WHAT I LEARNED......

Here I sit typing a few days before I turn 70 years old. Seventy.....how the hell did that happen? Inside there are still parts of a 20 year old, 30 year old, 50 year old, even 60 year old wondering where in God's name did the time go? Sometimes I feel every bit of my 70 years on this earth but other times, I think, oh, I'm only 40, right?

It has me feeling introspective & reflective on this life that I've lived as I get ready to start my eighth decade on this planet. Once again I have to repeat that - eighth decade! What the fuck? There is no other way I can convey my opinion on that fact. As an aside it should be noted that neither my father or mother ever swore around the house when we were kids, barely a hell or damn. BUT both my sister & I can rival most longshoreman when it comes to "speaking French". When some old man says "pardon my French", I always reply, "No problem, I speak French fluently." It has always come naturally to me & sure gets a hell of a lot of frustration out.

I taught my son from the time he was a child that it's okay to swear as long as it is warranted & you don't do it around people who are offended. He & I have quite colorful conversations when things just need to be expressed. So, my conclusion is that swearing as an adult has nothing to do with your upbringing. My parents never swore around me & I swear. We always swore around Darrin & he swears. But  I digress.....back to my thoughts on turning 70 & all those years past.

What I learned......

In my 20s:  I don't think most of us learn a lot in our 20s. We are too busy trying to figure out who we are especially if you get married at 19 before you have a chance to grow up. But the BEST thing that ever happened to me was in my 20s. At age 26 I gave birth to my only child, Darrin Allen Silver. It was the single biggest event in my life. I learned that I was not the most important person in my universe.

In my 30s:  I discovered that being a full time mom was the great passion of my life. I loved every minute of being a mom & threw myself into that endeavor one hundred percent. Unfortunately, having my mother for a role model taught me only what NOT to do when raising my son. However, I trusted myself & carved out my own nonconventional way of doing things. But that's a whole other blog post. I am extremely proud of the person I raised & pretty damn proud of myself for doing it all my way, just like Frankie sang.

In my 40s:  I came to the realization that although I loved devoting my life to Darrin & my husband & wouldn't change a single thing, I had no idea who Kathy was as a woman. What did I like? What things did I want to do? Everything had revolved around my son & my husband. I liked what they liked. I did what they did. Who was I? In that decade between ages 30 & 40 I lost all four of my grandparents & my mother which had a profound effect on me. My son was fast approaching adulthood & it was time to figure out who the fuck Kathy was.

In my 50s:  In my early 50s I did just that. I was now divorced from a good husband who just wasn't the right one for me. I discovered that I enjoyed my own company. I also discovered a new love with a man who shared my desire to travel & photograph the world. We had the means to explore the world & have done just that for the past 18 years. Neither of us has any desire to get married. Being a product of the 1960s, it may be a bit of the rebel in me who relishes "living in sin". But mostly it just seems that we like being together because we choose to be, not because we are bound by a contract. I realized that my soul connections - soul mate, soul relatives, soul friends - are what give my life meaning, my life blood.

In my 60s:  The most amazing thing happened to me! I became a grandmother (AKA Gaga) to Charley Ellen Silver. From the moment I gazed into those piercing blue eyes as she grabbed onto my finger when she was only a couple hours old, I fell into the purest love I've ever known. There is indeed something magical about being a grandma. My Charley made my life complete.

Lou & I are continuing our travel or trying to anyway. We should be recovering from jet lag after our trip to Italy but thanks to the coronavirus we aren't. Our trip was cancelled by the tour company but there will be more. I still cherish being a mom to an almost 44 year old son & treasure every minute with my 8 year old granddaughter. The man I fell in love with almost 19 years ago will become a full-fledged senior citizen, too, turning 65 a few weeks after I turn 70 & we are still happily unmarried seeking the next adventure. Life is good!

CORONAVIRUS STRIKES!

No, we don't have it & no one we know has it. But our trip to Italy has become a victim of the coronavirus pandemic or epidemic or any other kind of "demic". Right now, we should have been ending our first day in Rome after an evening orientation tour, but instead I am sitting home typing this post.

After several days of our pre-travel routine, our bags were packed & downstairs by the door ready to load into the car for the 2-1/2 hour drive to San Francisco airport at 6:45 AM. With all the hoopla surrounding the coronavirus outbreak in China & the subsequent cases in northern Italy, we were following it closely. After much research, calls to Trafalgar & emails with our tour director in Italy on the tour previous to ours, we made the decision that we were going on our 13 day adventure throughout Italy! Virus be damned!

Neither of us were (or are) scared of the virus. All reports are that it is no worse than a mild cold in the majority of cases. Those who have died are almost all people with major health issues or compromised immune systems. Both Lou & I agree with Dr. Oz's statement, "You can't sacrifice life because of fear." We use caution but we won't let terrorists or health scares deter us from seeing the world. Another one of my favorite sayings is "The purpose of life is not to make it safely to the grave."

If you are a fact person there are almost 8 billion people in the world. To date there have been 88,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide (mostly in China) with 3000 deaths (mostly in China). In any given year the flu kills between 300,000 & 600,000 people worldwide! The day before our trip, in Italy there were about 1200 cases of the virus, most in northern Italy, with 26 deaths. There are 60 million people in Italy. None of that was scary enough to consider cancelling our trip. I'm sure we had a better chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the airport.

Everything was in place to leave for SFO at 7 AM on Saturday, February 29. The evening of Thursday, February 28, we learned that the U.S. state department & the CDC had changed the travel alert to all of Italy to Level 3 - No nonessential travel. This had us concerned, not because of the danger, but because of closures or cancellation of attractions & drastic changes to itineraries. And we didn't want to get stuck in quarantine somewhere. BUT, we ultimately said, "What the hell, we are still going!"

Our bags were downstairs ready to be loaded in the car when we decided to check Trafalgar's website one more time. Shit! Now the website said "all trips to Italy have been cancelled through March 31". We immediately called Trafalgar & sure enough, it was true. Our trip wasn't happening. After about 20 minutes on the phone our trip was cancelled & we were getting a full refund. There was a little relief & a lot of disappointment. I'm dealing with an airfare refund or travel insurance reimbursement for the remaining expenses tomorrow.

Yesterday was a strange day. We unpacked, stopped the mail hold, started the newspaper & basically did everything we do upon returning from every trip BUT we hadn't gone anywhere. All the preparation was for nothing. The only thing we didn't have to do was laundry.

I totally believe that the world is overreacting to this coronavirus. For crying out loud, they closed The Louvre today & I don't know if they have even had a reported case in Paris. Italy's tourism industry will suffer tremendously. This is going to spread. It is a fact of life in this age of world travel. There is so much panic surrounding it all - today there was an impassioned plea by the surgeon general to "STOP BUYING MASKS!". They don't help you from catching the virus but there are none for the health care workers who really do need them to treat patients.

Yes, our Italy trip was a casualty of all this panic. The stock market is crashing (tell me, how does selling your stock fix this???). Maybe we just need to close the entire world. I know, we can't do that & I can pretty much guarantee you that wouldn't work either. I wish I felt better about how our country & the world is handling this but I don't. It is only going to get worse I'm sure.

There is one thing that just might prevail in this coronavirus scare & every other predicament that our world faces - COMMON SENSE. If we all just exercised common sense, we wouldn't be where we are right now.