About Me: WHAT HAPPENED???

Some wit has proclaimed that inside of every 70 year old is a 20 year old wondering what happened. That wit is right on. As my daughter remarked, the older we get, the more like ourselves we become, but I thought as my body aged, my personality would change with it. It hasn’t worked out that way. There’s this major disconnect. At times, if I think about things in advance, I adjust gracefully, but sometimes I am the quintessence of fuddle-brained frustration! A few examples:

I was once a prodigious multi-tasker who could do six things at once. Now if I do two things at once, I'm distracted by a third, then a fourth as I deal with the elements of the first two.  Too often I'm lucky to complete one! Several emails and video clips on the internet let me know I'm in ever increasing company judging from the number of times they arrive in my inbox.

I used to run full tilt 24/7. Now I can run at half my former pace for about two days - then I need three days of doing little or nothing to recuperate. If I don’t take that time to rest, I get stuck in the "hereafter" - walking purposefully from living room to kitchen, then wondering, usually aloud,  “Now what am I here after?” I often have to go back to the living room to remember. That usually works.

I still crave sailing, but now I’m a sit-down sailor. Instead of balancing on a slanting deck, tiller between my knees, main sheet in my hand, I’ve become slow moving ballast.

I still do bend-at-the-waist-gardening, but if I forget and sit down to work comfortably at ground level, it takes all the strength, ingenuity, and will power I can muster to get myself up again - butt foremost. This is the new normal with which I now know how to cope, but the fact of that need to cope still surprises me.

I once stood five feet, eight and a half inches and weighed a mere 118 pounds soaking wet. I slurped malted milkshakes and ice cream hoping to gain weight. I had a full bust, a 24 inch waist and anything I put on looked great. I have now lost a half an inch and have to exercise and think about everything I put in my mouth trying to reduce my permanent eight-months-pregnant side view. When I shop I am still drawn to styles that would have fit my former figure. I have learned to buy tops and dresses that fall straight from my still ample bust, but now and then I come home with a top that fits everything - except my pseudo-pregnancy. I crop my t-shirts at navel length so they don't hug. 


While a well-aged woman can often date a man considerably younger without raising eyebrows - thanks to make-up and plastic surgery or a beneficent set of genes - a well preserved gent with white or dyed hair is usually envied and joked about or scorned for his nubile trophy woman. The saddest ones are the blue-veined, baggy-eyed, jowly men hitting on beautiful young women half their age sincerely thinking they’re as irresistible as they once were. Equally sad, but more sympathetic, is the bald septuagenarian with a big belly and a bad back who pays a painful, perhaps disabling,  price for splitting firewood and shoveling snow rather than pay a teenager because he’s done manly work since he was a kid and that’s who he is.

WARNING: The slowest of our aging evolutions are those of self image and physical expectations. This fact can be hazardous to our health and dignity.

What Happened??? by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.For permission to use, please contact randmxcentric@gmail.com