The Best and The Worst of Aging

12/8/2022

Do you know “Women’s Older Wisdom”? You must request to join this Facebook group and I recommend you do so. WOW is hosted by Pat Taub and her page is often poignant, funny, artistic, or thought-provoking. Sometimes I post my things there to get a wider audience than I have here.

Lately Taub is asking her readers, “What have you found to be both the best and the worst aspects of aging?”

I thought about this yesterday as I drove to visit friends. If I was better at finding Bluetooth WHILE I drove, I’d listen to more podcasts and think less for myself so there’s that. Also, on my way home I got sleepy so I sang Christmas carols. Do you sing when you are alone in a car?

Anyways, I’ve been “old” for quite some time and I still can’t believe it - but I groan when I get off the sofa after binging Masterpiece Theater. I never drink coffee after 2PM. I just came through months of dealing with a garfed-up digestive system that has become remarkably “older person” sensitive. Yet in my soul and heart, I don’t feel a day over 54.

Aging, as many of us who are getting towards the bottom of our toboggan runs are noticing, is not an orderly decline done in lockstep. Aging is more like waking up to a town we recognize but don’t know. We try to negotiate this new place but soon realize we are constantly recalibrating old habits and goals in order to get around this new place.

For instance, I have become inconveniently timid in a car as either the driver or passenger. Basically, I don’t trust other people to stay in their lanes - and I’m occasionally right about this, right? My heart also beats fast at unprotected left turns on busy streets. The reality is that I’m a good driver; I’ve driven 50 years without even getting a ticket. Well, once a cop pulled me over for driving out of a library parking lot at dusk without my headlights on, but that was just lame. I’ve been in two car accidents, both fairly serious but neither was my fault. Maybe this is why I don’t trust other drivers?

Expressway driving anxiety is an aspect of aging I don’t admire or enjoy, but it’s here. How about you?

I love that here where there is less time, there is more time. We sleep later, get up later. There’s time to make better breakfasts. Today I had oatmeal with fresh cranberries, raisins, and cinnamon, and a prettily sectioned orange on the side. Then after I ate I spent 40 minutes cleaning the kitchen including inside the fridge where the cranberries had tipped over. I listened to jazz and thought about writing this while I worked. Enough time to do small things well? What a luxury.

I did not think I was a person who needed to have grandkids, but now that I have four of them, plus my two local young friends– I absolutely love having kids in my life again. There’s a reason to look at kid books in a bookstore. I’m allowed to buy cool pads of paper and markers as much as I want. Being a sidebar to the imagination and happiness of kids sparks small adventures and messy creativity for me, too. I like this.

I like that celebrating holidays is no longer my job and responsibility. I mean, prepping things so little kids learn the wonder and meanings of special days, that was cool. But I’m just as glad to no longer make the show happen. We’ve had a six-foot-tall faux tree for twenty years. This year I bought a much smaller tree and the cats love sleeping under it just as much as under a tall tree. Meantime, Len gave the tall tree away via Freecycle to a family with an iffy van and several kids and that’s cool, too.  

I’m less crotchety than I was when I was young and too often stressed. I don’t expect all the people I love and like to do things that way I choose to do them. I’m more angry at the diddly nearsighted prejudices of people who don’t like other people. I hated mustard when I was young, but I am beginning to respect the tang it can bring to the party.

It’s too easy to think we know enough now. It’s too easy to become patronizing. But this is a new town and we don’t.

“What have you found to be both the best and worst aspects of aging?”