The Problems of Aging

Gentle reader, do not expect to hear a whine about the vicissitudes of old age from me. I never expected gentle treatment from Mother Nature when I bestrode the path of becoming a formerly middle aged citizen. Which just means that I became sixty, the formerly forty. Well, I did not mind; sixty was nothing. I enjoyed it! I still wrote with words flowing easily like mountain streams in spring; I welcomed grandchildren into this world, looking forward to being their playmate; I played tennis, hiked mountains in the Cascades--in short, I did what I wanted. Then came seventy. Who could have foretold that the change would be so dramatic--momentuous--unbelievable--something so enormous that one cannot plan for or imagine it.

The worst of all the little, nasty plagues are not the wrinkles, the agues, the indignities of failing knees, no--we all can deal with those--it is the humiliating failures of one's memory that make life hell. I now view any form of writing, even a letter to friends as an exercise in punctuated equilibrium. There--I go along at a pretty good clip, writing what comes to mind and fingers. And then, suddenly---a big blank. The marvelous, perfectly fitting word I want to insert into the sentence to rescue it from blandness is not available to my mind. I sit there, angry, fretful--I know the damn word exists. It teases my tongue, my brain, my patience--I give up. I grasp for my dictionary of similies. I find different, enticing, intriguinging words--they enchant me. They are not the one bewitched word that I am pursuing. No, but they are soothing in their precision, their strength, their rightuousness. And, as I delve among them--totally distracted--the avidly pursued, the tricky, damned word suddenly descends  the convoluted channels of my brain and appears before me. I grab it, write it and go on with the text.

So, what does it mean to be older? Not much--apart from the agues. It is a challenge. If you are brave, it is the greatest challenge you ever had. You begin to think, to dress, to eat and exercise sensibly, always remembering the outcome of your action. And then, delightedly, you discover the right moment when you feel the other, the young person in your body and you go and dance, walk miles, listen to music that lifts you above the clouds--and you are fine!!!!!