As Time Goes By

Aging is both interesting and challenging. Living with it and through it, however, expands one’s understanding of life. Let me attempt to count some ways. If any of this is the least bit humorous, it is totally a mistake!

First, feet grow throughout your life. I blogged about that the other day. It’s worth repeating. Each time you get new shoes, measure your feet; they grow wider with age, a little longer, and with weight gain and falling arches, they grow flatter both length- and width-wise. If you haven’t bought shoes in a few years and are feeling pain down under, you may have outgrown your shoes. Check it out!

Second, weight gain is caused by several factors. Painful feet leads to more sitting and less walking; hence calories build up unless you find other forms of exercise (and blogging doesn’t count!) and eating less. Also, leg and back pains may cause less exercise and more step saving. Parking close to the mall door may save steps but not weight gain. Think of parking more strategically. Also, as we age and slow down, we simply need fewer calories to maintain our health and appetite. We may have more time to appreciate food and look forward to meals with more gusto, but restrain yourself!

Also, with age come maladies doctors love to medicate for. This may result in a reduction in alertness, vigor and exercise. Be aware of these developments. Of course, if you don’t care, write a blog and forget the other things!

Third, changes in taste for food. This is both surprising and delightful. In younger days I could not abide the thought of bleu cheese! Now I cannot believe I love it so. And herbs and spices in place of salt; Lord there is a whole new world to explore. Fixed incomes causes a brush with poverty; that requires a return to basics. How I had forgotten what is very, very good to eat. Take softly fried sunny side eggs in butter! Don’t burn them! The whites are firm, the yolks are runny. The butter makes the eggs soooo good it’s hard to keep from weeping! And then there are the accompanying English muffins well toasted and buttered while hot; the tiny pools of butter running to other crevices and ridge-pools! What a treat. Bacon of course is optional and doesn’t fit well with low income diets at $5 per pound. But softly fried or baked bacon to chewiness, keeps the fats running and luscious. What a meal. Who would have thought that eating on a strict budget would allow us to rediscover the best basics?

Fourth, time home is a blessing. If your eye sight is also getting fuzzy, it is even better to loll around the house. That way you get to spend more quality time with your grandkids, the dog, and your favorite books while not seeing the fraying rugs and draperies. While sitting in your favorite chair or sofa you cannot see its condition so remain there! Ignore the sagging springs. They have acquired that shape to fit you better.

Fifth, eye sight dims and yellows. Fuzzy becomes both a verb and a noun. Then you get new prescriptions and find that only surgery will help you. Dreaded with sheer terror (fixing your eyeball is really as easy as fixing a grape! Nice allegory, not!), the surgery is endured. A walk in the park. Big build-up but tiny procedure to the patient with miraculous results. That’s when renewed sight is astounding and one learns that light is white, not yellow! At least until the other eye gets surgery and is allowed to catch up with the other one.

Sixth, time or the sense of it. When retired every day is Saturday, or Sunday, unless you go to church regularly. One day runs into another and the only way to keep the calendar straight is to really get disciplined with your doctor appointments and drug store visits. While waiting for prescriptions you now have the opportunity to find over the counter remedies you once laughed at but now feel certain it is the missing ingredient in your life! Meanwhile, if time gets away you still, try memorizing your doctors’ names and spellings. With an influx of foreign trained medical personnel, I’ve wondered long on how to spell my doctors’ names; it helps to do this, too, because now you can practice understanding their dialect!

Finally, hearing acuity. The yelling you hear around older folks are not arguments. They are attempts to hear and make sense of what another person has said. This line of discussion can take a lot of time and opens many other topics to exploration whether intended or not. Humor is often the result although not to the direct participants! They are in a funk with each other because they don’t know how they got to their point of disagreement, or even what it was about. That’s when memory acuity enters the picture, but this is for another day.

That is when I remember it.

August 29, 2012