At what age happiness?

Every day I like to scan the stories on both Yahoo! and MSN.com. There's always some interesting reading there. But what caught my eye today was the story headlined "Study: 33 is the best age." There was a picture of actress Kate Hudson (known to many of us as Goldie Hawn's daughter). The brief article read, "Shake off your 20s—the best is yet to come. According to a new study by British social networking site Friends Reunited, 70 percent of survey-takers over the age of 40 said they were not truly happy until they'd reached 33. Actress Kate Hudson, who turns 33 this month, is in luck!" I had to think back to 33. For me, that was 1988. I was in my first year of operating the Alexandria Herald and Emery Enterprise. Melissa was 7, Kristina was 4, and Andrea was 2. Jessica and Brandon hadn't joined the family yet. Happy? Yes, I was happy -- happy to have a business, doing what I loved to do, with a beautiful family. I'd reached my goal. I'd bought my hometown newspaper and I was running it the way I wanted to run it. And I was doing it all -- writing news, feature and sports stories, editing submitted copy, typesetting, taking photos at sports and news events, selling advertising, proofreading, laying out the newspapers, writing headlines, even taking the newspapers to Madison to be printed. Heck, I was even writing out subscription cards to send to readers. My parallel military career was going smoothly. By then I was a captain in the Minnesota Army National Guard. But my favorite title, and the one I loved answering to, was "Daddy!" When I read that 33 was the "magic number," I thought "According to this my children haven't reached the age of true happiness yet." I hope each and every one of them finds true happiness though in family, friends and their communities. And, as every parent would, I will do anything and everything in my power to help them find happiness, independence and peace in their lives. But, thinking back on that article, I recalled that I always thought 28 was the perfect age. If I could freeze life at any age, it would be 28. Old enough to vote and be treated like an adult, no longer too young to be discounted as too young to know better, nor too old to be "over the hill" and untrustworthy. There is a lot of life ahead of you at 28. There is much cause for optimism. I would have trouble pinning down a certain age as the 'age of happiness.' The "hard times," however, are a little easier to pin down. Those I remember well. Hard times build character. Lessons are learned. But that makes them no less painful or difficult. They are just a part of life. Every decade has brought new challenges and new opportunities. The 20s were exciting, filled with freedom and the start of an adult life. The thirties were about building a family and a career. The forties I remember as a decade of pain, confusion and hurt. But the fifties have brought optimism, happiness and contentment. Oh, they've brought their share of challenges. Those never end. But they've also brought more realization that I'm no longer in the younger crowd. People my age are wrapping up careers, growing into their roles as grandparents; some of my best friends have died. Parents have passed away and Rog too. Life is viewed now through a mix of past experiences and a respect for those who have lived longer and experienced more than me. Where there once was brash opportunism, there is now wisdom. Not that we know it all, because we are keenly aware that we don't. Not by a long, long shot. I'm reminded of a sign that hung over Millie's desk at the Herald office. It read, "Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at." There is a lot of truth in that statement. I don't mean to imply that I don't respect the younger crowd. But they too have to live life, learn its lessons and apply them to their daily living. I laud their optimism and resilient spirit. Like every generation, I fear for my children and grandchildren. That's no different than our parents and grandparents did. We want what's best for our children and we want to protect them from a not-so-subtle, cruel world. But then every generation has risen to the challenge. We "baby boomers" followed 'The Greatest Generation,' and now Generation X (and Y and Z) will carry on after us. Life will go on. It always does. It's up to us to make each year the happiest one.

Trippin'

Barb & I returned home Monday night from a whirlwind five-day trip to South Dakota and Nebraska. It was our first visit back home since we moved to Tennessee in November. We drove 2,200 miles, saw most of our families and then dashed home in an 11 1/2-hour marathon drive on Monday. It got me thinking about the trips of my youth. But more on that later. Our planning for this trip began about a week in advance so it was quickly planned and coordinated. We left Millington about 1:15 p.m. Wednesday for our first night's stop in Springfield, MO, and immediately got off on the wrong foot (to mangle a metaphor). I hadn't researched Mapquest or our GPS beforehand, figuring our route would naturally take us northeast out of Millington on the only highway running roughly parallel to the Mississippi River and heading in our trip's general direction. But our GPS (affectionately referred to as "Dic-Dic") kept telling us to turn around. What? Head south out of town instead of north? That just didn't make sense, and so we ignored Dic-Dic and continued northeast through the small towns that lay near the Tennessee border. Finally as we got closer to Dyersburg (where we would have to turn west and cross the Mississippi River and into Missouri), Dic-Dic realized we weren't going to listen and changed to an alternate route that accommodated our new route. We found out that our out-of-the-way route had added about 150 miles to our first-day drive, and we ended up driving southwest diagonally across Missouri when our most-direct destination would have kept us going almost directly north. Ah well... We stayed overnight at the Rail Haven Best Western in Springfield. This motel was decorated in 1960s motif with a couple of 1950s-era autos out front, several nostalgic signs and two very old, square gas pumps in front of the office. Beside the front office and also inside the office were telephone booths -- another fixture from the past. We got going early the next day and made Kearney by 5 p.m., visiting Barb's Aunt Ruth, her parents Dr. and Mrs. Mary Bauer, and her brothers Bill, Char and James before leaving on Friday morning. We arranged to meet Barb's friend Heidi Swanson and her boys in Columbus on our way up to Sioux Falls, and then drove north again where we visited with Barb's daughter Breanne and family. On Saturday we met up with four of my kids at HuHot Mongolian Grill -- a favorite eating spot particularly for the younger generation. We celebrated Kaiden's birthday, and then the next day celebrated Barb's grandson Judah's birthday in Lincoln. The next day we left Omaha shortly after 7 a.m., and pulled into our parking lot in Millington by 6:30 that evening. This trip reminded me of themarathon trips my family made in my youth. Oldest brother Don was living in Connecticut, and later my sister, Pat, moved to Buffalo, NY, so we made several trips east. But I remember one in particular. It will always stand out in my mind. Don and Jane were living in Meriden, CT, and the rest of the family was going to go out to visit. That's seven of us -- in one car -- Jim's Mercury. If you want to talk about fellowship and family time, we had it. That's seven of us in a Mercury elbowing each other and falling asleep on one another's shoulders for about 1,500 miles. Of course Rog and I were pretty young back then so we didn't take up a lot of room. But for the the folks, Jim, Terry and Pat, it couldn't have been all that enjoyable. I remember we drove all night the first night, stopping somewhere in Wisconsin for gas and being "buzzed" there by a low-flying bat. Then we stopped in Milwaukee, WI with the hopes of boarding "The Milwaukee Clipper," a car/passenger ferry that sailed east across Lake Michigan, thus cutting hundreds of miles off the trip south around this Great Lake. The Clipper ran from 1941 to 1970, carrying cars and passengers between Milwaukee and Muskegon. But we were only on 'standby' status and were unable to ride the ferry to Muskegon. While I remember next to nothing about our actual visit, I do remember we were able to board the "Clipper" on our way home and sailed across Lake Michigan on its Muskegon-to-Milwaukee run. I also remember Mom used to remark about our trip in Jim's Mercury, and how we all got along well and knew we had to behave and tolerate each other in close quarters. And we did. It was one of those few truly family memories I have. Oh, we made other trips out east. One was, as I recall, right around the time of the 1972 Rapid City flood that took the lives of more than 200 people. I would've been between my junior and senior years in high school then. Another thing that I marveled at during our trips east were the restaurants that were built right over the turnpike. You could watch the traffic go beneath you as you ate lunch. I don't remember how we passed the time on that long, crowded trip. But I imagine we enjoyed the scenery and the anticipation of visiting Don and Jane in their home a long way from our home. But, as Dad said and as I felt when Barb and I got back to Millington on Monday night, "It always feels good to be back home."