Growing Old Is For The Birds

That’s it. The truth is unavoidable. I’m officially old. I am not ageist, truly. Nor do I have anything against aging. Who wouldn’t prefer it to the alternative?

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m still a kid inside or at least in my 20s. Even though I’ve spent the entirety of my life aging, I don’t think I recognized it until I looked in the mirror and saw my mother staring back at me. By the way, get that woman a vacation or at least some retinol cream. 

I think there are elements of aging that may require recalibrating our sense of self. Face it, until now, there are things I never had to think about. Like how to get up off the floor. Or figure out how I got there in the first place. It appears I’m finally old enough to know that beta blockers aren’t board games. And that AARP isn’t a sound a character makes in a comic book.

Lately, this aging evidence has been piling up. Unavoidable, irrefutable clinchers that only mean one thing. I’m older. I have crossed some invisible line and there’s no going back. And if I did, who knows, I might trip on it. Apparently, nowadays, I also have to worry about breaking a hip. As if that was ever a good idea.

Here’s a few things that alerted me to aging:

I like birds. When did that happen? No, seriously, I’m now a super fan. The other day I stood mesmerized by a little titmouse flitting about. The fact that I even know the word titmouse is damning. I can’t imagine what I would’ve thought that word meant in my youth. 

I have tissues in my purse. Okay, let me fess up. The truth is, they’re in my fanny pack. In admitting that, I want to tell you I could die from embarrassment. But, really, that could happen anyways. Any minute.

I can’t open my prescription bottles. Nothing makes you look more like an oldster than flailing about the kitchen trying to open something. That along with texting with one finger, reusing paper towels, sporting comfy shoes, arguing with my husband about his cassette tape collection, and actually enjoying Ricola cough drops. The very same ones my 92-year-old mother-in-law keeps in her fanny pack. Alongside her tissues. Oh my god.

At restaurants, I’m flummoxed when they hand me the early bird menu and inform me it’s 5 p.m. That’s when I used to eat lunch! I’m dumbstruck until I get excited that they have rice pudding.

Thank goodness many people get better with age. You hope we all become more our true selves, wiser, with broader perspectives. That we freak-out less about life’s quirks and, more challengingly so, our’s and other people’s quirks. That instead, we have more practice focusing on what matters. 

Like fine wine, aging causes us to be smoother, gentler. Sometimes increasingly more valuable. I like the wine analogy way better than cheese. Although it does seem to apply to some people I know. Like aged cheese, they’re harder, sharper and quite crumbly. Worse, some are moldy. Trust me, stick with the fermented grapes. 

Back to birds (can’t help it).The other day I spied the most brilliant cardinal. He was perched on an evergreen, plump in scarlet vibrance. Instantly, I was reminded of my friend’s parents who passed. Cardinals make her think of them. So, whenever I see one, I think of her mom and dad too. Because that’s the other thing about getting older, we lose many we love.

Maybe it’s why I’ve fallen in love with birds later in life. There’s something about their flight that harkens to feelings of passage and transition. Just like aging. My past selves have flit away, uncatchable, and yet they’re in the ether too. Like the pair of redwing blackbirds I watch from my desk when they flutter away in the evening as the sun gracefully descends towards the horizon.