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Today is my birthday. Let me fill you in on a little history of my generation. Those of us conceived during the Great Depression of the 1930s are the smallest group in the twentieth century–people didn’t need another mouth to feed. Only 24.4 million birth cries were heard in the United States after the stock market crash of ’29 compared to 31.7 million in the forties and 40.3 million in the fifties.

We “remember Pearl Harbor” and did our little bit for the war effort. Following high school, our boys marched to battle in Korea, the first in a string of undeclared wars. President Eisenhower ended that conflict in 1952, but the Cold War with Russia continued and so did the draft. The men in uniform were trained and ready to do whatever might become necessary. The threat of nuclear weapons wafted over the globe like a mushroom cloud.

In our twenties, we settled down. Ninety-six percent of us girls wed and most had three babies. Only seven percent of those who married did not become mother, the lowest proportion of childless women in any generation in American history.

The Pill became available in the ’60s and revolutionized women’s lives. Those who had sacrificed their own college education to work for PHTs (putting hubby through) went back to school and careers. Our generation became the first to have a large number of females employed outside the home. This new independence contributed to more than a quarter of our marriages ending in divorce. This created single-parent families, which were predominately headed by mothers.

Raised on radio, we revamped TV. Mary Tyler Moore went from Dick VanDyke’s wife to the single-woman star of her own show. Other female firsts abounded: Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State; Janet Guthrie, Indianapolis 500 race car driver; Sandra Day O’Conner, Supreme Court Justice; Geraldine Ferraro, Democratic Party nominee for Vice President; and Elizabeth Dole, candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. All of those events were reported by journalists including Barbara Walters.

The Census Bureau predicts that in 2020 there will be seven to eight million 85 and older. Many will be single–one out of three American women passed 65 lives alone and one out of seven men. Strong ancestors, healthy eating, exercise, medical care and camouflage help keep us feeling good and looking good, but physical and mental impairments can reduce us to climbing molehills instead of mountains. We must continue to speak for ourselves and form partnerships with the generations following us.

What are you planning for your future?

We’re often admonished to “live in the moment,” which is good advice, but anticipation of an upcoming event can brighten dull days. September 12th through the 14th, Ken and I will accompany Lisa and her motorcycle riding friends to Memphis, Tennessee. The group is delivering their donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, an awesome place. My husband, who ‘moonlighted’ as a semi driver when he was a cop, will drive our pick-up and pull their trailer. The van will carry snacks for rest stops and be available to haul a motorcycle if anyone has a problem. We look forward to sharing an adventure with our daughter and seeing the people we met during a similar sojourn last year.

As the trip approaches, our time is divided between before and after. We’ll check our suitcases and packing lists to be sure we have the needed clothes and personal items. Ken will get the truck serviced. I’ll schedule a haircut and any other necessary appointments. Medications must be monitored and any needed refills obtained.

As we prepare, Ken and I will reminisce about our biking days when we were teenagers. At that time, riders didn’t need training or a special license. He bought a motorcycle, practiced a bit and stopped by our farmhouse to take me for a ride. It was a surprise when my strict mother said, “I guess it’s alright.” Before she had a chance to change her mind, I tied a scarf over my hair and climbed on behind him grabbing the edges of the big seat with both hands. He pulled down his black cap with the white bill and we roared off on his Indian for the first of many rides we took during that summer of ’53.

What are you anticipating?

I just returned from my usual walk in Salelens Park, one of Durand’s prime assets. The isolated path runs beside a stream and takes me down memory lane to the farm where I grew up. At 4:30 every afternoon, I saddled Millie and rode my pony across the creek and through the pasture to round up our twenty-four cows for evening milking.

In the spring, the yellow dandelions and purple violets glowing in the multi-shades of green alongside the blacktop are the same as the flowers I picked to place in the construction paper, May baskets I made in country school.

Later in the year, brown cattails emerge from the swampy area to remind me of a long-ago Sunday drive. Mom, sitting in the passenger seat, spotted her favorite plants along the roadside and exclaimed, “Oh, look, cattails!” Dad immediately pulled our black, ’36 Chevy sedan off the asphalt, parked and stepped into the quagmire to pick a handful of the brown plants. He returned to the car, opened the right hand door and handed Mom the fall bouquet. He then dug in the glove compartment to find an old towel to wipe his mud-smeared, gray, dress shoes. When it came to expressing affection, my folks believed the adage, actions speak louder than words.

In the winter when snow sparkles in the sunlight, the village street department employees keep the trail clear. I don my purple fedora, heavy coat and warm boots to face the cold weather unless the daytime temperature stays below 20 degrees. I believe the two-mile hike from our front door down the cement sidewalks, along the park’s paved path that circles a small pond and back home keeps me healthy physically and mentally.

Do you have a favorite place to walk?

Every morning we open our eyes and start making small and large decisions. When Kenny and I were in high school, he made a little, spur-of-the-moment decision that ended up setting the course for the rest of our lives. On a sticky, July, Friday night, I was a bored 14-year-old walking around the Davis Days summer festival with my current boyfriend, Ronnie. I loved the carnival rides but they made Ronnie sick. A bold, 16-year-old Kenny stepped up to me and asked, “Would you care to go on the Ferris wheel?” I jumped at the chance. Back on the ground, I returned to Ronnie, who was standing where I left him. Kenny went his own way. The next night the village festivities continued and so did the romance kindled between Kenny and me.

Two years later, I promised to wait for Ken when he made the big decision to enlist in the Navy. It was the Eisenhower Era of peace and prosperity, but the Cold War, a state of political and military tension between the United States and Russia, continued and so did the draft. The men in uniform were trained and ready to do whatever might become necessary. He spent his first year learning to be a sailor and to handle the ammunition and the bombs carried by planes. The following three years, he was an ordnance man aboard the U.S.S. Bennington, an aircraft carrier. The small-town boy visited both coasts of the States and travelled halfway around the world to Hong Kong, Japan and Australia.

When Ken returned home, we were married. We raised Linda, Lisa and Kurt, welcomed daughter-in-law Sandy and became the proud grandparents of Katelyn and Jacob. Ten years ago, we buried Linda who died of breast cancer. Last April, we celebrated sixty years of marriage. We enjoy growing old together.

Have you made a small decision that ended up changing your life?

The last time my husband and I ate supper in an upscale restaurant, the host seated us at a table covered with a white cloth. A young woman introduced herself as Becky, our server. She asked, “Can I get you guys something to drink?”

Sunday at church, two boys and four girls gathered around our female pastor for the children’s sermon. She greeted them with, “Good morning. It’s great to see you guys.”

While I watched a high school girls’ softball game recently, one of the players shouted, “Come on you guys, let’s get some runs.”

I cringed each time I heard gals referred to as guys. I was part of the women’s movement in the sixties and seventies that changed our country including our language. Our daughter, Lisa, became one of the females who invaded all-male bastions such as police and fire departments to become police officers and firefighters. Men joined women as flight attendants and nurses.

Why go backwards? In the fifties, Becky would have been our waitress, our pastor would have been a man and there would have been no girls’ ball team. My female school teachers assured me that documents such as The Declaration of Independence with the words, “All men are created equal,” meant girls, too. When I became an adult, I learned that wasn’t true.

The English language provides words for a mixed group such as people and children that don’t have a gender connotation. Ball players can still be ladies.

How do you refer to females or groups including both sexes?

I believe we never start our life over. We may turn down a different road, but we are all of the personae from our past like Russian matryoshkas, the wooden nesting dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other.

My doll has nine incarnations. The smallest, a four-and-a-half-year-old wearing a cowgirl hat. Dad rode his horse, Mickey, and held a lead rope snapped to my pony’s bridle when we took jaunts together. One sunny, summer afternoon, I slipped from my sadde and landed in a bed of sand. I wasn’t hurt, but I was scared and started crying. Dad jumped down, picked me up and checked that I was okay. “Come on, get back on and we’ll go to the barn.”

“No. I don’t want to ride Millie any more. She threw me off.”

“She didn’t throw you off. You just fell off.” He lifted me onto my pony’s back and planted my feet firmly in the stirrups. I clung to the saddle horn with both hands while we slowly walked the animals to the stable. I’ve been getting back on the horse that threw me ever since.

The next is the 16-year-old, high schooler who my 18-year-old boyfriend left behind while he served a four-year hitch in the Navy. She is followed by the 19-year-old, office worker who spent five months in a tuberculosis sanitarium recovering from the life-threatening disease.

Ken returned home and I added two more, a wife and a mother. After our three children were in school, I found my calling as a journalist. Our kids grew up and our son made me a mother-in-law and a grandmother. The one you see is an older woman who is missing a piece of her heart. Ten years ago, my husband and I buried our eldest child who died of breast cancer.

How many dolls lurk inside you?

The less I do, the less I can do. That reminder is at eye level on my refrigerator door and I firmly believe it. When confronted with a task, it’s easy to think, that’s getting hard to do. I’m not going to do it anymore.

Earlier this summer, Lisa proposed that our family go zip lining to celebrate her birthday. I thought about it overnight and talked it over with Ken. For several years, my husband’s had acrophobia when he tried to climb a ladder. We decided we both would participate. I called our daughter to include us when she bought the advance tickets. We were committed. It turned out to be a beautiful, Sunday afternoon and the nine of us had a great time. The memory gives me a push to continue doing physical things. I remind myself, I crossed the shaky, wooden bridges that slanted uphill and climbed the spiral staircases to the nine platforms to do the zip lining. I have no excuse for not cleaning the house or other tasks I never did like doing. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve earned the right to retire from doing a hateful job, but I don’t really want to.

When my independent, octogenarian mother asked me to take over her checkbook because she was forgetting things, my reply was, “What are you forgetting?” The second the words were out of my mouth I realized how stupid it sounded. But, I hadn’t noticed any forgetfulness during my daily visits to her home. Apparently, she had. I always trusted my mother’s judgment. I began writing the checks to pay her monthly bills.

As we age, we need to decide whether it’s time to give up something we’ve always done or push to continue doing it. Our loved ones shouldn’t have to make these judgments.

How do you make these decisions?

I am an only child by chance, not choice. Two baby brothers died at birth when I was six and seven years old. I grew up on the farm with my English bulldog, Tony, and my pony, Millie. On holidays and special occasions, my parents and I celebrated with Mom’s oldest sister, her husband and their two daughters, who were more than ten years older than I was. I felt like a little adult who became a big adult.

I attended the nearby country school that never had more than ten students. For six years, I was alone in my class. I whipped through text books at my own rate. Beginning with seventh grade, I rode a yellow bus to junior high in town. Each of my thirty new classmates had at least one sibling. I was an anomaly. Only boys could participate in competitive school sports so I never learned to be a team player.

When I married and became the mother of three children, I felt it was my duty to join school and church groups. Most committees drove me crazy. A whole meeting could be spent discussing the pros and cons of serving peanuts or mixed nuts with refreshments at an upcoming event. My thought was pick one and move on. The zinger came later when a phone call from the chairperson changed the decision finally reached.

I have friends, but I’m more apt to get together with one or two instead of a bunch for lunch. When I spend a day shopping in the city, I’m comfortable taking a break by myself in a nice restaurant relaxing with a glass of wine and eating a salad topped off with dessert.

As a writer attending conferences, I know the value of making contacts. At the end of the day, I’m happy alone in my hotel room.

How have siblings or lack of them shaped your life?

I wonder what makes a word good or bad. One of comedian George Carlin’s monologues was “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.” Four-letter words dominated the list. We may say a couple “made love” or “slept together” but the f-word, which is often a more accurate description of the interaction, is banned in polite society. On the farm, I shoveled a lot of manure, but I mustn’t call it s***.

When I was growing up, we used a lot of euphemisms. Instead of saying a mother-to-be was pregnant, we referred to her as ‘expecting’ or ‘having a date with the stork’.

As a writer, I find myself looking up words I know to make sure the one I’m using is exactly right. Those, which in one context seem to be interchangeable, can be misleading in another. I can write, “It was a starry night,” or, “It was a starry evening,” without altering the meaning much. If I write, “The woman wore a nightgown,” your mind’s eye flashes a much different picture than if I write, “The woman wore an evening gown.”

What we say and what others hear isn’t always the same thing. Our own experiences color how we interpret words. For example, when someone says, “We had a little snow last night,” a person from Wisconsin expects snowplows to clear away three or four inches before drivers start their morning commute. A person living in Washington, D.C., knows an inch of the white stuff will paralyze the morning rush hour.

What have you said that was misconstrued by the listener with disastrous results?

Freedom for me is the fourteen-year-old Chrysler parked in our garage. I’ve loved to drive ever since I passed the test to receive my license when I was sixteen. When I climb behind the steering wheel, I’m free to go where I want and be who I want.

An hour or two of travel takes me to Madison or Chicago. For a day or a week, I’m a writer among writers sharing experiences and learning new things at a workshop or a conference. My urban friends see the world in a much different way than I do. I don’t agree with them, but I listen to their points of view.

The sedan has taken me to Elmhurst, Illinois, and Dubuque, Iowa. Those two days I was a proud grandmother watching our granddaughter and grandson receive their college diplomas.

From time to time, the automobile takes me to the Laona Township Cemetery. For a few solemn moments, I’m a daughter or a mother visiting the graves of my Dad and Mom and our oldest child, Linda, who’s buried alongside her grandparents in the country graveyard.

On April 17, the chariot took me to the dinner theater Circa 21 at Rock Island. That night I was a happy wife toasting sixty years of marriage with my husband. We piled our plates at a buffet of delicious food followed by a musical performance of Grumpy Old Men. When I’m pissed at that man, the car is my escape hatch. Driving off for a shopping trip in Rockford keeps me from yelling things I’d regret later.

After each respite of freedom, the blue, magic carpet brings me home–the center of my universe. I have a new appreciation for my routine life of wife, mother, grandmother and writer.

How do you define freedom?