We have always done a lot of traveling – our families are nowhere near us, and travel has always been a priority over other things/activities. Works for us. We started the bucket list traveling when I was diagnosed and have continued despite it all. It’s getting harder for me – orthopedically much more so than my two more serious diagnoses, but I am determined to keep doing it. Our vacations have always been of the fast-paced sort, trying to do and see as much as possible while we’re there (and there are multiple “theres” on every trip). In the past couple years we’ve started to slow that down a bit, and build in some down time.
My mom was no-go by her mid 50s and bedridden at 64, and I can count on one hand the number of times I ever saw my MIL outside of their apartment in twenty years. Any grandchildren that come along will live thousands of miles from us. That’s serious motivation to stay healthy enough to travel.
Very similar as you. Childless in our 20’s, not much vacation time or fun money. Traveled when we could. 30’s and 40’s raising kids, traveling was beach vacations, Disney vacations, driving to see my parents, once every few years we got away on our own. I feel like we were just more kid oriented go-go.
When youngest son graduated in 2015, we were in our mid 50’s and we’ve been in the Go-Go stage ever since. Some years just packed with travel (that includes long weekends), a few years just a couple places. But it’s nice having the time and money and health to do it. I keep reminding DH, we need to keep at it while we each have our health.
He has a tendency to keep thinking he’s 40 and can push things off.
The obvious things, joint pains (knees, elbows, other joints), and of course gray hair (I used to color my hair, but decided it was okay to be gray). My memory is not what it once was (it depends on what it is about though, still have a huge storehouse of trivia, but then try to remember the name of something common,…good news is I usually do remember it). I always was bad with names, so that doesn’t bother me as much as it could.
I have noticed I have slowed down, when we first moved to the house we live in I did massive projects, like building the garden beds we have the line the fenceline, planting things and removing them, taking down trees. Now, when I do something in the beds, I find I have to stop and rest, no more all day activities straight through (when I originally dug out the beds from the grass that was there, it was like 90+ degrees, and we have what a neighbor calls rock and root soil.). On the other hand I find it a lot easier to relax and read a book or something and not feel like I have to be doing something. And when I do a project, I don’t feel the necessity of getting it done quickly.
I think the biggest change is something my dad told me would happen and I laughed at the time, how time seems to be accelerating and how time in the past compresses, ie like “that happened 5 years go”…“No, dear, that was 10 years ago, S was in college”. Relative time becomes hard to recall, other than specific things, like for example when we adopted our critters. I just realized our S will be 30 next year, when we were 30 we already had been married 5 years.
Similiar to @FallGirl and @conmama we went back to grad school in our mid-late 20s and spent our savings, then saved for a house so did not do much traveling outside of the US. Then kids made it harder. DH’s family was on the opposite coast, so many of our trips were to see his family. It was great, but meant I did not get to Europe until I was in my 60s.
Now my DH has signficant mobility and pain issues. We took a great trip recently, but I have also done and am planning another trip with girlfriends, including some who also have husbands that don’t/can’t travel.
As for the making friends in our later years, it takes work and is not always easy. I feel very lucky to have some great friends - both from my childhood/young adulthood and others I have met more recently. Some are “friends” but we really don’t see each other outside of a shared activity, but others have become very close. I find it so much less intimidating to text than phone. I think if I had to actually use the phone to contact friends, I would absolutely have fewer friends.
On the other had, I have taken a few pickleball classes through my local rec department and have not been able to break into a regular group. One class never did get a group together. the other did, but a phone compatibility issue left me out of the group. At the gym, I tend to be a lone wolf. I have not been invited to play Bunco or Mahjong like some of my friends.
I have lost contact with most of the soccer/theater/band parent friends over the years but have kept in touch with a few.
I guess I am something of an extrovert, even though I need down/quiet time. I like to be busy, which is one of the reasons I am still working.
I am often the planner/initiator but not always. It doesn’t always have to be dinner at our house, and often that is not what we end up doing. Going out for dinner works. I also like to invite folks to do things - go to a museum in the City, see a performance, go to the beach or even just for a walk. We reciprocate with dinners, but certainly have friends who have had us over more often than we have had them - some times due to food preferences and sometimes they just find the process easier than we do.
@greenbutton I wouldn’t give up, if you enjoy some of these couples. See if they want to meet for dinner. I would fully expect to split the bill in that situation. Try just the woman for lunch or a walk. It may be that these couples are not good at/don’t like to entertain or it could be that they are not that interested in being friends or that they have lots of friends and enjoy seeing you, but don’t feel the need to initiate.
Don’t underestimate this these days. My sister has an older less expensive phone and it definitely keeps her out of the loop. It’s a decent phone but not “user friendly” and she hasn’t taken the time to figure out email, texting etc. If she went into a group she’d miss everything by not learning to easily get in a group text. It drives me batty. Worse everything is done with verification “we’ll send a text to your phone” these days.
I just bought her a new computer for this Christmas (had to be done) and will probably get her an iphone too (and on my plan) to bring her into this century. Not just for her but for me!
We got mom an iPhone because she would call about her android and we could not help her. Now I can at least answer questions. It was also easier for her to get help among her friends.
I hate that it’s an issue, but I have found that a simple understanding of technology helps to keep in touch with children and family.
My mil refuses to do anything that has to do with technology. Yesterday she called and my fil is getting where he’s forgetting how to do things. She missed that a friend emailed them that her husband was dying. Thankfully another friend told her that there was an email.
Funny phone issue - when my mom was in her early 90’s she often mixed up the TV remote with her cell phone (back in the Nokia days) and vice versa, always complaining about remote not working pointing the cell phone at the TV trying to change the channel! Had to laugh, it was funny.
The silver lining of elderly family members who refuse to learn (or use, or own) the latest technology- they are less likely to be victimized by a financial scam, many of which are digitally based right now.
Someone who doesn’t know how to transfer money using their phone-- that eliminates about half the scams out there. Someone who doesn’t remember their paypal or Venmo login- that’s another 10% of the scams. Someone who doesn’t know how to autosign a PDF…
You get the point. Some of the saddest cases of elder fraud right now aren’t the “old fashioned” home care assistant stealing the checkbook or pilfering mom’s engagement ring. They are older people thinking they’re donating to a charity (not), helping a cancer victim on a Go Fund me site (sadly, no) or other.
My MiL makes a new email account whenever she can’t find her old one. She had four different Facebook accounts before we scrubbed three. They now have a close caption phone but she won’t use it, so she just doesn’t call anyone, it’s exasperating.
I found this comment quite amusing as my Roku remote died and my local Walmart didn’t stock a replacement, now I’ve been without the remote for 6 months and use the app on my phone as a remote. Maybe she was just forward thinking.
The text thread issue was that the person that started it has an iphone and used imessage. I have an android and when they tried to add my number it didn’t work. I didn’t find out about it until it was too late and they seemed to have their groups set. It seems to send to my email on my ipad, but not to my phone.
I heard there was some kind of change coming to iphones so wonder if that issue will be resolved.
My DH’s aunt had so much tech trouble. She was constantly stating that her computer was broken. The unfortunate reality was that she didn’t remember how to do things like send an email.
My mother was surprisingly good with technology and then during the Pandemic at age 96 or 97, she started to forget how to use her email and her phone. So we couldn’t facetime her and she stopped looking at her emails. I ended up looking at her emails to find out if she needed to do/know anything.
My dad has a flip phone. Refuses to use anything else. We’ve tried. Doesn’t have cable or any subscription services, either. He does use a laptop, but he always calls us when one of the grandkids posts pictures of their kids’ sports events or latest activity. I don’t think he realizes we all see it on FB and that it’s not just him who got the post.
Haha, my mom frequently talks about the photos people “send” her on FB. She questions why some of these people are sending them to her (political memes and sports teams she dislikes). I have tried multiple times to explain that they are not sent to her specifically, but she cannot wrap her mind around the concept.
My fil would get mad if I posted a pic of him and then the next time he got on FB, it was gone because, “Why did you remove that?” He didn’t understand the concept of the news feed moving at all. By golly, that photo of him should be at the top of the feed every time he got on FB!
He didn’t have account - but crept on my mil’s all the time
It can be confusing, especially for people signed up to have FB updates sent to email.
My mother was pretty good on FB, email, Etsy (buyer and seller) etc. But not so much in the last months. Dang, that intermittent display failure on her laptop made it difficult even for me helping her.
Not to get off topic but I am always sort of shocked on CC that it’s an expectation that those in their 80’s or 90’s do/can use technology. My mom died at 88 3 years ago and was very active and mentally well but using anything beyond her flip phone was not going to happen (though we tried!) She did not have a computer, did not have an ipad, no Kindle, nothing. It was not a thing that was going to happen for her and we did not make it an expectation.