Getting Older?

            I just noticed I am growing older. There is a French expression: “coup de vieux” which means “a hit of old.” What this means is that we tend to plateau for quite a while, nothing seems to change much, and then suddenly within a day or so we get older. This just happened to me. I was priding myself at how young and vital I felt, and then last week I told a friend, “You should join my Bible class, we're studying Islam.” And she said, “I am in your Bible class!” Oops! Even though I wear hearing aids, I strain more to hear people, and even though I wear glasses, I squint more to see fine print.

            And now something else is beginning to happen. I was always the kind of person to go everywhere, do everything, meet everyone—ready for that next adventure. I have become hesitant about leaving my home. I was the first woman to be inducted into the San Diego downtown Rotary back in 1987 and hardly ever missed the Thursday lunches; now I think twice about getting myself up to go and have begun to miss meetings for no other reason but that “I'm a bit tired today.”

            Last year I attended my granddaughter’s wedding in Toronto with no problem and much joy. This year I'm hesitating to go to my youngest grandson's graduation from medical school, also in Canada. It feels like “too much.”

            So the question I keep asking myself is “should I push myself or give in to staying put?” I don't know the answer. On one hand, I don't want to give up on the pleasure I get from doing fun stuff, but, on the other hand, I wonder whether I can give myself permission to stop running around like the proverbial chicken without a head and stay home with a good book—which is in fact my favorite occupation. I try to live intelligently. By this I mean I eat healthily, I exercise regularly, my brain is stimulated (I'm writing this column!), I have friends… So what's wrong?

            I have often wondered why some of my healthy, elderly friends don’t go to cultural events when it is so easy with the White Sands bus providing the transportation. All of a sudden I understand: an evening out feels like too much effort, and the idea of going home and doing nothing sounds like heaven.

            They say that at my age (I’m 87), whatever does not dry out, leaks! So far I am doing neither, but I fell yesterday in my apartment—I was carrying a heavy flower pot and slipped. I did not hurt myself, but my balance gave way. I was sitting on the floor with the usual feeling of shock when one falls thinking, “Shoot! I'm getting old!”

            Somehow neither my age nor my new feelings compute. Just yesterday I was a spring chicken and suddenly I have become an old hen. The ad for my upcoming book signing at Warwick’s calls me a “Trailblazing Octogenarian.” I was literally taken aback. Is that me? So my job now is to mentally catch up with my chronological age instead of being in denial that I too am aging. The signs are there, shall I honor them or ignore them? I still have not decided.

Caring about Not Caring

The things I used to care about

I no longer do

but I really do care

that I don’t care

about the things

I used to care about

Copyright © 2014. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.