By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
January 18, 1958
WHEN you get on the far side of middle age you don't win friends as fast as you once did and you lose them a lot faster. They have a way of dying or moving to Tucson or Los Angeles or Peoria "to be near the kids."
Death, of course, is inevitable but moving to strange country is not. And while the desire to be near your own is natural, to yield to this pull can be folly.
For the first time in our married lives we failed to have the whole family around during the just-departed holidays. My wife and I missed the absent ones sorely and chafed at the enforced separation.
BUT THERE are compensations. Right now we are steamed up over the impending visit of our son and his family. They are due in from South Dakota tomorrow and the anticipation of again being grandparents, in fact as well as name, runs high. But the prospect would not be so enriching if they lived a mile away and had been over for dinner last Sunday.
My theory is that once the kids are off your hands you're lucky if they stay off your hands--and so are they. And while you can't quit being John's father just because he is a father, too, you can and should quit thrusting yourself into his life and perhaps messing it up.
A FRIEND of mine retired a couple of months ago and in a rosy glow he told me that he and his wife were selling their home and moving out west because their two children lived out there now.
I hope the rosy glow continues, that retirement will be up to their dreams, bulwarked by close association with their own and the continuation of the old family relationship.
But my doubts are strong. The old family relationship has a way of entering a new phase once son and daughter are married and established in their own homes. Any attempt to superimpose the old setup on the new is futile. Sad though it is, a son-in-law or daughter-in-law can weary of having you around, doting and kindly though you be, and so can son John or daughter Sue.
YOU PAY a heavy price when you retire to a strange place, I suspect, even though the climate is mild and the kids and the seashore close. You cannot take the old neighborhood and the old friends along. And it's a bit late to make new friends. The close ones only come with years of living in one place, and with ties of school, church, children and common interests.
Living close to grown children is insufficient recompense. The Browns and the Bakers don't live next door. The community grocery, hardware store and filling station, where badinage comes with the potatoes, nails and gas, aren't around. The Meades don't drop in. They are a thousand miles away.
IF YOU don't think familiar surroundings and faces mean much, go away for a spell and experience the joy of return. You should get away occasionally, medical friends tell me. You grow old fast if retirement restricts you to the same old scenes and people and activities and attitudes day after day.
But I cling to the conviction that the old home should be there to return to as long as you are able to make it on your own, that while you're still on your feet it's too dear to abandon for any reason whatever, including children.
MY WIFE and I rate our situation better than most. Our daughter lives 300 miles to the east and our son 400 miles to the west. Both are within a day's drive--far enough to make friction unlikely and close enough to nourish devotion.
And when, in some 14 years , our youngest strikes out for himself, while my heart says it would be nice if he lived around the corner, my head says he'd have greater peace of mind if he didn't. So no doubt, would we.
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