Tag Archives: life

Happy New Year: No Fakery, No Frills

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If I were writing a traditional New Year’s letter — the greetings that few people send anymore, now that photo-filled Shutterfly and Snapfish cards have replaced the lengthy recountings of successes and celebrations — I would focus on what went well in 2025. Like a Facebook post, my letter would paint a colorful picture of the past 12 months that is exuberant but only partly true.

Because it wouldn’t describe what has been difficult. Or sad. What has made me feel old and out of touch. Where I’ve been wrong, or felt wronged, or made decisions that I regret. The letter would broadcast, even brag, rather than reflect.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

As I write this, I’ve been home alone for two weeks over the Christmas holiday, mothering a tripod cat and two dogs who demand multiple walks a day. Outings with friends and a Christmas Eve gathering with my daughter-in-law’s extended family have been welcome distractions, but mostly I have kept my own company.

“I won’t feel happy all the time this holiday season,” a commentator wrote in a reflection about the 60th anniversary of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the timeless tale of an awkward boy who manages “to find hope” amid a season of mixed blessings. Author Abigail Rosenthal describes Charlie Brown as “anxious and depressed,” employing a lingo that today’s readers will understand. I find him to be honest and touchingly human, unafraid to acknowledge that this weighted holiday carries more expectations — whether religious or secular — than people can possibly achieve.

In that spirit, here’s what 2025 has really felt like for me. How it’s been, rather than what I want you to believe.

The first grandchild

How could the birth of Arthur on July 22nd be anything but a blessing? My younger son is a proud and attentive father; the growing baby came nine days early, and was a full pound and a half smaller than his dad, making labor and delivery relatively smooth; and he is healthy, alert and well loved. We are lucky.

One of the first times I fed him, as Arthur was transitioning to a bottle, I thought of malnourished babies in Gaza. When I left my son’s house, exhausted, after a five-hour babysitting shift, I wondered how overwhelmed, under-resourced single parents manage. Reviewing the photos I take every time I see Arthur, I push away thoughts of all that could go wrong, recalling my sister’s warning when I was pregnant with my first son: Once you have a child, you are always vulnerable.

What you love, you can lose. As a grandmother, in a role consistently described as relaxed and carefree (“you get to send the kids home!”), I didn’t anticipate feeling so unsure of myself, so afraid.

Heeding advice from my peers who became grandparents at a younger age, I have sought to be a helpful, loving presence. But transitioning from Mom to Grandma hasn’t come easily or naturally — I hadn’t held a baby in 30 years — and I’ve had to learn when to bide my time and bite my tongue.

“Do the dishes,” one young mother advised my older son as he prepared for his first visit with his nephew.

A traditional New Year’s letter would extol only the joys of being a grandma, and there are many. But it wouldn’t describe the generational tensions between how we Baby Boomers, the original helicopter parents, raised our kids and what our Millennial offspring expect today:

  • My son insisted that any relative who wanted to be responsible for Arthur’s care enroll in a grandparenting class at Amma Parenting, a women-owned center in an upscale suburb of Minneapolis where he and his partner had taken a daylong parenting class.
  • Given that my sons were circumcised right after birth, which my father recommended, I had to learn the particulars of cleaning an uncircumcised baby boy — and hide my dismay when my son described the procedure as genital mutilation.
  • I’ve abandoned the multicolored, gender-neutral baby blanket I was knitting because babies no longer sleep with blankets. Who knew? Recounting to my son how we tucked him in with a “blanky” and stuffed animals, I was startled by his abrupt response: “Arthur could suffocate.” Today’s babies wear a sleep sack and lie in a barren crib to prevent SIDS, the sudden infant death syndrome that took my husband’s second oldest brother.

What sometimes feels like zealous and unnecessary instruction — how to hold the baby, clean his bottles, push his stroller on a bumpy sidewalk — actually ensures that his parents will entrust me with Arthur’s care. In moments of insecurity, I wonder whether my son found me inadequate as a mother. Or has parenting just progressed and changed?

The only truth that matters is this: If I want a loving, respectful relationship with my grandson, I must set aside my ego and adapt. Healthy aging requires a willingness to learn from our grown children — as well as from our past mistakes.

A period of adjustment

My retirement in September and a deeper dive into volunteering are the other big news for my New Year’s greeting. As with the birth of my grandson, many hearty congratulations have come my way.

But for what? I enjoyed my career. I found purpose in work. It lifted me out of a difficult period in my 20s when I was floundering and making risky, unhealthy choices. And, combined with my husband’s astute investing, the income got both of our sons through college and allowed us to help with down payments on their homes.

Now, as a healthy (so far) retiree of comfortable means, I am supposed to build a life of leisure that runs contrary to my nature. Friends urge me to travel and read more books; and though I am doing more of each — including a first-time trip to London last April — I am noticing a cautiousness that has stifled me throughout adulthood, a tendency to default to the familiar.

Family wedding
June in Chicago

A leisurely ride on Amtrak to visit friends in Chicago and a stop in North Carolina last spring for my niece’s wedding enroute to see my older son in London were enjoyable, relationship-building experiences. But they didn’t stretch me. I didn’t challenge myself to take a solo train trip, which I promised myself I’d do after retirement. I didn’t immerse myself in a different culture or venture on a Civil Rights tour of the south, which long has intrigued me.

Even the warm-weather bike rides that I have loved for decades were on familiar pathways this past year. I never found time to haul my hybrid or road bike to trails and small towns throughout Minnesota, chatting with the locals along the way.

As for reading, it’s way past time to set aside the white women’s fiction that I enjoy and toe-dip into stories that will take me to new places, written by people whose backgrounds and perspectives differ from my own. Here again, I am learning from my younger son, who reads books only by authors from other cultures or with identities he doesn’t share as a middle-class, cisgender white male.

Reading widely means moving beyond your usual comfort zone to understand different human experiences and ideas. 

I thought retirement, given enough resources, would help me feel safe and secure. But challenge and ambition are what I always sought at work. Four months into freeing myself from paid employment, I recognize that the price of less stressful living can be sameness and stagnation — especially at an age when society warehouses seniors into dorm-like housing, walling them off from a community that could enrich elders’ lives and, in turn, benefit from their experience.

Not for me. Not yet. I am determined to live larger in 2026. How’s that for a New Year’s resolution?

Travel as a Practice for Retirement

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A version of this story appeared on June 10, 2025, in Next Avenue, a national publication for older adults published online by Twin Cities PBS.

When I left full-time work in September 2022, two months after turning 65, people naturally asked me how I liked retirement. Once I’d barked out my disdain for the R-word — chin lifted, spine stiffening — they learned not to inquire again.

In fact, the anxiety masked as rigidity was less about them than me: Retirement is a daunting prospect for us Baby Boomers who link our identity and sense of self with work.

I still don’t call myself “retired,” even though I work only a quarter-time job and a handful of contract gigs. But that’s about to change. I’ve given notice at my job, and my first grandchild is on the way, along with some shared responsibility for infant care.

Husband, David Studer, and our older son, Sam Studer, who is at London Film School

Since my husband and I had planned an overseas excursion this past April to visit our older son, who is studying at London Film School, I decided to approach the trip — only my second time in Europe — as practice for the less structured, more selfless life that is awaiting me.

Here’s what I learned.

Lesson 1: Lose Track of Time

We go-getter careerists live and breathe by our agendas. This holds true for me even 32 months after leaving full-time work. My quarter-time job, my freelance assignments, even fitness classes and coffee dates with friends: All fill my calendar at least a month or two out from where I stand today.

The decision to avoid sticking to a rigid schedule in London, aside from ticketed events and planned outings with our son, was an exercise in letting go — both a relief and a discipline all its own. As we planned the trip, I insisted on only one “anchor activity” a day, forcing a spontaneity I rarely allow myself to experience.

My favorite times were early mornings, while my husband was still asleep. With no deadlines to hit or dogs to be walked, I wrote in my journal. Sent postcards back home to friends. Read the library book I had downloaded on my iPad.

Diana and sons
Amy Winehouse

I refused to check work emails, relying on the out-of-office message that told people I was away, and tried to sit with the discomfort of being unproductive. The clock dictates my day, and it took effort to silence the pragmatic voice that drives me, even on weekends: “It’s 10 a.m., and you’ve accomplished nothing.”

So what? No one was monitoring my output or keeping score on how deeply I dug into London’s vast cultural scene. Free to let the days and evenings take their course, I felt how nourishing a less hectic life can be. No coincidence, I slept longer and more deeply in a stranger’s British flat than I ever do at home in my own bed.

Lesson 2: Get Out in the World

As luxurious as it was to hang out some mornings, I also had days when I left my night-owl husband sleeping at the Airbnb and struck out on my own. March and April are London’s least rainy months, and a stretch of sunny weather made it a joy to start the day walking the streets or seeing the view atop an iconic, red double-decker bus.

Pro-tip: Google Maps and the Transit app were my best sources of navigation, but I also felt more comfortable being out alone in the daytime once I’d been in town long enough to learn my way around.

One of my fears about full-on retirement is losing regular contact with younger colleagues and allowing my world to shrink. It’s become tempting as I age to stay home with a good book and a homecooked meal, or to settle in with my pets and watch Netflix or women’s basketball and tell myself that is enough. Or that it’s safer.

Tower Bridge
Tate Britain museum

So, following the lead of a widowed friend who goes alone to movies and concerts and routinely travels on his own, I spent the better part of one morning at the Tate Britain — one bus ride away — browsing the museum store, strolling through galleries and relaxing outside the cafeteria with my book. Yes, I was alone, but I was also among people.

Given my career in journalism and communications, I can easily strike up conversations with strangers, even in a city with thick English accents. The trip showed me how to carry my professional skills into retirement, when I no longer can wrap myself in the security blanket of a title and role, with a ready answer to the question: What do you do?

Lesson 3: Dress to Please Yourself

During my decades as a business reporter and later a marketing-and-communications director, I dressed up every day. Looked and acted the part of a career woman. I enjoyed shopping and the creativity of assembling a wardrobe — mixing and matching outfits, coordinating earrings, scarves and shoes — but toward the end of my career, especially after COVID, “dressing for success” felt like donning a costume. It wasn’t me!

In London, I had no one to dress for but myself. My comfort, the weather and how far I would likely walk that day dictated what I wore. That meant:

  • Comfortable shoes with heel support and a roomy toe box for the 17,062 steps I averaged during my nine days abroad.
  • Little to no eye makeup, even for “Carmen” at the Royal Opera House, because it could smudge in the wind and cold.
  • Refreshing my short razor haircut the day before we left, so I could fluff it with my fingers after wearing a hat for warmth or sun protection.
  • Ditching the more fashionable purse for a sturdy backpack, both to free my arms while walking and to discourage bag snatchers.
London subway
U.S. Embassy

Now that I operate from a home office, I rarely dress up anymore. “Athletic casual” is how my younger son defines my style. Retirement allows that freedom — to quit comparing myself with younger women and dress for the age and body type I am today. And for movement, the best antidote to low energy and stiff joints.

Lesson 4: Keep Learning

My gradual glidepath to retirement these past two and a half years has given me time to adjust, both financially and emotionally. Of course, I worry: Will we have enough money? Who will I be without work? Will volunteering and family life fulfill the sense of purpose that a career has given me for decades?

A trip to London is not exactly high adventure for a white American with English roots. Still, I find it fitting that a foreign country became my place to try out a different way to live. Retirement is a bold undertaking, a journey toward a different land. My passport — my practice in the coming months — will be to remember and refresh these lessons learned.

Evolving Reflections on ‘Home’

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My husband and I raised our two sons in Northfield, Minnesota — a progressive, two-college town where I always felt safe, where we rarely locked the side door off the driveway at night, where our kids rode their bikes freely around town. Back when we sold our family home in 2013, I wanted to write an ode to the place where I had lived for 20 years, the longest stretch of my lifetime.

That house was home, full of two decades’ worth of meaning and memories, family and friends, a center of activity for sleepovers and potlucks, where boisterous boys and loving dogs (rest in peace, Skip and Lucy) were a dominant, delightful presence.

The small-town house in Northfield, Minnesota, where our two sons grew up: 20 years of memories. Photo by Amy Gage

No one else in the family seemed to share my nostalgia for the white Dutch Colonial with a three-season front porch, a black roof and red trim, built in 1900 within eyesight of Old Main at St. Olaf College. It “looked appropriate” to see two little girls dash out the front door, my younger son said after he showed the house to his girlfriend during a trip back to town. That was all he would concede.

Eventually, I moved on, too, giving my heart to the smaller, 1906-era empty-nest house my husband and I have now in St. Paul, with a quaint wraparound porch that I fell for on sight. My shifting allegiances make me wonder: Is it the house itself that makes a home? Much as I love the expanded, updated kitchen in my current place and the egress window in the basement that fills my workout room with natural light, are those amenities what have bonded me to this place? Or could I comfortably, given time, call any place home?

Our city house today: walking distance to a library, four bus lines and two colleges, and a short bike ride to the Saint Paul Grand Round. Photo by David Studer

I’ve always reveled in the creative expression of home, the furniture and wall hangings and house plants that reflect my moods and tastes. These days, I am grateful not only for the safety and security I feel at home but for the privilege of being able to afford a house at all.

I root where I am planted. Whether it’s an upper duplex in northeast Minneapolis, a rental house on the edge of Indian Mounds Park in St. Paul or the first house that my husband and I purchased, and subsequently detached from when two teenagers burned a cross on the front lawn of a Black family down the street: Home is structure for me, a physical location, a place where I can put my stamp and comfortably be myself.

I had breakfast recently with a friend who had returned from a summer in Finland, her home country. She talked about the relatives she visited, described a mass transit system that allowed her and her wife to get along without a car, spoke fondly of the concerts they attended and the greater sense of ease in a society less gun crazy and politically polarized than ours.

“So, where is home,” I asked her.

“Home is where your people are,” she said.

My people, literally defined — the family I was raised in — are either dead or have moved away. My three surviving siblings are scattered around the country (the brother who died in 1988 lived just blocks from where I am now). At 67, I have few older relatives left in Minnesota. My mother, father and stepmother died in fairly quick succession, and all during autumn, in 2015, 2017 and 2018. In fact, my only extended family in a state where people are known for staying put is one sister-in-law in Minneapolis, an uncle who spends half the year in Florida, a first cousin in a far southern suburb and another first cousin about two hours north, a DFLer who keeps up the good fight in what is now solid red Trump country.

After seeing my older son off to London for graduate school in August, I feel lucky to have my younger son and his partner just a 10-minute bike ride away.

I describe my closest friends as “intentional family” — the folks who are no blood relation but with whom I share a history, the ones who hung with me through the messes and mistakes of young adulthood. After a 40-year career, I rarely go anywhere in St. Paul or Minneapolis without running into some colleague or connection. I worked with my next-door neighbor at St. Catherine University, shared a cubicle with the neighbor behind me for seven years in a newsroom and knew the woman who lives kitty-corner from my house at Minnesota Public Radio, when I was an editor on its magazine.

So, yes, as my friend says, people constitute “home.” My friendly neighborhood — with its walkability to mass transit, college campuses, and both fun and functional shopping — also enhances my sense of community. I thrive on the convenience of urban living, especially at an age when I feel less inclined to drive and more inclined to do good for the planet.

My parents divorced when I was 14. My childhood home was sold and my foundation ripped away at too tender an age for an awkward, uncertain girl. Perhaps that accounts for my love of home now, my reluctance to travel much with my long-retired husband. As my own career winds down, I have a growing desire just to stay home. To cook and tackle projects. To read and chat with neighbors.

To redefine my purpose and until then, to be still.

When my husband presses me about why I won’t travel more, I hardly know how to begin explaining. Our six-year age difference and our differing parental roles, which made sense when the kids were young, have now become a chasm in our respective wants and needs. As a largely on-site parent, he worked at home; even when he earned a part-time paycheck, he was the one in town while I commuted to my family-wage job.

He loved being Mr. Mom, “but there were no breaks or paid vacations.” And even though I did enjoy raises and paid time off and validations for a job well done, I also spent years leaving home five days a week, including on mornings when I longed to stay back with the little boy in the footie pajamas who held his arms out as I headed to the car.

Credit: iStock
Credit: Freepik

Being at home now is sustaining; it slows me down, allowing a reset from 40 years of pushing into the wind. There is much of the world I haven’t seen, large swaths of this country I’ve yet to cover. I dream about taking a train somewhere all by myself.

But for today, the simple pleasures of tucking in with a dog and a good book, learning how to cook tofu or repotting plants in my backyard while listening to a podcast are as much adventure as I want or need. Give it time, I tell my husband. This, too, shall pass.