Laughing On The Way Out

Perspective

2012-02-01T04:14:00.000-08:00

imageenvision.com

I was winding my wispy blonde-going-on-gray hair on bristly rollers this morning (an exercise in futility since it's raining out and the moisture will take out the curl before I get from the door of my cottage to the door of my car), and contemplating the unfairness of certain aspects of my persona. For instance, instead of having thick, shining, naturally curly locks that tumble in reckless abandon to my shoulders, I have thin, fine, stick-straight hair much the color of mouse fur. I was a tow head as a child, a color I carried right up to the birth of my first child. With each successive pregnancy, the color was leached from my hair follicles and deposited in my child's. All four were white-blonde as small tykes while my own hair began to take on the hue of a winter-dead tree. I've sought in vain for a haircut that is flattering to both my face and my hair texture but hair style magazines limit face shapes to oval, round, heart, and square. Bovine is not listed. Sigh.

Where I've been limited in the hair department, I've been burdened with excess when it comes to my nose and my mammary glands. Photographs show my great grandfather's nose holding a prominent place in the middle of his face, balanced with great bushy eyebrows and an equally bushy mustache. I have been spared the latter two features but my nose is decidedly similar, i.e. too big for my face. And what I wouldn't give to have my blouses and shirts fall straight and smooth to my waist without first stopping to leap off a cliff.

I mention all this because I have been going through old photos for a senior history project at the local senior center. Pairing a senior with a middle school student to talk about what life has been like for the past 60+ years, the project covers nine weeks of memory digging and culminates in a scrapbook of student writing illustrated with pictures of the senior from birth to the present. I keep finding photos of myself as an infant, a toddler, a school girl, a young wife - and I don't look at all like the image in my mind. I do remember, however, bemoaning my looks even then. What was I thinking? And why was I thinking that?

I'd like to think of myself as wiser since I'm so much older but old habits die hard and once I'd fallen into the habit of seeing myself as flawed in face and figure, it became almost impossible to think of myself any other way. Looking back now, I see all my worry over how I looked to others was useless. I wasn't half as bad looking as I thought and most likely, when I look back on photos taken now, I won't be quite as awful looking as I'm imagining now. It makes one wonder when we, as humans, started judging our worth by our beauty and our beauty by someone else's standards.

My mother was forever admonishing me that pretty is as pretty does. I wish I'd paid more attention to her; I'd be stunning by now!

What Was That?

2011-07-31T08:51:00.000-07:00

I've noticed lately that my hearing is not as sharp as it once was. For instance, when the whole second grade classroom is abuzz and some cherub whose voice doesn't ever raise above a lisping whisper says something to me, I have to bend to her level and say, "What was that?" repeatedly. If a train is hustling by I often can't hear my idling car engine. Likewise, when the phone is not pressed directly against my left ear (my "good" side), I often miss parts of the conversation from the other party and have to uh-huh and mmm-hmmm my way along until I pick up the gist of what I missed. I've gotten along just fine with what hearing I have left until last Sunday. Now I have cause to pause.

J and I were on our way home from a Transfer Station run when she suggested swinging by a fast food place and indulging in one of their inexpensive hot fudge sundaes. Any time the world fudge is mentioned I am all for whatever it is I need to do to get it. Besides, it was a beastly hot day and ice cream sounded like a bowl of heaven so off we went. We pulled up to the talking order board and when the scratchy voice asked us what we wanted, J leaned out the window and said, "Two hot fudge sundaes, please."

"Do you want double fudge for an extra dollar?" inquired the board.

J looked at me. "Double fudge?" I asked. J nodded. "Sure!" we both said at the same time, I to J and J to the talking board.

"Pull around," said the board so we did.

At the window, a young fellow handed J a small paper bag. She passed it to me and I looked inside. Surely our sundaes could not be in there. Just as I suspected, they weren't. What was in there were two apple pies.

"These are apple pies!" I exclaimed. J looked at me with raised eyebrows. She whisked the bag from my hand and gave them back to the fellow saying, "We ordered hot fudge sundaes, not apple pies."

"Oh, the sundaes are coming," he said with a smile. "You agreed to the pies for an extra dollar. They're our special this week."

J's eyebrows crept up another notch. "We did?" she asked me. "Did you hear anything about apple pies?"

"Double fudge," I said enunciating each syllable, then "Apple pie." No way did double fudge sound like apple pie, even if I dragged the syllables out. I shook my head at J. "Nope," I sad. "We agreed to double fudge. Who eats apple pies with hot fudge sundaes?"

"We don't want the pies, thanks," she told the window guy, but he handed them back to her saying that since they couldn't put them back we might as well take them and he'd deduct the dollar from our bill.

"Stranger things have happened," he intoned, his own eyebrows rising for emphasis.

All the way home we puzzled over the misunderstanding. Who could mistake double fudge for apple pie? Apparently two hot, tired, middle-aged, on-the-twenty-year-plan old bats like us because between them, those sundaes didn't have enough fudge to qualify as a single serving, never mind double. It was all very disconcerting.

I've been practicing the two phrases. If I speak through a paper towel tube with a piece of saran wrap held tightly over one end and I mumble, you might mistake one for the other, but you'd have to be hard of hearing in the first place.

2011-07-01T03:16:00.000-07:00

Parker the cat who knows the value of an afternoon nap.

The sun rises awfully early on summer mornings and though I don't have to rise with it, I often do. Sleep has become an evasive commodity lately (lately being the past ten years or so). At first I blamed my semi-insomnia on worries - you know, the ones about money and children and things you wish you hadn't said or done that loom like monsters in the deep, dark night. But, I have a job, my grown children all have jobs, we all have places to live and food to eat. And worrying about those things no matter what time of day or night never did present a solution. Now I blame my ever increasing age. I am older now than I've ever been and I can see signs of deterioration. It's the ones I can't see that seem to be causing the trouble.

Books and magazines offer solutions to what seems to be a global affliction. One can go the drug route complete with little flapping butterflies hovering over one's prostrate body, the health conscious route that advises a light evening meal and a brisk walk afterwards, or the natural route which involves chamomile baths and spraying one's bed linens with lavender. I avoid drugs whenever possible and prefer my butterflies out of doors so I tried first the healthy route. Summer evenings are fine for an after dinner stroll around the neighborhood but winter nights fall fast and early. A brisk walk to the end of the driveway involved hat and coat and boots and mittens. Just dressing and undressing made me tired and I'd tumble into bed earlier and earlier each night. My ability to stay asleep did not increase, however, and I would find myself awake and semi-alert well before dawn. By mid-morning I was desperate for a nap!

Lavender on my bed linens smells heavenly but does put me to sleep. Chamomile baths are out of the question as my tiny cottage has no room for a tub, but chamomile tea does not put me to sleep either. Nor does warm milk, a small glass of wine, or gentle yoga just before bedtime. I've tried reading in bed, counting sheep (and blessings), and meditation, none of which make me fall asleep more readily or stay asleep once I've nodded off. I'm beginning to suspect that the folks who come up with these remedies stay up all night thinking about them.

My latest tactic is to enjoy the pre-dawn hours, to rise slowly, make a cup of steaming tea, sit where I can watch the sun rise or the rain fall, and breathe in the new day as it unfolds. When I wind down around three in the afternoon, I take a nap. So far, that's working just fine.

Grief

2011-05-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

photo by Jean Couleurs

My friend J, who is my co-inspiration for this blog, has suffered a staggering loss. Her husband of 45 years died suddenly today after surgery. Friday night he was doing well and on Saturday all his major organs began shutting down. Though when we began this blog we titled it Laughing On The Way Out (for all the foolish things we were encountering as we traveled toward old age), J is unable to muster even a smile right now. Sometimes the things life deals us are not funny at all. This post, written several years ago for much the same reason, is for her...

Life on earth is at best a chancy thing. You cannot know the exact moment when you will leave the land of the living or if your dreams will die before they've been fully lived. One thing is certain—if a loved one leaves before you, whether by accident or design, you will travel to the strange land of grief and you will go alone. The winds of change will swirl about you, pick you up, transform you forever, and set you down in another place.

It is not only the departing who are changed by leaving. The living, the survivors, the ones left behind must become someone else in order to cope, to grow and finally emerge into a different life—the life without. It is a lonely walk through an unfamiliar land, this land without. Things that two did together one does now. There is nothing so empty as the other person's chair pushed up to the table, unless it's the stairwell that no longer echoes end of day greetings and eager footsteps, or the bed that suddenly seems vast and cold and too lonely on either side of the middle. There is nothing so quiet as a room with one person in it, the silence absolute after the death of conversation and shared confidences. There is nothing so solitary as a single plate on an empty table, a single towel hanging folded and desolate on its too wide bar, or a lone toothbrush standing solitary guard in its cup. There is nothing harder than being one when you have loved being two.

J was so happy, so loved, so alive while her loved one was with her. Now she looks and feels as though she's been struck down and in a sense, she has. Grief has her by the heart and for a time she must wrestle with it, pushing her way through the pain to unlock the reservoirs of strength and faith she accrued in happier days. I watch her struggle to come to terms with her loss, to find a place where she can lay her sorrow down long enough to eat, to sleep, to think of something other than what has befallen her.

She tells her story over and over, trying to make sense of it, to fit it in with her own picture of what her life is all about. Perhaps her peace will lie in the creation of a new picture, a new story, a tale that embraces this grief as a gift that, when opened, reveals all the words and colors she will need.

Thoughts Before Sleep

2011-03-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

(Photo from http://thuthienpezhai.org)

I will soon be, officially, a senior citizen. I've received my medicare card in the mail, I've been looking over retirement plans, and as my friend J often jokes, I am now on the 20 year life plan. (Actually I'm opting for the 30 year plan with a rider as 95 seems a respectable age to shoot for.)

I have the obligatory bucket list with entries like traveling to as many places as possible, seeing my grandchildren marry, walking across America, etc. But last night as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, another list altogether entered my mind. I laughingly dubbed it my "Just Once" list as it grew to include some rather bizarre desires. Nevertheless, here it is.

I would like just once to:

1. Be taken care of completely without my having to lift a finger. I don't want to be sick to have this happen but remain in complete control of my sense so I can enjoy to the fullest one entire day of having someone a) wash my hair, b) give me a full body massage, c) cater to my every dietary whim, d) turn down the sheets on my freshly made bed, e) hover over me solicitously and f) read me to sleep. I realize that one can attend a day spa and hire a maid to accomplish all this but I have the money for neither, which leads me to...

2. Have enough money so that I can go to bed without puzzling out how I am to pay the bills and still eat. I am not so much interested in spending the money lavishly (or frivolously) as I am in knowing that it's there as I need it.

3. Have a chauffeur. I used to live with a fellow who liked to drive. Now if I want someone else to do the driving I must first drive to them. For example, none of my children live closer than an hour and a half away. Before they can drive me about their neighborhoods, I must get myself to their neighborhoods. I used to love driving but now the merest hint of bad weather, any dire news of highway accidents or strange sounds in my car put me into an apoplectic fit. I go, but I'm not happy about it.

4. Win big. I know one must buy a lottery ticket to stand a chance (some blonde jokes are funny) but those times that I invested a treasured dollar have resulted in disappointment. Just once, I'd like to be the one crying on TV because I've just been given a million dollars (tax free) or the one who opens her mailbox to find a check for an outrageous amount of money from an undisclosed but compassionate source. The only thing I've ever won in my life was a chintzy pillow at the county fair when I was 12. (And I was shooting for the giant teddy bear!)

5. Be slim again, twenty again, and in the position to make an entirely different decision about the life I was about to give up in order to embark on the life I did. I have few regrets, even more blessings and a life now that is quite satisfactory in every way but monetary. Still, I'd like to see what my parallel lives would have been like.

6. Spend a day completely pain free. My feet ache, my knees hurt, my knuckles throb, my back seizes up. While I'm at it, I'd like my hearing and vision restored to their hitherto perfection. (After I thought about this one, I realized that having experienced that, I'd be more than reluctant to return to my current state. Still...)

7. I would like to know what follows once my 20 year life plan expires and I along with it. I might forget it once I've been shown, or I might assign it to a mere dream, but some part of me would then be able to relax enough so that I can enjoy the next bit of my life story with all the abandonment and delight I felt as a child. (Which, come to think of it, list or no list, is just what I intend to do!)

Adding Insult to Injury

2011-02-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

It's bad enough to be growing older at what seems an accelerated rate but it's awful to be ill at the same time. I'm not talking about terminal illness or progressive illness. I'm about to whine about the ordinary, common cold.

It started with a sneeze, which I attributed to the appearance of the sun, which hasn't shown up here for day after cold, gray day. I usually sneeze in the sunlight so I didn't give it a thought until I felt that suspect little tingling that means, "This is not a sunlight sneeze. This is your nose on a COLD. And it's going to be a doozy."

Sure enough, not an hour later, I felt the familiar ache and malaise that accompanies congestion. My eyes began to water. I sneezed at increasingly frequent intervals and went through half a box of tissue in twenty minutes. I sucked down a glass of Emergen-C, popped a couple of aspirin, and lay down on the sofa, thinking a short nap might make matters better. I sat up almost immediately, unable to breathe in a prone position. I gathered pillows, a quilt, the cat (as a foot warmer) and propped myself up on the sofa. An ungodly rattling noise woke me and spooked the cat. It was just me, snoring. I had toppled over and was constricting my own airway.

Soup was what I needed but making soup requires energy. I had none. Tea, that's what I'd have. I sat while the kettle came to a boil, disproving that old adage about the pot never boiling, etc. Measuring the leaves, pouring the water, ladling in the honey took every ounce of oomph I had left. I was almost too tired to sip.

Bed was the place to be. I hauled the pillows and the quilt back to the bedroom, arranged everything just so and climbed in. My back ached so I climbed back out and hunted up the heating pad. In bed once more, I realized I'd left my tea on the kitchen table. Out I climbed and back in, shivering now. Two pillows didn't seem enough. There were two more stored in the trunk at the foot of the bed but the thought of that hundred mile journey was enough to make me settle back, grumbling, against the two I had. I sipped my cooling tea, took note of every ache and sniffle, and let tears of self pity and moroseness ooze down my cheeks. I wanted my mother, and my tissue box was still on the sofa.

Feverish dreams pursued me in the dark of night. When I'm sick I dream of numbers that repeat themselves over and over. I dreamed of tally sticks that wouldn't tally and numbers that floated in soup like alphabet letters, never adding up to the correct amount. I woke exhausted.

I remember having head colds as a child. I remember the sore red nose, the scratchy raw throat, the head and body aches, but I also remember functioning despite all that. A mere cold never sent me to bed. Now the very thought of heaving this sad sack of skin and bones out of bed and into the work day was too much to bear. I reached for the phone and called in sick. We're only allowed three sick days in a row before a doctor's note is required. On Wednesday, I'm calling in dead.

Puckery Places

2010-10-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

Not a self-portrait...

J called this morning to say she'd caught a glimpse of her bare arm ("It looked like chicken skin, all puckered and white!") and she was suddenly depressed. It put me in mind of my mother who, in her fifties, stopped wearing sleeveless blouses.

"Aren't you hot, Mama?" I asked her as I helped her weed the garden one July day while the sun beat down on us like a sledge hammer. She was wearing a shirt with loose sleeves that nearly reached her wrists.

"Yes," she'd said, "but I can't show my arms any more. Look," and she'd pulled back her sleeve and held up the offending appendage. The skin in the fold of her elbow was all crinkled and soft while the muscle she used to show off proudly looked as though it had slipped from its mooring to hang upside down from the underside of her upper arm. She pulled the sleeve back down. "They're not fit to look at anymore," she said with a sigh.

I told this to J and she laughed. "Not much of me is fit to look at anymore," she said before she hung up. I knew just what she meant. Not much of me is either. I've never considered myself really vain though I used to take pains to make sure my hair and clothes were fashionable. Lately though, I've taken to letting my hair grow out until it's long enough to donate before getting it styled and my clothes are geared more toward comfort than haute couture.

I've started to wear longer sleeves in the summer as well, and to make sure the only people who see me in a bathing suit already know and love me, wrinkles, sags, and all. My arms look like something left out in the rain too long and my upper legs are mapped like an atlas with small, broken veins. The skin on my face seems to have taken on a life of its own. There are new lines every week and I noticed this morning that my drooping upper lids may soon be meeting the puffy bags underneath, akin to the way my bosom will meet my belly when I sit if either sags another jot. How on earth did I get so out of shape, or worse, into this shape?

Partly it's a change in lifestyle, partly it's more food than exercise, and partly it's the pull of gravity on weakening skin and muscles. At this rate, the inexorable weight of our own bodies and gravity combined will cause both J and I simply to puddle onto the ground like discarded garments. Each time we catch our breath from laughing ourselves silly over some new insult of age, we promise each other to make a greater effort to get ourselves fit, or at least more fit. Neither of us is particularly sedentary - she is a farmer's wife and I chase second graders around all day - but I've recently begun to walk daily again as I did in my youth, and she has taken to lifting more and heavier things about the farm in an attempt to shed some of our excess weight. And I'm seriously considering cutting my hair short if it will take some of the weight off my puckered forehead and hence, my descending eyelids...

A Member of the Clean Plate Club

2010-07-03T18:37:00.000-07:00

When I lived with a fit and hearty fellow named Bob years ago, he would heap his dinner plate with meat, taking much smaller portions of potato and vegetable, sometimes eschewing them altogether in favor of hot cherry peppers or a hunk of unbuttered bread.
Dessert was not a word in his vocabulary. He lumped them all together under the generic word cake and said, “I don’t eat that stuff.”

I, on the other hand, consider dessert part of the meal, feeling that no repast is complete without a bit of something sweet. It’s an old habit instilled by my mother who felt the same way. She liked to quote Winnie-the-Pooh and finish off each meal with a “smackerel of something,” preferably some tasty morsel oozing sugar and chocolate.

Her father, my Pepere, was famous at family gatherings for his ability to make room for dessert. “Go ask your grandfather if he wants pie or cake,” my Memere would instruct as she cleared the dinner plates.

“Pepere, do you want pie or cake?” I would obediently inquire.

“Yes,” was his reply. “Two fingers of each,” and he would spread out his thumb and pinkie, creating a five inch span indicating the desired size of each piece. Over the years this sort of indulgence made him into a man of admirable girth.

I seem to be following close behind. For a long time I blamed the three Gs—Genetics, Gravity, and Gravy—for my increasing bulk; genetics (witness my grandfather, not to mention my Aunts Margaret and Rose or my Uncle Roland); gravity—after all, my weight began shifting downward with every birthday after forty, as did the muscles in my upper arms and the skin under my eyes and my chin. Now I’ve reluctantly had to admit that the blames lies in the gravy—and the bread and the butter and, woe is me, the desserts. Everything I eat seems destined to collect at my waistline or in the general vicinity of the waistline I remember having.

A friend that I hadn’t seen in years recently asked, “Where’s that skinny little girl I used to play with?” and I had to admit I’d buried her under gallons of ice cream. Another high school chum who resurfaced after 45 years saw me at the doctor’s office one day. We eyed one another and finally blurted, “Gosh, you look familiar, but…” at the same time. We reminisced a bit and then he took my hand in his big paw (this man was at least 50 pounds heavier than when I’d last seen him in 10th grade chemistry lab) and said, Pao-line, you been livin’ large!”

Yeah. Thanks.

I drove home thinking about the dirty four letter D word, knowing that if I didn’t do something soon I’d need more than a diet to undo those decades of desserts. The three Gs are still exerting a powerful pull but I’m working on a new set of letters now, the Ws—Willpower, Walking, and Withholding. (Okay, when I see something sugary and oozing with chocolate, I add Weep).

photo credit: carifesta.net

Growing Older

2010-04-28T17:33:00.001-07:00

Crepe used to mean paper in bright, streaming colors—

transforming the gymnasium on prom night.

Now it means skin without suppleness,

wrinkles that don’t disappear,

old age creeping across my throat and the backs of my hands,

settling in the crooks of my elbows.

Sagging used to belong to the old summer camp mattress,

all its bumps and lumps gathered at the edges

leaving an uncomfortable droop in the middle.

Now it’s my middle that droops,

like the skin on my thighs

and the wobbly tops of my arms

and both sides of my chin.

Age spots used to be something my grandmother had

and then my mother.

Now my own hands are speckled like a hen’s egg,

like a pear left too long in the sun.

Gray used to be

the color of storm clouds,

my father’s old army blanket,

the galvanized bucket in the pantry,

but not my hair,

not my very own hair which once looked

like wheat ripening in the sun.

It's A Scary Ride

2010-04-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

I've worn glasses for distance vision for years now but lately I've been holding printed material farther and farther from my face. Pretty soon my arms won't be long enough.

So, I took myself off to the optometrist and he prescribed new glasses for reading and adjusted lenses for distance vision. Because I live on a very limited income, I opted to have the new distance lenses fitted to my old frames. Of course, they were the only pair I owned so I had to leave them with the good doctor overnight. J drove me to the office to leave them yesterday and back again today to pick them up. I put them on and the floor came right up to within an inch of my face. I felt suddenly very short. "It will take a few days for your eyes to adjust," the good doctor said as I tipped about like a dashboard bobble-doll. "Call me in three or four days and let me know how it's going."

It was a scary ride home. I was glad J was driving.

Old age, we decided, might creep up but it's a fast creep and it starts early. Once you hit the top of the infamous Hill, Age stands upright and begins to gallop. Neither J nor I have hit old age full on (I consider myself middle aged as I plan to live till 120), but the signs are there. Our joints creak and ache on and off. My hearing has diminished and we both have problems with our eyesight. We both sleep less. And less soundly. We've both gotten in the car and found ourselves wondering just where we were headed, or forget, when we've arrived, what we wanted (albeit momentarily and only occasionally). I told J it's as though my house cleaning strategy (find something in one room, take it to the room it belongs only to pick something up in that room and cart it elsewhere) has leaked into my every day living.

I have always made lists but occasionally now I forget to bring them with me. Grocery shopping has become a game of too many loaves of bread but no milk, three dozen eggs but no butter, two jugs of orange juice but no toilet paper, etc. I don't always forget the list and I can always make use of what I buy, but...

J reports that she leaves things behind. Her pocketbook doesn't always go home with her, or she loops it around her neck when she needs the ladies room and forgets it's there until the strap gets caught on the door handle. I sometimes make three trips from the house to the car to the house for things like glasses, keys, or water bottle.

It's like being in an old, rusty car with failing brakes only its your kidneys, your digestive system, your recall that are wearing out. All the sanding and patching and repainting in the world isn't going to make the car new again. J jokes that she's on the 20-year plan. Me, I'm holding out for 40. It may take me that long to adjust to my new glasses!

Sometimes It's Not Funny

2010-03-02T15:31:00.000-08:00

J and I titled this blog after our reaction to most of the ailments and experiences we've been encountering in our travels out of middle age and down the long, slippery slope of our dotage. We laugh when we fall and when we get up because falling catches us so by surprise and getting up requires such innovation. We laugh when one of us forgets to do something and again when we do remember and then find we can't do it. We laugh at each other's wrinkled knees and raggedy hair, our pudding-bag-tied-in-the-middle bodies and our baggy eyes.

But, there are things that seem to be happening with more frequency that are NOT funny. One of them is continuous pain. Over the years I've broken three toes and my collar bone, cracked the femur in my right leg, and suffered a hairline fracture in my tailbone. My body is a better weather forecaster than the folks on the Weather Channel, aching in several places whenever the atmospheric pressure changes.

Back pain has been a fairly constant companion over the last dozen years but lately it's been steadily flaring. I've tried various remedies - exercise, stretching, resting, and medications that made me feel alternately like I could fly without wings or so sedated I could barely move. To keep my mind occupied with something besides the steady ache, I walk a couple of miles a day and do some Yoga poses first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I don't resemble anything like a supple cat or a downward facing dog but despite my awkwardness, the movements allow me movement. I have also begun using what J calls 'old lady aids' -a vibrating back saver for my computer chair, a memory foam cushion with a tailbone cutout, a magnetic wrap. I have a walking stick for helping me over uneven terrain when I go for hikes and I have a pair of spiked grips for my winter shoes so that I can maneuver over the ice without fearing one of those windmill falls that look ridiculous and end tragically.

It's hell getting old. If I had my druthers I'd have stalled at 30. That's where my mental image of myself lies. There I can still toss a 40 pound bale of hay, spend hours bent over weeds in the garden and an equal amount of time hiking or biking or meandering through meadows. I can get out of bed without groaning, get down on the floor and back up in one fluid motion, and stay up past 9 p.m. I can't stay there, though. I keep waking up at 64, wondering where my get up and go got up and went.

To Sleep, Perchance...

2010-01-24T11:15:00.000-08:00

"It's age-related," says J. when I tell her of the last few weeks of interrupted or non-existent sleep.

I'm not ready to concede. "I'd rather blame the cat and his insistence on draping all 11 pounds of himself across my feet so that turning from one side to the other wakes us both fully. I blame the economy - who can sleep when bills loom unpaid, when my income grows ever smaller and sorrier while prices climb as high as my eyebrows at the sight of them? And how about late night snacking? The lack of conscientious exercise? Reruns of MASH and Seinfeld? The ancestors that lurk just out of reach of the long arm of Ancestry.com, necessitating hours of extra research? And people who insist on calling my telephone number after 9 p.m.?"

"It's age," sighs J. "Once you get to where we are, your body doesn't need as much sleep. It gets plenty of rest during the day. You walk more slowly, you sit down more, you nap a lot. Age."

"But," I sputter, "I'm on my feet almost all day!"

"Yeah, but when you sit down do you drop your head in your hands and take a three minute nap?"

I had to admit that happens now and then. Once last week, right in the middle of the day, I stopped into the ladies room for some relief. I sat, dropped my head in my hands and woke with a jerk a minute or two later. I felt like a jerk, though no one had seen me.

"But," I explain to J's knowing grin, "I didn't get much sleep the night before. Because of the cat. And the bills. And..." but the rest of what I was going to say was lost in her guffaw.

I have to admit, too, that late afternoon naps are something to which I've taken a distinct liking. I curl up on the sofa, pull a throw over my shoulders, adjust the cat on my feet, and slip into a pleasant hour of unconsciousness where nothing bothers me. The world I awaken to is always a better place.

Perhaps it is age. I used to rise with the sun and run and run until well after dark. I still get up before dawn but it gets dark here in the winter at 4:30, folks. To go to bed well after dark puts me between the sheets at about 7:45.

The only thing I can think for it is to stop aging. As soon as I figure out how to do that, you'll read it right here. Meanwhile, shhhhhh... I'm napping!

Giving Me the Creaks

2009-12-09T12:11:00.000-08:00

The alarm rings, my eyes open. So far, so good. Then I try to roll over to turn it off. I hear a strange noise from somewhere nearby, a sort of whistling, sighing, moaning followed by a grunt. I realize it's me. My body is protesting out loud. In fact, lately my body is doing a lot of things out loud that it ought to do silently, or at least surreptitiously.

I remember smirking when an older friend of my mother's apologized at the start of each visit for any graceless sounds her body might make while she was there. She creaked and crackled when she sat down, she snorted when she laughed, she farted when she stood up. "God spare me," I prayed, worried that in 30 years I'd be apologizing myself. For myself.

My prayers were not heard. You should hear the sounds with which my body entertains the world! And not only is it becoming obviously noisy, it's also behaving in other odd ways. I have to get up off the floor in stages now, rather than in one fluid movement. First a roll to one side, a push onto the knees, an obligatory grunt, then the rise to my feet, all within reaching distance of some solid object. Getting up from a sofa or a soft armchair requires a mighty push and an unladylike sound. When I try to walk after I've been sitting down for some time, I find myself taking several ungainly steps as a hunchback before I can straighten up and walk like the runway model I've always longed to be.

When I was a child my mother made me walk about with an encyclopedia balanced on my head. She said it would improve my posture. Now my head feels as heavy as that encyclopedia and lolls about on my neck when I'm tired, as though it were about to roll off to bed without me. I am subject to sudden nap jerks (especially during long and completely unnecessary staff meetings), and fall asleep well before 9 o'clock every night. I'm told I snore.

This morning I got up and looked in the mirror. I snorted when I laughed. I did not recognize the woman there and was too tired to ask her what she was doing in my bathroom mirror at 5:30 a.m. My joints creaked when I reached across the bed to straighten the quilt. I groaned while pulling on my socks. By the time I'd pulled on my boots, my coat, my hat, my mittens and picked up the shovel to clear the front path, I was huffing and puffing. I did feel more like myself once the shoveling was done and I'd returned from a brisk walk in the cold air. I ascribed the mewling noise that escaped me when I bent over to remove my boots to the cat and blamed that odd little popping sound on the neighbor's dog.

I noticed in the last few years that my hearing has diminished a tad. It's a good thing. I figure that by the time I'm 102 none of these strange bodily noises will bother me at all.

The List

2009-10-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

We all grow older and with age come certain deficiencies. I have a very dear, much older friend with whom I spend time and as her eyesight has diminished (along with her hearing and her memory), certain aspects of her housekeeping and personal appearance have suffered. Wishing to spare my children the embarrassment of having to clean up after me or suffer for my sake, I have devised this list so that I don't forget to remember how to behave in my dotage. When I told my daughter about it she laughed. "Oh Mom," she said, "you'll forget where you put the list and then where will we be?"

Well, the list will be right here. I will just have to remember to read my own blogs.

1. I will wash the bathroom, the kitchen floor, the stove top, and the counters every day even if I don't think they are that dirty. I will pretend that vacuuming and mopping are part of daily my exercise routine.

2. Likewise, I will change my clothing every day and make sure to do the laundry often. I do not want to look good in what I eat!

3. I will practice facial gestures in the mirror until I can do them automatically. One can sometimes tell what another is saying by paying close attention to body language and gestures. I will have an "uh huh" face, an "oh no!" face, and an "of course!" face all down pat.

4. Just to be on the safe side, I will wear my reading glasses and hearing aids (if someday I have either) when company comes even though they may be uncomfortable and I will hate admitting to needing them. I know how exasperating it is to repeat something a half dozen times with ever increasing volume. It must be equally as exasperating to have no clue what the other person is saying (despite facial gestures and body language)!

5. I will always wear my false teeth (if someday I need those, too) when eating in the company of others.

6. I will announce my nap times beforehand so that I won't be caught snoring open mouthed or drooling on the pillow by unexpected drop-in visitors.

7. I will allow (nay, even encourage) my guests to bring food rather than force them to bravely swallow whatever concoction I thought I knew how to make.

8. I will turn around and check to see if I did indeed turn the lights off.

9. I will wear three sweaters, socks, and a hat rather than keep the heat set at a comfortable 92 degrees.

10. I will write down the address of this blog post and keep it handy. I know my days are numbered.

CSFS

2009-08-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've found myself reaching more and more for my magnifying glass. I've tried those drugstore glasses with the graduations of magnification but they don't help a bit. I know it's time for new glasses, possibly - gasp! - reading glasses but money is short and glasses are expensive.

This morning the kitchen drain was a bit sluggish. I hauled the bottle of Drano out from under the sink and looked at the directions. Who in the world do they think can see that tiny print? The letters crawled across the label like ants in grass. I tipped the bottle toward the light. I squinted. I held the bottle close, then far away. Finally I relented and reached for the magnifying glass. The ants stopped moving and formed letters that spelled, "Allow to work for 15 minutes then flush with hot water." Oh.

Later J brought over the Sunday paper. The headlines blared up and down the page so I know that a reporter went skydiving and lived to tell about it, there's a new police chief one town over and, look at this! a new eye wear designer has replaced a nationwide eyeglass chain at the local mall. Well, good. Now I can't afford designer frames just as much as I couldn't afford the chain store variety.

Who needs glasses anyhow? I use my magnifying glass for all sorts of things. It makes the eye of a needle look like a yawning chasm, shows me the number of ibuprofen I can safely swallow at any given time, illuminates the fine print on credit card contracts, and tells me things I don't want to know about what's in my food. I know eventually I will have to rob Peter to pay the eye doctor but until then my trusty magnifier will keep me in the know.

Life Is In the Details

2009-06-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

(my new patio, furnished with tag sale chairs, donated slates, umbrella, and table, and decorated with transfer station finds. Cost? Free!)

It's summer! One of the joys of the season is combing the multitude of yard or tag sales that flourish on the weekends. Because both J and I are frugal Yankees by nature, have somewhat limited incomes, and take delight in using discarded things in new ways, we often join forces on a Saturday or Sunday (or both) and take advantage of someone else's urge to clean out the house, the attic, the garage etc. Every week the local penny saver is chock full of ads for sales and I religiously circle them, mapping out a route for us to take and starring those sales that list some of the myriad things for which we are always on the hunt.

This weekend was no exception. Two sales in particular caught my eye. Both were in the same town and both listed all sorts of items we had on our perpetual lists. I circled them with glee, called J and off we went. We entered town from one end, hoping there'd be a parking space somewhere in the middle of Main Street (which in the small towns around here is never more than a quarter of a mile long) so that we could walk to either sale.

"Odd that there's no traffic," remarked J. "Parking will be a cinch!" Then we saw the sign. It was nearly billboard-sized. GIANT TAG SALE it shouted in red letters. The dates were printed below. J looked at me. "What dates did the paper list?" she asked. I checked.

"Oh. Ummmm...," I muttered. "It says here that the sale is next week."

J burst out laughing. This wasn't the first time I'd gotten pre-excited about a sale. The last two times we'd gone tagging I'd made the same mistake. "I never did check the dates," I confessed. "I just assumed they were this weekend." (Never assume. You know what it makes out of u and me.)

J snatched the paper from my hands. She looked at the circles and stars and started reading the dates for herself. Not only was the giant sale next weekend, so were two others that's I'd circled with my enthusiastic pink marker.

"That's it!" she exclaimed. "Next week I'm checking the paper. You can't be trusted."

You'd think, after all these years paying attention to every little detail required of home-keeping, raising children, working, and caring for myself, I'd be able to remember to check the dates in a tag sale ad. I am attributing the lapse to the aging process, hoping that as the years go by and all that's left for me to do is check tag sale dates, my expertise will triumph.

There's never a loss without some small gain, though. Instead of tag sales, we traipsed off to the transfer station where the price is always right and the date doesn't matter.

IPhone as Brain Replacement

2009-04-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

"If you put my working body parts together with those of my husband, you still wouldn't have a whole functioning human being," J half-joked the other day. We were sitting in the car and I was gearing myself up to open the door and get out. I've had pain in my left shoulder for a couple of weeks now and certain movements make me uncomfortable indeed.

"Add mine to the mix and you still wouldn't make the grade," I said, not joking at all.

Why is it that everything seems to be falling apart at an accelerated rate? Wasn't it just yesterday I noticed all these wrinkles? These age spotted hands? A sudden crick in the knee? The gray hair? I grunt when I get out of bed in the middle of the night, say ooof when I try to get up off my knees (the same second grader who remarked that I looked older than John McCain sometimes offers to help me get up off the floor). I creak when I bend over and creak again when I straighten up. Little involuntary sounds escape without warning whenever I move too suddenly.

And what's with the forgetfulness? Yesterday J's son Bri brought home a small parakeet, a lovely little blue and yellow thing in a green cage. "What have you named it?" I asked when I first saw it. He said he hadn't given it a name yet. We talked a bit about the bird's period of adjustment with two cats in residence, what to feed the wee thing and where the best place in the house was for a captive bird. Near a window? Hanging from the kitchen ceiling?

"What have you named it?" I asked, and then, "I just asked you that, didn't I?" Bri just looked at me and shook his head.

On recounting this to J, she laughed. "He was probably thinking, 'Oh lordy, I'll have to be taking care of her along with my aging parents.' "

I see that same sort of half-impatient, half-worried look on my own children's faces when I say something I suddenly realize I've said already, and probably a dozen times. This has been going on for years, true ("We know Mom, we know," was a constant refrain in our house), but all of a sudden it seems to be happening more frequently. Maybe it's because I live alone and I can't remember if what I'm saying is new to my audience or something I've only mumbled aloud to myself. I've been playing Scrabble and doing crossword puzzles and taking Mensa tests in an effort to keep my mind nimble and my memory intact - maybe it's because I live alone and I can't remember if what I'm saying is new to my audience or something I've only mumbled aloud to myself.

I want some magic pill to slow things down, to let me age a little more slowly. My daughter recently purchased an iPhone, the little computer in a handheld box that does it all. If man can invent the iPhone, surely s/he can come up with something equally impressive to prolong the life of our most personal computer; what I need is an iPhone brain implant.

photo credit: www.iphonestalk.com

2009-02-12T17:12:00.000-08:00

The phone rings the other evening. “How’re things?” asks J. When she asks me, I know just which things she’s referring to—the aches, pains, missteps, forgetfulness, pratfalls, and mishaps that come with our age territory. So I hedge my answer. “Good,” I say, “and you?”

“Well,” she says, “I’ve had a problem with dry eyes lately so I got some artificial tears. The other morning I stumbled into the bathroom, took the bottle from the medicine cabinet, tipped it up and squeezed. Nothing came out so I squeezed harder. Still nothing. By now I’m shaking the bottle and squishing it so hard my fingers hurt and all I get is a teensy drop. ‘It can’t be empty already,’ I say to myself and try squeezing some into the other eye. I’m practically strangling the bottle and all that comes out is a miniscule amount.”

She is laughing so I figure it’s okay if I laugh, too. “So, did you go out and buy more?” I ask.

“No. (Long pause.) I took the cap off the bottle. I was squeezing that sucker so hard I actually forced some liquid out with the cap on! Of course, when I did take the cap off, the stuff squirted all over the place.”

“Oh, by the way,” I say in an effort to take her mind off the hoot I just let out. “You know the other day you asked if I’d ever left my purse anywhere and didn't notice?” (Of course, she’d just done that very thing and called to warn me.)

She started to chuckle again. “Where’d you leave yours?”

“At the doctor’s office. And the very next day at a friend’s house.”

“You left it somewhere two days in a row?” J laughed.

“I did. And when I returned to the doctor’s office to get it, the woman behind the window laughed and said, ‘Don’t feel bad, dear. You aren’t the only one.’ There lined up on her counter were three black purses waiting for their owners to realize they were missing.

“ ‘What, are we all the same age?’ I asked. She just nodded.”

photo credit: erstories.net/.../2008/ 07/brochure_eye_drop.jp

Seeing the Light

2009-01-08T15:24:00.000-08:00

When I was 12, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I was thinking in terms of freedom, autonomy, and privilege, not near-sightedness, difficulty hearing, and general creakiness. How little we notice when we’re young!

I first realized I needed glasses when I was driving to the store and saw a small child ahead waiting by the side of the road. I hoped he wouldn’t decide to cross just as I reached him but I needn’t have worried. He was a mailbox.

I related this story to J the other day when we were comparing middle-aged notes. She confessed to having just the opposite problem. “I can tell the difference between a chickadee and a junco at 10 yards,” she said, “but I can’t see what’s right in front of me.” Then she gave me a for-instance.

One day a week, she cleans house for a client. She was waxing the furniture and noticed her dust rag was getting awfully wet. “It just dragged along every surface,” she said. It wasn’t until she went to put the can away that she realized why. She had dusted the entire house with pet repellent spray rather than Pledge. “The cans were the same color,” she explained as I started to laugh.

Things got worse as the week progressed. The very next morning, still sleepy and bleary-eyed, J reached into the cupboard for a packet of hot cocoa mix. She ripped it open, dumped the contents into a cup and added boiling water. The fumes from the instant chili mix made her eyes open right up. Another morning she took a jar of fruit off the shelf. She wondered why it was closed with a metal ring and a sealed lid, but she persisted in opening the jar and spooning the contents into a bowl.

Her first taste showed her her mistake. “You know those pickles you gave me in August?” she asked. I gasped.

“I ate half that jar for breakfast, anyway,” she confessed as I started to hoot.

Her husband came in on the last of our conversation. “You know,” he said to his wife, “I wish you’d take that blue tarp off the clothesline. I don’t know how many times I’ve looked up and waved, thinking it was Pauline coming over to visit.”

I don’t wish for the same things I did when I was 12. Now I just wish I didn’t look so much like a large piece of blue plastic.

Little Indignities

2008-11-30T09:10:00.000-08:00

The other day a student rushed up for a hug. Then she looked at me and asked, "Why do you have two different shoes on?"

I looked down at my feet. Sure enough, the left foot wore a blue shoe, the right one a brown. I have taken to wearing Crocs since a bout with plantar fasciitis so at least I was wearing the same style shoe. They were just not the same color.

I grinned at her. "It's weird shoe day, didn't you get the notice?" I asked. She shook her head. Then she took off down the hall to ask her friends if it really was weird shoe day. I ducked into my classroom. Later in the day I saw the same student in the hall. "I think you're the only one who got the weird shoe day notice, Ms. Clarke," she confided. "No one else did!"

Well.

J burst out laughing when I related the story to her and told me about the day she went to work with her skirt on inside out. If anyone noticed they didn't mention it. Finally a student asked her why she had those funny threads on her skirt. J looked down. Sure enough, all her seams were showing. She hustled into the women's room and righted herself. "It was dark when I got dressed," she made excuse. I know. It's dark in my closet, too.

As if looking foolish wasn't enough for the day, that night I got out of bed to use the facilities. I caught my foot on a basket of magazines that I've avoided on my nightly trips for the past 8 years. My balance, never good since an inner ear infection, deserted me completely and I fell. Fortunately a chair stopped my body and the china cabinet stopped my face. I crept painfully into the bathroom to inspect the damage, fully expecting to see the beginnings of a black eye and a split lip. I thought I detected some minor swelling and two red spots on chin and forehead but the next morning there was not a mark on my face. You'd think I'd at least have had a bruise to show for all the pain, some swelling and a shiner to brag about.

"That's how it starts, Memere," my daughter-in-law said ominously when I joked to her about being old and falling. "I was able to get up by myself, though," I reminded her, feeling suddenly much older. While we spoke, I moved the offending magazine basket.

I am not yet, nor do I want to be, at the emergency-call-button-night-light-on-clear-path-to-the-bathroom stage of old. J says we just have to take these things in stride. At least, she reminds me, we're still laughing at our mishaps. I just wish I wasn't laughing so often!

Signs Everywhere

2008-11-04T13:40:00.000-08:00

J & I were discussing general decline the other day and she remarked, "There are just no red flags. You can be driving down the street and suddenly you can't remember where you were going."

I know that feeling!" I exclaimed. "Just yesterday I was on my way somewhere and I found myself in town rather than on the road home. I thought, 'Where is my car going?' It took me a moment to remember that I wasn't on my way home."

"Well, wherever it is that I'm going, I'm not sure I want to get there," she said, looking down at her hands. She held them up for me to see. They looked just like mine - used hands full of aching knuckles, age spots and wrinkles. "But, apparently I'm going despite myself." We both sighed.

The next day, a particularly warm one for late October, she stopped by to chat. I was out on the glider swing in my yard, basking in the sunshine. I was dressed in the shorts I kept putting away and taking back out as the weather see-sawed through early autumn. She laughed when I stood up.

"Look!" she cried. "You have gnome knees, too!"

I looked down. Sure enough, my knees looked like they belonged to the Saggy-Baggy Elephant. I thought wistfully of the ultra-slim me of years before. I went inside to put on the kettle (and a pair of concealing jeans.)

"It seems like our ends give out first," J said over tea. "My feet ache, my hands ache, even my hair hurts. And look at it!" She pulled a hank of it forward. "It has no body, it won't hold a curl, it isn't even a color anymore."

We consoled ourselves with a piece of pie. Chocolate cream. I'd had a craving the day before. "At least my end is plump," I observed. "And it matches my knees." Pie does wonders for all things saggy - including self esteem.

Speaking of decline, if there is one book you are going to read this year, make it Peak Everything by Richard Heinberg. It might scare you (he talks about inevitables) but it also might make you take a look at our society as you would your aging body and start now to make what amends you can and plans around what you can't fix. For this decline, we've had plenty of red flags.

Falling Apart...

2008-09-28T14:29:00.001-07:00

It’s that time of year when nothing in my closet is appropriate for the weather. It’s too cool for my short-sleeved cotton blouses and too hot for a sweater over them. It’s too cool for shorts, too hot for corduroys. It’s too warm for a hat, too cool to go hatless, too chilly in the mornings for sandals, too warm at noon for shoes. It’s also that time in my life when clothing that fit just fine when I packed it away last spring no longer fits my ever changing shape. Things are “settling” as the doctor so gracefully put it.

I was griping about this to J who declared, “I know! Even things that fit don’t fit.”

Not only do we have nothing comfortable to wear, we’ve both discovered a newfound inability to cook. (The fact that we both had our first failure with brownies may have a direct link to our clothes not fitting properly, but we’re ignoring that on the basis that life is currently more uncertain than ever so we’ve opted to eat dessert first.) Anyhow, giving in to an urge for chocolate in the form of brownies, I opened a box of mix, followed the directions, and produced a pan of something akin to brownies but, well, crumbier. It was impossible to cut the baked result without having the bars disintegrate into a mass of sticky crumbs. They were delicious crumbs, mind you, but they were impossible to pick up without a fork. I took some over to J’s.

“I can’t cook anymore,” I told her, offering a pile of brownie crumbs to her on a plate. Her husband snorted. “We still have our teeth,” he said.

“I don’t know what happened,” I said after he stopped laughing. “Who can screw up a boxed mix?”

“You?” he ventured.

J took the brownies, forked a few mashed crumbs into her mouth and pronounced them delicious. “We’ll just eat them with silverware,” she said.

A few weeks later she called me on the phone. “Remember those brownies you made that came out all wrong?”

I hooted. “Have you topped that?”

“Well,” she said, “I made the mix according to the directions but when I poured the batter into the pan, it seemed awful thin. So I checked the box and realized I’d put in a cup of water instead of a ¼ cup. I thought, ‘I can fix that,’ so I grabbed the container of flour and added some. Only it wasn’t flour. It was pancake mix.”

I could hear her husband hoo hoo-ing and ha ha-ing in the background. “I’ll bring you one,” she said. (You know what they say about paybacks…)

The brownie was surprisingly good, especially with a scoop of ice cream to ease it down. Still, if these two examples are anything to go by, we may both be changing our shapes once again. I understand raw foods are really healthy. Why just last week a headline exclaimed that a woman who went raw lost half herself. I hope if I lose half of myself, it’s the half that can’t fit into my current clothes.

photo credit: seriouslygood.kdweeks.co

We Can't Because...

2008-08-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

We just can’t…

Finish that sentence with
1. clean the house because it’s too big (J) or organize it because it’s too small (P).
2. mow the lawn, rake the grass, bag the grass, distribute the grass in the garden rows because we’ve worn ourselves out thinking about cleaning.
3. weed the garden, pick the ten thousand ripe tomatoes, can the ten thousand ripe tomatoes, or eat one more zucchini because the garden is just about done producing anyhow and besides, some of those weeds are supposed to be edible.
4. do both loads of wash in one morning because to hang two loads on the line requires twice the energy.
5. iron those blouses that have been hanging around waiting to be ironed because once they’re worn just one time, they’ll need washing and ironing again.
6. make a big dinner because cereal and milk is just so much easier.
7. clean the porch (or the garage or the closets) because next year they’ll look exactly as they do now.
8. entertain because the thought of making large quantities of food and then cleaning up large quantities of dishes make us think of napping.
9. make the bed, because, speaking of napping, it’s what we like to do best in the middle of the afternoon and what’s the point of making a bed THEN?
10. do much of anything. It’s just too exhausting!

J and I have discussed this lack of energy a LOT. J has proposed the theory that now we’re at this age, we understand that we’re perfectly capable of doing all these things so we don’t have to. We don’t have to prove anything or demonstrate our abilities. So, though all these things need doing constantly and unendingly, there’s no need to really DO them because we know, should the need arise, we could rise to meet it.

I like that theory but I’ve put my lack of energy down to, well, a lack of energy. It’s not boredom based, it’s not based on laziness, it’s tied to everything else we talk about on this blog – body deterioration. It’s like our bodies are saying, “I know how to do this, I just can’t right now.”

photo: www.mypeopleclipart.com

Missing Grace

2008-08-06T18:01:00.000-07:00

Growing old gracefully is somewhat of an oxymoron. There is nothing graceful about wobbling behind a metal walker or hobbling with cane in hand. J and I have not yet, thankfully, reached that stage but there are other things that come to mind as particularly graceless.

Getting Up And Down. Getting down is not as problematic as getting back up, which requires much forethought and a new kind of dexterity. I often get down on the floor to play with the grandchildren. I’m fine sitting cross-legged or sprawled on my side but it requires both of mine and all four of the grandkids’ arms to get me upright again. I can lean on one hand, push myself onto my knees and from there manage (with a boost) to stand. Or I can grab onto something sturdy and haul myself unceremoniously to my feet. Neither way exhibits grace in any form, especially when accompanied by various grunts and whistling breaths.

Getting Caught. Not the old standbys like getting caught in a zipper or getting trapped in your car. Getting caught on the toilet seat is NOT the same thing. J recounts the time her mother slipped unannounced into the bathroom. Moments later there was a tremendous crash. J ran for the door and called out, “Mom, are you ok?” Mom walked out, adjusting her clothing.

“Of course I’m all right. I just got my jeans caught on the toilet seat.”

J looked at her.

“Well,” demanded her mother. “Hasn’t that ever happened to you?”

“Ummm… no,” said Jan. She was just 42 at the time and it hadn’t happened to her. She tried to imagine such a thing.

“You sit down and your jeans are around your knees. And when you lean forward your jeans hike up in the back and get caught on the edge of the seat and then when you stand up, the seat falls down behind you.”

“Oh,” said Jan.

Now she’s 63 and guess what. Today she slipped unnoticed into the bathroom and moments later there was a tremendous crash.

“Are you all right?” called her husband.

J didn’t even bother to answer. How do you explain such a thing? She did think to herself, “Oh my poor mother. NOW I understand.”

Getting Uncrossed. When we were young ladies we were taught to cross our feet at the ankle when sitting down. Then we learned to cross our legs at the knee, showing off our stockinged calves to boys at dances. Now we can’t do either because of the excess flesh we’ve acquired. Where did it come from? We have lumps and bumps and bulges and it all jams up when we sit down. Nothing crosses anymore; not our flabby arms over our bulging chests, not our chubby knees, not even our puffy ankles. However, we’ve both noticed that our toes are beginning to cross, probably from wearing the wrong shoes all those years. Now we know why native peoples go barefoot.

A Chronology of Deterioration, Part I

2008-07-27T18:18:00.000-07:00

P learning to control lip leak and J with her own invention of the nose tampon.

SOMEWHERE after fifty-five-ish one reaches the Stages of Deterioration, also known as the big D. One morning you wake up and you can't read anymore. You rush off to the eye doctor and he says, "Well, that's what happens."

That's what happens?

Uh huh, that's all they can tell us. And it's a hot ride downhill from there. You not only can't see as clearly as you did yesterday, you can't hear as well, or get out of bed with the same vigor, or get up off the floor without getting to your knees first and heaving yourself upright. You look in the mirror and it's as though you've just washed your face and can't do a thing with it, all of your vital parts have headed south on the express train and in the process certain body parts have doubled in number—chins, for example, or butt cheeks. Yesterday you had one chin and two buttocks; today you have two chins and four cheeks, three side grips, two distinct belly rolls, and upper arms that look like balloons with slow leaks.

You have pains in places you know shouldn't hurt, patches of itchy skin, spots of various colors in previously unspotted places. Your memory isn't what it used to be and besides that, your memory isn't what it used to be.

All things being equal, (this blog is not for those who die suddenly), the years from fifty-five-ish to when you're finally OLD are a series of little degradations. One word of advice. Hang onto your sense of humor. You're going to need it. When all the things you've taken for granted—your figure, your teeth, your eyesight, your control over bodily fluids (see photo above)—and your need for all those things that you (and everyone else) have mistaken for identity markers disappear, it's just you and whatever makes you belly laugh. And if you can't laugh, you'll just get depressed and either rush off to the first plastic surgeon that your fingers walk to in the yellow pages or you'll stay home all the time because your nostrils leak.

Don't think you are not going to deteriorate. You can't cheat it. But relax, it doesn't happen all at once, just mostly all at once. We (J and P) are here to share with you all the things our mothers never told us (or maybe they did but we didn't listen to them) about the aging process. We're both in our 60s, both gradually turning into people we don't recognize on the outside but still hanging on to our prime 40s on the inside. We compare notes constantly.

P bewildered: "I blew my nose this morning and I got this wicked sort of scraping pain in the back of my throat."

J in commiseration: "I know. It's like you blew your nose and you missed and the air got sucked in from the wrong place."

or

J in dismay: "I've discovered you have to put your bra where your boobs are. Even if you tighten the straps and try to haul them up to where they should be, they just fall out from underneath and you're constantly having to make adjustments."

P sighing: "We need to invent bra strap extensions."

We thought it might be helpful for those approaching the big D to be aware of some of the pitfalls of the aging process. We’ll post them as they happen to us and figure you can either sympathize or empathize, depending on how far along the geriatric path you are.

P & J