On Becoming Old

 

Turns out, I don’t really know how to “become old” properly. This isn’t something they teach you in school.  I mean, growing up in New York didn’t leave much time for dwelling on the inevitable. Besides, it was so far off. I mean, even my grands were both still here and remaining reasonably active.

Look at that kid. Why would he even think about growing old, aside from maybe becoming six and then attending school at PS-82.

And we saw at least one of our grands almost every weekend, when she prepared a sumptuous Sunday dinner in the Bronx.  Yeah, so growing up in the streets of New York promoted thinking about what you might want to do over the next hour, not the next 20 years.

And then, I “aged” into my teens and made it into high school, way up in Spring Valley, New York. Each stage of my life seemed permanent, due to last forever, with nothing beyond. And then that stage ended, and another began.  And so life went on, the way it does with most folks, lucky enough to stay alive. We had exceptional experiences not granted to everyone. We went to live in India for four years, a completely amazing period of our lives.  It could only be described as accidental.  We were living in downtown San Francisco (not bad for a poor kid from the street of New York, huh?) at the time. I had joined a management consulting firm which obliged me to travel a lot. We were working on aerospace management subjects, mainly connected with the Air Force and its Minuteman Weapon system.  For some reason, the US Agency for International Development was looking for exactly our kind of management firm—one with lots of large scale program planning and evaluation experience.  They wanted to send some consultants over to India to work with a group in India’s Planning Commission. The idea was to form a sort of internal Government of India management consulting group, with Indian staff and American consulting staff. And so we were hired. And someone at the home office asked me if I would be interested in going to India to work with that team. My response? “Sure, why not?’

And so, for four years we wound up living in New Delhi, India. We traveled some and mostly enjoyed that four years. It seemed as though we were there permanently.  We were young, in our 30s, and when you are in your 30s, life can be glorious.  Your 30s are like the perfect age period. When you are in your 20s, you’re really still “a kid”. But then you achieve that glorious age of 30. You are mature, adult, a thinking creature, while still being gloriously young.  I mean look at this glorious creature I was lucky enough to call my wife.

So, yeah, we were young and adventurous and now had that travel bug in our blood.  Not bad for a kid who never ventured outside of Manhattan or the Bronx for his first 10 years.

And so we eventually returned to our home base in the US and resumed “normal” life there.  We first tried living in the Boston area, but two three-foot snow storms in one winter suggested to us that we would rather not “grow old” in Boston. And so we moved to the Washington, DC region, where we remained for 30+ years.

Now during that 30+ year period, we remained firmly young at heart, even if our bodies began sagging a bit.  Because we both tried to keep ourselves physically fit, our bodies only sagged a bit by the time we entered our 60s.  Ahhh, your 60s . . . you’re not yet actually “old”, although 20-somethings might now describe you as such. And being in our 60s, we acquired grandchildren. Well, technically, we acquired our first grandchild just before turning 40. So, take that old age! Yeah, there’s nothing like a grandchild to define you as old.  Here’s two of my grands in one of the only pictures I have of them.

I mean, they clearly are “old”, right?  Whereas this lady, their daughter is clearly still young, right??? And she’s holding me, also young, but their grandbaby. Well, maybe a fatty young, but still young, right?

And then life seemed to fast forward. Yeah, it zoomed along, right through all those nice dinner parties, and that traveling around, and that 60s thing, and the even better 70s thing. Yeah, the 60s gets all the credit, but the 70s was really the decade of peace, and love, and all kinds of good things. Why, hell, we even managed to concede defeat and declare the War in Vietnam to be at least over, if not really “finished”.  And then came the 80s and the 90s and they seemed to be more the decades of our kids and grandkids than of us. I mean, we were here and still pretty active. But now all the large Life Events were Kid Events—Graduations, from high school, from college, even medical school. Marriages . . . all of our “kids” were getting married, thereby declaring themselves to be fully adult.  So, if our kids were “fully adult”, what were we?? Old maybe??

Well, hold on. Not quite yet.

But then something else began occurring—people we knew began dying: grandparents first, but then parents, then siblings, and friends. Yeah, we began losing some friends. Not a lot, but some, and that was telling—siblings and friends are at least your generation. And when your generation begins kicking off, then you begin to wonder.

And so, we retired and moved to Concord, North Carolina, to our “retirement home”—no, not that kind of retirement home. Just a regular home in which we could “retire”.  And, not feeling quite “old” yet, we did some traveling. We flew off to Australia to visit friends and attend a wedding of a close friend.  We zoomed off on a 9,000 mile road trip to celebrate 49 years of married life together. Yeah, we still had it.

And then we just settled into life as a retired couple. Oh we still did some traveling, and we entertained a bit, but mostly for family.  One of the things that happens when you “retire” is that you receive fewer invitations for things like dinner parties.  Now, to be fair, our observation is that “dinner parties” themselves seem to have gone out of fashion. We think they peaked during the 1970s, and maybe dragged on for a bit into the 80s.  Ahh, the 1970s . . .

Nonetheless, being “retired’ places you into that camp of “old people”, and the younger sets tend to mostly ignore oldies.  I guess what the two have in common begins shrinking to the point that even conversations become difficult. And so that super socially active period we experienced during the 1970s into the 1980s, begins diminishing to the occasional.  And your social life reduces to whatever your family provides—in our case a lot, but still less than those old days of the 1970s.

And then I entered my 70s. Mind, I still felt the same. Physically and mentally, we were both really fortunate in having so few problems.  All parents and grands had departed life by then of course. And even some siblings. In my case, I was the youngest, so my brother and sister left first. Then Carol lost a sister. Happily, Carol’s brother is younger and remains active and healthy, refreshingly still young.

As we moved out of the 70s, and into our 80s, our ages seemed to matter more. Happily, we still had our acts together and still had at least reasonable physical prowess.  When asked about my age, I invented a cute way of announcing—remember jack Benny from radio fame? Well, Jack Benny was forever 39.  And so, I became Jack Benny. How old are you?  Well, I am in my 45^th 39^th year (aka 84). And then we would laugh.  And so I proceeded, until I entered my 47^th 39^th year (aka 86). And suddenly that joke tired on me.  I became officially 86, headed towards 87.  And now, I find myself unable to decide what to do. How do I cope with being 86?? What am I supposed to be doing, or not doing? Can I do yard work? Well, maybe some, but not all of it. Can I climb ladders and go onto the roof to retrieve fallen limbs?? Hmmm, best not.  Can I enter our koi’s pond to do some work there? Well, can you still get into the pond physically without falling in? Yes . . . well ok then I guess you can continue.  And so it goes. See, you don’t get any formal instruction in school, on how to behave when you become old. It seems that, one day you’re still “Not Old”, and then quite without warning, you are officially OLD.  I keep waiting for distinct changes, but they all remain subtle. I find myself getting tired more easily after doing some gardening work, or maybe I just ache more, despite the fact that I work out to stay healthy. Well, gardening is different, uses different muscles I am told. Well, they didn’t when I was 40. Why when I am 80ish? And so it goes. I notice that, now, each time I pay a visit to some of my many doctors (yeah, when you get old, you have a full partnership of docs who care for different parts of you) I enter their office with a certain trepidation. Is my ophthalmologist going to discover something that keeps me from driving???  And on and on.

Yeah, it’s a lot of fun, while still beating the hell out of the alternative.  “What’s it like to grow old” is way more entertaining than, “What’s it like after you die?” Well, I guess the big test of weathering the storm called aging is the ability to laugh. As long as I can laugh at other people’s doings, laugh at the TV screen and even, occasionally, laugh at myself, that will have to be enough.  And I do laugh at myself a lot.  It seems useful, and even still fun.

So, go for it, folks. You too can become old. Just don’t take it all too seriously.