old age | Close to the Ground: Living Inductively

My hands are worn and my vest is worn. I was able to buy a new vest yesterday, but I am not sure what to do with my hands and the body to which they are attached.

old hands

old vest

What started this line of thought: A few days ago my husband Tom read an article that noted that people 65 and older are “elderly.” As I am going to have my 65^th birthday in a little over two months, I was not happy to hear it. “Older” I have been using for years. “Mature” I have used as a joke. “Old” I have recently accepted because to do otherwise would seem—to myself and to others—like I was avoiding reality, but “elderly”? I’m not going there. Then there were the articles in the New York Times: I read three of them about aging–one after the other. One article talked about retired people getting rid of possessions and traveling the world as carefree vagabonds. Another article talked about how the elderly (harrumph) can find pleasures in doing the small things in life like going to the public library. The final article talked about some Baby Boomers’ discomfort at finding themselves old.

Looking Backward: When I was a freshman in college, I translated Cicero’s De Senectute (On Old Age). I remember that I found the topic boring, that I wasn’t very good at the translating, and that I only got a C in the class. The good thing about this class for me was that it was Cicero and Catullus, and I loved Catullus.

I forget what Cicero had to say about old age, so I am not going to get any advice there, but I remember what Catullus had to say about love and I suspect that might help me as I look forward. As Catullus wrote to his beloved, I say to my husband: “Suns may set, and suns may rise again: but when our brief light has set, night is one long everlasting sleep.”*

ravens on the South Rim at sunset

Note: If you haven’t read Catullus, I recommend Catullus: The Complete Poetry translated by Frank O. Copley. Used copies seem to be available on the Internet from $.01 upward. A new copy sells online for $506.98. Somewhere in storage in Charlottesville, I have my own copy of Copley and perhaps, the notebook where I wrote my own translations.

* This excerpt from poem #5 is translated by A. S. Kline at http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.htm#_Toc531846828

I didn’t know there was going to be a Flexibility, Part 3. I had thought that I had explored my flexibility (and lacks thereof, various) sufficiently in Flexibility, Parts 1 and 2. This has not proven to be the case.

When I contort my arms while doing my stretches, my left shoulder hurts. I think I am losing strength and range of motion (e.g., flexibility) because I haven’t used my weights in over a week. We are on the road again, plus it was a) too stormy b) too cold c) too sad (see below) d) too cold (second round) to get the weights out of their storage space in the camper.
Yesterday morning, after re-stowing the–once-frozen, now defrosted–canned goods in the camper, my hands were so cold that I went back to the cabin, whimpered from the pain in my thumbs, and sat in a chair all day with a blanket up to my chin.
I am warm today as I sit here in the food court of the Myrtle Beach Mall, Kings Highway, Myrtle Beach, S.C. I sit here and miss my father and mother. How flexible is that? I might have gotten used to their being gone since it has been 20 years and more. Without my parents’ kind hearts and bright souls here to raise my spirits, I feel like I am in a cave without a light.

I’m late: I usually transfer the data from my old day planner to my new day planner by around January 1 of the new year. It’s some sort of ritual for me–copying names, numbers, emails, addresses from the old book to the new. Note: I also transcribe some of my passwords onto the day planner pages. Because of that, in a fit of sense, I am not posting my photo of the old and new day books together as I had intended. Someone might be able to read my little secret codes.

New day planner

Speaking about rituals: For the last several years, I have affixed a Post-It note with lyrics to the back of the day planner. This year, I have actually written the words on the inside cover:

There is a town in North Ontario,
With Dream comfort memory to spare,
And in my mind
I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there

For decades, I would understand the North Ontario part, and then I would hear Neil mumble the next lines: something, something, something. I didn’t know what the somethings were or meant, but I felt they were important and the words I couldn’t understand made me want to cry.

I do, however, understand the meaning of the song title: Helpless.

I grow old. Someone else wrote, “I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled” (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot). I used to think that line was a bit funny. Now, I get it.

I think I am fit and flexible. When I ask, people tell me my gait is fine. However when I see my shadow, I see a little something wobbly with the gait on my right leg.

Shadow

I can’t seem to stop walking into swamps of one sort or another, but then I remember, I love swamps.

Congaree National Park

I am helpless to stop people I love from dying. So, Ave atque Vale (check your Catullus) and Happy New Year.

Sunlight on sea foam, Myrtle Beach

Close to the Ground: Living Inductively

Lynda Terrill

Tag Archives: old age

De Senectute

Old Year, New Year: Flexibility, Part 3