I can't remember when I first noticed older women's obsession about paying with correct change. But I do remember making a mental note to either avoid getting into a line behind such an old dear or to be extremely patient when I did. And now I seem to be that, ahem, not-quite-so-old dear. When did it become so important to me to micro-manage my coins? When I was younger and had to use the laundromat, I hoarded quarters and dimes. Or lived in different places traveling on tollways, I was happy to grow my stash. (Except pennies. Can we all just agree that, charming though they are, pennies need to go away?) But those days are gone along with pay phones. So now, I can't get rid of coins fast enough. Have I become so weak in my advancing years that I can't handle being weighed down by metal currency? I don't think so. I think they're just another form of clutter I find it difficult to live with. And while we're on the topic of managing minutiae, compartmentalizing clutter, let me confess , to that end, I have also recently purchased...a pill organizer. Now I'm not near the critical mass my parents manage, along with memories worse than mine (if that's even possible). Like many my age I have some maintenance medications along with vitamins, allergy meds, those baby aspirin doctors like to suggest we take, etc. And in my apparently very busy life, opening all those bottle caps is just cramping my style. So I've begun using the pill organizer. Now, I only have to uncap all those bottles weekly rather than daily - some of them twice. A quick dump into the palm of my hand and bam! Done and out the door. Or off to bed. Whatever busy activity (dreaming about my next concession to old fartdom?) I have lined up. Actually, let's not think of it as being an old fart. Let's just call it streamlined living.
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So, you have a child and born with him are imaginings of who that pudgy little bundle might become one day. And, because you have no other real reference, you start with the path you took. A word of caution to those with real young ones - hold on to those dreams loosely. My oldest is about to turn 21; my youngest is 18 (God knew two were all I could handle). My path to 21 included captaining high school sports teams, graduating and going directly into college - knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up - and joining a sorority. My husband's was similar, exchanging sports for arts (and the sorority for a fraternity - though he might have enjoyed the sorority house). My kids' paths are markedly different. My son is taking a break from college after two years to reassess what he really wants to do. We've discussed what that break could look like - just working, joining the military or doing service work domestically or internationally. My daughter, who graduated high school early, has her sights set on just one college with an incredibly tight admission rate and average age of first year students at just over 20 years old. So, while my husband and I couldn't wait to fly the coop, it looks like my kids will be around a while. And, the truth is, so many kids who go straight into college end up back home for years anyway because they can't find a job. I think it's telling that the Affordable Care Act allows kids to stay on their parents health insurance plans - even without being students - until they're 26 years old. The Feds raised the full Social Security retirement age from 65 to 67 for folks born in 1960 or later, so more seniors are staying employed, reducing opportunities for the young workforce. Or, those seniors lost their shirts multiple times in market crashes so they can't afford to retire. My point is, you can guide your child along in their younger years and even through the treacherous teens. And while everyone cautions their youth will pass in the blink of an eye, a lot can happen in 18 years. So whatever you think the world might hold for them as they blow out that first birthday candle, don't be surprised by the way things are when they toss their graduation cap. I would really like to meet the folks whose kids became exactly what their parents had imagined. And then I could ride off into the sunset on my unicorn. My 18-year-old daughter was away recently visiting a friend. And the decision to let her go could not have been more difficult. For starters, she had to drive 4-5 hours which she'd never done. She'd probably clocked an hour at a time behind the wheel at best. She's a good driver, but somehow letting her drive farther and farther away from me, alone, on a road full of crazies was a serious obstacle for me. What if she broke down? Or had to visit a dark, sparsely populated rest stop? It certainly didn't help that, when I was a college student driving between Austin and Dallas, a trucker, throwing cans of something out the window, played a very scary game of cat and mouse with me until I veered off an exit at the last minute to get away. What if she encountered THAT? Now, mind you, she'd already spent a week this past summer at a college intensive in California. Without a car, she had to navigate the Los Angeles public transit system. And stay with a host family I had never met. She did beautifully. But driving through the cornfields alone for 4 hours? Are you kidding?!! Compounding the issue was the forecast of an ice storm and the tricky business of timing her travel so she would arrive before, and come home after the threat was over. Which, if you've ever had to travel during bad weather, changes by the hour. The morning she was set to leave, did not look favorable. But, then I remembered what it was like being her age, being more fearless and confident - right or wrong. I remembered one icy New Year's Eve, my mom admonishing my decision to head out with my date in his Trans Am. I thought she was being overly cautious and, in the end, we made it home just fine. And so I let her go. It's one of those incremental steps a parent learns to take in allowing their children to grow up. And, believe me, it's harder than most we take when they are small. Then, we generally hand them off to someone we trust. As they become adults, we hand them off to themselves. And, if we've done our job right - and all the stars align - they, too, will be just fine. Image: Zoe Meek I love the Jimmy John's commercial with the old man in the retirement home. He calls the sandwich shop for delivery and, before he's hung the phone up, the sandwich arrives. After all, aside from their sandwiches, the chain trades on its zippy service. The old guy, without missing a beat, yells - in his best I'm-nearly-deaf voice - "what took ya so long?". Classic grouchy old person. So it is with some regret that I feel my own version of this coming on. And though I'm not grouchy necessarily, my critical quotient is on the rise. Could grouchy be around the corner? For example, when I watch TV I often disagree - aloud - with what's being said. Could be a wet-behind-the-ears newscaster. It drives me crazy when they can't pronounce things they should know - like Aleppo. Seriously? How do you not know that? Or the outrageous use of the word "literally." Or an ad teetering on the brink of a false promise. I could go on and on. I remind myself of the aforementioned old coot or of those two grouchy old codgers from Jim Henson's Muppets. You know the ones - they would sit in the balcony and heckle and critique everything. The only thing I lack is the cracking up that follows heckling. Just laughing at themselves. Maybe I should adopt that. I don't know about you, but I've reached an age when I look back and think "I've lived many lives." I generally categorize them by decade:
As I've gone through adulthood, I've been a southern sorority girl, nightcrawling Manhattan club fly, mommy, advertising writer and craft shop owner. I've lived in the Northeast, Southwest, Mountain West and Midwest. I wonder, does everyone have a pattern of change? Does everyone look back and think they've lived multiple lives - even those of us who grow up, live and die in the same house? My husband is younger than I, a fact he loves to point out at any opportunity (smart fellow, huh?). And, that aside, the older I get, the younger everyone else gets. It's a numbers game - if the current life expectancy is around 80, then after you reach 40, forever after there are more people younger than you than older. And it only gets worse.
The current President of the United States is younger than I am . I don't know about you, but for most of my life the President was an old dude. *sigh* So I express excitement any time I find out someone - particularly public figures - is older than I. And I generally play this little game with my husband, just to be sure he knows I'm not the oldest living person on the planet, despite his less-than-gentle ribbing. Driving to work this week, we both heard Michael Stipe's birthday announced on the radio - born a year before me. Yippee!, we both exclaim (at least my husband knows enough to share in my glee). I mean, the lead singer of REM is more senior than I and he's still cool, right? I want to be the person for whom age is "just a number." But I find myself using age as a barometer more and more. For example, if someone makes a bonehead move, the first question I tend to ask is how old said person is. That will determine, for me at least, if we can chalk it off to youthful naivete or if that person is old enough to know better and, therefore, just clueless. (And believe me, I am said person more often than I'd like to admit.) Does that make me an ageist? For now, I will continue to play my "who's older than I" game, though with diminishing returns, I'm afraid. Oh well, as they say, it's better than the alternative. Take that Michael Stipe. Remember your senior year in high school? That unique period in your history when you were on the cusp of becoming a whole new you? Well, this is like that with arthritis.
Shenioritis is one woman's account of grappling with being suddenly senior. As I enter the various rings of senior citizenship (at 50, the AARP card arrives; at 55, discounts at Denny's) perhaps we can laugh and lament together all the things no one told us about. For example, how can 60 be the new 40 when my hair is falling out? I do hope whomever happens upon this earnest account of aging with some semblance of grace will comment and share experiences. Let's document our senior adventure together - if we don't write it down, we'll forget it. Probably by tomorrow. Thanks for reading. |
d.a.meek
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December 2017
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