Day 9: It's All in the 'Tude

 Today I was reading a portion of the Axios Finish Line I received in email. In it, Mike Allen wrote that people begin to feel their youth slipping away when they are 42. They begin to feel old at age 52. He asked for input from the readers. When did I start to notice my age and how am I navigating it?

I am noticing my age now and am ignoring it. I did think about it during my efforts to find a part-time gig online. The advice I read from the AARP was that seniors could find jobs working from home. I began looking in August 2022. I applied everywhere my skills matched the employers’ requirements but was passed over repeatedly.

It must be my age, I thought. This year, I finally began working as an online tutor. I love it. I have an interview this week with our school district’s early childhood education program. I have an AA in Early Childhood Ed and years of experience tutoring children and assisting teachers. Yet, I wonder what my interviewers will think when I meet them. Will they see an asset to the team, or will they see the wrinkles on my neck and face?

I am sixty-eight. What does 68 feel like? I can’t say because in my mind, I am young. My body moves more slowly than it used to, and I have challenges with opening jars that I never had before. I have creeping arthritis and ache from time to time. Sometimes I need to nap.

The challenges don’t slow me down.

As for opening jars, pill bottles, and what have you, I have tools to help me when my fingers don’t want to cooperate. I have rheumatoid arthritis, especially in my fingers. I used to keep handwritten journals. Over the years, it’s become more difficult to hold a pen or pencil and write more than a few sentences. I got around that and use my laptop when I want to write. As for texting and instant messages, there’s a blessed thing called a microphone.

One of my favorite activities is walking, especially on park trails. When our grandson was small, Ted and I must have visited every park in southern New Jersey. I used to have to stop and take breaks because of issues with my spine. I have spinal stenosis and mild scoliosis. Despite that, being out in the fresh air and in the company of my husband and grandson was so invigorating and joyful. Last November, I had a minimally invasive procedure on my spine. Now I can walk a 2–3-mile trail without stopping for a break.

For me, navigating the years is all about attitude.

When I was forty-two, I still felt like a young person. I married and began having babies in my thirties. That year, they were 9, 7, and 3. I was working full time by day and my late first husband Rich worked nights to save on daycare. When I came home from work, Rich passed the children to me. I would take them on walks to local playgrounds or the library. We participated in scouting and school activities. I didn’t give a thought to being 42.

At 52, our grandson was two and living with us temporarily. Kids that age are highly active. I noticed increasing pain and had gained too much weight, but I didn’t slow down. My now husband Ted and I were like new parents all over again. We weren’t rocking chair grandparents to say the least.

At 55, we decided for the sake of our health to have bariatric surgery. Together, we lost a total of 350 pounds. What a difference it made. Now when we took our grandson to a park, we were happily able to get on some of the equipment with him.

It’s all in the mindset, despite any pain or physical limitations. It’s all in making adaptations to make activities easier. It’s all in staying in motion. If I were going to answer Mike Allen, these are the things I would tell him about navigating my senior years.

I am participating in the American Cancer Society’s challenge to write for thirty minutes each day in May. I do a lot of writing and I can meet this challenge. I plan to make a blog entry each day with what I’ve written.

I wanted to participate in memory of loved ones who fought cancer bravely but succumbed:

My brother-in-law Jeff

My sister-in-law Ann

My dear friend Kay

My Uncle Bob

My Uncle John

 

I also wanted to help raise money to support research and a cure for those currently fighting this vicious disease.

My Facebook to the fundraiser is here. 

Day 8 Writing and Cats Are Good for the Soul

 

I started keeping a diary when I was about 11 or 12. It was a little pink book with a few lines provided for each day of the week. I used it mostly to write up a little synopsis of my two favorite soap operas: “Dark Shadows” and “One Life to Live.” Sometimes I would note something that had happened daily but hesitated to do much of that.

I also wrote creative stories, filling composition books with my scribblings. I was writing a story about a family with an evil stepmother. My mother thought it was all right to read the story because I left the notebook out. She was outraged, thinking that the stepmother was really her in disguise. She was right about that but continued in such a rage that I was nervous about writing anything else.

With this little pink diary, I found that the few lines they provided for each day of the week were not enough. I filled it out fast and so, with my allowance, I bought a larger-sized diary. I’d moved on to junior high and had a positively miserable year. It started all right. I had been placed in the highest track, which was supposed to lead to an earlier high school graduation.

The trouble started with an English creative writing story. We were supposed to write a fairy tale.  I wrote about a talking cat with a magic flying carpet that flew around the world. The cat met and befriended everyone she met in the world. It was quite unlike the stories the other students wrote. I guess I was socially immature for my age. The teacher asked me to read my story and while she was charmed, the rest of the class howled with laughter. To them, I’d written a babyish story and they wouldn’t let me forget.

I wrote about the daily torments and how I hated to go to school. Writing released a lot of the anger and hurt I felt inside but I wondered what my parents would think if they read this new diary. I began to hide it in different places to keep it safe from Mom’s prying eyes.

I was writing so much I soon filled that book too. These little diaries were pretty but not nearly large enough to fill my thoughts. I bought a three-ring notebook. That would be big enough and, not only that, but my parents also wouldn’t be suspicious about the purchase. Three-ring notebooks were part of a student’s school supplies.

I felt so much freedom. I didn’t have to confine myself to a few lines for each day of the week. I could write freely for pages and pages, or I could write nothing at all.

Writing in a journal is so cathartic. I felt apart from others to begin with because my parents were Deaf. They also drank too much. There was domestic violence in our house. Sometimes when they would fight, Dad would hit Mom. Sometimes they battled each other. I would hide in my room, locking myself in with my cat. I would write and write.

Mom had an undiagnosed mental illness, possibly bipolar. Her moods would fluctuate between calm, annoyance, and uncontrolled rage. She would turn on my brother and me and hurt us. I wrote about all that too. My journal and my cat were my therapists. I hid the notebook well, changing its hiding place often.

Not so very long, that notebook was filled and so I bought another one. Over the years, I must have gone through six or seven notebooks.

One year, we’d convinced Mom to see the doctor about her depression and rage swings. She went to our family doctor; there was too much shame in consulting with a psychiatrist, which is who she really needed. The doctor prescribed a drug called Sinequan. I don’t recall that it helped.

What I do recall is that after one of my parents’ fights, I had trouble rousing her one morning. Then I found an empty pill bottle on the floor. Frightened, I looked around her night table and found a note. The Note.  I ran downstairs to tell my father and then got on the phone to call for an ambulance. Dad hung up the phone. He didn’t want anyone to know what was going on.

After getting the emergency operator off the phone and while Dad was upstairs trying to rouse Mom, I called the doctor. He first asked, “What do you want me to do about it? Call an ambulance!” I suppose he must have heard the fright in my voice because then he advised, “If you can, get her up and walking.”

I went upstairs. Dad and I dragged Mom out of bed and then walked. At first, Mom was barely conscious but then, thank God, began to awaken. Once she was alert enough to brush us off, I ran downstairs to call the pastor of the Deaf church. I was beside myself.

The pastor said, “Pack a bag and get out of there. Come down here to the church.”

The first things into my suitcase were all my journals and then a few clothes. The suitcase was very heavy, but I hauled it to the bus stop and caught the next bus to that church. The pastor and his mother were waiting for me and, when I explained why my bag was so heavy, they couldn’t help but burst out laughing. They didn’t realize that those journals were the most precious things (next to the cat) that I owned.

Speaking of cats, all of my precious ones have been a part of my life since babyhood. At first, the cats were my mother’s. When I was about 8, I began bringing them home. My mom liked cats too and so she never told me ‘no’ when I asked to keep them. Petting them and listening to them purr always soothes my soul. Don’t get me wrong, I like dogs too. I am just a cat person and over the years have become a crazy cat lady.

I still write journals and stories but not with pen and paper. Rheumatoid arthritis has invaded my fingers so that it’s difficult to grasp a pen or pencil for long. Everything I write is done on my laptop now.

Do I still have my handwritten journals? Alas, no. I shared them with my first husband, Rich, in the 1980s. He cried. He said, “I don’t want you to have these memories for you to fall back on. I want to make new, good memories with you.” He asked if we could throw them away. I’d been rereading them and was experiencing what was later called PTSD. I wanted to feel better and so I said yes. We drove to a dumpster and threw them away.

Sometimes I regret that. Sometimes I don’t. I still remember a lot of what happened anyway, even without the raw and emotional words to remind me. What I do know is how valuable they were to me at a time I needed them most. And I currently have four cats.

I am participating in the American Cancer Society’s challenge to write for thirty minutes each day in May. I do a lot of writing and I can meet this challenge. I plan to make a blog entry each day with what I’ve written.

I wanted to participate in memory of loved ones who fought cancer bravely but succumbed:

My brother-in-law Jeff

My sister-in-law Ann

My dear friend Kay

My Uncle Bob

My Uncle John

 

I also wanted to help raise money to support research and a cure for those currently fighting this vicious disease.

My Facebook to the fundraiser is here.