Digging in My Heals

Lately I’ve noticed that life has become like a game of tug of war, and I’m starting to lose. I’m pulling hard on my end, using my weight, burrowing my feet as far into the soil as I can to gain a little leverage, but the force is just too strong. The truth is that I’m on the dark end of forty and my husband and I are approaching our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

I’ve written blogs before about age. I’ve talked about sagging body parts, societal changes from the 70’s to now, and I did an entire series on tumbling over the hill and the inevitable loss of mental acuity. Most of those were written at least a couple of years back, when I was in my mid-forties. At that point in time my husband wasn’t intrigued by the thought of trying that little blue pill, neither one of us required the drug store readers, and fifty was only tapping lightly on the door, not pounding with the ferocity of a sledge hammer.

Of course age is really only what you make of it. I remember pondering ‘old’ people as a child. One of our neighbors had children a good five to ten years older than me and I found them terribly intimidating. They drove cars and went to high school and college, and when they talked they sounded super smart and way beyond my years.

And adults? Any one over the age of twenty-five perplexed me. My brain couldn’t even come close to processing the idea that they had ever been young like me. I couldn’t grasp that those ‘big’ people had played tag and dress-up and gone to school and that they’d had parents who’d scolded them and tucked them in at night.

Of course now I’m one of those ‘big’ people. But the funny thing is that I often still feel like that little girl, I’m just no longer perplexed. I get that we all have life stories, and we’re all in this same game of tug-of-war. We all live as children, grow up, and will at some point begin to feel the pull as the other side starts to win.

It’s possible that I have another forty-some years to live, and I certainly hope that my husband and I have at least another twenty-five to spend together. But, I know that these coming years will go a bit differently. Our body parts will continue to sag and creak, the gray hairs will crop up with more frequency, we will probably speak our minds more without worrying what others think, and I know we will do more sitting and eventually less working. When I think of it that way, not all of those consequences are all bad. And, who knows – my husband might get that little blue pill!

At the Top of the Hill? Part Two

Last week I addressed the possibility that once a person hits somewhere around the age of forty they are considered over-the-hill.  I’m sure the phrase  comes from the idea that the day you reach the big four-o pretty much symbolizes that your life is essentially half over.  During that first half you were clearly climbing the hill of life with the goal of reaching the top, and then baam! You turned forty, reached the apex of your life, and from that point on you headed down that blasted hill.

So here’s the deal. I’m over forty, and as I addressed in my previous blog, I basically get the concept behind the ‘over-the-hill’ comment.  Certain parts of my physical and mental being have begun to change. But I think I might have missed something.  What in the heck was at the top of that hill? And have I really and truly reached it?

I have to say – I don’t think I’ve reached it, and I’m not sure there really is a top.  From my experience and from watching others around me, those first forty years are generally about hard work and a search for ‘the dream’.  Most of us acquire an education, get married, possibly have children, and spend most of our time trying to figure out how to make all of that work.  And then somewhere around the age of forty – we begin to settle down. We become more comfortable with ourselves, we get a better grip on our relationships, and often times we begin to reach out and explore the world in a new and more open-minded manner.

Just last night I went out to dinner with the ladies golf league. One of the women who attended I had never met. She must have been around the age of seventy and had lost her husband of forty-three years just a year and a half ago.  The woman impressed me. Life without her husband had clearly been difficult, but she was doing her best to pick up the pieces and participate in this new chapter. Not only had she joined our golf league, but she also belonged to a garden club, a book club, I’m sure a few other clubs, and is currently looking into attending an over fifties activity group.

I know couples who picked up traveling as they got older and some who built their dream home. My father-in-law purchased a Harley when he turned 72, I skied in Europe with a large group of people who belonged to the over seventy and pushing eighty crowd, and I know numerous people who have
taken on a wide variety of volunteer activities or started a new career years after they turned forty. One seventy year old woman I know has recently written and published three novels and is currently planning a book tour. And I know several people over the age of forty who run marathons, including at least one man who just completed a 100 mile run in Virginia.  I’m more than impressed.

So what? We get older and some things stop working the way they did when we were twenty-five. My hearing might be fading, someday sooner rather than later I might have to buy myself a pair of reading glasses, I mumble to myself on a daily basis, and I’ve noticed that these days I have more gas than a hippo on a diet of beans and prunes. But I’m not over-the-hill.  Not even close.  In fact all of us are still climbing it, and personally, I don’t think we reach the top until the lights go out and we’re laying twelve feet under.

 

At the Top of the Hill, or Tumbling Down?

Back in the seventies, when I was just a little kid, I remember the angst with which people discussed turning forty.  Once a person hit that magic number they were considered over-the-hill – a term that in my mind created an image of some manor woman in a wheelchair rapidly speeding through their remaining years only to crash and burn at the bottom. And when a man turned forty not only was he over-the-hill but he also faced the onset of a  mid-life crisis.  From what I understood a mid-life crisiscould include anything from the purchase of an over-priced Porsche that hit 60 in five seconds flat, to an affair with the barely out of high school secretary from the office next door who wore size seven stilettos and a triple D cup size. Needless to say, the whole crazy idea of turning forty and beyond scared the hell out of me.

Of course I’m now over forty by a few years. Neither my husband nor I are in a wheelchair careening toward the bottom of some unnamed hill, and I’m pretty sure if we had a mid-life crisis, we had it together.  In retrospect it might have happened the day we took our oldest to college, or maybe it was just last month when we went out on a whim and purchased a generator for the house – woohoo! But, even though none of my preconceived ideas happened to me, I must admit I get it.  I get the over-the-hill thing, and in some ways I get the mid-life crisis.

Sure, turning forty isn’t the end of the world, and I suppose getting older does have some advantages, but I am sadly discovering the true definition of over-the hill – that some of my previously goofed up characteristics are only becoming exacerbated with age.  And I’m not talking just about my visible physical body – my sagging breasts, the chin that is turning into chins, the grey hairs that I try to hide, or those wrinkles that keep popping up that others sweetly refer to as laugh lines. Nope, I’m talking about a whole slew of other issues.

Let’s start with the brain and digestion and the deterioration that is happening within. According to the NSP 5^th Edition OEC Manual, a healthy ninety
year old has about half the lung capacity of a thirty year old, a sixty-five year old has lost nearly thirty percent in body water, those over the age of
sixty-five have a fifty percent chance of developing Type Two Diabetes, and by the age of eighty-five our brains have diminished by ten percent. I’m not even fifty and I’m a little worried that I’m already on the road to a few of those deficits. It’s almost as though the older we become the more we turn into a walking encyclopedia of deteriorating body parts and dysfunctional brain disorders.

For example, I’m pretty certain I’m developing ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). I’ve know a few kids and adults with an official diagnosis of this behavioral problem. They have a difficult time staying on task and really struggle with even the concept of sitting still for more than a few seconds – symptoms that I’m beginning to notice in myself. I swear I’m busy all day long but when I go to bed at night I can think of little I actually accomplished. Mostly I flit from one project or chore to another. My focus gets completely discombobulated. I’m in front of the computer where I have a minimum of five tabs open at any single moment. I flip from one page to the next until I get bored, stand up and wonder into the kitchen. I start to do the dishes but notice that my bladder is full and needs to be emptied. So I head off to the bathroom where I ignore the toilet because I see my reflection in the mirror and remember that my over forty chin has a new facial hair that needs to be plucked. While standing at the sink I find that the porcelain needs to be scoured, but instead of washing it I wind up searching for a clean rag in the laundry room where I see that the kitty litter needs to be changed. And so my day goes. It’s honestly rather embarrassing.  I feel like an old squirrel on speed!

And that’s all I have for today. My attention span has diminished to nil and I can’t stand it any longer. I must get up and find another project to not complete.  More later….