New Jersey Baby Boomer

At this time 4 years ago, we were well into the planning of our daughters outdoor wedding, and indoor reception. I may already have mentioned that she was married at the New Jersey Botanical Gardens, and then we had her reception at a local lake-front lodge. The weather was perfect!Because we are in New Jersey, we didn’t have the opportunity to use chair cover rentals in San Diego, but we did have to rent chairs for the guests at the botanical gardens. Still, I enjoyed visiting this beautiful website, what magnificent pictures showing how beautiful a table can look with wedding linen rentals in San Diego If you have wedding plans in the future for a member of your family, take in the breath-taking pictures of wedding linens in San Diego, they are beautiful and inspiring!

 

A day or so ago, I gave you a view of our home from the street, here’s what we see out our bedroom window. The leaves are just beginning to grow on the trees, so you are not seeing them in their full green glory, but it’s been quiet, beautiful and serene for the past few days.

I have a swing on the deck that I love to sit in on quiet evenings, as the sun is just beginning to go down. This picture wasn’t taken at that time of day, but it is beautiful looking across the lake…the water is still, with only the fish eating causing rings that spread out, out, and out some more, joining rings formed by other fish. An occasional mallard will fly and land on the surface. Geese will join them, and now the little gosling’s and ducklings are appearing.

This is our “little cabin on the lake”, it is set down over a foot below the the lawn and garden, with a rock wall that my husband worked on all weekend, he reset the stones which had shifted a lot in the years since we moved here.

Yes, in this cozy little cabin with a lake in the back, we have raised two children, and now the cabin is just the right size for the two of us…or three, as our son is still living with us at present. Will we ever move? I don’t know, it would be hard to leave behind the natural beauty that surrounds us, and all the memories we’ve made here. Time will tell.

One great thing about being a Baby Boomer, at least one my age, born in 1951, is that you have new choices. You can dye your hair, or you can let it go Grey. You can get a face-lift or keep those wrinkles.

I’ve opted to “go natural”, enjoy the new crow’s feet that are multiplying around my eyes and wrinkles that surround my smile. I’m letting the Grey hair that glistens in the sunlight when I look at myself in the rear view mirror of my little red Volkswagen Cabrio convertible keep on going grey.

I’ve told this story before, but when I was in my early 20′s, that’s about 30something years ago, I was at one of those hippie Jesus festivals standing in a circle holding hands and singing, and looked at the woman next to me with her denim jacket, long greying hair pulled back in a clip, and her weather-wrinkled face and thought she was beautiful, and said “when I get older, I want to look like that”, I’m on my way!

Oh, you want to see a picture? I’ll get on that right away and have one for you within the week, the one I’ve been using is a couple years old, time for an update!

Do you remember the show “The Wonder Years” that lasted a quite a few seasons after it’s release date in 1988? It was a show that many Baby Boomers can relate to, it was our time and stirred up so many memories. When my brother and I would watch the show,  we could relate, right down to the late ’50′s to early ’60′s suburban developments with their perfect streets, sidewalks, neatly mowed lawns and, for us at least, ranch style houses.

Keeping a perfect lawn was a BIG deal in those days…I suppose it is in many places today, but living where we do now, in a rural woodsy area some 40+ years later, it’s not our lifestyle…we’re more a product of the hippie years, living close to the earth, natural living, and all that came from those years when we decided to rebel against “the establishment”. Of course enjoying nature and natural living is one of the GOOD things that came from those times, but back to those lawns.

Most men were out early on Saturday mowing & feeding their lawns, and keeping them trimmed along the sidewalks. Almost every front yard had two neat “squares” of green, parted by the sidewalk that went up to the front door, and a little strip of green along the road between the main sidewalk and curb.

My Dad would brush off this ritual between men of keeping the perfect lawn as “keeping up with the Joneses” as if it was something to be scorned, as if he were above all that. But believe me, he was right out there “keeping up” himself, and I have proof of his passion for the competition, think I’ll save that for my “Memories and Nostalgia” blog.

Here’s to the wonder years.

When my husband and I first met, it was at a church get together…something my girlfriend talked me into going to that I wasn’t really interested in. Oh, I loved God and going to church, just wasn’t into going that night. At this get-together, I sat down at a picnic table with a big burly guy and we talked quite a bit, and in our conversation, found out we worked about a block away from each other. I was a legal secretary, and the Bergen County Court House is in Hackensack (pictured), so that was the place to be.

My future husband was working only a block away for a company that installed traffic systems all over the US, but it took a while for him to get up the nerve to ask me out…our first “date” was lunch at a local diner, which lead to many other dates, and 7 months later, marriage. For the first year of our marriage we traveled to work together, and met for lunch every day. We did that until he took me away from NJ for a 7 month business trip to Colorado, his childhood home, where I finally got to know his family….and where our son, who is now 26, was conceived…and the rest, as they say, is history.

I guess our anniversary coming up in a few weeks has me a bit sentimental.

1946-1964, were you born somewhere between those dates? Then you’re a Baby Boomer. Boomers were born during the years after World War II, the post-war years, when there was a surge in births in both the USA and other countries.

This Baby Boomer is Jersey through and through. I was born at Orange Memorial Hospital, raised in Nixon/Edison New Jersey until I was 14, then we made a move to Hillsdale in Northern NJ. From there, I made many a move from the age of 21-27, but always in NJ, until I met and married my husband, and we settled in West Milford….New Jersey, of course.

I look forward to sharing some Baby Boomer and “Joisey” trivia with you, I’ve got a lot of it in my head ready to spill out into this blog, covering a wide range of topics.

Now, being new to WordPress, I have to get back to figuring out sidebars and widgets and such, see you soon!