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Life in 2011

Life is not a constant. The influences through events and people with whom one is related or connected can change things, sometimes in small, other times, in big ways.

Social mores, religious affiliations and moral bearings have obviously changed too - yet another impact on our lives. It's a topic not often the subject of either analysis or discussion, in the media at least.

Two aspects of life 2011 style are thrown up in these two pieces, one from Salon ("Regrets of a stay-at-home mom") and the other from the Sydney Morning Herald ("Taking the grand out of grandma").

"We had wonderful times together, my sons and I. The parks. The beaches. The swing set moments when I would realize, watching the boys swoop back and forth, that someday these afternoons would seem to have rushed past in nanoseconds, and I would pause, mid-push, to savor the experience while it lasted.

Now I lie awake at 3 a.m., terrified that as a result I am permanently financially screwed.

As of my divorce last year, I'm the single mother of two almost-men whose taste for playgrounds has been replaced by one for high-end consumer products and who will be, in a few more nanoseconds, ready for college. My income -- freelance writing, child support, a couple of menial part-time jobs -- doesn't cover my current expenses, let alone my retirement or the kids' tuition. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of two teenagers must be in want of a steady paycheck and employer-sponsored health insurance.

My attempt to find work could hardly be more ill-timed, with unemployment near 10 percent, with the newspaper industry that once employed me seemingly going the way of blacksmithing. And though I have tried to scrub age-revealing details from my résumé, let's just say my work history is long enough to be a liability, making me simultaneously overqualified and underqualified.

But my biggest handicap may be my history of spending daylight hours in the company of my own kids."

And:

"Adored or barely tolerated, grandparents were once just a fact of life. You saw them regularly or not, depending on where they lived and how well your parents got on with them, and if you were lucky they were warm repositories of wisdom and unconditional love, and if you were unlucky they were grumpy, distant and boring."

****

"Divorce has created an army of broken-hearted grandparents, estranged from grandchildren for reasons that are not always clear to them. Many grandparents suffer terribly as a result of being sent into exile, often by a daughter-in-law."


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