Living Her Age

I think it likely that people who have not been here will be interested to know what it is like. I arrived on the thirtieth of November, fresh from care-free and frivolous 69, and was disappointed.
There is nothing novel about it, nothing striking, nothing to thrill you and make your eye glitter and your tongue cry out. “Oh, but it is wonderful, perfectly wonderful!” Yes, it is disappointing. You say, “Is this it? - this? After all this talk and fuss of a thousand generations of travelers who have crossed this frontier and looked about them and told what they saw and felt? Why, it looks just like 69.”
And that is true. Also it is natural; for you have not come by the fast express, you have been lagging and dragging across the world’s continents behind oxen; when that is your pace one country melts into the next one so gradually that you are not able to notice the change: 70 looks like 69; 69 looked like 68; 68 looked like 67 - and so on, back, and back, to the beginning. If you climb to a summit and look back - ah, then you see!
Down that far-reaching perspective you can make out each country and climate that you crossed, all the way down up from the hot equator to the ice-summit where you are perched. You can make out where Infancy merged into Boyhood; Boyhood into down-lipped Youth; Youth into indefinite Young-Manhood; indefinite Young-Manhood into definite Manhood; definite Manhood with aggressive ambitions into sobered and heedful Husbandhood and Fatherhood; these into troubled and foreboding Age, with graying hair; this into Old Age, white-headed, the temple empty, the idols broken, the worshippers in their graves, nothing left but You, a remnant, a tradition, belated fag-end of a foolish dream, a dream that was so ingeniously dreamed that it seemed real all the time; nothing left but You, centre of a snowy desolation, perched on the ice-summit, gazing out over the stages of that long trek and asking Yourself “would you do it again if you had the chance?” (December 1905) Mark Twain

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He had pottered about most of the afternoon, and so had she. At their age winter seemed to last longer every year. Behind them now; they were in early spring. And it was quite wonderful. They were now able to go out of doors without hauling on heavy overcoats and boots. Same for their little dogs. Figuring what was needful for themselves was no less so for those very small creatures sharing their lives.

He had, earlier in the day, read aloud to her a short, succinct and somewhat bitter observation about growing older and becoming ensconced in old age, by none other than Mark Twain. They’d both laughed, not uproariously, but knowingly.

Still, they were doing pretty well for a pair of old codgers married 55 years with no end in sight of their partnership nor their love for one another. Thankful for their good health, and the immense enjoyment of their lives. And they had ample to be thankful for.

In the afternoon he had hauled out from the basement where it was stored over-winter that huge brown canopy - now faded by two summers’ exposure, into a softer shade of brown - to fit it over the metal infrastructure that comprised the form of the canopy shielding them from direct sun exposure, on their backyard deck.

While he was busy doing that, refusing all offers of help from her, she was out at the front of the house, hauling out lilies that were crowding into other beloved perennials. Something she should have done last fall, but was too busy with other garden chores, to attend to that one.

It was a warm day, unseasonably warm for early spring. There was a robin singing from the top of the ash tree across the street, and its trill was loud and sweetly brilliant, thrilling her to her very core. It was her husband who took their older dog downstairs early in the morning to let it out to the backyard while she slept in a little longer. With the younger, smaller one right beside her, directly under the covers. And her husband always whispered to her, when he got back into bed, how liltingly beautiful the trill of the cardinal was in the backyard at that early morning hour. Or the song sparrow, or the chirping of chickadees, which she always seemed to miss.

She felt guilty, she always did, that he was the one to go out so early; get up out of their warm and comfortable bed, to meet an obligation their 17-year-old dog required. The consequences of not doing so were unpleasant, but even when that occurred her husband, refusing to scold their little dog, did a good-natured clean-up.

She felt guilty because she really got a better night’s sleep than he ever did. He was up repeatedly, thanks to his bladder being pressed by his oversized prostate. He did a half-hour of therapy - kegel it was, to strengthen the bladder muscles - every day - sitting, counting the number of muscle-tensing exercises he performed, until he finally reached into a figure that satisfied him. When he’d first started doing this, years earlier, there had been an improvement, and they’d anticipated ongoing improvements, but they’d been tardy in unfolding. The initial improvement remained, but the promise of other, greater improvements simply did not materialize. He was grateful for the relief that did occur, and remained wedded to the exercise protocol to ensure that at the very least, that minimal relief remained.

He always said since he had to get up at six anyway to relieve himself, it was no additional bother to go downstairs with the little dog and take her outside. He would go out with her in case the raccoon was around. Even though he put bungees on the composters the resident raccoons never seemed to give up hope. They had disagreed about that, about tying down the composter tops to dissuade the raccoons from their night-time raids, because before tying down the tops they’d come around regularly and never left a mess. She didn’t begrudge them whatever they could use from their kitchen waste. But her husband reasoned that they were a threat to their little dogs, particularly their ten-year-old toy poodle, because it was stupidly aggressive and wouldn’t hesitate to attack any other animal impinging on his territory.

So that little routine was his and his alone, up out of bed as soon as he heard the female dog leap off the loveseat in their bedroom where she slept the night. Tie on his cuddly white dressing gown, tromp downstairs after her, out the sliding glass doors into the back garden. While she remained blissfully in bed, to sleep another two hours. It wasn’t fair, but it was their ritual and although they lived with it, she remained uneasy at her too-easy capitulation to his reasoning.

By early afternoon that day, after he had finished cleaning out the garden shed and re-assembling everything neatly back into it, placing the snow-thrower right at the very back where it wouldn’t be noticed again until the snow began flying, and she had finished her little bit of gardening, they wondered at no telephone calls. And it occurred to him to pick up the receiver and listen. No dial tone.

She’d done it again. Picked up the telephone sitting directly beside her upstairs desk-top computer, and not replacing it properly in its cradle. So the telephone was effectively out of commission all day. They’d been on tenterhooks, waiting to hear the results of their daughter’s job interview. Even if she’d dialled their cellphone it would never be heard. The cellphone was tucked securely into his shoulder bag, hung in the cupboard next to the door leading to the garage. It was only used when he was out of the house, checking back to let her know where he was, when he’d arrive home from his errands.

And sure enough, the upstairs telephone hadn’t been properly secured. He said nothing, but she felt the fool. Again. It happened so regularly. Their granddaughter would sometimes text-message her and next time she’d retrieve her email she’d read “Grandma! You forgot to hang up the telephone again!”

Damn! She cursed her lack of attention. If their daughter called, tried to contact them, leave a message, she couldn’t. He had finished his work. Had gone down to the basement store room to pluck a pair of long cushions out of there, and take them upstairs to make the glider plump and comfortable for her. “There”, he said, “just sit there, get yourself in the mood to relax”. He’d even brought the newspapers out for her, and the mobile telephone, now in working order. She set it beside her, under her skirt, and beside her on the other side, he sat their apricot poodle, a lazy little dog that wanted nothing but to cuddle and to sleep.

Then he sat himself across from her, and discommoded at the temporary absence of his mini-laptop, was fiddling with a short-wave radio. The laptop was used for nothing but listening to radio stations, anyway. Like National Public Radio. He valued the debates, the in-depth news coverage, the flow of the conversations. She preferred her newspapers. And the laptop? In for repairs. It had taken a serious dive. Actually thrust itself out of her husband’s hands as he was conveying it from the dining room to the breakfast room. And arced straight across from the kitchen onto the porcelain tile floor of the breakfast room.

This was a lovely floor, in black-and-white squares, very classical, and it was pleasant being able to see it through the glass top of their breakfast-room table. But this was most definitely not a surface that dealt kindly with suicide-prone baby-computers. What had been whole became pitiably fractured. Her husband had been stricken. As much as their little dogs were animated companions, his laptop was an inanimate companion, one that informed and pleased him mightily.

He swore, (she thought swiftly, now there’s an end to all that incessant noise; good riddance). He picked up the pieces, and examined them. Actually, the computer did not completely shatter; there was merely the separation of a few pieces, one of which was the long metal hinge covering the vital conductors between screen and hard drive; the other the sliding door covering the battery. And, after putting it all back together, slowly, carefully, hopefully, it worked! “Isn’t that fortunate” she said dryly to her husband. He grinned back at her, triumphantly.

But in the days that followed it became clear that the little computer was feeling a trifle queasy, not quite up to itself. One of the hiccoughs was that it was no longer keen on following orders. As in ‘shut-down’. It would display the message that it was ‘downloading updates’, but that was merely a ruse. It was downloading nothing, just taking him for a fool. In it went for critical care, and he was bereft of its presence, even thought of teaching it a lesson by acquiring a second one. Prudence prevailed.

So now, fiddling with the short-wave radio he zeroed in on the weather, and then went to the local news. One of the news items was of a very local accident. The area, an hour’s drive from where they lived, was almost where their daughter’s house was located. A fatality. She felt her face grow heavy, and her chest pinch. So well did he know her that he looked sharply up from the radio and regarded her. Quietly, he said, that wouldn’t be her. Don’t you start worrying now, over nothing.

When she worried and got tense and upset her body went into lock-down. She would develop a rash, and break out in dreadful, suppurating sores. Her gut would refuse to process the food she ate. She would feel ill, and there would be a shut-down of her alimentary canal. He dreaded that; she put up with it. Their son, who lived halfway across the country, occasionally would send his mother books with titles like “Women Who Worry”, and “How To Deal With Stress”. She would dutifully read partially through each of these self-help books, then have a conversation with herself about how idiotically presumptuous people were to write such witless, useless tomes. The books would be shelved, she would thank her son, and go back to worrying.

Her husband tried to engage her mind, wanted to talk about their imminent vacation, but she felt capable of nothing but nodding her head in agreement with whatever he said. Suddenly, the piercing call of the telephone. They both jumped, and she looked frantically for the telephone; not on the little table before them, while he rushed into the house to grab it off its cradle. She was puzzled; the sound was so clear, so near, and when he came back with a disgruntled look on his face reminding her that it was in her direct possession, she remembered she’d placed it beside her, covered by the fabric of her skirt.

She was, quite frankly, amazed at her inability to react, to understand fully what was happening, instead of being thrown into the panic of blank confusion. The telephone rang, clearly enough, loudly enough so that it registered that it was there, right there, not inside the house, but there, beside her, where she had secured it in just the very event that it would eventually ring, and she would respond to the ring. Instead, she had been confused, blanked out, couldn’t recall she had a mere half-hour earlier placed the telephone beside her, secured it so she could simply pick it up and respond. What was wrong with her?

“Hello?” she said, holding the telephone close to her left ear, hoping she wouldn’t have to confront, this time, a situation where, as so often happened increasingly, she could barely hear the words on the other end. Her faculties, clearly, were on the fade-end of usefulness.

“Me”, came her grandchild’s voice. “What’s going on?”
“Just home from school?” she asked the girl. “Had a snack yet? Got much homework?”
The usual. She was speaking in a clear, calm voice, nothing betraying the disquietude she felt. Fearful that the girl’s mother, a single parent with huge responsibilities would be unable to find another contract quite as quickly as she hoped to, fearful that the child was at home, alone, while her mother was still out somewhere, fearful that it was her daughter who’d been involved in an accident nearby her home, fearful that she herself was beginning to sink into a morass of old-age inclemency, where she could no longer depend on herself to react appropriately even to minor, day-to-day situations.

She would be going out this evening, after dinner, to do the canvass for her street. Something she’d done for more years than she could even recall, unless she really put her seemingly overworked mind to. She still did that three to four times a year, for various health charities, collecting donations from their neighbours, writing out the receipts for taxation purposes.

It was fine, she got through the process, even though it was one she detested. Going to peoples’ houses, knocking on their doors, appealing to their better natures to donate a few dollars for charity. Mostly, their neighbours responded well, and she was grateful for that. Not so grateful for the sense of dislocation that would occasionally overcome her; unable to even remember the house number while writing out the receipt, attempting a feeble stab at humour to cover her confusion.

And feeling overwhelmed, sometimes, not knowing quite why she would feel like that, but she would suddenly feel weak, tired, chest tight, and one of her neighbours would bring her inside, tell her to sit still for a few minutes. These episodes she kept to herself, unwilling to share them with her husband. Because, really, there was nothing at all wrong with her. She had plenty of energy and stamina, more than capable of brisk walking for lengthy distances, cleaning their large house, working in the garden. All things she took pleasure in. Just that, occasionally, going up the risers at a good clip she would suddenly feel a loss of strength at the top of the stairs, and have to lean against the wall for a few minutes until the spell passed.

That need not necessarily happen this evening. Just a by-product of aging, obviously. The weather is gorgeous and there’s no reason not to get out there and finish up the canvass. Her neighbours are, after all, anxious to off-load their excess earnings in a good cause. And anxious too, come to think of it, to exchange neighbourly and neighbourhood information occasionally called gossip, with her. She hasn’t much to gossip about, but she is a good listener. And people like that.

Not long afterward, she did speak with her daughter. The interview went well. But the company isn’t really doing the kind of things she does; she’s a little higher on the professional scale. They wouldn’t be prepared to pay her what she knows she should be earning. She wouldn’t be working out of the house, from her home office as much, working there. She wouldn’t have the autonomy she now enjoys. And she has her doubts that she’ll be offered the job.

Later, on the late-night local news, when she returned from canvassing her street, they both listened to the details of the accident which she hadn’t mentioned to her daughter. It was, evidently, caused by a woman who hadn’t stopped at a stop sign. Went right through. Hit head on with a transport vehicle. Not much of a power contest with the Volkswagen Jetta that the woman was driving. One death, the only occupant of the Jetta, the driver. And the driver? A long-time area resident, a 93 year-old woman.

How’s that for living your age?