It was 3PM, and, up north where I live, dusk. The hall was dark. My writer’s mind grabbed my body out of the chair like a puppet to head urgently for the kitchen. Both hands were full of empty cups of cold tea, so no hand to turn on the light. I was in a bio-break-hurry, as in getting more tea in me to keep on with my habit of shrinking my spine by sitting all day at my computer.
Then, I stumbled over something, and went down hard.
My first thought was, “Are the cups okay?”
Everything I own has a provenance.
One cup was pulled out of a yard sale free box ten years ago. I liked the design so much that when I spied a matching mug in the thrift store five years later, I nabbed it.
Satish Kumar of the recently closed Schumacher College in Totnes, UK, gifted me the other cup. I taught there in 2004, and the cup represents his sweet disposition, his radical teachings, the stone buildings, the dark wood beams, the time in my life when I still thought I had a magic wand to change the world.
The cups were fine, thank god, but I was not.
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I wear three silver rings on my right hand because I’ve always thought chunky turquoise looked good on older women. I noticed that every knuckle hurt where the rings jammed in to the webs between those fingers.
As I got up, I scanned my body. My elbow hurt (and still does over a week later), but nothing was broken. My whole body was in shock, though, it the what-the-f-just-happened mode, looking around for the danger.
The culprit
Lights on, it was obvious. My hall has accumulated things, either mine or my cat’s, on their way to somewhere else. I put that in passive voice, like the hall has the hoarder disorder, not me, not Bella the cat.
On the left, a card table tilted against the wall, waiting to go down to the shed on the West side of my house. On the right, plugged in to the wall, a heavy jump-starter waits to go down to the van. And my stumbling block was actually a large, floppy cardboard box by the guest room door. I couldn’t seem to figure out if it might be useful somehow - so never flattened it. Looking back towards my office, both sides of every door - bathroom, office - has an over door hanger with things crowding the doorways, things I use often that don’t have a place, other than hanging on the door. I have a “if I put things away how will I ever find them” complex. Towels, a robe, little beaded bags to carry my phone. Doesn’t everyone have a collection of beaded phone bags? From the thrift store?
The culprit c’est moi
I’m not saying it was my own damn fault, a perfect storm of MOOP (matter out of place) and me too lazy to take them the last 50 feet. No, this triggered something deeper than scolding myself for sloth.
My coming-of-aging mind put two and ten together. “Now it begins” it whispered, “Next comes some nice young man installing grab bars along the hall, and we know where that leads… they take the keys to your car.”
Surveying the litter.
While icing my hand and elbow with bags of frozen peas, I looked around my living room. Behind the other chair were piles of items headed for the thrift store, the van, the shed, the trash, the recycle. Also, another large, plug-in battery sat right in my scurry path. I bought it for my tenant’s ground floor studio to keep her computer and one light on in black outs. By the deck door were things headed for the garden shed. Everything was in glacial motion, on its way elsewhere, resting up for the journey.
At breakfast several days later, a friend my age told me she’s in the same sinking boat. Her daughter bought her a new microwave to replace the one that nearly set the house on fire. The box sits where her daughter left it, waiting for the grandson to to come, set it in place, and plug it in.
Why?
Fifteen years ago I bought a plain Jane, split entry house. I’ve reworked it into an expression of my values, needs, and financial cleverness.
I turned the family room on one side of the ground floor, and the garage on the other, into two studios, each with an outdoor entrance, bathroom and kitchenette. We share utilities, and some chores but we all lead separate lives. The rent is part of the architecture of my retirement income.
From time to time, I also rent my guest room off that dark upstairs hall. I love having bright, creative people half my age live there for a few months each. We laugh, we spar, and they help out as well as pay some rent. (Per this story, it occasionally works out poorly). (Per this one, though, it’s been brilliant, building a chosen family).
When I bought the house, a sad jungle gym rusted in a large moss-tufted back yard surrounded by a rotting fence. The gardener in me recognized this south facing yard as perfect for a large vegetable garden, and so it is.
My house is a workhorse. It’s my ark for when the storms come. This 35-year-old box on a cul-de-sac up a hill in a small village has supported my life for 15 years. This house grows food, builds family, shelters worthy people and will shelter me for the rest of my life. It’s not just a fungible resource to be traded in for a ranchette.
If I need to call the agency to have a nice young man put in grab bars, so be it.
The piles of denial
So these piles of things waiting to go somewhere else are simply a measure of the fact that I am do not have the arms, legs and mind I used to have when I bounded up and down these stairs without a thought. It took the fall to be able to admit this. And maybe that was just a dumb fall, and my knee pain will clear up and I’ll do more push-ups on the kitchen counter and all will be as it was. And maybe not.
What time is it in my coming-of-aging?
I told one of my tenants about the fall and she started in on her father refusing to surrender the car keys.
Wait a ding-dong minute, girl, I think, that’s a leap too far. It’s me you’re talking to, not some 80-year-old doddering… mmmm.
I didn’t tell her that for several days after the fall, my balance was off, adding to the spiriling fear of spiraling downward. I caught this psychological fall quickly, and righted myself, but how long will I be upright?
Adapting, but how
My first determination was that I need to turn some of stored resource (money) into current life energy. It’s time to hire help for what I clearly no longer do happily for myself. I can see it as another way to help the service workers in our community - from nurses to cleaners to landscapers to clerks - who are all integral to all of us aging in place.
My second determination is that I need to do some late-life money alchemy.
Do-it-yourself/DIY, frugality, and hoarding have been the engines of my time freedom. In a profligate society, I’ve made a point to be a jill-of-all-trades. My job-seeking resume (if I had one) has big holes in it when I was getting educated in real skills for the real world, including growing and preserving food. I partnered for years with an engineer who took me under wing as an apprentice (to my benefit and detriment), so I know how to fix, build, design, cobble, make do, and Macgyver. That was long ago, though. Far fewer things are fixable and my body is creaky.
I had an illuminating conversation with fellow Substacker, Douglas Tsoi, about this. I highly recommend his detailed post about his calculus with aging without traditional safety nets, and what it revealed about his fears and habits.
I did not take into account that I’d built those mental and physical capacities into my financial calculus. I used to say, “I buy my freedom with my frugality every day.”
Very clever Vicki, but how now, old sow?
I need some attitude adjustments. Where am I being rigid? Ideological? Identified with a prior self? How do I use my savings keep my fears at bay? Is spending associated with penury? How much padding of financial security is enough? Is my happy go lucky attitude backed up by a healthy body, survivalist skills (gone soft), and an unreasonable amount of ready cash, all of which can evaporate?
This is big spiritual work. It has flavors of bag-lady-fear and no-one-is-there-for-me fear and my escape-artist-feral-fear of being stuck somewhere that feels unsafe. What illusions need to be surfaced and questioned with kindness and good cheer.
How do I know how much is enough now that I am unsure how long I’ll live, how much money I’ll need for safe passage to the grave, how able bodied and minded I’ll be between now and then?
Yes, this is a social problem… the sickness care system in the US makes profits from our insecurity. This is not my interest. Instead, I ask, once again:
Has my frugality become unfreedom? If so, how do I, yet again, liberate myself from ideas that are too small for who I am becoming?
I didn't mean to comment twice on the same post but as an internal medicine and lifestyle medicine physician interested in prevention, I think this post is excellent. Not to be a downer, but here is a little information on falls and prevention.
Falls really increase as we age. over the age of 75, nearly 80% of preventible deaths are related to falls.
Some facts about falls from the CDC:
One out of five falls causes a serious injury such as broken bones or a head injury.
Each year, 3 million older people are treated in emergency departments for fall injuries.
Over 800,000 patients a year are hospitalized because of a fall injury, most often because of a head injury or hip fracture.
Each year at least 300,000 older people are hospitalized for hip fractures.
More than 95% of hip fractures are caused by falling, usually by falling sideways.
Falls are the most common cause of traumatic brain injuries (TBI).
In 2015, the total medical costs for falls totaled more than $50 billion. Medicare and Medicaid shouldered 75% of these costs.
One of the best ways to reduce falls, I believe, is to practice balance exercises. In fact, standing on one leg for 5 seconds or more is a strong predictor of decreased fall risk. One way to improve balance is to perform exercises such as Tai Chi. In fact, in one large study called the FICSIT,Tai Chi was found to reduce the risk of multiple falls by 47.5%.
Just some little information I hope others on this thread find useful...
On a totally practical tack--sign up for SAIL. It's a Zoom class, free, sponsored by the island's EMTs, who want to avoid fetching us in ambulances when we nosedive. An hour each session, much of it about balance, movement, not falling. Also cardio, and stretching.
ALSO don't move around the house with your hands full. I have two heavy-duty clear plastic bags with strong cloth handles. Whatever has to go somewhere else in the house is in the bag so I always have my hands free.
I didn't mean to comment twice on the same post but as an internal medicine and lifestyle medicine physician interested in prevention, I think this post is excellent. Not to be a downer, but here is a little information on falls and prevention.
Falls really increase as we age. over the age of 75, nearly 80% of preventible deaths are related to falls.
Some facts about falls from the CDC:
One out of five falls causes a serious injury such as broken bones or a head injury.
Each year, 3 million older people are treated in emergency departments for fall injuries.
Over 800,000 patients a year are hospitalized because of a fall injury, most often because of a head injury or hip fracture.
Each year at least 300,000 older people are hospitalized for hip fractures.
More than 95% of hip fractures are caused by falling, usually by falling sideways.
Falls are the most common cause of traumatic brain injuries (TBI).
In 2015, the total medical costs for falls totaled more than $50 billion. Medicare and Medicaid shouldered 75% of these costs.
One of the best ways to reduce falls, I believe, is to practice balance exercises. In fact, standing on one leg for 5 seconds or more is a strong predictor of decreased fall risk. One way to improve balance is to perform exercises such as Tai Chi. In fact, in one large study called the FICSIT,Tai Chi was found to reduce the risk of multiple falls by 47.5%.
Just some little information I hope others on this thread find useful...
On a totally practical tack--sign up for SAIL. It's a Zoom class, free, sponsored by the island's EMTs, who want to avoid fetching us in ambulances when we nosedive. An hour each session, much of it about balance, movement, not falling. Also cardio, and stretching.
ALSO don't move around the house with your hands full. I have two heavy-duty clear plastic bags with strong cloth handles. Whatever has to go somewhere else in the house is in the bag so I always have my hands free.