J is for July Fourth —The Year the Celebration Never Ended

The Fourth of July used to be my all‑time favorite holiday. Family parties with star‑spangled tablecloths and food of every description, parades where half the town’s children marched down Main Street while the other half sprawled along the tree‑lined route—those are pleasant memories now, tucked into the scrapbook of my younger days. Days when Don and I always had someplace special to go. Even before I met him, the Fourth meant a party at my folks’ summer cottage. My good memories of the holiday are endless, including the night I got my very first kiss from a boy—under a fireworks display, no less. Sweet.

Time marches on, and the only thing certain is that nothing stays the same. People move. People die. People divorce. People marry into new family units and spend their holidays elsewhere. The big family parties I loved for so many years petered out decades ago when the ones who organized them left this earth and no one stepped into their shoes. Such is the natural order of things. Whoop‑de‑do. Happy fricking Fourth of July.

If it sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself, I’m not. I’m gearing up for a walk down Memory Lane to the happiest, biggest Fourth of July of my life—1976, the Bicentennial. Don and I were six years into our relationship then, still acting like kids even though we were in our thirties. I remember that summer as a blur of bluegrass festivals for us and the Ford administration for the nation. It was the year Rocky came out, along with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, one of our all‑time favorites. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” topped the singles chart, and Barbara Walters became the first woman to co‑anchor the network news.

And then there was the spectacle: more than 50 tall ships from 20 nations filling the Hudson River for the celebration. A laser beam—via satellite!—cut a star‑spangled ribbon to kick off the nation’s two‑day party. That was a huge technological marvel back then. And for every dignified event, there was something quirky to balance it out—like guys sporting red, white, and blue dyed beards, or the landing pads built for UFOs that never bothered to show up. I was so disappointed!

Don and I threw ourselves 150% into the Bicentennial spirit. We went a little crazy buying ’76 souvenirs, convinced we’d someday get rich off our collection of commemorative coins, china, jewelry, McDonald’s containers, and even dry‑cleaner bags wishing America a happy birthday went into a wooden Anheuser-Busch commemorative beer case. I made myself a long, flowing hippie‑style dress out of Bicentennial fabric, and I loved wearing that thing. When I downsized to move to my CCC, I discovered—duh!—that the souvenirs weren't worth much because everyone had saved them. But remembering our enthusiasm still makes me smile. We even signed a copy of the Declaration of Independence that now sits in a time capsule. That was also the summer several nearby towns opened their 100‑year time capsules, and of course we attended those too. I loved 1976.

I wish we could stay young and carefree forever. I wish people didn’t have to die or move away. I wish our country didn’t feel so fragile right now. But since those wishes can’t come true, I’m grateful for the memories that keep me company. ©

I is for Independent Living—Where Choice Still Matter

I doubt there’s much about living in an Independent Living facility that I haven’t already written about over the past almost five years. But I’m old, and old people are known for repeating ourselves, so if you’re a long‑time reader and have already heard what I have to say today, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. 'I' is a hard letter for a lifestyle blogger to work into the A to Z Blog Challenge.

Although now that I think about it, I’m not sure “lifestyle blogger” fits me anyway. AI defines a lifestyle writer as someone who: “...creates engaging content focused on daily living, trends, and personal experiences, covering topics like fashion, wellness, travel, food and home décor. They produce articles, blog posts, and digital content designed to evoke emotions, offer practical advice, and help readers live well.” If that’s the standard, I checked the wrong box when I registered for this challenge. “Memoir Blogger” would have been more accurate. 

If I influence anyone at all, it’s usually about whether (or not) buying into a Continuum Care Community is right for them. It’s a huge decision, and in my opinion it’s one you should make for yourself—not wait until your kids are forced to do it because you shouldn’t be living alone anymore. And since most of these places have waiting lists measured in years, starting early isn’t a bad thing. The sales crew here tell people to begin the process five years before they think they’ll be ready.

So what’s it actually like living in an Independent Living apartment with an Assisted Living and Memory Care building just down the road where you could end up someday? I can tell you what it’s not like. It’s not like the stereotypes in movies such as Queen Bee or The Inside Man. At least not in my experience. And it’s not like high school, despite what one snarky commenter once suggested. I did a lot of soul‑searching after that remark, wondering if I’d been writing about my life here in a way that made us all sound silly or shallow. My reply to her was that the same personality types and situations exist anywhere a large group of people interact—schools, workplaces, neighborhoods. And I gave a silent apology to the residents I’ve never written about: the ones devoted to serious causes, like the man who won a national physics prize for a book he wrote while living here, the woman who teaches OLLI classes at a local college, the woman who founded and works at a church that serves a large immigrant community and the woman who helps out at the humane society's neutering clinic. 

But from that high‑school comment I learned something important: I’m no better than the creators of Queen Bee or The Inside Man. I choose the low‑hanging fruit when I write about my daily activities. Sure, there’s gossip and misunderstandings in my blog. Sure, there are 'portraits' of people I don’t like and people I fan‑girl. But that’s on me—not on the environment I live in. I like using self‑defeating humor where I can and observational humor where I can’t. 

But here’s the bottom line: I love living in an Independent Living facility. I have all the privacy I want, and when I want to be around people, they’re right outside my door. There’s intellectual stimulation—book clubs and serious discussions in my Tuesday night group. And lectures, like the one on Nellie Bly we had this week. We have good food in our restaurant, but when I get a kitchen itch that needs scratching, I have a full kitchen where I can make my own comfort foods. I get to laugh every day. And I love having a maintenance crew and an IT guy as close as my keyboard. 

(Tip: it helps to keep your computer skills up—checking schedules and menus, signing up for events and dinner reservations, ordering take-outs from the dining room, and putting in work orders online keeps you more independent than having to depend on someone else to do these things for you. We do have a concierge who will help with these things BUT my theory is the more independent you are the less likely your family and the management will put their heads together and proclaim it's time to ship you on down the road to Assisted Living or Memory Care.)

Yes, it was hard leaving a house I designed and built, a house full of memories and possessions that were difficult to part with. But I wanted to be the one to make those decisions. I didn’t want to end up like a close friend, who was given less than a week’s notice that her sons were moving her to assisted living. She was so shocked she stayed in her bedroom the whole while they packed her up. When I talked to her last night, she said she was surrounded by things her family thought made her new assisted living space pretty, but few of the things she wanted. 

I’ve heard versions of that story from others here—people whose families strong‑armed them into moving before they were mentally ready, and who had no say in the place chosen for them or the stuff moved along with them. Those are the people who struggle to adjust, who hide in their apartments, who find the transition hard. Finding your tribe and a new rhythm for living in a CCC is so much easier if you do with a free will.

When we’re growing up, when we go off to college, when we get married and move into our own places, we’re generally in control of our own destinies. Moving to an independent living apartment—for me—was just another station along the way. It took several years of visiting places like this before I found one where I wanted to sign on the dotted line. Then another couple of years of purging and downsizing a huge amount of stuff. But I’ve never regretted the decision. Not even once. Independence looks different at every stage of life; this just happens to be the version that fits me now. ©

 Photo: One side of my living area in my Independent Living apartment

H is for Happiness—a Colorado memory that never dulled

If you’ve been following my A to Z Blog Challenge posts, you might recall in E is for Education I ended with a teaser about me writing about the happiest day of my life for the letter H.  I first wrote about this topic back in 2012 and a few people might think I shouldn’t be recycling an old post for this month-long writing event. But for selfish reasons I wanted to wallow in old memories. So here it goes, my recycled post with additional text at the end….

I wish I had a better memory or I would have had the foresight to keep travel diaries when Don and I took vacations. In my defense, I never needed to keep track of the pesky details of our trips because Don could be counted on to be my living, breathing encyclopedia. If he was here right now, for example. I’d ask him if it was in Central City, Black Hawk or Cripple Creek Colorado where we found ourselves on a Halloween night with nothing but fumes in the gas tank. It was one of those little boom and bust towns high in the Rocky Mountains back in the days before they became tourist destinations. That happened more recently after the state legalizing gambling in their historic goldmine districts.

Whatever town we landed in on Halloween, back then there was only three ways to get to that town: a narrow gauge railroad, a two lane road that wound its way through horseshoe curves with a mountain on one side of the road and a deep drop off without guard rails on the other side, and a far less dangerous road going out the other side of the town. We were young and stupid back then or we never would have taken that mountain pass---especially after dark----and we never would have driven past a sign by a gas station proclaiming it was the last chance to buy fuel for x number of miles. 

Let me tell you, we were never so relieved to see a gas station in our entire lives and as far as Halloween memories go, that night and the next day created some of the best. Inside the station was a table full of popcorn balls for trick-or-treaters and when Don tried to buy one, the lady explained they had 27 kids in town and only 27 popcorn balls. ("No popcorn for Don!" as Seinfeld's soup Nazi might have said.) We had a 50 gallon auxiliary gas tank on the pickup and it took a long time to pump 49+ gallons so we were there a long while, and as we waited Don handed out popcorn balls while the proprietor took Polaroid pictures of the kids for their bulletin board. That was small town America at its very best.

Our next stop in town was to the only other business open that night---a bar inside of an old three story hotel built in the 1800s that no longer rented out rooms. It was a beautiful building with ornate carved wood everywhere and it had a staircase winding upward to a sky light framing a full moon. No amount of talking on Don’s part could get the owner to let us stay in one of those rooms upstairs but he did get us invited to stay overnight in the private home of a patron of the place. Don would have taken up the offer, I’m sure, if he’d been alone but all I could think about was the Bates Motel and getting killed by a psycho while taking a shower. No, that night it was sleeping bags under the stars for us.

The next day we spent roaming around the town, talking to the residents and soaking up the history of their heyday of gold mining. We even spent a fair among of time sitting on a huge pile of dirt at the mouth of an old mining shaft, sifting for gold that some how—we thought—had escaped the eyes of hundreds of other people in the hundred years since that mine was active. It doesn’t sound like much to tell the story but that afternoon, sitting there in our flannel shirts and jeans, the sun overhead and the smell of fall in the air was the happiest time in my life. We were young, crazy, newly in love and we didn’t have a care in the world. We were letting our imaginations run wild picturing ourselves alive and living a hundred years ago and also trying to figure out how we could buy that old hotel in town that was up for sale for ridiculously low price, especially considering what has become of that place since casino gambling gave the area another boom. Back home we'd been looking for a vintage house to restore.

People in the widowhood circles I’ve come to know all seem to name their wedding days as the happiest day of their lives. And of course, everyone else immediately understands the reference—the emotions and commitment a day like that represents. I usually don’t say anything when this topic comes up because there is no shortcut to understanding how sitting on a pile of dirt in the mountains of Colorado could be the happiest day of anyone’s life. But it’s the day I keep coming back to when I think about Don and myself starting out life together. Even when people see the gold miner’s pan filled with rocks, fool’s gold and unpolished rubies sitting on the dining room table no one could have ever guessed that it’s the equivalent of having wedding day flowers pressed between the pages of a book. They’re the souvenirs we brought back from a trip we took to heaven on earth.
Back to 2026: I didn’t change a word since I first wrote the above. Visiting that post still has the power to bring back those Zen-like hours we spend panning for gold and day-dreaming of the futures we could have had, if we could have found a way to live in that area. After we got back home we did give it serious consideration but in the end we didn’t have the assets to buy that old hotel and restore it, not to mention at the time there was no way for us to make a living out there. For anyone, we thought. This area was not even in the sight-line of the deep-pocketed people, back then, who later came along with bigger dreams than we had. From all reports, they turned that dying town and the hotel into something uniquely Western and profitable. But we were always afraid to go back again because in this case, Thomas Wolfe was probably right. You can’t go “home” again. Seeing the town spit-shined and full of tourists would have destroyed the feelings of total solitude, peace and love we experienced that day.  © 

When I downsized to move to Independent Living the gold panning tin got sold and its contents ended up in this fruit jar. Note to Nieces: Be sure to move it with me if I end in Assisted Living or Memory Care.

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