I’ve written about the expectation that women my age are supposed to be docile and invisible, and “act our age.” To which I said, “hell with that.”
That worked for a while, until it didn’t. Something unexpected happened.
I got old.
I don’t know why I should be so shocked about getting older. It’s just the way I’m getting older that has thrown me. I expected to age chronologically, just not physically. Which is stupid, I know, but hey, I thought, I’m different! I’ll be out splitting wood with a sledgehammer and a wedge when I’m 80! I work out! With dumbbells, no less! I mow my own lawn! And it’s a big yard – a third of an acre!
Hell, last week, I crawled out of my bedroom window onto the shed roof above my kitchen to clean out a gutter and unclog a downspout. The roof was steeper than it looks, so I scooted around on my formidable ass to get to the clump of foul smelling leaves and debris that was plugging up the downspout.
That is something that I’m not supposed to do, according to the bone scan I finally had last month, about ten years after I was first told to do so.
The magnitude of my morning aches and pains has shocked me. The disintegration of my knees, held at bay only by the exercises given to me in two rounds of physical therapy (one for each knee) has made me more tentative in my movement (don’t twist that knee!)
The casual medical use of the word “atrophy” regarding parts of me that help define me as a woman stunned me. And there have been painful and heretofore unknown (to me) conditions associated with the hormonal changes of female aging that took me completely by surprise. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this shit years ago? Probably because back then, everyone was still afraid of hormone replacement therapy, the most effective treatment. It doesn’t matter that those fears have been largely debunked – women my age are at greater risk anyway, so it’s too late for me now.
So, what, I’m just supposed to accept that if I try to fix this, I could break that? Just suck it up?
And it has dawned on me that the enthusiastic pickling of my brain (Libiamo!) that I’ve been committing for the past, oh, I don’t know, 45 years, might have put me on the road to worse than just taking an extra beat or two to come up with that….what was that? That word that means…ummm….Who are you again?
I have persisted in karaoke. Although it’s typical for karaoke audiences not to listen much, it used to be that I could get them to listen every once in a while, and occasionally get them to sing along.
But no one was listening this past Friday. (OK, that’s a lie – I did get a few compliments at the first place I went. But I didn’t even get up to sing at the second place, where there were a lot of really good young singers doing songs I didn’t recognize).
Which is when I realized it’s time to hang it up.
OK, so, what’ll I do for fun? Knit? Nope, don’t remember how. Same with crochet. I do love to read (check out my Books and Music page for updates on that). And there’s always gardening, an acceptable little old lady pastime.
All of which are done without an audience.
I wrote that my “nudge” word for this year will be “less.” Now, I want it to be less is more. I want to be silent. I want to embrace invisibility.
I want to be an “eminence grise,” sitting quietly and smiling cryptically in the back of the room. Invisible, but present. Keeping myself to myself, unless and until someone notices I’m there and that I haven’t said anything, and asks me to.
Which will never happen, but I’m OK with that. It’s not that I’ve lowered my expectations. I’ve eliminated them. Which is a kind of liberation. I’m just…here. Take it away, Emily:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Dont tell! they’d banish us – you know!How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell your name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
The bog can go admire itself. I’ll just be back over there, admiring other people’s talents. And puttering in the garden. Tea, anyone? Now where’d I leave my glasses? Too wet for the garden today. How ’bout a nap?
Having reached the age where a nap at home beats going out any day, I remain,
your creaky-jointed, tea-totaling (for now, anyway, but my birthday is coming!), indulgently smiling at the young’uns,
Ridiculouswoman