A New Bloom

I’ve been thinking a lot about getting old. There are things that happen as the days go on and it seems easy to fall into the rhythm of it all. Achy joints, flabby skin, grey hair, medications … yet the changes one sees in oneself can be subtle that the years go by slowly in the mirror. It’s easy to ask the question do I look that old when looking at television shows or movies with people of the same age.

Every ache creates concerning opportunities: what is that? should I call a doctor? am I being dramatic? did (grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle …) ask these sorts of questions when they were my age?

The conversations Alan Arkin’s character asks in E8 of S1 gets to it … do we slowly go a bit insane as we get older and ask the big questions?

To avoid the madness of it all, I plan. I make lists, I check things off the lists. I do old people things, like spray my lawn to keep the gophers at bay. The difference, generation-wise, is that I have a hose sprayer that says insecticide on it but it’s full of water, Dawn dish liquid, and castor oil, rather than insecticide.

And I’m grateful for every ache, every moment, every panic overcome.

Because it means I’m still here and still have a chance to beat my grandmothers’ records at life. They were both in or near their ninth decade before Leaving.

I already have my list of things that I will take up when I’m 100. No spoilers.