Janet Clearwater

Issues Include Bipartisan Older Americans Act, Medicare, Age Discrimination, Transportation Safety and More WASHINGTON, DC – Today, in the midst of Older Americans Month, AARP Kansas visited Capitol Hill to urge their elected representatives to back bills, including the Older Americans Act, that can help Americans live their best lives. Visits to the offices of Senators Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran and Members of the U.S. House of Representatives Tim Huelscamp, Mike Pompeo, Lynn Jenkins and Kevin Yoder took place to discuss a variety of issues crucial to older Americans.

Guest blog by AARP Kansas staff member Janet Clearwater.

In past decades, workers worked for one company for many years, often for their entire working lives. That is no longer the norm. In fact, the average length of time a worker stays in one job is about 4½ years. Assuming a work life of about 45 years (estimating from 22 to 67 years of age), a worker will have about 10 positions during his or her work life. That fact proves two very important things:

The tragedies that befall others always seem to provide a brutal clarity to our own vulnerabilities. For example, the tornadoes and flooding that have affected so many in the Midwestern part of the United States in the last few weeks have served as a stark reminder that a natural disaster has many degrees of destructive power. Many small tornadoes touched down across the Midwest but caused little damage. However, the tornadoes that struck on two separate dates, destroying parts of Moore, Oklahoma and costing many lives, were huge, powerful, and deadly in the paths they took through heavily populated areas and across major travel routes.

In the past few weeks, I've been able to attend a 3-year-old’s soccer game, a 5-year-old’s t-ball game, and an 11-year-old’s first school play. Being Grandma is kind of fun, for me, because I didn’t have children of my own – the children I watched are my oldest step-daughter’s children. I’m a grandma to six young people now, and it amazes me how much they learn from one visit to the next. It also amazes me to watch my step-daughters caring for these little ones and guiding them toward adulthood.

I try to keep up with the news and activities in Washington as much as I am able. But there are so many abbreviations and unfamiliar terms in the news coming from current activities and debates that I feel like that famous groundhog who sticks his head out in the spring, looks around, dislikes what he sees or hears and decides to go back to sleep. I think that there are many who have similar reactions to news from Washington. But now, more than ever, that news has the potential to dramatically change my life and the lives of my loved ones, so I’m trying to educate myself.

This may seem like a silly question, but have you ever stopped to realize the dramatic effect that death has on life?

Recently, my spouse d eveloped physical challenges that made him unable to perform some of his own personal care. We were quite concerned, for a time, that the incapacitation was caused by a systemic and degenerative condition and were very relieved to realize that the cause of his disability is localized and, hopefully, can be repaired with surgery.

As part of my Environments and Aging class, I was asked to evaluate my current home using universal design checklists for each of several areas – kitchen, bathroom, living room, exterior, lighting and sound, etc. The lists we used as a class were compiled by Rosemary Bakker, an interior designer and gerontologist, in her book AARP Guide to Revitalizing Your Home: Beautiful Living in the Second Half of Life. Ms. Bakker has written several other books on building or retrofitting homes for lifelong use.

I have always enjoyed learning, whether it is traditional “book-learning” or the more spontaneous kind. Since receiving my Bachelor’s degree in 1980 from Emporia State University, I’ve returned to school many times for a class or two – I even completed 20 hours toward a Master’s degree before I met my husband. I stopped taking classes toward that degree to help him finish a very important job – raising three teenaged girls. Now, I’m a grandmother, with six beautiful grandchildren.