Old Age Day by Day September 18, 2011

We're going to the opera in an hour, our first one of the season.  It's a premiere, and didn't get good reviews, but I've learned that means little to me.  What I find about opera is it is so rich in resonance that I think about certain aspects for weeks or months or years afterwards.  I expect there will be something haunting for me with this one as well.  Everything is writ large with opera.  The passion, the tragedy, the absurdity are delightful reminders of our humanity, and our connectedness.  The music addresses the spiritual, the costumes and sets the art of living, the voices remind of us grace given to us, in small moments or big.  So, it's a beautiful day out, but I will be inside a large part of it, addressing these parts of myself that want tending and noticing.  Then back to dog walking.

Old Age Day by Day September 16, 2011

I wonder about this body of mine sometimes.  I didn't really walk yesterday, and my body is stiff and complaining.  It wants exercise.  I sort of heard it grumbling, but wouldn't listen.  If I want to feel really old, all I have to do is stop moving.  Today will be different.  I am resolved.  I have to engagements with friends, and I'm walking as much as I can in and around being out, and maybe after I've finished with the second, I'll mosey around by myself. 

I was thinking yesterday that I don't have one good chair to read in, and that doesn't help either.  I'm so short that my feet don't touch the ground, so I get myself in contortions to feel braced and comfortable.  I need good light and a chair that fits me.  Yesterday I was in a huge chaise lounge chair in the sunroom, and nothing was supporting my lower back.  I just wanted to be in a light, cheerful room, but I would have been better off hanging myself upside down from the ceiling, like a spider.  They probably have plenty of light, and they are supported by a web of their own making.  I'm going to solve this sedentary dilemna, and also the sedentary problem of not being active enough.  At least I can dance to my Gypsy Kings and tromp around the neighborhood.  Girl, get your dancing feet on!

Old Age Day by Day September 15, 2011

Another dreary morning. I guess Indian Summer is not coming to a theater near me. I'm thinking of museums, or practicing my Spanish or continuing to read my very interesting book about Wendy Wasserstein. Of course, there are chores, and looking at the sale stuff at my local luggage store. I haven't given up on trips entirely, just expensive trips. I'm looking forward to seeing a couple of friends tomorrow, and I have the weekend more or less booked. So life is good, and I appreciate it. But I'm not FEELING it successfully at this moment. Maybe the desert with intense sun is what I need. A trip to Death Valley.

In the meantime, I do have a primary goal of avoiding reading or hearing anything about the GOP hopefuls. No news is good news. And the news is so fictionalized and melodramatic that it is only good for raising the blood pressure. And that's not something I need. I, like a lot of Americans, am sick of sound bites and posturing. I attempt to engage with others seriously and I expect the same behavior from politicians. Since I don't get respect, I don't give any, at least these days. I don't watch any TV. If I want to see a President, I'll see the movie "Dave". It's so comforting. And yet. It takes an impostor with no agenda to get things done in Washington in that film. So it's not that comforting.

Maybe I'll just wallow in the miserable weather after all.

Old Age Day by Day September 14, 2011

I'm about to have a haircut, which means turbulence in my atmosphere of the highest order. I'm actually going to back to a stylist I haven't seen in a few years, because I'm not happy with the attempts at bubble cuts of the last two persons. I did the bubble cut in the early sixties, and I am so not having that again. It makes me look like a bobblehead, and I'd much rather look like a witch with stringy long hair that that. Wish me luck.

After that we are off to see our financial wizard, who will have nothing but dire news, and is further lowering our risk. Of course, I risk is still 100% in some scenarios, but hey, we all like to have our fairy tales. Ours seems to be being eaten by the big bad wolf. I don't see any woodsman on the horizon to save us. After that meeting, I expect we will both be so depressed we'll be glum for the rest of the day. It's a plan.

I also learned my Buddhist teacher has had a fall and injured her knee. I hope it is not the one she had surgery on last fall. This is why I say my whole goal in life is not to fall. And I mean it. Mobility is crucial. I'm going to pray it is not serious and she recovers quickly. Sometimes it seems that old age is about frustration.

Old Age Day by Day September 13,2011

I am having trouble adjusting to being back home. I feel unstructured. Today I have errands, and then my foster granddaughter after her schoolday, but there is this sense of looseness. Last night my husband and I tried to plan a trip for our birthdays, but everything we thought of, when we checked into it seemed too expensive. We've always wanted to see an opera at the Met in New York, but when we added the costs, it was so horrendous we gave up. We've always dreamed of staying at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite, but that was terrible too and we could only get a reservation for one night. Then we looked into Santa Fe, as we've wanted to stay a one of the great hotels on the Plaza, but, same thing. We gave up. So if we aren't going anywhere this fall, what are we doing? We don't know.

I assume this is part of the adjustment of retirement, and transitions are hard. I know we'll figure this out. But right now I don't know what I want to do, and all I see is others taking trips. I could volunteer more, and take classes. And maybe I will. When I do, I'll let you know.

Old Age Day by Day September 12, 2011

We saw the movie "Contagion" yesterday for five bucks. It was not as good as "Outbreak", but still interesting. How a movie about something so dire can be entertaining I'm not sure, maybe because it is in the back of our minds anyway, and we get our anxieties front and center, but without any responsibility - more disconnected and thus seemingly safer.

Today I weighed myself after skipping over a month, and I had lost a bit. But not what the doctor said to lose. I guess I'll have to do a sort of diet to get down five pounds. Just a salad for dinner or something like that. As much as I've eaten out recently, it's a miracle I've not gained. I attribute it to running around after a three year old and lots of walking. But now, with the little dynamo back home, I must take it upon myself to keep active. Back to the exercise video, and perhaps more cleaning around the house. I vacuumed yesterday morning at nine am and it felt GOOD.

The sun just came out, so my day just got better. I'll walk the dogs and take it from there.

Old Age Day by Day September 11, 2011

I'm back from being a grandma full time, and I miss my granddaughter, but am happily doing laundry and getting lists going for appointments put off, grocery shopping and reconnecting with friends. We rode many trains, a boat and now it's time for grandma to rest up. What joy a grandchild is, and how invigorated I feel around her! My granddaughter, daughter and I were in the hotel in side by side queen beds, so I overheard my granddaughter telling her mother, very seriously, that she did not want to die. She is 3 years and four months. Her mom told her she wasn't going to die. Then she said was she going to die ever. Her mom told her not for a long, long time. She said she didn't want to get old, was she going to get old? Same answer. She didn't want to get old because she didn't want red hands. Her mother said she was so young and she had many many years to live.

Next day I said to my daughter. I'm with her. This growing old business is disgusting! We laughed. But it was the essential question, and at three, she gets it. I pray she loves her life and it is very, very long. I don't believe I was as precocious as my granddaughter, but I remember worrying about the universe and life on other planets, and god and death and the atomic bomb. And I was pretty young. It's like Gerald Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall to a Young Child". "Margaret, are you grieving, over golden groves' unleaving".

It's hard to imagine not being in the world, and, without understanding our interconnectedness, terrifying. Our world is ourselves, but we sense, even when very young, that it is not the true world. My granddaughter seemed comforted by her mother's reassurances, but us older people do represent something disturbing - we're on our way to somewhere else, but where?