Dancing

Nothing makes me feel any older than going to a wedding and watching kids dance. The enthusiasm and energy of some 20-somethings is contagioius and I love watching them take over the dance floor, but I get tired just watching them from the sidelines while I wait patiently for a "slow dance" to come up in the rotation.

My favorite movie is "It's a Wonderful Life" with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. Its the heartwarming story of a man who is faced with losing his life's work and possessions and is so overwhelmed by it all that he considers jumping off a bridge and ending it. Anyway, it's a classic so I don't need to go into details about the plot, but what I was getting at was that there is one scene where the two main charaters are out front of a home where an older man is watching them and he finally waves his hand in disgust and utters the phrase "Aw, youth is wasted on the young!"

I think about that line so many times now that I am older. If only I had known then then what I know now I would have danced with more abandon, laughed with more entusiasm, and just generally lived life with more gusto, knowing that it was brief and every moment is to be savored. I would have spent less time worrying about what people were thinking about me and less time worrying about what I looked like or sounded like or anything else that might have made me enjoy moments more fully when I was in them.

It's not too late for me to live it with more freedom though, and I think I will.

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!