WHEN THE AMERICAN DREAM CHANGES? KEEP UP

If you wonder how you’ll keep up when the American Dream changes, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Different people, different dogs, different places? Still keeping up?

Start in the easiest place: know your place.

Does that sound too rigorous? Too condescending?

Here, I’ll help you adjust:

In America, you have a chance to be whoever you want to be, limited only by your imagination.

That, my friends, is the American Dream: Be who you want to be.

Don’t forget the cute cottage with a picket fence in a nice neighborhood where your car isn’t keyed, packages aren’t stolen off the porch, and no ‘meth-friendly’ house next door.

‘Meth-friendly’ is a gentle term for drug house where customers lay collapsed in the front yard after a good time.

That’s their American Dream, get wasted and fall over?

People in recovery know the answer better than me, better than you if you’re not in treatment, and have never been.

The empathetic view is sadness and sorrow for anyone so far gone that dropping in the dealer’s yard is normal behavior.

That’s not anyone’s plan for the future. No one wants to be comatose high in the yard.

The neighbor’s view asks you to keep up with your business, or take it elsewhere.

 

In the days of being part of a young family and loading up the car with bags and kids for a two day drive to Grandma’s house for Christmas, we’d leave town on a cold day and go to summer.

Grandma lived in SoCal, a town called Culver City, on Hill Road.

We’d drive through the Oregon cold and snow.

Spring started near the California state line, with summer in full bloom, temps in the mid-70s, in Culver City.

In a car it’s a gradual change; flying down and back was jarring.

Knowing my place, I pretended it was all normal.

Yes, children, it is sunny here and still frozen at home.

How can that be?

Ask your mother.

 

Dreams Of A Warm Water Beach

I grew up on the Oregon coast. My beach was Sunset Bay.

I remember it being cold, breath taking cold, blue skin cold.

That’s the ocean I knew and it was fine.

As I got older and found other beaches, they were cold, too.

Bastendorf Beach? Cold.

Horsfall Beach? Cold.

 

Nearby Attractions:

Head to Coos Bay, a picturesque inlet where the Coos River flows into the Pacific Ocean. The waterway is about 3 miles wide and 10 miles long, creating a flourishing habitat for sea birds.

 

After one trip to Hawaii it all changed. There is such a thing as a warm water beach. Who knew?

I’d heard about such a thing, then I was in it.

Like a dream, I rolled in the waves, felt the power, only to wake up to yelling from surfers to get out of their way.

I was somehow blocking the way in the biggest ocean in the world?

Once I paddled my wake board past them I resumed my warm water day dream.

Back on the beach my daughter in-law stood at the water’s edge talking to a surfer who then paddled out to ask if I needed help.

Help? No thanks, I’m fine.

I was fine until I started kicking back to shore and didn’t move.

I added some arm stroke to the mix and still didn’t move. The shoreline told me I was going the wrong direction and picking up the pace.

Did this call for an all-out effort to defeat whatever current wanted to take me out?

Just in case the answer was going all-out, I went all-out. I kept going all-out.

The plan was ditching the paddle board and swimming in if I got too tired, which was a good option instead of sea rescue.

If the life guard wasn’t concerned, neither was I.

Twenty minutes later I pulled up on shore and learned all about people going out beyond the surfers and never coming back.

How close was I to that happing? Closer than it’s ever been on cold water beaches.

If your big American Dream includes warm water beaches, don’t let it lull you to sleep. (Thank you, Mandy)

 

Closer To Home American Dream

Central Oregon and the Cascade Mountains are an earth time machine frozen in place.

One set of my grandparents lived there and I’ve been going over and back all my life.

The mountains haven’t changed, the lava fields haven’t changed, but I have.

I went looking for a mild adventure one afternoon during a family stay in Sun River.

The trail around the Lava Cast Forest promised a mild adventure, but not if you wear Romeo skis like me.

No grip, side slip, with no landing room that wasn’t sharp lava.

I started out worried about my wife slipping, then realized I was worrying about the wrong one.

She has hiking poles, I had my athletic ability and superb coordination. In other words, I was in trouble.

What I’d planned as a relaxing walk through a park-like setting turned into a dance with death going up and down the icy but gentle elevations.

I measured every step and calculated every move, which took more time than expected, while my wife walked point, pulling away.

Not keeping up with her was better than a back country rescue after a dive on the rocks?

Yes, it was.

 

Aging Baby Boomer American Dream

Baby boomers are not alone in their American Dream, but maybe they’re better at it than past generations.

Does anyone need a warm water beach to be happy? It can’t hurt, but what if you’re still not happy once you get there?

Then what?

If you live in a place with four distinct seasons and travel to summer during winter, it is a disconcerting trip when you come back.

You’re moving from one seasonal mood to another and skipping the steps in between; from sad, to happy, and back to sad.

Instead of driving for two days, or flying for six hours over water, check out alternative activities close to home.

Find a sandy beach two hours away, or the banks of the nearest river, if you need to be with nature and water.

Portland baby boomers have Columbia River beaches, and a local volcano, to keep them happy.

If social media is your lens on the world you might miss the little stuff, like holding a little kid’s hand on the beach while small waves wash over their feet and make them dance.

You’ll miss the brave wife who wants you to know she can handle her own drama in the field.

“Don’t worry about me,” while you struggle to stay upright.

One baby boomer blogger says the joy of life is seeing yourself and how you fit in, how you keep up, and what you need to do to stay in your place.

 

PS:

Your place is with your family, if you need a reminder.

 

PSS:

But, Boomerpdx, what about the trend of millennials being estranged from their parents?

 

Baby boomers were raised by parents of the “greatest generation,” the generation that lived through the great depression and fought in World War II.

That generation, as a whole, tended to parent in fairly traditional, authoritarian ways, telling their offspring that “Children were meant to be seen and not heard.”

Corporal punishment was still an acceptable way of disciplining children, and children were often afraid of their parents, particularly of their fathers.

Mothers frequently threatened their children to “wait until your father gets home.”

 

Dear Kids,

Daddy isn’t coming home because he’s been there all along. There is no waiting, so behave.