Remember when we were young and we walked through antique shops admiring the patina and beauty of old things? The older a thing, the more soulful and beautiful.
For the past few years, I've begun to wonder what it means to be old. I'm not ready to call myself old, just noticing that it's creeping up a bit.
Remember when we were young and heard that Beatles song: "Will you still love me/When I'm sixty four?" and we smiled to ourselves, thinking probably "Sixty four is so far away I can't even project my imagination out that far."
Having recently passed that iconic Number Sixty Four, and being referred to at the chiropractor's office as a "Medicare patient," I can hardly believe that I'm here already.
Mimi, my grandmother, who lived a healthy life until she was 96 and who called herself "middle aged" in her eighties, never considered herself old. Neither does her daughter, Carlene, my mother. When Carlene left Texas, she went home and made herself a "flouncy" skirt and texted me today on her iPad that she felt "prissy" in it when she dressed for church. I'm lucky to have come from a lineage of women like Mildred and Carlene--and I hope to follow their lead!
But still:
Some doctors and their receptionists call me "Sweetheart" and "Sweetie." Nobody called me that when I was forty, even fifty. What's up with that?
Some clerks at the drive-through windows speak a bit too loud--as if I (ordering the senior drink) am hearing-impaired.
Some of the things that fascinated me at fifty no longer do--especially things in stores.
Some days there are aches and pains (my own and those reported by friends) that seem to have come out of nowhere, and descended into our bones and joints, unwelcome guests.
And I can't read the small print--even with glasses--on much of anything!
Hardly a day passes that I don't notice age. I am amazed by those who seem to have kept it at bay; I am sad that some among us have left already, and I'm hoping for the courage to accept my own aging with something akin to grace.
Hardly a day passes that I don't catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and feel astonished: That's me?
Being old (or close to old) still feels new to me. I remember how being a teenager once felt new--how self-consciously I walked about in my new blooming body. I remember how being pregnant felt new at first, then began to feel natural, then was over. There wasn't one single day when everything changed--just a cluster of days when I was aware of being in a new body and had to figure out how to move it along on the unfamiliar road without falling all over myself.
The mounds of leaves in my yard are slippery; I walk gingerly over them to avoid "falling and breaking my neck"--as my daddy used to say. A jar is hard to open, and I ask a stranger to please open it for me. I can't squat all the way the way I could for the first fifty years without even thinking about it.
But I'm not complaining; I'm staying right here, for as long as I can, doing all the things I love to do.
My teachers are Mimi and Nana.
And Elena, too.
At almost two, she has it all figured out.
After a full hour in the tub at my house, after pouring hundreds of cups of "tea" from the tea pot to the cups in her new tea set, she was totally absorbed in pouring. Half of the hundreds of cups had landed on the floor.
"It's time to get out now," I said.
"No, Yenna," she said. "I staying."
"Okay," I always say.
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