All I Know -- Mothers Day Ruminations

I became a psychologist, as many do, to find answers to my own questions.  Much of the time I can sort my way through my angst and agita, but right now I am at one of those points where there are just too many bits colliding.

Part of it has to do with missing family.  Part of it has to do with the chaos and destruction going on in a country which liberties I had taken for granted most of my life.  Right now quite a bit of it has to do with chronic pain, and the piece that makes all the other pieces throb: money.

I am a smart person, I was a good psychologist, later I had a job I loved at the library, but a combination throughout my life of bad luck and timing and tough decisions has meant that, except for very short periods, I have lived with financial insecurity.  And right now, there are unique aspects to this financial insecurity, not unique to me but unique in this later part of my life.

My mother's death in 1983, at 63 years old, was the first tectonic shift in my perspective of mortality.  Over the years after her dying, I realized that I had come to see my own life not moving past 63 years.  When my husband developed pancreatic cancer and died at age 77, my fear of death and denial-based perspective finally went out the window, but not in a bad way.  I would no longer play that game of, “when my daughter is _____ years old, I’ll be….”

Somewhat to my surprise, I turned a fairly healthy sixty-three.  And during Stephan’s dying, I talked and read about mortality.  Christopher Hitchens had died too young of cancer; Terry Pratchett was dying at the time, and gave us a last gift of allowing us to walk with him awhile as he approached his death.  Today, I don’t do that math game, but think more short-term of family visits.  I appreciate the fact that despite my bad knees and arthritic body, I am playing tennis again.  The most exciting part of which is the feeling of being totally in the moment:  watch the ball, anticipate your opponent’s next move, and get there.  When I am on the tennis court, I may occasionally spazz out as my hand loses its grip on the racket, and when I run I still don’t get there fast enough, but I feel more graceful than I do anywhere else in my life.  And for that, that I thought I had lost forever, I am grateful.

But over the years, even though I have exercised some discipline with a budget, there was always a little more savings.  I’ve always loved to get away, family visits and beach vacations, and even on a budget they have been times away that I lived for.  And then I realized that the savings were really finite.  And shrinking fast.  And the wolves in congress are circling the poor and middle class, which angered me but didn’t frighten me, until lately, as the dollars and cents of health care costs have been eating away at my savings.

I worry about leaving the house, more so since my old car, getting ready to roll over 200,000 miles, finally had that big breakdown that I knew was inevitable.  The getaway I had planned so I wouldn’t be at home alone on my birthday just wouldn’t work with the thousand dollar car repair.  The car repair is a gamble; if it is going to be the first of many I will be shoveling money into it that I should be spending on a “new” car, but if it is going to be fine for awhile, it is a bargain.

And yet, it is a bargain I can’t afford.  I can’t afford all the insurances that we all pay out, but I have to pay them out.  With less than 18 months left on my mortgage, that $500 a month is a modest cost for housing, but last year began with expensive plumbing repairs and ended with Hurricane Matthew finishing off my roof.

I am really, really good at stretching a dollar.  But at this point, the things I know I will need to cut are those things that give my life meaning.

I’ve talked in my other blog about the greed and ignorance by which most Americans are victimized, so I won’t go on about it here.

But that financial insecurity is at the root of the sadness and depression that play in the background of my life these days.  My desire to close myself off from others has more to do with the cost of leaving the house than any wish to be alone.  The anxiety of being stranded by my old car, exacerbated by the costly and somewhat frightening breakdown, can’t be understated, because that is my lifeline.  The cost to visit my family, all too busy and far away to come here, breaks my heart.

The mental math I try to avoid these days has to do with whether my meager savings will last as long as I do.  If I have a short few years remaining, I may not have to wrestle with running out of savings.  But I get tired, tired, tired of the acrobatics it takes to save a few dollars, only to get hit with an unavoidable bill that mocks the dollars saved:  after paying $300 for a fairly routine dental visit, I got a bill a few weeks later for $58.  No, it wasn’t a mistake.  No, they didn’t know why I hadn’t been billed at the time of the visit.  Did I want to split it into two payments?  No, I said, because I wasn’t going to have any more next month than this month.

And I don’t mind not living high.  I don’t need all that much.  But having to agonize over every dollar I spend wears me out more than the chronic joint pain.

So as I am sitting on the porch this beautiful Mother’s Day, I am wishing I had more energy and more joy.  I know I am not special.  In this time, in this country, too many of us share these anxieties.  My daughter and son won’t have the luxury of going from good job to good job the way I did; they won’t have the pensions, and maybe not even the social security that has been chipped away at for decades.  I was lucky to have savings so many others don’t have.  When the powerfully stupid went to war in Iraq and spent our fortunes, it was the fortunes of people like me and you, not the fortunes of the rich.  As they are about to do again.

And yet I am going to turn off my computer and go outside and continue to read a gripping mystery by a writer I enjoy immensely.  I may not find joy today, but I will sort my anxieties out here, and then put them aside for today.

And that is all I know.