Not Applicable--or NA--anymore

Or should I say, "No Longer Applicable"?  Some things I'm just never going to do.

     Wearing glamorous blingy shoes with 4-inch heels

     Celebrating a fiftieth wedding anniversary with a lovable old man

     Making all the things for which I've collected supplies 

     Giving birth to a baby-person

     Reading every books I've meant to read

     Traveling to Greece with a handsome young lover

     Making delicious china-plated dinners for twelve 

     Being a rock star 

     Deb (54) and I (68) were talking the other day about how the "No Longer Applicable" list grows longer every year.  I flip through magazines and skip the articles on fashion and make up.  I don't pick up magazines about parenting or weddings in waiting rooms.

     Age creeps up on us all differently.  Every day we're reminded of the grim aspects of aging--in cheesy cartoons: drooping, shrinking, rippling, rusting, stiffening body parts, eroding memory, etc.

     We talk about our ailments--as we vowed we'd never do!--and we bemoan the loss of strength and vigor and energy that we had twenty minutes (or is it years?) ago.

     But hardest of all is doors closing that used to be open.  Or admitting that after we leave this life, someone else is going to have to figure out what to do with all these art supplies and fabrics and books we won't get around to using.

     When you're twenty and thirty, everything imaginable seems possible--well, everything except growing old.  When we Boomers were 20, we laughed a little at the song, "Will you still love me when I'm sixty four."  Sixty four???  That was too ancient to even imagine!