Author Archives: Amy Gage

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About Amy Gage

A community relations director in higher education and mother of two adult sons, Amy Gage spent the first 20 years of her career as a journalist and public speaker in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The issues addressed in her award-winning newspaper column, "On Balance: Issues That Affect Work and Home," remain relevant today. In "The Middle Stages," she continues the vital conversation about women's work and lives, with a focus on the challenges and contradictions of aging, the mixed blessings of forsaking family time for the more immediate rewards of a career, and how middle-aged women can continue to forge full lives even as their priorities and sensibilities change.

Flipping the bird at Thanksgiving

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It’s not that I’m an ingrate or fail to recognize the many unearned blessings in my life.

I simply want no part of Thanksgiving.

I don’t need the 4,500 calories that the Average American consumes in the carbohydrate- and gravy-laden meal served on the fourth Thursday of each November.

I don’t want to expend the time or money shopping for food, and I’m even less interested in spending days preparing it.

Instead, after having to cancel a visit to see my sister in Colorado because of work, I am spending Thanksgiving the way I wish I spent more weekends — with no plans at all.Flipped Bird

Turkey rebellion

Here are five reasons why sitting out this most overrated of holidays feels like the right thing to do this year.

No. 1: The food is predictable. Dry turkey, drier stuffing. The only color on the traditional Thanksgiving table comes from whatever centerpiece the hostess has assembled. Everything else is shades of brown and tan, like those suburban subdivisions I used to pass on my commute to work.

And what guru decreed that the traditions can never change? Put fresh green beans instead of canned in the infamous Midwestern casserole? Heresy. Bake the sweet potatoes with soy milk and ginger instead of butter and brown sugar? I made that mistake only once with my German-Catholic in-laws.

No. 2: I hate football. It’s boring. It’s slow. Its players have inflated pocketbooks and egos. I’ve wasted way too many Thanksgiving “holidays” pretending to be interested because the noise of the television drowned out any conversation in the room.

If women spent Thanksgiving watching Norma Rae, Tootsie or name-your-favorite-Meryl-Streep-movie at full volume while men overworked themselves in overheated kitchens, Thanksgiving would have been cancelled years ago.

No. 3: Thanksgiving is a sexist holiday. (See above.) Dad’s job — the role of any father from a bygone era — was to sharpen the knife, carve the bird and later ask from the easy chair when pie would be served. Mom’s job was everything else.

Even in my own nuclear family, with sons raised to be progressive, the men turn to me (the one who works full time and is in graduate school) with the wide-eyed question: “So, what are we doing this year?”

No. 4: I feel too somber to host or attend a meal. My mother died in September, and I think the best way to honor the woman who introduced me to feminism and the necessity of breaking social codes is to avoid repeating the obligation she dreaded every year.

In fact, Thanksgiving hasn’t been the same since my husband’s sister and children’s godmother, Peggy Studer, died in January 2011. Peggy was the family’s center. She held us together. Sure, she cooked too many potatoes and preferred pumpkin pie to pecan, but her humor and bold bitching about the timeless traditions never failed to make them fun.

No. 5: I don’t need Thanksgiving to remind me to be grateful. A Buddhist friend introduced me to the practice of gratitude in 2010. We spent a year exchanging a gratitude list by e-mail every night.

On the inevitably difficult days — those low times that later help us recognize real joy — I can always lift my spirits by reciting or writing down a list of why I’m thankful.

For my health, my home, my husband and grown sons, my job, my friends and family, my silly dogs, my sense of purpose: I am truly grateful. And that’s enough for me to celebrate Thanksgiving this year.

 

‘Overserved’? Certainly, and workplace sobriety underrated

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By this point in the news cycle, even the most blasé sports fan in the Upper Midwest knows that Norwood Teague has problems — legal, psychological and, likely, alcohol-abuse problems.

The former athletics director at the University of Minnesota was said to have been drunk at a president’s retreat in mid-July when he sexually harassed two senior-level women. He resigned August 7.

Amid the media firestorm that has ensued — with more women coming forward to say Teague harassed them and the U of M president backing away from his original claim that his golden boy had merely been “overserved” — one question has yet to be asked.

Was it appropriate, or advisable, for alcohol to be served at this work-related function at all?

Star Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse, a recovering alcoholic, was the first to say that Teague’s alcohol consumption at the retreat was “no excuse” for his boorish and illegal behavior. True enough. But can the U of M be held accountable? Who was minding the bar at the taxpayer-supported leadership retreat? How was Teague allowed to get this drunk?

Attorney, women’s advocate and human resources consultant Gina Franklin counsels employers to “turn around” the assumption that alcohol is a bonding agent and a necessary source of creative inspiration at work.Gina_Franklin

“That’s the ‘Mad Men’ philosophy of life,” says Franklin, a senior associate at W.J. Flynn and Associates in Eagan, Minnesota. “We think it’s seriously dated.”

Franklin, like me, is an old-school feminist who would never blame women for harassment or assault. But we share the perhaps prudish and politically incorrect opinion that sobriety in professional settings is a protective tool.

As an HR coach, what would you say to Norwood Teague?

Now that he’s resigned, he needs to think about: “How do I address this so I can be employed again?” If I were his coach, I would say: “Go get an alcohol assessment and really learn if there is abuse or addiction. Put together a plan for how you’re going to better understand this. Have this be part of a life-changing event.” I think an employer would give some credit to the proactive nature of that.

Employers that cater to younger workers, especially, promote alcohol at workplace functions or after long days at the office as a well-deserved stress reliever.

If our clients have an occasion to provide alcohol at an event, we work with them not just around policy but the whole culture of consumption:

  • You can serve alcohol in limited amounts, such as two drink tickets per person.
  • Remind everybody of the organization’s harassment policies and code of conduct.
  • Provide food at the event. Stop any access to alcohol after dinner. Instead have a speaker or entertainment — and then provide cab rides home.Drinking at work

What role does alcohol play in sexual harassment?

Alcohol is a factor in the majority of these crimes. It goes almost hand in hand. Alcohol removes inhibitions, and it compromises judgment.

While I was in law school in the early 1980s, I had a public debate with my law professor: Is alcohol a mitigating factor when sentencing a sex crime? My response was: “No, it’s not a mitigating factor. The individual made a choice to consume to excess and his judgment was impaired.” I was unequivocal about it. If you use alcohol as a mitigation in sex crimes, then you’re always going to mitigate. Always.

Your daughters are 18 and 21. How do you caution these young women about mixing alcohol and work, without missing out on the networking and relationship-building that often happens at work-related events?

I have to think about that as a woman every day in my world, and both my daughters and my stepdaughters, who range from 28 to 38, ask me how I do it. I talk about compromise. If consumption of alcohol would compromise your thinking and decision-making and put you at risk, that’s not a good plan. There are men who would take advantage of that.

Since I quit drinking five years ago, I’ve noticed how often workplace socializing is tied to alcohol — and I’m increasingly ill at ease with the assumption that everybody drinks. How can employers support people who don’t drink, whether they’re recovering alcoholics or abstain for other reasons?

We advise employers to have non-alcoholic choices for employees, just as you’d have non-meat choices for meals. If I were the HR person, I would meet with any employee whom I knew was in recovery and develop strategies for how to navigate those events. I’d give that person advice and support.

The U of M incident — or multiple incidents — has helped many of us recognize the prevalence of sexual harassment, despite women’s gains in all sectors of society. Or is harassment tied more broadly to the prevalence of rape and domestic violence?

Sexual harassment was not a subject when I started in the workplace. I’m 62. I’m literally a grandmother in terms of the women’s movement and the subject of the relationship between the sexes. I founded a rape-crisis center in the 1970s as an undergraduate in Nebraska. It still serves victims of sexual assault, domestic abuse and child abuse.

For years now women have been coming forward to say: “No, we’re not going to tolerate sexual assault.” Prevention of sexual harassment — and recognition of harassment — evolved from that.

Elder-care duties call us to seek the best inside ourselves

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I’d heard the news about women and memory loss by the time my sister sent her foreboding e-mail — “a little scary, sisters” — with a link to a story headlined: “Women Descend into Alzheimer’s at Twice the Speed of Men.”

One in six women has a chance of getting Alzheimer’s by age 65, compared with one in 11 men. I recognize that truth every time I count the female heads at our mother’s memory care building.

What is less in the news — but ever-present in the lives of thousands of Baby Boomers, the majority also women — is the stress of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s.

I’ve been my mother’s primary caretaker since February 2012, when she was diagnosed with the disease. I get the 6 a.m. phone call when she refuses to take her shower. I press the doctor about why he prescribed an anti-depressant without consulting me. I clean the toilet and the sink every time I visit.

These chapters of my life are writing themselves as I rush through them. Unlike my journal, I rarely linger long enough to reflect on how I really feel. All I can hope is that my sons observe the constancy and discipline, and that, one day, they will do the same for me.

Chapter 1: The Professional Caregiver

I joined 40 other scared, sad middle-aged people at a talk in late April by Charles Schoenfeld, a Wisconsin-based author who retired from truck driving and studied to become a certified nurse assistant in dementia wards.

“Human kindness can often reach where medicine and textbooks cannot,” said Schoenfeld, the only man in his CNA classes. “It takes a special person to work in these facilities.”

We daughters and sons or spouses and partners were invited that evening by a physicians’ group that services upscale memory-care facilities. But 800,000 people in the United States who have dementia live alone, without benefit of the long-term-care insurance that allows my mother to reside in a well-appointed place with daily activities, on-site nursing care and an aide-to-patient ratio of 8:1.

The cost of $5,500 a month will drain her financial resources and exhaust her insurance within five years. At that point, if she’s still living, county assistance will kick in.

“So, what do low-income people do who have Alzheimer’s or dementia?” I asked Schoenfeld, adding that every resident but one at my mother’s home is white and all of the aides are people of color, many of them first-generation immigrants.

“That’s a head-scratcher,” he said, clearly not expecting this twist at a white-table-cloth dinner hosted at a country club. Next question?

Chapter 2: Caregiving and Work

It would be dramatic, and inaccurate, to say I downsized my career a year ago solely to care for my mother. It is absolutely true, however, that a non-management job — and the 15 hours a week it nets me — makes my time with her more possible and more pleasant.Audrie Gage_06.15

Now that Mom can no longer shop or talk politics or converse on the phone, I focus on what we can do. I wash and style her hair when I visit. I attend and sometimes lead the seated exercise class — and tear up when the residents close by singing multiple verses, from memory, of “You Are My Sunshine.”

Mom has lost 12 pounds in six months as the disease has claimed her appetite and sense of taste. I sit with her at mealtime and urge her to eat. I bring her candy bars and sugared coffees from the Caribou nearby.

I’m grateful for those moments when my maternal instincts take over, when I sit beside her on the bed and rub her shoulders or stroke her cheek. When I am thinking less about my loss than her own. And I do it all unquestioningly and mostly without complaint. I take the responsibility as seriously as I did my duties to my children.

“Working at home,” “on vacation” and “sick child” are among the dozen or so descriptive magnets on the check-out board at work. Not one of them says “elder care” or “Alzheimer’s” or “gone to see my mother while some shell of her is left.”

Work-life balance is still defined as moms with kids.

Chapter 3: Caregiver Support Group

The first time I heard about the caregivers’ support group at The Alton Memory Care, where my mother lives, I pictured the group therapy sessions on The Bob Newhart Show of the 1970s. Kooks and cranks sitting awkwardly in a circle while a droll, befuddled expert tried to lead them back to mental health.

The image amused me till I recognized the kook and crank inside myself — and felt my resistance and resentment at having to sit around that table.

Two weeks ago a woman named Julie dominated the conversation. Her mom was just diagnosed at age 86, and Julie wanted to know every fact and facet about Alzheimer’s:Alzheimers word cloud

  • How many stages are there? (“Most experts say seven.”)
  • What’s the difference between Alzheimer’s and dementia? (“The former is a subset of the latter.”)
  • How is Lewy bodies dementia different from Alzheimer’s? (She had me there.)

“What does it matter?” I finally asked her, as kindly as I could. “You won’t be able to predict the course of this disease. Your mother will have good days and bad days. Every time you see her will be different.”

Our group leader steered us back to the strengths of people who have dementia. They live in the moment, observe non-verbal cues, always appreciate music and experience a range of emotions.

I note the absence of emotion every time I leave Mom’s building. I turn off the car radio and drive home stony-faced, in silence, seeking the distance between myself and the inevitable.