Joan’s Boomer Blog

Broken Birds - The Story of My Momila by Jeannette Katzir is a book about author’s life up in a dysfunctional family of five siblings, headed by her mother Channa and her father, Nathan, both Holocaust survivors. The premise of the book is that the many problems of the children were the direct cause of the suffering her parents endured when they were young.

As baby boomers, most of us had parents who grew up in the shadow of World War II and the Great Depression. During the early years of Katzier’s story, my mother was one of 6 children whose family struggled with too little money and the prospect of war looming. To this day, she keeps an over-flowing pantry and two freezers full of food stored up for some possible day of shortage. Those years affected her views of money, family and many other things.

My father too was a survivor of the depression years and a 17 year old Marine at the start of the war. He survived three years in the Pacific Islands, seeing more death and horror than anyone should ever have to see in an entire lifetime. He was physically wrecked for most of the rest of his life from those three years of starvation and deprivation. All his life, he suffered from what would now be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but back then, men were just told to buck up and get over it.

These experiences made my parents stronger, if less tolerant of weakness in others. They are toughened and hardened but when it came to family, my parents were determined that we would never suffer from anything they’d lived through in the past.

I’m sure most boomers have experiences and memories passed down to them by their parents which helped to form them into the people they are today. The question that arises from Katzir’s book is what causes some to rise above the suffering and horrible memories of their past to become better people and parents and what causes others to pass their bitterness and anger to the next generation, continuing that hold of evil from the past?

Another point that came up for me was - when do you stop blaming your parents for your own miserable life and take responsibility for how you live each day?

When I was studying for my degree in history, World War II and Nazi Germany was one of my areas of interest so the early story of Channa and Nathan was a familiar one to me. Channa was born in a small town in Poland and was just a young child when the German army took over. She was 12 when her father was taken away, never to return, while her mother and sister and her brother Issac, with his wife and small children, were forced into a ghetto. When Issac’s wife and children were killed in a pogrom, he took Channa with him to join the partisans in the forest where they survived for two years.

Returning to their home town, they found all their family gone and eventually, brother and sister made their way  to America.

The author’s father, Nathan, was born in Czechoslovakia and his experiences are condensed into a fairly short chapter. His family was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, where his entire family perished in the death camp the first day. Nathan survived the gas chamber selections and beatings and eventually sent on a work detail to the Warsaw Ghetto, to clean up the rubble left by the Jewish uprising there which led to its ultimate destruction. The allied army was coming closer so Nathan was sent to Dachau, where he managed to escape.

Nathan and Channa eventually came separately to America, where they met married. This background information on the author’s parents would be a story all unto itself if it were delved into thoroughly but it actually takes up only about 75 pages of this 373 page book. The rest is devoted to what happened to the author, and her family relationships with her two brothers and two sisters.

The author’s premise is that the dysfunctional nature of their family (constant fighting and bickering over seeming petty issues) was caused by her parents being Holocaust survivors. One way you could look at this book is how horrific experiences early in life affect your life and parenting skills later on. Channa lost all her family, except for the brother she ended up fighting with continually, so she clung passionately to her husband, constantly in fear that he would leave her. Her jealousy and constant complaining put a wedge in their marriage and harmed her children.

On her husband’s side, when he hit her and put bruises on her, Channa told her children and their spouses that it was just the lot of a wife to endure this treatment. What’s more, she told her daughters that they should expect such treatment in their own marriages.

As a mother, Channa was sadly lacking. She actually told her children she didn’t want them to be successful because then they wouldn’t need her anymore. She loaned money to certain children to buy homes and start businesses and not to others, setting up rivalries between them as they learned to equate money with love. Channa told the author if she wanted to catch a man she needed to “look trashier.”

Channa’s five children had battles with each other all through their lives but some of that was also brought about by greedy spouses whose parents presumably were not in the Holocaust. These siblings entered into business agreements with each other and then fought over them, going to petty levels to get back at each other. It seemed they constantly expected more from each other than they could ever get.

At one point, the author was using her sister’s addrss to send her children to a better school. When the sister got angry over something, she informed the school that these children did not live at her address, causing a rift that was brought up again and again as the author continued to be angry over it.

The final part of the book is actually about what happened after Channa’s death. When she dies, she totally cuts her husband out of her will, leaving the entire estate pretty much to her youngest son - who in the view of the author was always her parents favorite child. Left destitute by his wife, Nathan quickly marries again, setting off another set of problems.

Once Channa is dead, the author finds out that actually the father she’s pitied all these years because of her mother’s treatment of him, isn’t really a very nice guy after all and by everyone focusing on the mother, he got away with being a petty, angry person in his own right.

Since the family had settled in southern California, just one of the homes Channa owned was worth over $1 million dollars and for the rest of the book, we are treated to a blow by blow description of the legal procedures and even the emails these quarrelsome siblings exchanged, spewing anger and hate at each other as they fought over the proceeds of their mother’s estate.

Most of the book, this part included, is a “he said, she said” sort of thing, seen only from the author’s view point. As a person who has been involved in various family disputes over the years, I know there is more than one side to any story and it would be interesting if each sibling wrote their own book, I think, because we aren’t getting their side in this story.

All in all, I think the author is trying to analyze the reasons why her family is so dysfunctional and the fact that her parents are Holocaust survivors is a convenient rack to hang that hat on. I imagine all of her life, she’s made excuses for her parents based on this fact of their early lives. As she gives them this excuse, she is also giving herself and her siblings an excuse for their own behavior. Her parents were “broken birds” who passed their brokenness on to their children, who, apparently had no say in how they live their own lives 65 years afterward.

The book is interesting in that most of the time, we read about Holocaust experiences but not about what happened later to the survivors - how they raised families and handled their terrible memories. However, I would be willing to bet than a great many survivors managed to rise above these experiences to become loving parents to their children, trying to make their own children’s lives better than their own had been.

Granted, my parents experiences would be considered mild to a Holocaust survivor but the fact remains that many people have difficult and even horrible experiences in their younger years and it doesn’t turn them into petty, quarrelsome people who would stab their brother or sister in the back for a few dollars.

Perhaps  the way each individual handled the Holocaust and its aftermath has more to do with the kind of person they were to begin and how they decided to live their lives than it did the terrible experiences they lived through. That is a decision each and every person must make in their lives, Holocaust survivor or not.

What kept me reading this book? Honestly, I was hoping that the author and her siblings would realize they needed to forgive - both their parents and each other - and move on to some sort of healthier resolution of their family issues but alas, this was not to be.

Did your parents’ past affect the kind of parents they were? Do you think your parents’ past can still affect you today?

About a month ago, my husband and I started taking a Tai Chi class for beginners. For baby boomers Tai Chi is the perfect form of exercise because it builds muscles, keeps joints flexible, reduces stress, helps you sleep soundly at night and improves balance - all through breathing and a series of slow, smooth flowing movements that are easy on your body.

Tai chi is an ancient art, often described as meditation in motion. The focus is on practicing the precise movements which flow one into another without pause, in coordination with the breath. Besides these postures or forms, there are also many exercises to help move the chi, or life force energy, throughout your body, creating good physical and mental health.

I’ve always wanted to try tai chi and our first series of classes was in the Qigong, which, I think is less precise in the movements than other forms of Tai Chi. We learned some wonderful meditations in this class too, which focus on clearing chakras, or energy centers in the body, and bringing chi to the various organs of the body.

I found another Tai chi class for beginners at the local Y where I also take yoga. This is Tai Chi in the Yang style which is extremely precise and really makes you feel like a klutz at first. I can do the arm movements and the foot movements pretty well but do them at the same time will take some practice!

What I’ve found in learning tai chi is that this is a journey which has no ending. Many spend months on just one movement to perfect it. One of the important benefits of Tai Chi is that besides being a physical journey, it’s also a spiritual journey and you learn some surprising things about yourself along the way.

If you haven’t tried Tai Chi, or you are a beginner, you may see it being performed and think “How could Tai Chi really be good exercise?” Let me tell you, you definitely feel it in every muscle but the body moves as one piece so there is never strain put on any one muscle or joint. Along the way, you also focus on deep breathing.

After a few classes, you find you’re standing straighter, breathing deeper, feeling stronger and more energetic. I’ve been sleeping better than I have in years.

Besides taking a Tai Chi class for beginners, you can also learn the basics of Tai Chi and receive the benefits from Tai Chi DVD’s. Here are some that we’ve collected and use daily:

Qigong Beginning Practice -A 2 cd set featuring instructors Francesco and Daisy Lee-Garripoli. One cd is a PBS special on Francesco’s journey to China and his discovery of the QiGong exercises in his video. Done with voice over before a beautiful lake, the exercises are easy to follow and perform. You definitely feel the benefits of this Qugong work out. We’ve been doing this one twice a week but you could certainly do it daily for more benefits.

We have two Tai Chi dvd’s by David Dorian Ross:

A.M. and P.M. T’ai Chi With David-Dorian Ross and CJ McPhee

T’ai Chi Beginning Practice

David Dorian Ross is a wonderful instructor and between these two Dvd’s we have several practices for daily use. The AM/PM dvd also has a great option for morning when your body needs waking up, and evening, when you need calming for good sleep.

We don’t yet own Energy Boost for Seniors With Chi but it’s next on our shopping list.

One thing about Tai Chi for beginners is that your practice becomes about perfecting the moves and making them second nature so you never really get tired of any one dvd or workout.

Tai Chi is one form of exercise that you could do well into your elder years.

Read more about how lack of sleep can make you obese and forgetful!

Read more about the benefits of Tai Chi for stress management.

Do you know what you’re really passionate about in life? Have you found your purpose? Are you working at a job you love? Maybe you’ve been laid off recently and need some guidance in setting some goals to finding a new career. If you’re a boomer, you probably want the second half of life to be more fulfilling than the years that went before.

According to the law of attraction, or just plain old-fashioned goal setting, what we focus on will grow in our lives. I believe that but my issue has always been trying to figure out what I should be focusing on. What goals do I really want to achieve? Especially as we near our retirement years, we think of all the things we still want to do. Which goals are most important? Many of us would like some retirement income so how can finding our purpose help us make money?

I’ve been thinking about goal setting and finding my life’s purpose more lately because a couple of weeks ago, I got an email newsletter about how to find my passions in life and the opening paragraph really stuck in my mind:

Suppose you asked yourself, “If I focus on one thing, what could I be like in a year? What could my whole life look like?”

If I focused on one thing for a year, set one goal, and dedicated myself to making that one thing happen, what would my life look like? There are a lot of important parts to that question, the first being, what is important enough to me to dedicate myself to it for one year? What one thing would make the biggest difference to my life?

If you’re like me, you’ve had many goals in the course of your life - finding a new job, losing weight, starting an exercise program, being a nicer, more patient person, sticking to a budget or focusing on attracting more money. Probably most of us have set these goals in our life - over and over and over. Are we thinner now? Do we all have lean, muscular bodies now? Are we rich? Probably not.

Right now you may be in your 50’s or even your 60’s and struggling with a job loss or facing retirement. It’s hard to set positive goals with our bank account nearing zero.

In order to discover your true passion in life, what one thing could you do to make a difference? Forget being thin and rich for a moment. These are outward trappings anyway, not things that really make a difference to the kind of person you are.

I love this quote about the law of attraction - “We don’t attract what we want, we attract who we are.” If you worry about money all the time or fight being overweight, that becomes who you are so, although you want to be rich and slim, your life becomes about wanting, not being.

I have decided to go back to square one and begin by connecting with my inner being to see what my subconscious wants me to know about myself. My goal for finding the purpose for the second half of my life is to meditate every day. I’ll start with 15 minutes and try to build on that but I’ll get at least 15 minutes.

I plan to start a meditation journal on here so if anyone is interested in joining me, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

If you need help purpose in life and setting goals, here’s some great books that may help:

Create A Life That Tickles Your Soul : Finding Peace, Passion, & Purpose (Tickle Your Soul Series). This book by Suzanne Zoglio got terrific reviews on Amazon and boomers, you especially will love the idea of re-inventing yourself in the second phase of life. Find your true purpose and passions in life and carry that into a whole new career!

Finding Your Passion: The Easy Guide to Your Dream Career by Marcy Morrison. If you are currently unemployed and seeking a new direction, looking for a way to live your purpose in retirement or in a new job, this is a great book for you.

Work with Passion in Midlife and Beyond: Reach Your Full Potential and Make the Money You Need by Nancy Anderson. Making money is great but wouldn’t it be nice to make money doing something you are passionate about? Many baby boomers have spent years working at jobs they didn’t like just to make a living. Now in the second half of life, maybe it’s time to do something you love doing.

The Purpose Driven® Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren is one of the most famous books about finding your purpose in life. The premise of the book is that there are no accidents, that God plans everything, or if you’re into the law of attraction, the Universe has a plan for you. You just have to figure out what it is. The Purpose Driven Life can help you do that.

Have you discovered the passion and purpose in your life? I’d love to hear about either your new purpose of your struggle to find it. Visit my Meditation Challenge journal and share your thoughts.

I just discovered a terrific website where you can find out, not only what happened in your birth year, but in the decade of your birth. I was born in 1950. All About Eve won best picture, Judy Holliday won best actress for Born Yesterday and Jose Ferrer won best actor for Cyrano de Bergerac.

Beat the Clock and Jack Benny were on TV and the song Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy topped the music charts in my birth year.

The credit card was invented the year I was born too. In the 1950’s people mostly lived on the cash they had, which wasn’t always much but they weren’t in debt either.

In 1950, Snoopy the cartoon character, Jay Leno and Stevie Wonder were born the same year as I was too.

There is some info about the decade of the 50’s too when the economy was on the upswing and the Cold War and Anti-Communism consumed the news.

Reading about what happened in the year and decade I was born brought back some great memories! Not the Cold War part, of course, but looking back, even the Cold War seems kind of tame compared to terrorism. At least we knew who the “enemy” was then.

I look at the 1950’s as the last time of innocence for young people. I was a teen in the 60’s and by the end of that era, there was the Viet Nam War, drugs and a social revolution going on that forever changed that youthful naivete we used to have.

What happened the year you were born? Just click here and type in the year you’d like to revisit.

You may have several senior citizens on your gift list and you want something special for Grandma or Great aunt Mary. Gift ideas for seniors can be challenging to come up with but the best idea is to make your gift personal. Does your elderly relative or friend have health issues or are they living in an assisted living setting? Even if they are living on their own, most seniors want a gift they can actually use and which shows some special thought.

Here are some gift ideas for seniors to get you started:

• Photo frames with family photos – While most seniors no longer want knick knacks sitting around, they will love a nice framed picture. Consider a new digital photo frame. This Pandigital PAN7000DW 7-Inch Digital Picture Frame is a mid-priced gift and you can personalize it by adding a file of family photos.

• Homemade treats from your kitchen. Be sure to check to see if your gift recipient has any dietary restrictions. Here are some tasty gift ideas to make in your own kitchen.

• Deliver a holiday meal if you live close enough. If you don’t, and your gift recipient does their own cooking, consider something like this New England Breakfast Gift Basket

• Holiday decorations - Make this idea even better by giving some of your own time to put them up!

• Plan a special outing with your senior relative. Take them to lunch with the family, to a movie or maybe to do some holiday shopping.

• Run errands for them. If the elderly person you know lives at home, offer to mow the lawn, cook a meal or go get groceries for them. If they live in assisted living, you can still offer to bring in special food, do some laundry or ask them what they need.

• Candy you ate as a kid® Wax Lips, Candy Buttons, Wax Bottles, Candy Cigarettes and more fresh candies from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. This retro candy will bring back great memories for seniors on your gift list.

• Large print books or audio books. Make sure they have a device to play the books if you get audio.

• Warm blankets, afghans, slippers and robes are always appreciated.

• DVD’s or videos of old movies or TV shows

• Audios of old radio shows like this one CBS’s 60 Greatest Old-Time Radio Shows

Remember for many seniors on your gift list, the gift of time is the most appreciated. Either the time you spent choosing that special gift or time spent with them.  Think about them, what they like to do, listen to their memories. What old TV shows or radio shows did they love? What foods are their favorites? Is there any special restaurant they’d like to eat at or movie they’d like to see? The greatest gift idea for seniors is knowing you put a lot of thought into choosing just the perfect thing for them.

If you have a blog, you should try Blog Copy. Simply register your blog for free and Blog Copy will monitor your site and let you know which texts and photos are copied and passed along. Why would you want to know this? Because the more you are quoted, the more of an “authority site” you become, which is great for your blog rankings with search engines.

If you use Google analytics, site meter or other tracking for your blogs, try Blog Copy too.

If you’re a baby boomer, your kids have left home and you have a dog, you know you’re getting older when

We have photos of the grandkids in the bluebonnets too so why not our dog?

your dogs become your “kids.” We always had a family dog when the kids were growing up. She was a great dog and we loved her but she was always just kind of “there.” In our household though, as the kids progressively left home, we started filling it up with rescued dogs and cats, until, at one point, we had 4 cats and 2 dogs. I even volunteered at the local animal shelter.

When I started volunteering, my husband told me specifically, “Don’t bring any animals home with you!” I did a very good job of ignoring all those hopefully doggy faces until our youngest daughter left home for college then I got hooked by this one little wall-eyed puppy, the last of a litter of six puppies which had been at the shelter for a month. In that county shelter, dogs and puppies who had been there too long were routinely put down on Fridays, which was the worst part of volunteering there. I never helped with that, of course, but I knew about it, which was bad enough.

As a reporter for an Oregon online new website, I’d attended a seminar on pet therapy and I thought that would be a great way to spend my time now that the kids were gone. Surely adopting a puppy was a good way to get into this, although you couldn’t be sure you’d get a dog with the right personality for this type of work.

Who could resist this little face?

Anyway, with the best of intentions, I decided to take this one little puppy home for the weekend, telling myself I just wanted to socialize it and see what happened - or if my husband would make me take her back to the shelter:)

Needless to say, my husband not only fell in love with the puppy, Molly, he was soon out buying her her own bed, toys and other things the other dogs sure hadn’t gotten when they moved in! We always said Molly was our daughter’s replacement when she went off to college.

Fast forward 5 years and the rescued pup is still with us. During that time, my husband, daughter and I even moved lock, stock and barrel to Texas from Oregon with the four cats and now, three dogs. Would never want to repeat that trip! Also, in that time, one of our dogs and two of our cats died of old age and we somehow acquired another kitten.

Back to my original premise though - You know you’re getting older when your dogs become your babies - My husband and I aren’t the only ones in our age group to start acquiring dogs that we pamper tremendously once the kids are gone. In fact, most older baby boomers we know have some pretty lucky dogs as part of their households.

There are some negatives about adopting a dog when you’re facing retirement. If you want to travel or if you

Playing with your dog is good exercise too!

have to live on a tight budget, having a spoiled dog can sometimes be difficult. Our dogs eat high quality dog food, go to the vet regularly and have even had their teeth cleaned (never thought I’d admit that.)

On the other hand, dogs offer companionship, they love to be walked, which gets you out to the park or out to exercise on a regular basis, and you can take them traveling with you quite easily if you want to. We’re even getting an RV to travel with, just so the dogs will be comfortable!

You know you’re getting older when your dogs become your babies, yes, but in our later years we also have lots of time to devote to a dog, which we didn’t have when the kids were young and life was more hectic. Everybody needs a smiling face to greet them expectantly whenever they come home and having pets is a proven factor in healthy aging.

Do you have a dog you love like another child? I’d love to hear about it. In the meantime, if you love dogs, you might be interested in Molly’s Dog Blog. You can read about her journey from being alone and forgotten in an animal shelter to being a pampered pooch in a loving home.