant the other."  (my paraphrase of Gandalf the Wizard's comments in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy; and reminder of the virtue of humility; to the governor of Texas on the death penalty)

Embracing Winter

Who, me?  The one married to the guy who boasts that the only ice he's seen since 2008 is in his glass of rum?  Me?  Winter?

Yeah.

We decided to hang out in Annapolis this year for a couple of logical reasons. I wanted a long period with supertrainer Jen to get my back back into shape so I could, you know, walk normally.  And we'd needed a few months to let the bank accounts rebound after the excess spending of the last glorious winter in St Augustine.

I knew that staying in Annapolis for a year meant we'd experience winter for the first time in 4 years. What I didn't expect was to look forward to it.  But today in the grocery store the shelves were stocked with big orange soup mugs and a sale on canned Progresso soup.  Like all advertising, it wasn't about the item itself; it was about the image of myself using the item, that they tried to sell.  Sure enough, I could visualize myself in the cozy lovely life I fantasized, log cabin in the woods with the trees shedding their autumn-colored leaves outside.  And I wanted that coziness, that safety from the storm.   I could just see myself standing near the fireplace, wearing a well-loved old gray sweater, sipping warm tomato soup from that mug after an invigorating hike in the woods...

I don't have a log cabin, or woods full of maple trees.  And I know that winter will also include chilly fingertips, icy docks, and dark mornings.  But I'm going to buy myself one of those big mugs, and browse the Web for soup recipes, snuggle down, get slow and contemplative and quiet, light some candles and make the very very best of the coming season.