Just as an eagle must fly, I must write. — Art by Pat Bean
Aging My Way
“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.” – Lawrence Kasdan
I’ve been retired from being a newspaper journalist for 20 years now. It was a job I loved. I thrived under the stress of the interviewing, the research and writing against a daily deadline. Every day was a new learning experience – from writing about Father’s Day from the view of shelter dads to interviewing a former president at a busy airport.
I miss the excitement, and even the grind of that kind of life, which all began two years after I decided – without a doubt in my head – that I had to become a writer. That was a huge dream for someone who was a high school dropout.
As one of my efforts, I applied for a reporter’s position. I saw the job as an opportunity to hone my writing skills. Instead, I was hired as a darkroom flunky at the small Texas Gulf Coast newspaper to which I had applied — for the grand salary of $1,25 an hour.
Toward the goal of becoming a reporter, I started taking journalism classes at the local community college. Fortunately, due to luck and the resignation of two college-educated guys, I got my wish – and a 25-cent an hour raise.
The year was 1967, and I was ecstatic. What I experienced for the next four years, beginning as a green reporter with no experience of the real world, was at least the equivalent of a master’s degree, not just in journalism but in life. Those experiences, along with hard work and my clippings, took me through the rest of a successful journalism career that lasted for 37 years.
And beyond – when I retired from my journalism job, I didn’t retire from writing. A day in which I do not put pen to paper or fingers on a keyboard leaves me feeling short-changed and restless.
But the writing I did in earlier years was all about other people and things – as all true journalists should do. What I write today is all about me and how I feel about things. No longer a journalist, I’ve become an essayist writing about my view of the world – and myself.
The change wasn’t easy, nor safe, because as a personal essayist I expose myself to the world. The transformation began after I wrote the first draft of Travels with Maggie, a book about me and my dog RVing together across America. I was told by a group of writers, who critiqued my efforts before the book was published, that my writing lacked voice.
And they were right. I suddenly saw that I was still writing as a journalist. So, I rewrote the book, adding the voice of an old broad who was still learning and still had a zest for life.
And that’s how I continue to write today – almost every day. I can’t help myself. I think that the day I stop writing will be the day I stop breathing.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
A week from now, what colors would you recall the colors of these flowers? More likely than not, it won’t be purple and yellow. — Art by Pat Bean
Aging My Way
Memory is fickle, sometimes true and sometimes false. I didn’t need Sally Tisdale’s essay “Mere Belief” in The Best American Essays 2024 to know that. All I have to do is listen to my adult children. When they recall one specific family event, no two remembrances of it are ever alike, including mine. We all could have been somewhere else on a different day.
But I found the article well-worth the read as the author attacked the subject from an ethical writer’s point of view. She believes that we writers have a contract with our readers that says we are telling the truth.
I’ve always tried to adhere to this ideal – and wish all writers had signed the same contract. But enough of that.
Sallie also noted that writers sometimes don’t write the truth but think they are. This is especially true of memoir writing where an author recalls lengthy conversations that happened when they were only two or three years old. But then she went on to say that: “Our false and shifting memories of the past don’t matter to anyone but ourselves. The future only cares about what we learn from them.”
And that line of thought brought me to how I had looked at my childhood from a child’s point of view, and then how one day when I was approaching 40, I viewed it through an adult’s experience. I realized I had failed to be the mother I wanted to be, not from not trying, but from circumstances.
It was only then that I realized my own mother had actually loved me, that it was circumstances, including three much younger brothers and other heavy burdens she carried on her shoulder, that meant I didn’t get the same attention I had when I had been her only child.
A memoir I would have written at 20 would have been much different than what I would have written at 40. At 85, I can see how it would be even more different today. Experience, especially observing the world around me, has made me thankful for the great childhood I had.
Time has a way of changing things – and one’s fickle memories.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
Heading this year’s Thanksgiving list is that I’m simply glad to be alive – and doing well. Thanks to modern medicine I survived a heart attack and with the three stents I received, my heart and I still have at least a few more adventures to experience.
While thinking about this annual list, I came across this quote by Jane Goodall, that I’m planning to take to heart for the coming year. “Above all, we must realize that each of us makes a difference with our life. Each of us impacts the world around us every single day. We have a choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place – or not to bother.”
I hope you will join me in “bothering.” Meanwhile, here are the next 99 things I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving:
2. All the abundant help I received while recuperating from friends and loved ones, especially a granddaughter and her wife who live next door and a granddaughter who flew in from Florida. They stuck with me even though I was a horrible patient.
3. My canine companion Scamp, who fretted over my absence during my hospital stay and stayed faithfully by my side after I returned home.
4. A new artificial knee, which preceded my heart attack by eight days and which is now working perfectly.
5. My small apartment, with its small tree-shaded yard that is a gathering place for birds and provides me a view of the Santa Catalina mountains.
6. The daily Wordle.
7. Sunrises and sunsets.
8. A hot bath.
9. Flowers, but especially wildflowers.
10. Books and the authors who write them.
11. Nature, and all its wondrous aspects that have kept me sane, or relatively so, down through 12. A comfortable bed.
13. Audible, especially when that comfortable bed is not enough to get me through a restless night.
14. Air conditioning and heating.
15. My doctors.
16. My large family, which includes five children, 12 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, and their partners and spouses.
17. The internet that feeds my curious mind and keeps me informed in an ever-changing world.
18. Libraries and bookstores because virtual is not enough.
19. A refrigerator and pantry that is always full enough.
20. Fun surprises.
21. Trees and plants that make the world a better and healthier place.
22. Soft pajamas and blankets.
23. My Social Security.
24. Colorful 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles.
25. My rollator – and a comfortable chair. Priorities change with age.
26. Comfortable shoes.
27. My Roomba.
28. Reality TV series like Survivor, The Challenge and Amazing Race. They’re my soap operas.
29. Being a writer, which makes me more observant of the world around me, and lets me experience life twice.
30. Kind people.
31. An honest media and journalists who only want people to know the true facts without taking sides. As a retired journalist, I have to believe this is still possible.
32. The return of wolves to Yellowstone.
33. Caring people.
34. All the national and state parks, animal sanctuaries and refuges that I have visited, and all the others, too.
35. Sunshine on a cool day, shade and a cool breeze on a hot one.
36. Home delivery.
37. A clean apartment, and that I can still mostly make it so.
38. That I still have a zest for life.
39. Sky Island Scenic Byway that winds its way to the top of Mount Lemmon – and all the other backroads and other scenic roads I’ve traveled in my life. I’m especially thankful that there are a lot of them.
40. Tie-Dyed T-shirts that have become part of my identity.
41. Peace, wherever one can find it.
42. Story Circle Network, my writing network and support group.
43. 50 years of personal journals.
44. That I finally became an avid birdwatcher at the age of 60.
45. Chocolate.
46. Reading glasses.
47. Braless days, which is most of them these days.
48. Computer games.
49. My book, Travels with Maggie.
50. My health insurance.
51. The rainbows that follow thunderstorms.
52. The Cooper’s hawk that sometimes sits in my cottonwood tree, even though it dumps on my patio.
53. The coyotes, whose howls I hear almost every night and morning.
54. Good-natured games of Frustration with a granddaughter and her wife who are as competitive as I am.
55. Van Gogh’s Starry Night – and the real thing.
56. A good pen and a blank page in a journal.
57. My kind neighbor, who loves my dog and gives him a walk every evening, and all my other kind neighbors as well.
58. Washing machines and dryers.
59. Enlightening and interesting conversations.
60. Learning something new – every day.
61. That I no longer believe I have to be perfect.
62, The wisdom that comes with having lived for 85 years, which of course includes no longer feeling like I have to be perfect.
63. Good cream-laced coffee to start my day, and the daughter-in-law who sends me coffee in care packages on a regular basis.
64. For never feeling lonely.
65. Smiles and laughter.
66. Snail mail from a friend.
67. Hugs.
68. A good haircut.
69. Helen Reddy singing I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar. This one almost always makes my annual list because I go back to that era when women were fighting for equal rights – which they still seem to need to do.
70. Art.
71. Butterflies.
72. Morning walks with my dog Scamp, especially since there were some days this past year when I couldn’t walk him.
73. Discovery of a new favorite author, especially one who has written a lot of books.
74. Silver linings – and that I still believe in them.
75. The smell of the Sonoran Desert landscape after a rain, and for its saguaros that drink up the rain for the dry days ahead and bloom once a year.
76. For my new smart phone, which I’m finally learning to carry around with me when I go to the store or walk my dog.
77. For the cuddles and sweet doggie kisses my dog Scamp gives me.
78. For my heating pad when my back hurts.
79. For drop-in guests. I actually love them although most people don’t.
80. The New York Times Online – it’s my newspaper of choice these days.
81. Female role models, beginning with my own grandmother and mother.
82. A hot cup of lemon-ginger tea.
83. Zoom meetings with my long-time friend Kim when we can’t get together in person.
84. Weekend pancake breakfasts with my friend Jean.
85. My brother Robert, who is the sole remaining member of my childhood family.
86. Freshly washed sheets.
87. That I can still drive, and have a car to do so.
88. Phone calls from loved ones, near and far away.
89. Scented candles.
90. Moisturizer.
91. Doggie treats, because Scamp is so happy to get one.
92. My 35-year-old rubber tree plant, which has had lots of babies that I have shared.
93. Aspen leaves in the fall.
94. My 85 years of good memories, and even a few of the bad ones that I have survived and which have turned me into the person I am today.
95. That I’ve heard the song of the hump-backed whale.
96. Readers of my writing.
97. The nine years I spent traveling across America in a small RV, in which I lived full time. I found beauty everywhere – and everywhere is my favorite place, well next to sitting on top of Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park.
98. Ice cream.
99. Quiet mornings in which to ponder and think.
100. And finally, that I’ve finally come to appreciate and like myself.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
I’m at a crossroads. I’m worried about the world, especially attempts to silence a free press while anyone can deliberately speak untruths on the internet. It’s already a mine field trying to figure out what’s the truth and what’s not. People shouldn’t believe everything they hear or read.
Let me repeat that: People shouldn’t believe everything they hear or read. In these days, double and triple checking everything is a must. Even so, what I’m seeing and hearing for the days ahead has my head in a tailspin. I just want to stick my head in the sand and let the world pass me by.
I mean I’m 85 and retired. I could just bury myself in books, art, birding, friends who don’t talk politics and other things that give me pleasure. Why not? I often feel useless because I have no power to make the world a kinder place.
And then, while I’m reading, I come across Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem Ulysses in which he wrote about growing old: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end,/ To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” And I realize I’m still not ready to turn the world off.
Suddenly my rabbit hole emerges to a time when I discovered Lord Byron’s poem, The Prisoner of Chillon. I wouldn’t know for another 15 years that I was destined to be a writer, but the ancient sounding words, or so they seemed to a 10-year-old, enchanted me. I memorized that lengthy poem, simply because I loved the sound of its words. Many of those words, I still remember 75 years later: My very chains and I grew friends,/ So much a long communion tends/ To make us what we are:—even I/ Regain’d my freedom with a sigh.
I love the freedom of being retired and yet I miss being chained to the feeling of being useful.
By now, well down that rabbit hole, I contemplate these two poems by authors that younger generations have most likely never heard of, and I’m back at that crossroads – and Robert Frost’s words about that road not taken.
Finally, I laugh at myself. Who says that road can’t be taken on another day? And who says I can’t still keep one foot in the world around me and try myself to be kinder, and the other foot in books and birds and art and pleasant friends.
Perhaps there is no crossroads at all – just plodding on.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
“It’s good that at 85 you can still do the techie stuff,” my granddaughter Shanna complimented me the other day when I was telling her that my Roomba was misbehaving and that I had been texted a link to a YouTube video that would show me how to fix it.
I was tempted to say “But I don’t wanna? Have I mentioned how much I hate doing techie stuff. Still, I was pleased that my granddaughter thought me so capable – but even more appreciative when her wife Dawn fixed the Roomba.
I love technology, but all I want to know is which button do I push,
I was blessed with that before I retired, as there was always someone around to fix my technical problems. Since I’ve never been afraid to push a button, I sometimes even created those problems myself. That’s probably why when I went to find an IT specialist and they saw me approaching, they usually exclaimed: “Ohhh. Here comes trouble.”
But not having those helpful specialists around these days makes me want to go back to work – well, almost.
Meanwhile, my loved ones and friends mostly take care of my technical problems. Of course they’re not always available. What happens then is that I spend four hours figuring things out for myself instead of a techie taking 10 minutes to do the same thing.
The silver lining, however, is that when I finally fix whatever techie thing went wrong, I do feel pretty proud of myself –and I like that feeling.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon and is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
Life is full of flowers so keep moving and enjoying them. Art by Pat Bean
Aging My Way
My fight to make my days meaningful during these latter pages of my life, which is already a long book, paused for a bit this past week. While I can fight to keep my own self moving, I had to come to grips with the fact that I can’t do it for others, no matter how much I desire to do so.
A feeling of helplessness when a loved one attempted suicide caused me to pause doing the one thing that for more than 50 years has given meaning to my life. I stopped my daily writing, including journaling. What does it matter? I thought.
To be truthful, this wasn’t the first time I had stopped writing, especially when hard times hit. But my job back then as a newspaper reporter kept me writing, if not journaling. And my busy, active, engaged with life world meant I didn’t miss, or even notice, that I had stopped any writing in my journals.
What’s different now is that at 85, my days are my own to fill. And since I can no longer dance through them playing tennis, white-water-rafting the Snake, hiking new terrain, or working at a job I love, writing has become more meaningful.
Being a writer is an honor, a title I was reluctant to even claim until I finally published a book. Now living in a world so different from the world I was born into, has filled me with stories I want my children and children’s children – and if I were honest, the world – to know.
These latter years have given me time to connect the dots of my life. And perhaps there is a person or two out there who can learn from my mistakes, or that it’s OK to follow their dreams, or to realize they are not alone in who they are or how they think.
Others’ words do that for me. Like those from Maggie Smith, whose book Keep Moving, I picked up, not for the first time, again this morning.
The title of her book says it all. Keep moving. I intend to do just that, and hope with all my heart that my loved one will do so as well.
I also intend to keep writing. Perhaps that second book that still resides within me will finally decide to come alive.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
I once was in the season for raising chicks. It was wonderful and it was terrible. Just like being in the season for slowing down. — Art by Pat Bean.
Aging My Way
I spilled a whole cup of hot, cream-laced coffee the other morning, and I may have awoken my neighbors when I shouted Sh-ie-tt! I spell it that way because my grandmother, of whom I have fond memories, once told me that you can say such a word and remain a lady if you use more than one syllable.
And that’s exactly how I say it, as anyone who has seen me upset to that point can testify. Meanwhile, I had the unenvious task of cleaning up my small kitchen. Coffee had splashed on and under the microwave, into the tiny crevices of my stove, onto my freshly washed dishes on the drying rack, into an opened drawer, and onto my pajamas and the walls.
While I’ve always been a klutz, spilling things is something I seem to do more of lately. It could be because I’m 85 and not as steady as I once was. The coffee incident probably happened because I had two other things, my glasses and a pen in the same hand as I used to pick up the coffee. The other hand held my journal as I was going to settle down with the drink and write.
Anyway, the incident got me to thinking what else I can’t do these days. Putting on pants without holding onto something or sitting was the first thing that came to mind. Next came lifting anything that weighs over five pounds or bending over repeatedly, on the advice of my cardiologist.
On the other hand, I’m supposed to carry my phone with me everywhere – just in case.
I’m amazed that I’m still enjoying life. And I am. It’s just that I’m in the season for slowing down. And what’s wrong with that, I ask? So, no way am I going to cry over spilled coffee.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
Read any good instruction manuals lately? Art by Pat Bean.
Aging My Way
OK. I admit it. I’ve always been a person who turns to an instruction manual only when everything else fails. I’m always sure I can figure out whatever contraption needs to be figured out without any help.
ometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t, which is probably a good thing because it keeps my ego in check
But the world is changing too fast, and my stubbornness and impatience isn’t helping me stay caught up with its rapidly changing technology. I still, after years, don’t know how to use all the potential possibilities of my phone, and my new Fitbit has me even more befuddled.
What I would really like are good instruction manuals. Ones I can hold in my hands, and slowly peruse. Ones that explain things in logical order, instead of making me go from page two to page seven for complete instructions.
Finding such a manual these days, however, isn’t easy, particularly for technical gadgets like computers, phones or Fitbits. You have to go online, and you have to know the exact model of your gadget, and hopefully you have the latest update of it, to find instructions you may, or may not understand.
As for how-to videos, they usually leave me more confused than before, probably because they expect me to already have more tech knowledge than I do. Such videos put me back in the 1980s, when I bought my first computer and quickly discovered my six-year-old granddaughter knew more about how to operate it than I did.
Thank goodness I have another granddaughter living nearly. And she has a tech-savvy wife, too. Between the two of them, they keep my gadgets up and running. And they don’t bother me with all that tech gibberish of how such gadgets work because they’ve come to understand that my only real interest is which button to push to make it do what I want it to do.
So, who needs instruction manuals anyway? But it would be nice.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, wand these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
I wonder what this little feller is trying to say. — Art by Pat Bean
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw
Aging My Way
As a writer, one would think I would be a good communicator. After all, that’s the primary purpose of writing. And, if I might be a bit immodest, after 60 years of doing it, I think I do it quite well.
But when it comes to the spoken word, I fail quite miserably. I’m always using the wrong word, the wrong tone, or simply the wrong connotation. And it often gets me in trouble.
My brain seems to work better with my fingers on a keyboard than they do with my vocal cords. Simply put, I have foot-in-mouth-disease. My newspaper reporter colleagues used to even joke: “It’s a good thing Pat Bean doesn’t write the way she talks.”
While they might have been talking about my Texas accent, I think it went farther than that. In my defense, I always spell people’s name correctly – well after the first time I was embarrassed in print by calling someone Mary, when she actually spelled her name Mari.
After that, asking someone to spell their name was always the first question out of my mouth. And it’s a good think I did, because I discovered there were several other variations of the simple name Mary, not to mention what parents did with other supposedly common names.
I was thinking about this after coming across a bit of trivia this morning that noted there were over 7,000 languages spoken around the world. How did this come about? It’s no wonder people in this world can’t get along. They can’t understand each other.
Meanwhile, after my latest spoken communication gaff that unintentionally left some hurt feelings, I’ve decided perhaps I should spend more time writing than talking.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
“Some of my much older friends have 10 doctors or more, like an overeducated friend community. I have only six so far. But time lurches on, and the reality is that, before too long, I will have 10 as well. Until then, the point of life is gratitude, modest miseries aside. And gratitude is joy. – Anne Lamott, from a recent Washington Post essay/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/01/joy-age-life-lamott/
Aging My Way
I became a big fan of Lamott after reading her book, Bird by Bird – many years ago. I guess you could say she and I are of an age, even though my doctor collection so far is only four: primary, cardiologist, pain and orthopedic. But I do have a new knee and three heart stents, which has my friends referring to me as the Bionic Woman.
It’s just too bad I don’t have the implied powers that go with the title. This hare, who for most of her life raced through life, always afraid of missing out on something, has turned into a tortoise.
It’s actually not a bad pace. I’ve come to appreciate the benefits of having more time for reflection of this beautiful, albeit crazy and at time sordid, world. I have more time to read, piddle with my art, write and connect with the meaningful people in my life. And I still wake each morning with zest for what a new day will bring, and thankful for my canine companion Scamp, whose morning walks grease my achy joints for the day ahead.
I’m glad I was a hare, but now I’m just as happy being the tortoise.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
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“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul. She spent nine years living and traveling in a small RV. She now lives in Tucson with Scamp, a rescue who was supposed to be a Schnauzer mix but turned out to be a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who is as stubborn as his owner, her granddaughter says. She was also a journalist for 37 years, and can be reached at patbean@msn.com
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