Aging in America
Don’t be fooled: there are no great cures to the whole dilemma of aging here- just an account of another holiday spent in a small Tennessee town with lots of time on your hands and lots of corn fields to look out over.
I guess there’s no way I can write about something like aging in a very personal way. I don’t want to name names or describe persons on whom that wrinkly process has occurred so instead I have a series of experiences which bring things into perspective…
…my grandmother getting older. Realizing that I have always thought of her as an old woman, but that she stayed that way all my life and has now passed into a point where I think of her as not an old woman, but an “older woman” . It’s such a subtle distinction but right now it means everything.
…playing with my niece and playing all the games I used to play: yelling in the coat closet and shining flashlights down the bedroom a/c vents to try and see the center of the earth. Whoa, I used to be the one getting coached on how to do this!
…talking with my brother and his wife and making up things his daughter should learn to say. One of those things being “I want some cousins!” Yikes, I say.
… My mom asking me if she is “too old” to wear this or that. While my grandmother has always felt like an old woman to me my mom has always felt like a young woman. I could never imagine her being to old for anything.
…walking around the neighborhood wearing my moms coat and going out to look at a field. Aware that I must look like my mom out for a walk in this coat. Looking out at a pond with frogs in it and listening to those frogs. Being happy where they are and okay with them being out of sight, rather than wanting to catch one and see it in a jar. Well, maybe I do kinda still want to do that…
…wishing I had a house here. Yes, a house in Tennessee .
