Knees

The knees are sore this morning. It's funny how you give so little thought to your body parts for so many years and then middle-age hits and suddenly it's as though they all want your attention at once. An ache here, a creak there, and new feelings and experiences all the time. What used to be taken for granted is now constantly at the forefront of our minds.

My father had bad knees and his sister had both knees replaced so it is a worry for me. Genetics is such a troublesome thing! I used to be able to bound up the stairs at home without a second thought and now I hang on to the banister for fear I can't manage to pull myself up without the extra help.

What a strange thing it is, watching as our bodies slowly deteriorate. Not that I feel as though I am wrung out and done with, but I can surely see the slow process happening and it is fascinating. For me its the knees, for others it may be shoulders or elbows, but all my friends in this age bracket have some sort of issue with joints or bones. It's the kind of thing you don't want to talk about too much because it makes you feel and sound "old", but it is always there and it makes us well aware of the years we are looking back on as opposed to forward to at this point in our lives. And it's comical to be out with friends and hear all the little groans when we all stand up to leave the dinner table.

But....my knees still work and I am still in pretty good shape so I take the warning signs as just that. I need to work on the treadmill and keep myself in physical shape as much as it is possible for me to do. And I can go a long way in that respect.

Time to get moving....

Memory

I wanted to call someone on the phone and I walked out to the office, picked up the phone book, and started to flip through the pages. There was one problem. I forgot who I was calling.

How is it possible to forget within 5 minutes? It scares me sometimes in this "age of Alzhiemers' because I watched my grandmother suffer with it and the my mother-in-law. I read everything I see about it in the newspapers - every new study or discovery is important and I devour every word. It is going to be the curse of my generation.

But then I am with friends and they do the same thing. "What was I going to tell you?" they say, or "Where did I leave my car keys"? It releives me a little....but still there is that doubt.

I know at the end of the day what will be will be. There is not a blessed thing I can do about it if I get it. But with middle-age comes many concerns about health and fitness and we fuss so much about the way our bodies are changing. We try to eat right and excercise and stay in good shape, but we know the clock is ticking and time inevitably moves on.

Now what was it I was talking about again?

New glasses

Today I was fitted for new eye glasses and it was a pretty painful process. Not only was the mirror large and close to my face, it had magnification. Now - I know that I don't look like I did 30 years ago, but I honestly had no idea it is as bad as it is. I mean, I am used to seeing myself in the bathroom mirror, standing at a nice distance of about 5 feet. Flaws are easily hidden and my increasingly poor eyesight misses a multitude of sins. But the mirror at the optometrist's office....well that was just brutal.

It was noon when I walked out of the office, and I really wanted to find the closest bar. And I don't really drink as a rule. Today it was called for.

When I was young I was often complimented on my complexion. Now I think it is a bit scary, with age spots popping up all over the place and the imperfections in my skin tone and quality are quite visible, even through make-up. It's impossible to hide it all anymore.

It would be easy to give up at this point and not bother trying anymore. If I was wealthy I might consider botox or some other cosmetic surgery, but probably not. I am not fond of needles or pain.

Then again, the pain is sometimes mental. Like when you look too closely in a big mirror and realize you're not fooling anybody anymore.

Doctors

It's doctor season for me. I have been dreading it for a month now, because I knew that as soon as September came I would need to start making my annual pilgrimages to the various specialists and general practitioners who make up my "health care team" as they like to call themselves. So far I've been to the optomitrist for updated glasses and a glaucoma test and to the dentist to have the plaque scraped off my teeth. Tomorrow I'll head west for blood work so I can have my annual check-up with my general practitioner. Then it will be the gynocologist for Pap smear, mammogram, and bone scan, and then to the gastroenterologist for my follow-up endoscopy.....and the sad thing is that this is only the beginning! If I am lucky enough to live a nice long life it will only get worse and I'll will need to spend more and more time in waiting rooms and on examining tables. Yuck.

From a pretty early age we learn that the things that are good for us are not always pleasant, from taking medicine to eating the right foods - but once middle age sets in it really gets rediculous. I remind myself how lucky we are to have the kinds of interventions and screenings that would indoubtedly have extended my grandparents lives had they been available 40 years ago. I know we are the recipients of the results of wonderful research and discovery. And I truly like all my doctors, I really do! Yet the idea of spending 30 minutes (or more) cooling my heels in the waiting room of a doctor's office still makes me annoyed.

Maybe we need more research on how to make the doctor's scheduling more efficient. And then how to make the tests themselves, and the hospitals and their staffs who administer them, less intimidating and more "patient friendly".

A good start would be improving those silly hospital gowns...

Candidates

I am amused at the way our new vice presidential candidate has highlighted the gender gap that exists so blatantly in this country. The most obvious thing that brought it to light for me was when I sat in a room full of men and they looked at me, with big grins, and asked "Well, what do you think of Sarah Palin, huh?" The tone left no doubt of the uspoken insunuation that I should be ready to run out and vote for this person simply because she was a woman. I was a bit taken aback by it simply because, as much as I admire any woman who has managed to get as far as this one has in what is obviously such a "man's world" like politics, I do not agree with many of her political viewpoints and would no more vote for her simply because she is a woman than I would have voted for Hillary for the same reason. Here we are 80 years after winning the right to vote and yet men still seem to think we are more concerned with gender than substance. Wow.

I wonder if we will ever see true equality in our world. I'm not sure its possible, but I hope so. I look forward to a time when no one would assume you would vote for any candidate based on the color of their skin or the type of their genital organs. I know that's something that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King would have also hoped for - being judged on the content of one's character and all. But we are not there yet and as a middle-aged woman I wonder if I will ever see it.

What an interesting age we live in. We - many of us - are in the doorway. But not quite yet into the room.

Newlyweds

Having my newly-wedded son and his adorable wife live with us this summer has been an enriching experience for me. If anything, adding her to the family mix has made life easier as she has tempered my son's usual sloppy and carefree ways with a more refined and focused attitude. She is a good influence on him and I think they compliment each other well - he chose wisely.

One of the things that has been most fun for me to observe is those moments in early married life where we attempt to figure each other out and find what our acceptable boundaries are. This morning, as my husband helped them load the truck with furniture to move into their new apartment, I was especially amused by the following exchange: My son and my husband were putting an end table in the pick-up truck. It is one of those tables that has a lamp built right into it, and they stood it up in the truck bed and secured it with a bungee cord. The lampshade was still on the lamp. As my daughter-in-law and I watched from the door we both had the same thought and as my son walked back into the house she said sweetly "Don't you think it might be a good idea to take the shade off the lamp before you drive away?" So sweet, I thought. I remember those days so well! All optimism and joy in the discovery of who we have attached ourselves to for the rest of our lives.

Anyway, I watched silently for the next few minutes as they continued to load things onto the truck until I finally couldn't stand it anymore and headed out to the truck myself, and with all 33 years of experience behind me stated firmly to my husband "You need to take that lampshade off and put it in the truck".

"Good idea" he said and promplty did exactly that.

Ah the glory of youth. Ah the wisdom of middle-age!

Ouch!

Today I am paying for not physically working out for months. I was so faithful for so long - since I turned 50 when I began an exercise program for the first time in my life - and then a series of events happened a few months ago which derailed everything, and now here I am, out of shape and miserable. So finally I laced up my sneakers and headed outside on a beautiful September day for a nice walk.

Today - my shins hurt. Every step I take causes pain to shoot up the front of my legs and I am annoyed that I allowed myself to get to this point. And also that my age is a factor in everything anymore. It will take me weeks to get back to where I was a few months ago.

I came from a family that never did anything very physical. It was not the best legacy, but it is what it is. Now I struggle to make myself get out and sweat just because I know its good for me. And I have a message for all those people who hvae told me over the years that I would learn to love it: I hate it. And I always will.

Especially when my shins hurt.

Perspective

One of the interesting benefits of middle-age is the perspective I have attained on life and the journey it is. I can think back on so many things that have happened over the years, things that seemed so earth-shattering at the time they occurred, and realize with hindsight that none of them were as important or horrible as I thought they were at the time. Each traumatic event was HUGE when I was in the midst of them, but now, in retrospect, they were not such a big deal. So why was it that at the time it seemed as though my world was rocked and nothing would ever be the same?

I think that this is what we see in the elderly as contentment and peace. It is simply the knowledge they've acquired with age that helps them take everything with grace and calm. My mother was the very picture of grace when she was dying. Now I think I know why. We live for so many years sort of bouncing from crisis to crisis, dealing with kids and financial issues, so many really heavy things - and then we get to this point and we can see that we weathered it all, we are still here, and at the end of the day everything worked out OK.

I am trying hard to take on the peaceful presence that I observe in many of the senior members of our lives. And hopefully when the next crisis comes I will be ready with an attitude of contentment, happy in the knowledge that this too shall pass, whatever it is, and I survive. And also that God abides in us if we are open to it, bringing a peace and grace that is otherworldly to our lives.

It is a wonderful revelation.

Diet time...again

What is it about diets that make us think we need to start them during times of "new beginnings"? Like a new year, or a holiday just passed, or maybe a birthday we are celebrating. Whatever it is - and today it's September for me - we somehow think that the "beginning" of something is the right time to start fresh and get our act together. So today the diet begins.

What torture, what agony! And why is it so difficult? I have theories about diets but I'm sure they would never stand up to scientific proof of any kind. I just know what I have observed in my lifetime. For instance: some people can simply eat more than other people and never gain weight. You can spend an entire day showing me proof that calories make people gain weight, but I have seen it with my own eyes and I know it is true. Some people are just meant to be thin. I hate those people.

Another truth: the people who are on TV talking about how they went from a size 22 to a size 6 by losing 50 lbs must be freaks of nature. I mean, I have lost tons of weight over my lifetime (well maybe not tons but certainly hundreds of pounds over the years) and even my largest losses have never amounted to more than 2 sizes different.

And this one: If I never eat another day of my life I will never be a size 6. I am quite certain that my bones are a certain size and its definatly not a 6.

I made my husband promise me once that if I am ever in a coma and they say I will not recover, he is not allowed to let them turn off the machines that are keeping me alive until I am down to a size 12. Just once in my adult life I would like to reach that goal. It may not be a size 6, but on me I think it will look really, really good. Even if I do have tubes coming out of everywhere.

I wonder if there is a space for that request on a living will....