Think back in the day.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by CarolinaWoman

I lost my parents when I was in my 30's and they never got to know my children and that is why when anyone on the board questions having children late in life I am against it. Only because I didn't have my parents long enough and I realize how difficult it was for my parents trying to keep up with a child at their age. I would give anything to to be able to spend time with my mom and dad again. But I do take my little stool and sit at their graves and tell them what's happening in my life and with their grandchildren.

I can identify with that. My youngest child was born just a year before my mother's death at age 68 (pancreatic cancer) and my father's about a year later. They only saw her once, on her first birthday, as we lived 500 miles away. We went to them. Their maternal grandfather died before my last two children were born but thankfully, all the children got to know and appreciate their maternal grandmother.

Losing both my parents before I turned 45 was nothing less than that, a loss. While putting off having children until later in life, as have both of my sons, does have its merits, there is also a trade-off.

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by old_cold

Its strange, but I wasn't even familiar with that phrase until we started watching Pawn Stars.
Now it seems common (and over-used)on all the spin-off/similar shows.

For some reason I think of Robert DeNiro when I hear it but I can't quite think of the movie when he said it. Cop Land, maybe?

[catsy girl]

for carolina woman-

i too lost my parents when i was in my thirties, as they were in their 40s and 50s when i was born. there are plusses and minuses to having older parents, but i feel i gained a great deal from their maturity and from their seasoned view of the world. i never chose to have children, for many reasons i've reiterated on this forum previously, although, frankly, neither of my parents ever voiced any real interest or concern about grandchildren.

i have often felt in the past, and sometimes now as well, that i would have liked to have had my parents and also aunts with whom i lived, for more years than i did. however, as i've aged, i've thought about that in a different way. i would have been a different person if i'd had parents, family for all these 35+ years, and although i adored my family, they raised me in a very sheltered enviornment. i don't think, had they lived, i would have developed the independence and resilence, perhaps, that i feel i have now, because with their insulation, i may not have felt i needed it. not having them as support in my life has forced me to become more independent and probably a stronger person.

of course i regret losing them when i did, but i don't feel we are ever truly aware of the forces in our lives- positives and negatives- that shape us, and it is difficult to speculate how our lives would have been if events and circumstances had been different.
just another point of view-

catsy girl

[Yeledaf]

Originally Posted by newenglandgirl

Last night I was watching that old PBS fundraising warhorse, Hits from the 60s, with live performers some of whom were the originals. To hear them singing our hits from high school, but now looking older than I do, never fails to blow me away. What happened? How could those hit songs literally be like yesterday and yet here we are, at this age, watching those once-slim young kids now overweight and looking like they're ready for a home in a few years, up on stage in front of live audiences performing ?? And worse, watching the old geezers (men and women) hopping around in the audience like teenagers, lol. Life sure is unreal.

It is that. But consider the alternative.