Autumn Years Spring 2024

IN MY WORDS

Keeping Up?? By Sally Novak

much more complicated. I have forgot ten most passwords for all the apps on my computer. When I create a new one it must include numbers, letters, capitals and sym bols. Using a portal to connect to a doctor’s office seems very redundant to me since they are asking questions to which they have known the answer for years. Mak ing an appointment requires anywhere from a minute to an hour of listening to bad, repetitive music. Even then it usually requires a call back from a different de partment. Of course, that occurs when my ringer is off because I’m in a rehearsal or a meeting. When I was learning to drive, the long driveway to our country road provided lots of practice both forward and backward. Since then I have always been really good at backing up! Many of my trips now are on three lane highways where no one is following the old fashioned rule of slow lane right and pass on the left. Now speed demons are whizzing by from all sides. I do love that GPS. That’s something that would be unimaginable for my dad who had to roll down the window and put out his arm to signal. Still we have to be technologically skilled to use a GPS cor rectly. On one of my trips to Boston, the GPS took me through every little town and village. I didn’t know there was a feature that called for avoiding tolls. I agree with my dad. It’s exciting but also hard to Keep Up.

FaceTime has been a real connection tool. I can sing to my one-year-old great granddaugh ter, and when I visit from eight hours away she can recognize me. Recently, I shared FaceTime with a friend who now lives in Japan. It felt like we were in the same room. What a blessing. Keeping up has been a won derful adventure. I can gather

I can’t keep up with soooo many chang es.” My dad was trying to adjust to a world that was evolving around him. He had been born in the horse and buggy era and was now dumbfounded by the news that we had landed a man on the moon. Pluto is no longer a planet. FaceTime can connect me with my family in Switzer land as if we were in the same room. Some changes are fantastic. During the extended Covid lockdown, Zoom and FaceTime helped folks deal with the isolation and for some avoided depression. I was grateful to keep up by having the equipment and the skills to learn these new connections. Keeping up with social media can really boggle the mind. Some posts are of real importance. Others not so much. There is much concern about the social impact, particularly for teenagers. There are some things I just as soon not Keep Up. There used to be just a few TV channels. Now there are hundreds. Who can keep up with such an overload? Now we watch Netflix and Hulu at home with no conversation to follow. We used to go to movies together. We often had social time after a movie with coffee and dessert. We could discuss the film and our different reactions.

by Zoom with my Girl Scout friends. We had gone to Europe in the summer of 1953 and now shared memories, photos and current activities. Classmates from high school are always reminding me to set up the next Zoom gathering. Now that the grandchildren are living in five different states, including Hawaii, it is a blessing to connect when we are careful about the six hour time difference. Keeping up is a constant process. My children have given me a memoir writing project. Now I have to learn to get photos from my phone to my computer and the computer to the writing program. It’s all great fun until I can’t make something work—just can’t keep up. I have always been a very impatient “quick draw McGraw,” but when the grandkids aren’t available to help, I quit. Their demos are too fast and infrequent for someone in my generation. Grandson Nick has put instructions into my phone so I keep making progress. Managing communication for commit tee work is easier with email lists but not everyone uses email. The newest change is the print-out of a voicemail—boy, does that get words and names mixed up! Technology was supposed to make things easier not harder. Keeping up is

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Prior to moving to a continuing care community, Sally Novak, 87, lived in Allendale and is the mother of three and the grandmother of seven. She is

a retired special education teacher, watercolor painter, choral singer and swim instructor.

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AUTUMN YEARS I SPRING 2024