I come from small town folks, on both sides for as far back as I can identify. My grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers were farmers, teachers, grain merchants, bankers, and small-scale bureaucrats. Their wives raised kids and looked after their homes; some worked on the family farms or were teachers. Near as I can tell, the biggest town any of them lived in was Hutchinson, Kansas, which at the time my father was a boy had a population of about 23,000.

I, on the other hand, am a big-city woman. My father was a naval officer and we lived in a number of places, but most of my youth was spent in Washington, D.C. As an adult, I have lived in Philadelphia, San Diego, Los Angeles, Denver, and Albuquerque, plus some smaller cities along the way.

I feel at home in cities. I like having access to more than one doctor, jeweler, florist, bank, McDonalds, Walmart, Starbucks. And yet … I liked to sit on my mother’s porch in El Reno, OK (pop. 14,000) and wave at the neighbors as they drove by. I liked that my mother’s mailman came to her funeral. I liked that my grandmother’s house was mid-way between the Presbyterian Church and the Dairy Queen, along a stretch of state highway in Arkansas that didn’t have much else on it. I liked hearing that my great-grandmother is commemorated with a statue to the Pioneer Mother in Ardmore, OK. I liked eating fish & chips last Friday in a mom&pop restaurant in Truth or Consequences, NM, and listening to the regulars chat with each other and tease the waitresses.

The allure of the small town is that, like the fictional bar “Cheers,” everybody knows your name. The downside is that, as my small-town friend Carol Porta used to say, everybody knows what you ate for breakfast — and with whom.

I plan to keep living in cities. I’m going to build in some small-town ambience, though, by waving at my neighbors and being loyal to one McDonalds and one dry cleaners, and learning my mailman’s name.

1. How old are you?
2. Do you spend more time thinking about the past or the future?
3. Is there a direct or inverse correlation between Questions 1 and 2?

I guess I was about 41 or 42 when I was reintroduced to Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development and realized that I had moved into the stage he called generativity, or the care of others and the betterment of society. This stage runs from roughly ages 35 to 55 or 65. Get it wrong at this stage, he said, and we can become self-absorbed and stagnate.

I’m at the brink now of moving into the final stage. My choices, Erikson felt, for this upcoming period in my life are to be fulfilled, content, and comfortably detached from the hurly-burly of “getting there,” or to be despairing of missed opportunities, fearful of death, and dogmatic in the view that my path and my opinions were the only right ones.

While I’m not overjoyed at the prospect of the likely physical and intellectual challenges that I may face in the future, I’m feeling pretty good about my progress through the stages so far, and (mostly) eager about the possibilities as I wrap it up.

I’ve been making my living with words for many years. I’ve also written as a volunteer for various non-profit groups, and for my own pleasure and that of my friends. I’m approaching retirement now (108 weeks, and I count them down every Monday!) and thinking about what I’m going to do when I have slept in and read as many mysteries as I can stand. Writing seems like an obvious choice and I’m sure I’ll work on my version of the (choose one) gritty novel/YA coming-of-age/police procedural/tender love story that all professional non-fiction writers plan to do “someday.” But … just in case that doesn’t work out, I’m taking classes in private investigation and brushing up on my flower arranging skills!

In 1992 I argued with a good friend – a Republican – that the worst outcome of re-electing George Bush (the only one we knew about at the time) would be the effect on the Supreme Court. More conservative judges, more decisions that negatively impacted our lives as women, as lesbians, as private (as opposed to corporate) citizens. I was overly aggressive in my argument; accusing Republicans of having selfish, monetary motives when opposing social welfare and cultural programs, such as Head Start, Medicaid, the National Endowment of the Arts, etc. I finally noticed that my friend was backing up, waving her hands in front of me, saying, “Whoa, whoa!” We will still say we are friends, but I don’t think we’ve had a meaningful conversation in twenty years.
I believe that the strongest lasting impact of a presidency is the construction of the national judiciary – both the Supreme Court and other Federal courts. SCOTUS in 2012 can give a win to Citizens United over real citizens by refusing to reconsider that ruling, but then uphold the Affordable Care Act, making me think that additional reasonable decisions could come out of the 2013 session.
My conversations with friends in this election year are going to be more moderate in delivery than those I had in 1992, but my argument is going to be the same: a President is going to be around for 4 or 8 years, but the Justices and Judges can serve for decades.