Emily's Senior Moments

  Main Street, Oneonta Thirty years ago this month, the VanLaeys family moved into an 1870s farmhouse on Brook Street in Oneonta.   It was our fifth move in twelve years of marriage.   My brother, Chris Lissandrello of Afton and Sidney, helped with the move. I told him that this would be our last. He asked: “So you’re going to be carried out in a box?”             “That’s right!” I said.             Over the next thirty years we would make the house our own with multiple renovations, mostly done by Mark, who in addition to his work as a P.A. is an accomplished jack-of-all-trades. When we arrived, Mark had a job as a P.A. at Fox Hospital and I had a job taking care of 3-year-old Vera and 1-year-old Peter.   I enjoyed taking the kids to Story Time at Huntington Library and Mothers-of-Preschoolers at Main Street Baptist Church. Eventually the kids attended preschool at the same church, and we became members at First United Presbyterian Church.             The year t

Like many retirees, Mark and I have started to work on our travel bucket list, a job that took us to Italy for eleven days this spring. The last time we went to Europe was in 2002 when we spent eight days in Ireland. My dad asked why we went there, probably because he doesn’t see any reason to go anywhere other than Italy. His parents migrated from Italy – more specifically Sicily – so that is the country that most members of my family journey to when they travel overseas. Our son went to Sicily and mainland Italy several years ago, and it was high time that we made the pilgrimage ourselves.              The easiest way to plan a trip is to sign up with a tour. A tour has many advantages since all of the details are taken care of, but Mark and I like to travel independently – a travel style that has its own advantages and also one that results in many misadventures. Travelers who want to fit as many famous sights as possible into a short amount of time should join a tour.

My family - before the kids left the nest for good. “ To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Thus begins the well-loved Bible passage, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, adapted into the song, “Turn, Turn, Turn” by Pete Seeger in the late 1950s. The words to this verse remind us that nothing in life is permanent, and so we should not be overly attached to any particular time, place, or thing.               The other day I was talking to friends who had realized it was time to let go of some volunteer responsibilities because that part of their lives felt complete. These friends and I feel there is a spiritual reason for each of our ventures – perhaps a lesson to be learned, or an opportunity to polish one of our gifts. But the time comes when the lesson has been learned, the gift has been shared, and we must move on to the next phase of life.             I have arrived at the time of letting go in different ways – sometimes because a certain ac

The older we get, the closer we are to the moment of death. The certainty of death is one of the few things all human beings have in common, and yet the topic is considered taboo in polite society. We see death in the news every day, but we don’t talk about our own death or the death of our loved ones – at least not until it happens. Even then, we avoid the words “death” or “died” by saying that someone has “passed away.”             If someone has “passed” it means they have gone from one place to another. To say that someone passed “away” implies that they went out of existence. Many people do believe that they will no longer exist after death. I can understand how they would avoid thinking about their non-existence as long as there are other things to think about. Other reasons to avoid talk of death may be: (1) it’s considered to be a morbid subject, (2) we don’t want to make others feel uncomfortable, and (3) there is too much disagreement about what happens to us after

             Another year has begun. For many it is a time of reflection; a time to evaluate the accomplishments and disappointments of the past, and to set goals for the new year. One of the perks of the senior life is that many of our lifelong ambitions have either been realized or discarded. Now we have fewer responsibilities and more freedom as we set new goals.                 One new goal that my husband and I share now is to simplify our lives. Recently Mark sold the cargo van he used for his home repair business, so we are down to one car and a motorcycle. He also donated the mountain bike he rarely rode, so while we still have several bikes in the garage, we don’t have any that aren’t being used. We have also been cleaning out our basement, attic, and garage. It’s a slow process considering we’ve lived in the same house for over 29 years! The plan is not to leave our children with a house full of junk to sort through, and we find that we are more content with fe

                       It is Veteran’s Day weekend, a time when we honor all of our veterans of war, both dead and living. I honor my father, who thankfully did not have to fight in World War II, but served as a private in ordnance; m y late father-in-law, who flew with the navy during World War II, my uncle who flew a fighter jet in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, a cousin and brother-in-law, who still suffer the after effects of the Vietnam War, and many others. I honor them for their sacrifices and I pray for the day when we no longer create veterans. I was born eight years after World War II ended, and just after the end of the Korean War. As I grew up, these wars were a part of the dim past that made up the history of the world before I came into it. For the first ten years of my life I maintained the naïve belief that all wars were history; that people had learned to resolve their differences without violence and warfare. I couldn’t imagine that I had been born into