Tag: Aging

  • Date Night!!!

    Rather on the last minute, the kid got invited to a slumber over the weekend. Great for the kid as she is getting to the age where she’s not so keen on spending every minute with us. So, her getting a night away from her folks was a huge victory!

    And it wasn’t too shabby for us either. With the kid gone on a Saturday night meant that we could have a fully guilt free date night! And you know what, we looked up and found a new place to go. A place with cocktails, and an adventurous menu, and it wasn’t too far from us up in Northern Harlem. It was perfect.

    Then it rolled around to time to start getting ready, which caused us to admit that we really just wanted to order out and watch a movie on the couch. Yes. We had the opportunity to go out, and we decided not to because we didn’t want to.

    This has led to wonder of the rest of the weekend; are we getting too old? We had the opportunity to go out and do something we like doing, which is trying new places to eat, and the restaurant wasn’t far away. Not like we had to go downtown or anything. And this wasn’t cute “Let’s stay in a snuggle on the couch” even. This was ordering food and sitting on the sofa in silence as we watched a movie.

    I would hate to think that we, a couple in our late forties, can’t muster the energy to go out and get and get drunk anymore.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Surprised I’m Here, Gotta Have Goals, and Sports

    (Nothin’ to do, nowhere to go…)

    I’m forty-seven years old. Not ashamed of my age, and other than a slight pot belly, I think I look rather good for my age. But for the life of me, when I was a kid, like nine years old, I never imagined that I would be this old. Well, sometimes I thought I’d be really old, like eighty, walking with a cane, shuffling around, being all grandpa like. No, when I was a kid, I thought I’d be in my twenties, and then, nothing. Thirty seemed like it was so far away, let alone forty. That some how, it couldn’t be possible that I would live that long. Not that I had some death wish, or believed I was doomed. No, it was more a matter of time. It’s time, the time it would take to become old seemed insurmountable. There just was no way that I could become that old… When I think about me at nine year old, I think he would be surprised that I am still here. And so bald…

    But the thing that makes getting older tolerable, is having a goal. Something to work towards, or look forward to. My Grandma Groff used to say that all the time when she would come and visit. That and it helps to have some spending money. But the goal thing, having something to accomplish, that has made a big difference if the last year for me. Not that it’s completely gone, but I don’t have that feeling of flounder much any more. That I’m just passing through my life, instead of being active in it.

    Growing up, we were a sports family, and then there was me; the un-athletic kid. I mean I tried. I tried my hand at baseball and basketball up through junior high. I really did love playing baseball, but I wasn’t athletically gifted; Batting ninth and right field were my lot. I took tennis lessons in high school, as my dad believed that we should do something physical, and not be a total loaf. I was pretty good at tennis, but I didn’t have the killer instinct for me to actually be competitive. After high school, I stopped playing any sort of sport. And then I had a daughter, who now is very into soccer. Which is cool, because I really like watching it. In my kid’s mind, watching soccer must mean that I know how to play soccer, right? I had written a week or so ago about helping the kid get ready for the soccer club try out. I enjoyed that, mainly because I was spending time with my daughter, but it was good being out and active. I also see in her mind’s eye that she is starting to think I am an athletic type of person. I enjoy this admiration I am receiving from her, but I know that in a year of two, it’s going to dawn on her how awkward and uncoordinated I really am.

  • Short Story Review: “Beyond Imagining” by Lore Segal

    (The short story “Beyond Imagining” by Lore Segal appeared in the June 10th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Bénédicte Muller

    A few years before my mother passed away, we got into a conversation about getting older. She was around 70 years old at this time, and happily enjoying her life in retirement, as well as being the matriarch of our family, but she especially enjoyed being a grandmother. “Is it all what you hoped it would be?” I asked her, to which she responded, “When I got married (at 19) I never thought I would live past forty. This is all new to me.” My mother could be dry, but at the time, I wasn’t sure what to make of her answer. Since her passing, and my own aging, I have come to understand that you can’t get excited for something you aren’t able to imagine.

    Lore Segal’s “Beyond Imagining” posed this thought early in the first section, when the character Bridget, speaking about death states, “I think that the reason I think I won’t mind being dead is that I can’t imagine it, and I don’t think we know how to believe what we aren’t able to imagine.” This idea, this through line, plays role in the four sections of this story, which follow a circle of elderly women friends in New York, as they handle, deal, and accept their current lives.

    I know that the above description is, maybe, an unfair simplification of this piece. The story exudes a wonderful melancholy as it lets us experience the world of these women. But it also has a very delicate touch, showing the importance and power of their friendships, how these relationships at this point in their lives sustains them, and gives them strength to deal with issues and discoveries they did not anticipate. Though this piece is not very long, the characters intertwin in each other’s sections, and I found this structure added a depth of authenticity to the friendships.

    When I finished reading this story, I wanted to hug these ladies. I wanted to hold their hand, like a doting son would, and listen to them talk. But the emotional power of this story is that these are the conversations these friends have when it is only them around. These aren’t salacious or confessionary conversations, but conversations friends have when the sharing of experience is the intimacy. It’s the conversation between friends that can make what one can’t imagine, into something that can be believed.

  • Forgetting Things

    I’m here on Sunday night trying to create a blog that I will publish on Monday morning. Normally, I write something and publish it same day, but tomorrow I’m very busy and I still want to write five blogs this week, so I am trying to get a jump. The funny thing was that earlier in the day I had an idea that I wanted to write about, but being that I was in the middle of making lunch for the family, I thought I would take care of it a little later.

    And you can guess it; I forgot the idea. Sadly, I even have a category in my Notes app on my phone for blog ideas, and I was so sure that I would remember it and I didn’t need to write it down.

    It’s moments like this that I start to wonder if my minor forgetfulness is normal, or is it a sign that I’m getting older?

    I’m only forty-five; I’m not that old. But I’m also not young anymore either.

    I say all of this because I know I am at the age that I have to start have sections of my body, organs, and appendages examined, in some cases, annually, to make sure that I am healthy. I have had my heart checked, and my lungs. I know I need to get my colon looked at, well as my eyes, and I am due to see the dentist, so it’s like I’m getting looked at from both ends.

    But also, I have strange aches and pains. If my left arm of shoulder has the slightest pain, then clearly I’m having a heart attack. I’m having trouble seeing small print, which must mean that I am going blind. Sure, the easy thing to say is that I’m a neurotic hypochondriac, but I like to think that I’m just being very observant of my body.

    I am sure that there is a balance out there that some people achieve, where they age gracefully and enjoy the next phase in life, but…

    It was B.J. Novak’s book of short stories! I finished reading it this weekend and I wanted to write about it.

    I’ll write it down and do it tomorrow.

    (Umm… the thing with “like the blog” and stuff. It would be cool if you did that. Thanks.)