"I am what survives of me." (Erickson)
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It’s interesting how our capacity to absorb life-changes increases with time. The growing sense of calmness and confidence in ‘things working out’ allows us to deal with life’s occasional points of inflection more easily as we get older. Those points of life-change, when the future is a bit shrouded, include the life-launching years of adolescence, starting one’s own family, significant career moves, eventual retirement - and ‘the big one’ - as one deals with the ‘December’ of one’s life.
In a few days, I turn 70 and enter my 8th decade! It’s hard for me to believe - I certainly don’t feel that old. But the fact is that I’m closing in on that final change which awaits us all. Oddly, it isn’t particularly threatening. I have been a senior-citizen for five years now and I’ve become accustomed to retirement and it’s relaxed reflection of the paths traveled on..
But this winter has been a bit distracting - a winter season in the winter of my life. Hence, I have let almost two months go by without an update for the first time since I began these LJ scratchings in 2001, first as “tomcan” and, for the past year, as ‘cool-moose’. But springtime is upon us and I’m stimulated by new energy - perhaps caused by the thought of a clan-gathering for my birthday. The family doesn’t think I know about it, but there’s a party planned in about a week with me - as husband, brother, dad and granddad - as the center of attraction. And I will love the attention, of course.
A month later, my older son is traveling with me to my ‘other home’ - his birthday gift to me is a trip to Chile. Peter hasn’t been there with me before as he was busy in grad school in France and ‘careering’ in New York during the late 80’s and the 90’s when I spent so much time in Santiago. Sandra and Geoffrey (my younger son) have walked along the Alameda and traveled in the Andes with me and now I get to show Peter the wonderful country that captured my mind and heart twenty years ago.
Just as I have a ‘southern home’ in Chile, I have a ‘southern family’ as well. There are two little guys named ‘Tomas’ down there - sons of my borrowed sons, Patricio and Antonio. And Fernanda and Donna-Diane, their daughters. There will be a reunion with a bunch of the kids (now young men and women) from the Hogar Santa Cruz, who adopted me as their ‘Gringo-Tio’ in those exciting years just after Pinochet was replaced. The fact that the old bastard is dead now provides us with yet another reason for a celebration.
I’ll be seeing old business and engineering friends, some political acquaintances (a Senador, an Ambassdador, maybe even a former Presidente) and some musicians from the ‘nueva cancion’ era - Inti-Illimani, among others. I thought I might post some pictures of me with some impressive government people - but, when I think about it, the most important people I spent time with in Chile were the beautiful children at our Hogar.
I’ll be meeting with them in May - now grown, and with six children of their own these days.
According to the late psychologist Erik Erikson, the hallmark of successful late-life development can be encapsulated in the understanding, "I am what survives of me.”
It’s interesting how our capacity to absorb life-changes increases with time. The growing sense of calmness and confidence in ‘things working out’ allows us to deal with life’s occasional points of inflection more easily as we get older. Those points of life-change, when the future is a bit shrouded, include the life-launching years of adolescence, starting one’s own family, significant career moves, eventual retirement - and ‘the big one’ - as one deals with the ‘December’ of one’s life.
In a few days, I turn 70 and enter my 8th decade! It’s hard for me to believe - I certainly don’t feel that old. But the fact is that I’m closing in on that final change which awaits us all. Oddly, it isn’t particularly threatening. I have been a senior-citizen for five years now and I’ve become accustomed to retirement and it’s relaxed reflection of the paths traveled on..
But this winter has been a bit distracting - a winter season in the winter of my life. Hence, I have let almost two months go by without an update for the first time since I began these LJ scratchings in 2001, first as “tomcan” and, for the past year, as ‘cool-moose’. But springtime is upon us and I’m stimulated by new energy - perhaps caused by the thought of a clan-gathering for my birthday. The family doesn’t think I know about it, but there’s a party planned in about a week with me - as husband, brother, dad and granddad - as the center of attraction. And I will love the attention, of course.
A month later, my older son is traveling with me to my ‘other home’ - his birthday gift to me is a trip to Chile. Peter hasn’t been there with me before as he was busy in grad school in France and ‘careering’ in New York during the late 80’s and the 90’s when I spent so much time in Santiago. Sandra and Geoffrey (my younger son) have walked along the Alameda and traveled in the Andes with me and now I get to show Peter the wonderful country that captured my mind and heart twenty years ago.
Just as I have a ‘southern home’ in Chile, I have a ‘southern family’ as well. There are two little guys named ‘Tomas’ down there - sons of my borrowed sons, Patricio and Antonio. And Fernanda and Donna-Diane, their daughters. There will be a reunion with a bunch of the kids (now young men and women) from the Hogar Santa Cruz, who adopted me as their ‘Gringo-Tio’ in those exciting years just after Pinochet was replaced. The fact that the old bastard is dead now provides us with yet another reason for a celebration.
I’ll be seeing old business and engineering friends, some political acquaintances (a Senador, an Ambassdador, maybe even a former Presidente) and some musicians from the ‘nueva cancion’ era - Inti-Illimani, among others. I thought I might post some pictures of me with some impressive government people - but, when I think about it, the most important people I spent time with in Chile were the beautiful children at our Hogar.
I’ll be meeting with them in May - now grown, and with six children of their own these days.
According to the late psychologist Erik Erikson, the hallmark of successful late-life development can be encapsulated in the understanding, "I am what survives of me.”