You Pierced What? Welcome to Mid-Life!

 JENN McKINLAY: Well, hello, mid-life crisis!

Nose stud! Scale of pain from 1-10 with 1 being none, I'd say it was a 2.

I was on the phone the other day, catching up with my former college roommate, a person who has known adult me for almost 40 years. We talked about what was happening in our lives and when I finished, she said, “So, you’re writing fantasy novels, running 5Ks (see photo below), and now you have a nose stud (see photo above). Overall, how do you feel your mid-life crisis is going?”

Me and H2 - Rock and Roll 5K - it was 44 degrees!!!

I laughed and said, “This from a woman who is selling her house and traveling the country in an RV for the next few years to find her perfect retirement location?” She also laughed as we acknowledged we were both managing our middle years in different and surprising ways. (I have always loathed running and she never planned to leave CT).

Side note: neither of us have bought a sports car or traded in our husbands for a younger model. LOL.

My question to you, Reds, is what did your middle-age years look like, what did you do, or plan to do to embrace the next chapter?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Middle years….When was that, again? Remind me?  (Wait, I just re-read your opening paragraph. You have a nose stud? Did I know that?)  Anyway, my middle years are long gone, and I got through them with a strange but inadvertent combination of ignoring them and embracing them. I’m not sure I ever thought of “mid-life crisis.”  I was unmarried and unattached between the ages of 21 and 40, and happily so.  Married at 40, working 24/7 and truly loving it. There was nothing else I wanted to do, and nowhere else I wanted to be. I just wanted to be better at what I was already dong.  Then, after a bit of turmoil,  married Jonathan when I was 46. 

Hmm. I may be the ONLY person, come to think of it, who traded in her husband for an OLDER model. :-) 

So was that before or after mid-life?

I loved my mid-years, and valued them. I’m better now than ever, but I see it as so much of a process.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: How did I not know about the nose stud, either? Is this since the last time we zoomed? I say, “good for you,” and “ouch!”

Middle years? Oh, I did the classic. Wrote a novel. Got a divorce. (For the first time in my life I had my own money! Oh, it was so incredibly liberating!) Married slightly younger model. Bought a sports car. Started making trips to England by myself. (Can you shout “liberating!!!)

The writing, the husband, and the solo trips have stuck. The red sports car, not, alas. I had to come to grips with reality when the warranty ran out. 

HALLIE EPHRON: Mine was a gradual shift. (I’ve always had a keep-one-foot-on-the-dock-and-one-on-the-boat approach to change.) 

The big thing was that I started to write fiction. I’d started a freelance writing business which gave me the flexibility to write stuff that, for quite a long time, I did not get paid for. Meanwhile my daughters were flying the coop and my Jerry was our anchor. I was also letting my hair go gray and Jerry and I were ticking travel destinations off our bucket list. And buying another new white Honda Civic every so often to replace a 14-year-old one. I’m not a big risk taker. 

RHYS BOWEN: It’s funny that my next stand-alone, MRS ENDICOTT’S SPLENDID ADVENTURE, has the theme of midlife crisis. Dumped by her husband after being the model wife she takes off for the south of France and forges a whole new life there. (Maybe a bit of a living vicariously write?) Anyway my fifties were much better than my forties when husband was laid off and I had three kids in college. Last kid went to college. We traveled and I took the risk of switching from a reliable income writing YA books to writing what I like to read. The first Constable Evans novel got a teeny advance and a print run of 2500. I think it’s worked out okay. If I hadn’t switched I’d never have made all these wonderful friends and been part of this amazing community. 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I got my @$$ tattooed when I turned 36, does that count? Maybe I had an early start on the midlife "say yes to changes" thing, because that's around the time I started to write. 

 

In some ways, I agree with Rhys: my fifties were easier at times than my forties (I had a baby at 39, after all!) And my sixties (so far) are even better. I feel freer, more myself, and more willing to take risks than I was when I was younger. I can't see going in for a piercing, but I could definitely sign up for another tattoo... 

LUCY BURDETTE: whenever someone asks how I started writing, how I switched careers from clinical psychology to mystery writer, I say it was my midlife crisis. I don’t know how else to describe it that would make sense. It certainly wasn’t planned, but I’ve never taken the straight route to anything. The middle years were filled with angst, so I am really enjoying being settled with John and having lots of adventures writing and otherwise along the way.

JENN: In reading these answers, I am reminded of why I absolutely adore the Reds. We're all so different and so uniquely ourselves and there's no judgement just a lot of support. And the nose stud happened in December. Not planned - a totally spur of the moment - why not? - at the mall. LOL.

Your turn readers! What did/does/will mid-life look for you?

Victor Wakefield, 1926 - 2024

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: You may have missed the news in the comments section, but our own Celia Wakefield's beloved husband Victor died this past month, at home in bed, at the age of 98. He led an amazing and rich live in his almost-century, and this morning, instead of a recipe, Celia is sharing a few - there are so many! - Victor stories.

 

 

It's Julia's week which seems to say it’s Celia's Sunday. Julia suggested that while I had written so much about my own childhood perhaps it was time to tell some of Victor’s early tales. 

 

Where to start? Of course, how did we meet? I had recently joined IBM UK and was at the Data Processing Christmas Party held in the pub across the road from IBM UK HQ. (IBM was a dry company worldwide, in fact they were ahead of the current trend). I was feeling very nervous finding myself a part of a group around the managing director (UK speak - CEO). Someone came and stood between my friend Audrey and me. “Hello, Vic” said Audrey and introduced us. However, Victor told a different tale. He always insisted he had seen me from across the room and asked who I was. On being told I was a new secretary - "and I hadn't a boy friend," Victor like to add as he replied then, "Well she does now!" Knowing the person he had been speaking with I disagree. There are some things one didn’t discuss at work. But you be the judge as to which version seems most likely.

 

Victor grew up in circumstances very different from mine. He was a life-long asthmatic. This served him well as he turned eighteen in 1944. He was called up to fight in the Second World War, but due to his health was never sent to the front. Instead, he was placed in British counter intelligence. On testing he proved adept at foreign language, so was learning Japanese when the war ended. As he still had to complete his three years of national service, he was posted first to India, where the saying was, “Those who hold the Red Fort (large military complex in Delhi) hold India.” The transfer from British to self rule was, as Victor wrote, “A turbulent and terrible time.” The work involved retraining of thousands of jobs done by the British now to be done by the Indians. Victor spoke very little of his actual work. I would imagine he had to keep listening for possible sedition but I have no proof. 

 

The scanned version is scratched, alas...

Victor loved to talk about his seven sweeps of the scythe. Opportunities which might have ended in disaster but from which he was saved by unexpected help. Here is one that has disaster written all over it. After the monsoon season Victor heard of a remote hilly area where a profusion of spectacularly colored butterflies hatched only at that time of year. Riding on a narrow dirt road he veered too close to the edge over a deep drop into the ravine below. His motorbike swerved off the path and hung over the drop. He was stuck. The bike was army issue so losing it was out of the question, but it was heavy and there was no way to maneuver it back onto the path. Then his luck changed. 

Along the path came two Indian men who, seeing Victors predicament, ran to him and were able to lift the bike and pull Victor back to safety. 

 

The screen shot version is blurry!

From India Victor was posted to Nairobi, Kenya. Among his responsibilities was teaching the “Kenyan Askaris” to be smart and effective soldiers, which included learning how to ride motor-cycles. This involved a lot of merriment on the troops account. They referred to the motor-cycles as piki-piki, in Swahili from the motor-cycle sound. 

 

Victor had several adventures or Swipes in Kenya. I think this one scared him the most. One night he drove his jeep into the bush to look at the stars. Turning off his headlights to scan the heavens, he was horrified to find he was being watched by hundreds of pairs of eyes. Reversing quickly, headlights on again, he fled back to civilization.

 

Victor was a man of many talents and hobbies. He liked to tell friends that he had been active all his life from the early gift of a bicycle from a Canadian soldier. He rode miles over the South Downs above Brighton. He loved to play tennis and one friend wrote of his determination to win (though in a most gentleman like manner.) He had great pleasure trying to play with our grandson in 2021 even though it was hard to swoop around the court as he had in the past.

 

His retirement work centered around mechanical clock repair and rebuilding until he had his cataracts removed, which altered his shortsightedness. He was an avid gamer, researching century old games which he would build to play with kids. He was a clown. Yes, he went to clown school! He was a photographer and returned to the immediate pleasure it gave him through his iPad - instant gratification. He would take photos of breaking news on the TV. I think this helped him to cement the event as he knew his memory was failing. 

 

Victor and I bonded over my love of the Beatles whose lyrics he told me reminded him of Elizabethan madrigals. We loved music, particularly classical, and Victor studied and played an Alto recorder with our daughter Olivia, who played the soprano version before switching to flute. He was a founding member of the Recorder Group here at the senior college at USM. Looking back on our almost 60 years together I realize he has left me a gift. Time to spend now on pursuing some other interests of my own - though I know I shall still be cooking. In fact, I am finding that cooking for one isn’t as bad as I thought, so perhaps that will be my topic if Julia invites me next time. 

JULIA: Oh, you know there will be a next time! Dear readers, what are some of your stories about loved ones now passed?

Unsubscribe Me, Please!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I was listening to an episode of either The Indicator or Planet Money (because everything I know comes from NPR) and they were talking about SaaS - software as a Service. It started with big companies, who found it more expedient to subscribe to the software they needed rather than build and run it on their own. (The current state of this? All those damn AI chatbots and summaries we can’t escape from.)

 

Of course, we use the same SaaS, even if that’s not what we call it. We don’t own movies, or music, or sometimes even books anymore. We subscribe to them. We subscribe to credit monitoring agencies, and email platforms, and productivity software, and cloud storage (the digital version of those self-storage units gobbling up real estate everywhere.) We subscribe to auto-ordering, so the dog kibble and paper towels arrive right on time without us having to think about it.

 

Not to mention the “memberships” that renew annually and monthly - Costco and Sam’s Club, Amazon Prime and Netflix, AAA and House Beautiful magazine. (Those last two are me, byw.)

 

It’s become so prevalent there are businesses whose sole purpose is to go through your financial records and eliminate all the zombie subscriptions you never use, but faithfully pay for. And - you guessed it - you can subscribe to the anti-subscription service.

 

How about you, Reds? Do you know everything you’ve subscribed to, or are some of the services lost in the fog? And have you ever had to jump through hoops to get out of a subscription? (I’m looking at you, New York Times.)

Genuinely evil

 LUCY BURDETTE: Oh lordy no Julia, if something happened to John, I would have no idea what television applications we’re subscribed to. What about Substack? That is complicating my life even further. Everyone wants you to be a paying reader, which I get. Writers deserve to be paid! But then how to keep track of who you’re paying what? And, what about all the apps on my phone? I’d like to go through and delete the many I don’t use, but I’m still a member on their site, right? I’ve lost track of those too!

 

Ps It’s Crate and Barrel I can't get rid of currently, and I’m quite sure I didn’t buy anything from them!

 

RHYS BOWEN:  I like to think I know everything but every now and then I get a message saying “Your subscription to x will renew” and i’m surprised because I didn’t know I had it. I try to write them down in my agenda to make sure they are part of my taxes: Lifelock and Norton and travel evacuation and password storage and Zoom professional and Calm and Dropbox etc etc etc. It certainly adds up, doesn’t it. Not to mention Netflix, Britbox, Peacock, Prime… 

 

I’m smiling today because my travel cancellation insurance finally paid up after months of wrangling after John couldn’t travel in September. They wanted to see tickets when all i had was online confirmations. They wanted to see railroads writing to say that my ticket was non-refundable when it says so on their site.I tried pointing out that since I was showing them the cancellation of the flight across the Atlantic John could not have taken any train trips or flights within Europe!  Finally I got so frustrated I told them that if I didn’t get paid now I’d write to the CEO of Chase and the Better Business Bureau. Got paid the next day!

 

 DEBORAH CROMBIE: Good for you, Rhys!! Julia, it was just this morning I actually had to think about what streaming services we subscribe to! Too many, I’m sure. And to many on Substack–those $5 a month subscriptions add up, but I somehow haven’t managed to find the time to cancel the ones I don’t read. (Or to read the ones I really want to read…) I’m patting myself on the back for finally not renewing our subscription to Rolling Stone, because we never read it, and I have no idea who most of the artists are. But every time I cancel a newspaper/magazine/substack, I think about how important good journalism is and how I should support it.

 

 HALLIE EPHRON: I keep a pretty close eye on my expenses in general, and subscriptions are just one piece of it. I stick to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Britbox for streaming. And would drop one of them if I decide to take a ride on HBO Max or Disney. It adds up. Plus, how much TV can you watch??

 

ACK: Substack. I keep thinking I should be more conversant with what’s there but I’m not. 

 

Am I the only one who’s noticed some up-to-now “free” news aggregators are now making you subscribe and pay to stay tuned in?

JENN McKINLAY: Hub and I recently discovered we had TWO Amazon Prime subscriptions and have had them for years. Also, the Hooligans have subscriptions tied to my accounts that I have no clue about and am afraid to cancel - what if they need it for school? And of course, I keep forgetting to ask. I think this answers your question. I am the WORST. I am going to end up in the poor house over a $19.99 monthly subscription I forgot about - I just know it!

 

 HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What a great topic, Julia. But good grief, I am the WORST! I have no idea. I am sure it is TRAGIC–like, I have Disney Plus. Do I watch Disney Plus? Heck, no. But what if I wanted to?

 

 And don’t suggest I “get it free for two weeks”because I will never remember, and so much for that idea.  I am very tempted by the anti-subscription service, but it has to be a scam, and even if not, I am not giving someone all the  info they’d need to do that.

 

I think I pay about a billion dollars a year for the NYT games, but I can never figure out what’s what so I leave it. 

 

Roku, and New York, and the New Yorker, and how much am I paying for zoom and dropbox and streamyard and masterclass? Oh, whatever. 

 

JULIA: Okay, dear readers, are you also THE WORST?? Or do you keep a tight fist on your subscriptions?