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At the birthday party for our 85-year-old friend recently, he and I were talking about relative ages. He asked me mine and I told him. But before I said it I found myself about to say, "I'll be 83 on my next birthday." And I realized that, now that we're past the middle of the year, I automatically assign myself the upcoming age, not the number age I am right now. It's like the five-year-old who lets you know she is five and a half, so eager is she to reach that magic Number Six, when school begins and front teeth fall out and she is no longer a baby-ish five.
So why would I want to anticipate my own new number? No excitement awaits me when I will turn 83 at Christmas.
Or at least I hope no excitement awaits. Because at this age the excitement is more likely to be unpleasant than fun. I know this because I look around and see what is happening to the people I know. Even my ten-years-younger friends are experiencing that not-so-pleasant kind of excitement.
And I don't know whether I speak for everyone my age, but I have to say that after years (decades) of pretty much taking my body for granted, I am now excruciatingly conscious of every twinge. A sharp pain someplace, a dull ache someplace else, a twinge where there has never been a twinge—any of these becomes the harbinger of—not "the end" but the beginning of the end, the means to the end. The possible signaling of what will carry me off—though first delivering me willy-nilly to the machinations and chemicalizations of the medical fraternity.
More alert than I have ever been, I track the workings of every organ, every muscle, every tendon, every bone. It keeps me busy, I have to say. It's a lonely task, because who on earth would want to hear all those details? I'm not quite the "malade imaginaire", since I don't broadcast these "symptoms" or let them rule my life. Yet. But I am aware as never before.
This has to be a good thing, this hyper-vigilance. I say that because otherwise it looks like an obsession of the ego. So let's frame it as good, as an old person's way of staying healthy physically even as the mental stress does strange things to her reality.
Anyway, that's it for today. Today's report from the Land of Old. Was I not premature those ten years ago when I published Hesitating at the Gate, that report from the Land of Old? I see now that ten years ago I was not old at all. And ten years further down the line (can you do the math?) I'll look back on today's rude good health and see this present self as a model of vigour and strength.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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