Aging gracelessly

A (hopefully funny) tale of woes

Two old ladies, sitting sipping tea

h-i-s-s-i-n-g

First came hips, then came knees

Then came dentures, and they’re not pleased

If you don’t know that nursery rhyme, no worries. It’s my attempt to make light of another bump in the coming of aging road.

This last week or so feels more like coming of aging is in the rearview mirror, and I’m in a new territory where things that break might not get fixed.

This is a kvetch, but like a Jewish comedian in the Catskills kvetch. Oh dear! Maybe you don’t get that reference either. See, I may have outlived the culture I was brought up in, made a terrific life in and meant to age gracefully out of.

Yesterday, my three front teeth (a bridge) fell out.

Of course, the second thing I did, after holding them in my hand in disbelief, was to look in a mirror. The dreaded hag looked back at me. We were both shocked. Not Sharon Blackie’s reclaimed meaning of Hag in her book Hagitude. At least not yet. No, the witchy hag in Macbeth. Here’s a picture of said mouth. I think a nude photo would be less risky than revealing a toothless smile, so I cropped and dazzled it with stars. Call them tassels.

Hello, is the doctor home?

The day before, I’d learned that the new online portal for my rural health system wasn’t working.That was several weeks after I asked for an appointment with my doctor (who is down to two days a week), and after a week of asking politely and then not so politely for a prescription refill. With no reply. I finally went down to the walk-in clinic to get the g’dam prescription face to face.

The nurse there said casually about the new online system, “Oh, that’s not working yet,” and took my blood pressure, which was surprisingly normal. I inquired further. It seems our whole health care system on my island is now understaffed and rickety.

“Just here?” I asked.

“Oh no, everywhere. The pay is too low, rent is too high, and it’s not worth it anymore.”

Crap. Just as I turn 80 and into the time in my life when the body is slowly, or not so slowly, wearing out.

OK, after an hour the doc (actually a PA) came in, and gave me the prescription, I raced off to my next appointment: a circle of friends grappling with the results of the election.

Oh, and the election results

Well, there’s that. Along with 50% of the nation, the results shocked me. Boomers like me are doing their coming of aging work, reflecting on long lives, forgiving, asking for forgiveness, thinking about legacy, determined that the best might yet to come in the form of peace of mind. And then, whoosh, the rug comes out from under our worldview.

Everything I’ve done rests on the premise that “we can change the world” and this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. That sentence doesn’t really honor my long and dedicated world work, which I’ve loved, which has served so many people and came right out of my heart. I truly believed that if we only did x or y or z - be it writing books, participating in movements, being an “agent of change” - that change would come. But not this change.

Is all my idealistic work going to get the axe?

God, grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change…

I am reciting the serenity prayer a lot.

Can’t even read a spread sheet

The day before that I attended a Board meeting for a local agency serving seniors. I’d joined a few months ago, thinking I might have something to offer. Perhaps I could help jazz it up so my generation - very resistant to the label senior - might participate. I had zingy mottos come to mind. From older to elder. Not a problem to be solved but a gift to be given. Respected, connected and cared for.

Well, I’d only served on boards of small, visionary organizations trying to change some corner of the world. I had no idea what board work in an agency would be. Sitting there for two hours going over complex budgets, I was soon in over my head and drowning. “What was I thinking,” I thought, lips buttoned. I felt useless and somewhat embarrassed. Monty Python, The Meaning of Life, came to mind. If you have 5 minutes, click the link. Watch for the Hospital Administrator.

Mouse in the house - still

Going further back, a wee mouse has been in my house, and it refuses every trap I set for it. Every single one. It’s wreaked havoc. More than once I’ve wanted to just walk out the door and sign up for a studio in a retirement community, which is extreme because that’s the very the coming-of-aging thing i never wanted to do.

Oomph

See what I mean. I wonder if I have the oomph anymore to keep my complex and creative life going. Do you even know the word oomph? It was coined in the 1930s to mean pizzazz or sparkle or attractiveness. 1930s! Almost a hundred years ago. I’ve always been “oomphy”, but am I still?

Off to the dentist

So, I race to the dentist with my front teeth in a small plastic leftovers container. A kind young dental assistant puts a line of Polident on it and glues it back in my mouth. I’m told to eat nothing but water and come back the next day to see the dentist.

Pablum, I thought.

Unrequited writer

Oh, and then there’s the book. What book? A book I’ve been writing for 20 years about freedom and limits. I glimpsed what I thought was the core of why our society was/is barreling off a cliff. With the same spirit that wrote Your Money or Your Life I drove into writing this book, motivated by the desire to have everyone, or enough “everyones”, to understand that endless growth on a finite planet is insane. Yes, thousands of researchers, educators, authors, podcasters are also hammering that issue, but I thought I had a unique spin. Writing the book has been an odyssey, fits and starts and fits and starts, a tale for another time, but recently I decided to take it off the shelf and try again.

I spoke with a possible agent. He pinpointed what’s been the problem with the book all along, and I started to see how I could change it, took notes, sat down to lunch.

Then, my teeth ended up on my plate.

Back to my friend and I drinking tea at my dining table, surrounded by large tubs of food I’ve removed from my cupboards to starve the mouse that’s now happily eating through the drain hose of my 15 year old dishwasher.

She starts talking about an impasse at the highschool around a dress code. Young girls are wearing clothes so scanty that every class is about sex, not history or english. They are adament. They have the right to dress however they want. At first I was shocked. What happened to the sexual revolution? What happened to “my body my choice?” Regressing to “Your body, my choice,” sets us back 100 years. Is this the revenge of the Patriarchy. Are we in for some version of the Taliban?T

Then I saw this as a necessary post-election conversation. Maybe the evangelical driven red tide is, in part, a conservative reaction to what looks like a lack of values and morals. Is our current impasse - in developing an agreeable “dress code” that lets girls wear what they want and teenage boys keep their mind on their studies - a cultural rite of passage. We are grinding towards a more whole, more tolerant, my diverse world. Do we need Patriarchal men to assert their rights one more time? I fervently hope not.

Another damn thing to accept what I cannot change?

I know I’m catastrophizing.

One mouse should not drive me out of my house. One failure of our rural health system should not have me abandon my beloveds on this island and live next to a top notch hospital in a big city. One election where the new team has Project 2025 as their blueprint doesn’t mean democracy is dead. One incident of toothlessness doesn’t mean the rest of my body will fall apart soon.

I commit to staying calm and carrying on. I commit to l curiosity, nuance and learning. I commit to staying with what’s right in front of me and seeing it with fresh eyes.

The secret to aging is acceptance.

Paulo Coelho said, “If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.”

We will have many good-byes before the final good-bye. Coming of aging is getting good at good-byes. Not some forced cheerfulness, but opportunities - coming ever faster - to acknowledge that our bodies are on loan from the earth and will soon return. Even if you are an anti-aging influencer, eventually you’ll be gone. Maybe Musk or someone will figure out immortality, but would you really like to be in eternity with him?

The lesson, perhaps, is opening to being humbled again and again. Humility has the same root a humus. Soil. The more you let left-overs - leaves, manure, kitchen scraps, - rot, the richer the soil. Humility makes us soil for others, which is what elders are. We are soil in which others can grow.

Most of our lives are behind us. We’re composting our experiences, and becoming a field in both sense of the word. A field is a place where seeds can grow. A field is also study, something we hope to master and be able to contribute a bit to humanity’s collective evolution.

I look forward to getting a new bridge in my mouth. I look forward to bridging in general. I look forward to learning how to contribute in this version of the United States of America. I look forward to getting the mouse out of the house. I hope to be on a glide path again.

These last weeks remind me that the job of coming of aging is rigorous and never ending. It’s not a school where you get graded or a profession which you master. If anything, coming of aging is returning again and again to the serenity prayer so it’s with you in the final hours.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can; 
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; 
enjoying one moment at a time; 
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 
taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it; 
trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will; 
that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
forever in the next. 
Amen.

reinhold niebuhr (1892-1971)