Aging in orbit

Well, it’s official! As of the publication of this issue of Dirt, I am a senior citizen, and I have the Medicare and AARP cards to prove it. To put it in a kinder, gentler way, I am in the sunset years, a strangely difficult thing to admit to myself, but hey, there’s the blue plate special and Shoprite old folks discount Wednesdays, baby! Do I find joy in this? Am I ready to embrace that compassionate offering to help unload my shopping cart or open that jar of pickles? I stubbornly say no but my degenerating vertebral discs and arthritic fingers scream yes. Am I really that decrepit? Try as I might to not make the old man sound when I hoist myself up out of the chair, I hear it come, unbidden, in full throated advertisement of the fact that I am, (dare I say it?) old. Gone forever are the days of devil may care eating, and sleeping, and spontaneous exertions. I am now a slave to my body’s needs, feeding it with prescribed precision lest I suffer intolerable consequences, putting it to bed at precisely the time it needs because God forbid I should stay up past ten, and planning with exactitude what labors I will ask of it throughout my day, the usual push me pull you of obligation vs. joy, making dinner or sitting down for an unencumbered afternoon of writing, cleaning the toilets or going for that nice walk. So, when I ask myself if I am finding joy in my ‘golden years,’ I think there is much joy to be found, but it means embracing a new definition of myself, one that picks the finer points of the me I used to be and restructuring them to a simpler, mellowed version, with a lot less heavy lifting.

I have friends who are going through quandaries like mine, all of us asking, how will I survive old old age? We’re watching as the years peel by and various body parts suffer the ravages of time, wondering how much longer till we cease being productive. I wake up in a pool of sweat, imagining what my life will be like in the coming years, the maybe not so terrible seventies, the uh-oh eighties, the highly improbable how the hell did I get here? nineties. I stare into the dark void of night and replay the same questions over and over: will I be able to age in place, or will I be in a nursing home? Why didn’t I plan better? Who’s going to be able to stand me when I’m really cranky?

Lately, I find myself dwelling on more existential questions, such as, why am I even here? Then it occurs to me with a jolt of clarity that I came into existence for the obvious purpose of bringing my darling daughter into this world, she being the bearer of my genetic coding for dark humor, intractable headaches, a love of natural sciences and an aversion to cilantro. She is the sum total of the best and the worst of me and her father, plus the eons of generations that came before to culminate in this one incredible person, the best legacy I could possibly leave behind.

When I am staring in the mirror at the unconscionable changes in my face, I look for clues in the wrinkles and sags to a question that plagues me; will I be one of the rare ones who will stay cogent, independent, of use right up until the end? I get no definitive answer, but my old face reminds me to take heed, to watch that sunset, to cherish that hot cup of coffee in the morning, to hug my kid. No one knows how any of this will go, it says, and there’s no do-over.

We all know that Elon Musk has this plan to populate Mars in the not too distant future, and it is rumored that in an effort to ensure its success, he has offered to donate enough sperm to help start a robust colony. You’d think a guy with that much legacy under his belt would be content with what he’s accomplished right here on our precious planet, not the least of which is a dozen earthbound progeny, who will most likely grow up to produce untold multitudes of industrious Musks. Maybe I’ve just got simpler dreams, a lower bar for what I see as a good and happy legacy, the child I’ve raised, a lifetime of cooking and feeding people, tending a garden of pollinators where, year after year, hummingbirds and monarchs and bumble bees come back to partake of the goodies they know they can count on. That’s the best I can offer, and in fact, I am pretty happy with how it’s all turned out. Mr. Musk can have his Mars colony. No matter what the future holds, I plan on growing old and decrepit right here on terra firma, a damn good place, after all, to live, grow old, and die.