A Sad Thing: Baby Boomers with No Interests
By Teresa K. Flatley

I was stumped recently while filling out a warranty card for a new appliance. At the bottom of the card I was asked to put a check mark next to all my varied interests.

The choices were myriad: gardening, travel and leisure, automobiles, etc.

Faced with the daunting task of summing up my interests, I realized I didn't seem to have any. I used to have some, I really did, but having spent the last 20+ years raising children and making certain they had interests, I can't seem to come up with any of my own.

This point became even more apparent when our younger son was sidelined with a soccer injury, keeping us from participating in our Main Weekend Activity. Nothing serious, but he couldn't participate in sports -- his life's work -- for several weeks or potentially months.

This had never happened to any of us before and we weren't sure how to respond. Early on in his recovery process, he wanted to go to his weekend soccer games anyway, sit on the sidelines and root his team on. We went along, too, but felt a little out of place.

Faced with the choice of spending the most beautiful weekends of the year watching other children play or not, we chose not, but that left my husband and me lost. As he likes to say, our social life is church and kids' games. If those games have been erased from the calendar, what are we supposed to do? OK, a little more church couldn't hurt, but spending entire weekends there is probably a little over zealous.

In the early days of parenthood when we still believed we could actually pursue things that interested us, there was no time. How could I justify spending entire days at writers' conferences when there were children who needed tending? How could my husband referee football games when he had his own budding athletes right here just waiting to go out and do something?

Naturally, like "good parents," we gave up the fight and let their interests become ours. Now, I'm not sure how to get our own back.

Pre-kids in the 70s, I was an interesting crafty lady. I had my own little business selling handmade creations, which turned out ultimately to be an expensive hobby. No one bought many of my crafts but at least it was something I called my own. Before that it was gardening -- I had wonderful gardens from May until July, when it got hot and I got tired of weeding.

In those days, my dad and I used to spend Saturdays at auctions, sitting in the sun, waiting excitedly for the next item to come up for bid, never going over our self-imposed spending limit of $2 an item.

We'd nosh on hot dogs and consider the day a success if Dad brought home a tool he didn't yet have a use for and I arrived home with a box of assorted treasures -- trash, actually -- which I could sort through at my leisure all week until the next auction.

Those were the days. I've missed them.

I'm beginning to see the light, though. Friends who are a little farther along with Empty Nest Syndrome (they've changed their locks), tell us life can be "wonderful" after kids move on. They get to do what they want when they want, enjoying themselves while they "reinvent the future," a term coined by a friend which I am beginning to warm up to.

No doubt there are flea markets and auctions and conferences galore just waiting for us. And other interests (rock climbing, stamp collecting, hang gliding) which we may want to explore.

When the time comes, I know we'll be interested.