Sixteen Times Four

Some 30 or 40 years ago, we hummed a Beatles tune: will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64? That was the age at which we youths expected to become old folks, tottering a bit, needing someone to monitor our meds and take away our car keys if we strayed too far off the center line.

Today, I turned 64. That's 8 times 8, as I learned my multiplication tables in third grade. But as I thought about it, I decided to look at my life so far as 4 times 16. Once, 20 years were supposed to define a generation, but today, with the rapid rate of technological change, a generation is closer to 16 or 18 years. So I tried to break the years into generational, or 16-year segments.

1959--My sixteenth birthday. Most girls of my generation expected a special party, but nothing like the "Sweet Sixteen" social coming-out galas that are commoplace today. That year, there was no party. My grandmother McElyea died one day before my 16th birthday, and her funeral was held a few days after. Mary Paris McElyea left me a legacy of a trunk full of hand-made quilts and a fistful of prized family recipes. I wish I could have claimed additional items at her estate sale, like her full set of Fiesta Ware. But mother did save for me her Apple Blossom china and her Vintage pattern silver plate. When I was about 7, Granny Mc helped me make a simple doll quilt by hand. Unfortunately my desire to make quilts of my own didn't emerge until the late 1980s, some 30 years after her death. But I inherited any talent I have with a needle from her. (The wall quilt above is a Lone Star I made a few years ago that was exhibited at the 2005 Flower Valley Quilt Guild show.) The one bright spot of this birthday was getting a phone call that told me I had been selected to attend a national Girl Scout encampment, called Roundup (kind of like the Boy Scout Jamboree, except these Roundups don't happen any more) that would be held in Colorado Springs in July. So it was a bittersweet birthday when I was 16.

1975--My thirty-second birthday was observed in St. Louis, where I was unemployed and taking an editing class at a local junior college in order to network and try to find a job in journalism. In the 16 years since 1959, I had gone to that Girl Scout camp, attended college and earned a master's degree, obtained a college teaching job in Kansas, met Norm, gotten married, moved to Denver while he went to seminary and moved to St. Louis when he got a publishing job. That was an action-packed 16 years. My dog I had had since I was 10, Rags, had died in 1969, and later that summer, on our first wedding anniversary, Norm and I adopted a puppy we named Sandy from our friends John and Nancy Sanders, and Sandy would brighten our lives for almost 17 years. In March of 1975, I got a proofreading job at a weekly newspaper, which was the start of my journalism career.

1991--How did I get to be 48 so soon? I'm almost 50! I really can't remember how I celebrated this birthday, except later that month, Norm had a wreck on his way to work and I waited in the emergency room while they verified a couple of broken ribs. These were stressful years involving work and my parents' health. In 1989 my father died. My mother had difficulty coping with the details of living alone, but she wouldn't consider moving to live with us, or to a senior apartment. Check stubs from those years reveal that I flew to Tulsa about once a month on weekends to help her with insurance forms, balance her checkbook, stock up on TV dinners, go to church. I had been teaching writing courses at a university since 1987, after working in newspapers, magazines and public relations. Norm had been pastor of a church since 1985. Sandy had passed away in 1986 and later that year we adopted Suzie, a 5-year-old Lhasa-Poo cross, who would be with us until 1995. The 1990s were a dizzying round of emergency trips to see our parents, frantic grading of final exams while someone was in the hospital, all while trying to maintain friendships and a life. By the end of the decade, we had said farewell in this life to both of Norm's parents, one of his brothers, one of his sisters and my mother.

2007--Here I am, at 64. When I turned 50, I got my ears pierced and started collecting earrings. I kept on teaching and started advising a college newspaper in 1994, the same year mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I joined a quilt guild and attended a summer writing workshop in nonfiction. Norm and I began taking short trips to state park lodges where we could indulge in bird watching. In 2003, Norm retired from preaching. In 2006, I retired from full-time teaching but kept a part-time job with the student newspaper. I started writing what I call the Memoir Project and if I finish it, it will be a family and personal history, starting with my four great-grandmothers, 3 of whom were known to be quilters. And we have been blessed with surrogate parenthood: for at least a decade, we have had Doug in our lives as the son we never had. And now we have his partner Matt, also, and their dog Sam. We have enjoyed volunteer projects and have lots of travel plans.

Where from here? Well, if the past is any predictor, the next 16 years should be quite a trip. If I'm still blogging in 2023, I'll be 80, and I'll let you know how the 5th generation is doing.