It is difficult to choose which day to begin with, as I believe I realized I was old in the middle of the process, somewhwere between denial and horror. Yes, I saw this creepy being in the mirro, but I have a small mirror and I can't get close ot it due to the sink and I never wear my glasses when I look in it, so it wasn't really disturbing. I knew I was turning into a n apple shape the size of the Rockefeller Plaza globe, but there are ways to camoflage the lack of a wist: long black cardigans, raincoats year round, and clothes so big you look lost in them. i'm so short that i still fit into the large juniors and petites, so I told myself I was still a callow youth. Being forced into plus size might have awakened me sooner.
then there was the dermatogist. We became intimate friends. I was in her office so often I began giving advice about her daughter. Things grew on me. Really strange craters and hillocks and topographical countries. I realized if I was ever in need of having my body identified, there were so many markers I was in no fear of an unmarked grave. Things got burned off, scraped off, dug out, biopsied. Sometimes I could sense my dermatologist was excited when she dug something out, but I tried not to think what that meant - a talk at a conference with my slab of skin on a screen? Eventually, I had a basel cell carcinoma on my leg, which was the least worrisome form, but she'd nicked a nerve and on a visit to see our daughter in Manhattan, I was in acute pain for all the miles we wandered above and below ground looking for the right subway, or figuring out what streets were missing on the tourist map. Greenwich Village, by the way, is as convoluted as those corn mazes at Halloween. I once stayed in my daughter's flat to help my son through a surgery and though they were a block and a half apart, I turned the wrong way at the corner every morning for a week. Somehow I could get back easier, because there was a video store on the corner and I always knew I'd gone too far and backed up.
Where was I? Oh, yes. The age thing. There's also the medicine. THough taking it seems by the label warnings far more dangerous than getting a heart attack or stroke, I am now on a statin, a betablocker, an omega fish oil pill the size of a football, and my thyroid drug. When I get symptoms now, I don't know if it's the drug or a dread disease, and frankly, I don't want to know. I have an old age health book next to the bed, and I self-diagnose, and will continue my habit of not sharing any symtoms with my doctor until I am screaming in agony. Because what is he going to do? Add another drug to the cocktail. As it is I have to rest on a daybed in the bathroom as I'm swallowing my meds. I can't stand up that long.
Now, I'm not saying aging is all bad. there are the grandchildren, senior discounts, the possibility that your adult kid will pay for dinner (though that's iffy and I always go to the bank first), and the fact that makeup now makes you look like a corpse, so a swipe of lipstick is all you need. I never liked the grooming thin, and was terrible at it. I never dyed my hair, and now, if I did, I would look like Nancy Reagan. Enough said. So the gray in my salt and pepper blob (kind of like a bob only messier), is distinguished. Well, they say that aobut men, so why not women?
SO this blog will be a day by day report from the trenches, and you other soldiers out there will, I hope, empathize or at least realize you'll never walk alone (Sound of Music with the big nun singing in a suspiciously deep voice). WHen you age your voices goes down an octiave for every decade.
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