Some women have questions.  Married women.  Divorced women.  Widowed women.  Single women.  Whether by choice or circumstance, women are wondering.  Young women of college age are asking questions, but it is generally the older women, those who know where they were when Kennedy was killed.  Those who feel the Big clock ticking.  The Baby Boomers.

            You know these women.  You see them all the time, every day, everywhere you go.  They’re your mom, your aunt, your sister, your wife, your daughter.  The bank teller, the cashier at the supermarket.  The doctor, the dentist, the vet.  The waitress, the chef.  The policewoman, the EMT.  The teacher, the colleague.  The accountant, the lawyer.  The secretary, the senator.  Some are even stay-at-homers who seem to visit the GAP on a bi-weekly basis.

            Generally women of this age had parents who survived the Great Depression and were raised with a strong work ethic and a held over enforced frugality that caused them to rebel into the Me Generation.  Baby Boomers caused credit card debt.  Having grown up in a post WWII world, their parents wanted to give their children things they had had to go without or ration.  And so, it began with coon-skin caps, Howdy-Doody, Rock ‘em Sock ‘ems, Barbie’s Dream House, and braces for the kids’ teeth. 

When the Boomers had kids of their own, they wanted even more for their offspring and the debt grew and grew.  As the women grew, so did their various needs.  The need to feel young and beautiful and so came the memberships to country clubs, gyms, tanning salons, designer outfits, manicures/pedicures, waxings, bi-monthly cosmetic surgery procedures, that extravagant fun summer rental, and that gas-guzzling road hog. 

            You may say these are women suffering a mid-life crisis, empty- or semi-empty nest syndrome.  These are women who still don’t know what they want to be when they grow up.  It seems all the ballerina positions have been filled and perimenopause and being a flight attendant don’t necessarily make a great match.  One hot flash too many and that jerk in business class requesting another drink and a sleep mask may be in for a rude awakening.

            What do these women want to know?  What are the burning questions on their lips, on their minds, and in their hearts?  After some sleepless nights, these women can pretty much solve the difficult, painful questions of putting an elderly, failing parent into an assisted living facility; struggle to make a marriage work or surrender to reality and opt for divorce; let the kids move back in after graduation or use tough love and encourage them to find a place of their own; get a second job to sock some money away for retirement, or dip into the retirement fund and travel around the world; sell the house and downsize to a Florida condo; go back to school to fulfill a dream and perhaps change careers.  Will I find my soul mate, my true love life-partner, or is this it; will I find true happiness?   No.  Those are not the questions.

            They have questions.  And they need and want answers.  Answers they cannot find in all those self-help books, seminars and weekend retreats offering enlightenment of one sort of another.  Answers they cannot find after hours of deep, meaningful discussions with their best friends, male/female, gay/straight.  Answers their religious or spiritual leaders cannot give them through no fault of their own but that they are only human.

            If the usual avenues lead nowhere, one resorts to seeking advice/guidance from the Great Beyond – through psychic medium readings, Tarot cards, tea leaves, palmists, phrenologist (head lump reader), auras, pendulums, past life regressions, and conversations with a channeled spirit guide.  And for what?  To find out once and for all, Does my soul look fat in this?

 

 

 

 

Writers are like extreme sport athletes.  We are the sedentary mountain climbers, hang gliders, and BMX bikers.  While we may do it from the comfort and relative safety of our chairs, we share the danger enthusiasts’ desire for that brush with excitement and peril.  All for the coveted adrenaline rush associated with risk and pushing ourselves further than we’ve gone before.  Because it’s there.  The blank page or screen.  Daring us, seducing us, with promises of increased confidence, stamina, and determination.  That if we practice and train, and time it just so, and the gods look kindly upon us, there’s a good chance we’ll get on a roll and feel our blood throbbing in our ears as we chug along nicely.  We push on, always honing our skills and abilities in the hopes of attaining our goals.

 

As a mountain climber pauses at the summit to gaze down upon their starting point so far below, and the hang glider, now back on terra firma, shields their eyes to glance up to the sky where they’d just been soaring, and as the BMXer stands filthy, breathless, and sweaty at the finish line and looks back beyond the hills and hollows of the hazardous terrain they’ve just bested, writers, too stare at the formerly blank page or screen and think, “I did it.”  Accomplishment and success are such heady fuels that keep the extreme sport enthusiasts and writers going, sure that we will triumph, winners all in our quest for getting it right.

To ‘e’ or not to ‘e’ – that is the question                       

Whether ‘tis Barnes & Noble or Amazon
As the supplier of this outrageous ‘e’ tool

Or to take a stand against a sea of plastic

And, by opposing, end it.  To read, to read

A real soft or hardcover made of paper.  



OK, will not push my luck in a play on words with the Bard.
Cannot see myself purchasing one of these cold and impersonal devices in the near future - I like to dog-ear my stopping off pages and drop them on the floor beside the bed when my bleary eyes close.  Can't do that with unyielding plastic.  But if one were to find its way into my Christmas stocking, I may give it a try. 

Hooray!  My first blog on my first website.  Welcome to The Blogerage. [It sounds like you should leave your tri-cornered hat and cudgel at the door.]  Many years ago I read that James Thurber (who was nearly completely blind at that time) was at a party with his wife.  She encouraged him to mingle with her but he chose to hang back and posted himself strategically against a wall facing the large room full of guests.  I remember being irked by her line of, "Oh, James, stop writing."  At the time I thought it pretentious.  It was not until several years after reading that, when I was deeply involved with one of my novels, that I realized I have that in common with Mr. Thurber (and plenty of other writers).  We hang back and listen, observe and steal overheard bits of conversations and make mental notes of quirky traits or downright weird idiosyncrasies that we can later attribute to our fictional characters, hoping to breathe some verisimilitude into them.  Subtlety must be utilized or the invitations will soon cease when word gets around how you've weirded out past hosts and hostesses.