Bed time

It is now after 10pm and I am feeling as though I should have been in bed an hour ago. What's happened to me? I can remember a time, (and it seems as though it wasn't long ago but I guess it was over 30 years now,) when I would go out to a nightclub with my friends until 3 in the morning, go home to sleep for a few hours and then get up at 8am for work. And I thought nothing if it! I don't even think I was particularly tired the next day. What happened to that person? Now if I don't get my solid 7 hours I can barely function for the following 12 hours and honestly, I cannot think of anything I want to do badly enough to make me stay up after midnight.

For some reason, the older I get, the less I do, and the more I need my sleep. What a crazy life.

Childbirth

It was exactly 33 years ago right now that I was laying in a hospital bed holding my newborn baby for her very first feeding. We had checked in about 1:30 and were only there a couple hours when she graced us with her presence, with her perfect little head and adorable little face. How vivid and special those memories are today, all these years later.

But where did those years go? As much as I can rationally say they went to school, and piano lessons, and 4-H Club, and sports - because I remember every year quite well - I still cannot quite fathom that the tiny baby I held in my arms, so overcome with the gravity and responsibilty of it all, is now a mother herself. Life is strange in so many ways - none more than in the way it grabs us by the scruff of the neck and sends us spinning off through the ages with dizzying speed.

Today I will celebrate a special day, 33 years ago, that changed my life forever. And today I will wonder at how it all goes by so fast. A vapor, as the Bible says. Truer words were never said.

Fall Cleaning

I used to love to do spring and fall cleaning in the house. The kind where we pull all the furniture out, get every hidden baseboard and corner well vacuumed, roll up the area rugs and scrub the floors - it was such a great feeling. But as I get older I am starting to dread it. What was once a liberating and wonderful event is something I now look to with dread. A long week of cleaning out closets, scrubbing walls and cleaning carpets seems like an overwhelming duty now. And I find it easy to put it off as long as possible just because it's so much work.

And I'm only in my 50s. What am I going to do if I'm lucky enough to hit 70? I don't even want to think about it. It is already making me tired...

Muscles

I notice when I sit curled up in a chair for awhile, and then stand up to go into another room, it takes me three or four steps to straighten out all the way and walk upright. What is that about? The muscles just don't seem to make the quick adjustment they used to - like everything else in my body they seem a bit worn and slow. When it happens I usually think something along the lines of "My kids must think I am looking really old these days" because I remember observing such changes in my own parents and thinking that very thing.

I am enjoying my age - it is full of new experiences and tempered with contentment. I no longer worry about the future because I've lived long enough to know the future will take care of itself. But I wish I had the mind of a 57-year-old and the body of a 27-year-old.

Now that would be a winning combination!

Grandkids

I tapped into a very distinct memory the other day. It was when we was in our first home together over 30 years ago now, a tiny little house in Amagansett. I was rocking my first born baby about 2 in the morning - she was only a few weeks old. I distinctly remember looking down at her tiny perfect face and being so overhwelmed with love for this child, and then just as suddenly being struck with a new thought: Is this the way my mother felt about me? Did she love me with this same kind of intense and heart-wrenching love that makes me now know that I would do anything for this child? Wow. I had no idea!

For years I thought there was no other love like that - the love I felt for my children. And this coming from someone who is still very much in love with her husband, and has a big wonderful extended family that I love very much as well. But what I feel for my kids, well that cannot be matched can it?

And then I had grandchildren.

The confounding thing about grandchildren is that we have very little control over much that happens in their lives - we must sit back and watch our children do all the parenting and make all the decisions about what they are taught and what they can do. As much as we would love to wrap them in a bubble and protect them from everything we cannot even be there to protect them from the everyday dangers they face. Their parents have to assume that burden. But when I look into the faces of those kids I feel the same intense emotional connection that I did to my own babies - a primal, protective urge that is so strong it nearly bursts out sometimes. It has in fact - at those times when I've pleaded out loud to one of their parents "She can't do that can she?" or "Do you let him play with those?" Usually I can suppress those kinds of words but sometimes, it just happens. And its not because I think any of them are bad parents, quite the contrary. So far they've all been top notch in the parenting department. It's got more to do with not being in control of something so important to me than anything else.

Anyway - the thing that set all this thought process off was a few days ago when I was going to baby sit for the kids and my daughter said, innocently enough, "I feel better about having them with someone who loves them almost as much as I do!"

She really has no idea....

Saturday

Saturday used to be a long work day around our house. For so many years we rose early and began the process of crossing off the jobs on our list that ranged from house cleaning to car washing to hedge trimming and yard maintenance. We would work together - not side-by-side necessarily but together all the same, to get the house cleaned and manicured and totally up to snuff - at least as much as it ever is around here. (Neither of us is a neat freak!) Even the kids had a chore list for Saturdays.

That was then.

This morning we were out of bed before 7am and started working deligently. I vacuumed, wiped, scoured, and scrubbed around this house which has been a bit neglected during this very busy summer, and even the cabinets got a good going-over. My husband headed for the yard where he washed the cars and is even now toiling away at the hedges which are badly in need of a trim. It's 10am and I am exhausted.

So here is one more thing to put on the list of the annoyances of aging - lack of endurance! Where we used to work until about 3 in the afternoon before resting. Now we are lucky if we make it to lunchtime. And we take little breaks all morning at that. By noon we are usually sitting in chairs, grabbing a bite to eat and trying not to think about how much our legs ache or our backs hurt.

It' a strange thing, watching our bodies wear out. And we are not even that old yet! But we can already see the difference and it sometimes sobers us up realizing how much less we will be able to do in a few more years.

So - we work on our own maintenance - regular excercise and eating (fairly) well. But age is an inevitable part of life and its efects are clear. My poor parents. I should have offered to help them out more...

Memory

Earlier today - or maybe earlier this week - I can't remember which - I told somebody I would do something for them. I remember the conversation enough that I remember saying "No problem! I can do that in a couple minutes! I'll take care of it right away." Now, I cannot remember the person I was talking to, the place we were, any of the details of the conversation (as in what it was I was promising to do) and I'm totally confused. What do I do now? I can't go back and ask what it was I promised to do, I can't do it now even though it might be late - I'm stuck in this world of not knowing anything basically.

It's very unfamiliar territory for me. I am a person who has always prided myself on a pretty reliable memory for details and here I am not remembering enough to even back-track and fix all of it. I'm basically screwed.

My memory has failed in the past but never quite to this extent. I'm not worried about Alzhemiers - not yet anyway - but gosh I hate not being someone that others can depend on.

I supposed it's time to begin writing everything down. Everything. What a drag....