Life in the Slow Lane

71……That’s when this whole adventure began.  I retired from teaching at  57 and immediately moved to Vermont and my new career.  Inn keeping really keeps you busy.  There is no time to waste as things have to get done on a schedule.  Rooms had to be ready by 2pm so when the new guests arrived they could be taken right to their rooms.  I had it down pat.  I moved smoothly from one task to the next, making beds, cleaning toilets and bath tubs, replacing towels and of course leaving time to chat with our resident ghost.  I was all over it.  Then of course there was the necessary snow shoveling of the parking lot and all the paths to  the inn itself.  And even with those added responsibilities everything had to be done by 2 pm so that we could greet the guests with a smile!  We were like a machine, I would strip the bed, throw the used linen down the stairs for them to go in the washing machine.  Then move from one room to the next effortlessly.  I even learned a trick to fold fitted sheets.  I was in good form, my body moved perfectly and effortlessly.  After 14 years of inn keeping we had to sell the inn because the advent of Air BnB’s pretty much killed the market for all the little inns and BnB’s.  Homeward bound back to New York and on to the next adventure.  Not knowing what to expect I bought my own little house and spent the first few months setting it up.  Still in good form I could mow all the lawns, shovel the walks and driveway and then chill with a nice glass of wine.   AND THEN, I TURNED 71!

Something happened to my body.  I think it wanted me to slow down but I was fighting it. It won!  Acid reflux and other discomfort necessitated a trip to the  emergency room, an ambulance ride up to St Pete’s in Albany and two stents planted in the widow maker as the doctors called the vessel.  They said I was lucky, no heart attack, but I had to slow down and recuperate.  While I was recuperating, doing lunches with  former colleagues and students, emergency number 2 struck.  After two weeks of my dog licking the right side of my neck, my cardiologist discovered that my right  carotid artery was 99% blocked and needed another procedure.  They slit my throat and scraped the artery clean and inside of 3 hours I was back home and having to slow down even more. So I looked like a lopsided Thanksgiving Day parade balloon  for almost 2 months which pretty much slowed me down out of necessity.  I didn’t want to scare innocent children in the grocery store.  But once again the doctors said I was lucky because they caught it before I had a stroke.  My body then began to slow down without me having much control over it.  I began to notice little things……When I got out of bed often I would fall back onto the mattress.  No problem, I was tired!  After all I wasn’t a kid anymore.  Both my kids reminded me of that on a daily basis. I could deal with that annoying but not serious problem.  Then, I noticed when I would pick up a stemware glass my hand would shake.  That never happened before and bothered me because it was something  other people could  see.  Obviously, I had to develop some coping mechanisms to deal with the balance and shaking issue.  Activities that I could do in a split second all of a sudden required a moment of thought before attempting the activity.  The rest of my 71st year was uneventful and I was beginning to feel myself again.  MY activities were not interrupted and my energy level was back to normal.

Then 72 came!  And with 72, I began to have pains in my wrists and thumbs.  Annoying at first but not really limiting.  Add to that a painful few months with plantar fasciitis which really limited my walking, but luckily I broke my foot and had to wear a brace for 6 weeks and it magically cured the pain .  I started an alphabetical list of all my old man ailments.  As the time passed I adapted my lifestyle to the  restrictions left by the refusal of my body to move in the way I wanted it to.  Unfortunately, though the fasciitis disappeared, the arthritis intensified and continued doing so up to the present..  I was beginning to get the rude awakening that I had to start making amendments to the way I do things.  My wrists got so sore that I had to develop alternate ways to accomplish simple tasks.  Common everyday activities became challenging,  The most difficult was opening cans and jars, door knobs became hurdles, trimming my shrubs caused hours of pain.  Doing the laundry, which I hated in my 40’s became unbearable, even lifting a pot off the burner for dinner was a chore.  While this was going on, my balance was intensifying, My hearing was getting worse to the point where my kids , thinking they were humorous, would mouth words carefully so I could read their lips.  It was time to do something about all of this.

The worst pain was from the wrist.  I was mowing my back lawn and the mover went over a wire cable that twisted itself all around the blade.  There was nothing I could do to untangle it.  The strength in my wrist couldn’t clamp down on the handle of the wire clipper, so I went to Home Depot with a piece of the wire that fell off and searched for a tool that could actually do the job.  I finally found a long armed clipper meant for this kind of thing but I still didn’t have enough strength in my wrists to clip it.  Suddenly I realized, that because of the long handles, if I used both hands and my knees to compress the handles I could experience success.  I was very proud of myself.  Bought the tool, got home, turned the mower over and with one clip of the coil which was wrapped around the blade hopelessly entangled, the whole thing fell right off and I could continue mowing forever more.  There is a solution to all problems.  Opening jars became more difficult.  I found that if I bang the  lid several times on opposite sides and then arrange my body so that my left hand was grasping the lid, my right hand wrapped around the jar and my shoulders were extended forward, the lid would begin to break its seal as I turned the jar instead of the lid.  I even had to buy pants a size too big so that I could snap the waist band pain free.

Because of my balance issue, which has improved by a series of exercises in my shower(there is a safety bar) I can now stand on each foot for at least 25 seconds without losing my balance.  This is important for me because I had fallen several times in the last year.  This slows down my life considerably because I always have to think about what my next move will be especially on staircases.  Which brings me back to the laundry.  My clothes sometimes sit in the dryer for several days.  The process of getting the clothes down to the basement is difficult.  The basket is always full, the dog is always under my feet and I have to stop at the top of the stairs and think,  I had a friend who was doing her laundry, fell down the stairs and hit her head on a metal radiator at the bottom.  I developed this two part system of getting my dirty clothes down to the laundry.  If my laundry basket was overflowing, I developed a rope system that I tied to one of the handles, and slowly and carefully let the basket slide down over the steps until it hit the bottom.  That works really good but now I feel more comfortable and I know the number of steps in each of my staircases.  When going downstairs I naturally hold the handrail, count the steps going down and make sure that my heel hits the back of the riser as I descend.  It works great!  Going up is easy cause you can pull yourself up by using the handrail unless you have an overflowing pile of clean laundry. I actually know how many stairs there are in most of the places I frequent just to be on the safe side.  All of these processes require us older people to think before acting.  The joy of spontaneity is certainly reduced but it beats a trip to the emergency room or worse.  One other thing…..My neck doesn’t move as it used to .  Driving can be difficult because of it.  When roads merge at less than a 90 degree angle I have real problems discerning whether there is on coming traffic so what I have learned to do is all the way at the end of the ramp I position my Jeep as close to a right angle as I can so that I just have to turn my head to the side which then allows me safe passage off the ramp and onto the larger highway.  Anyone who has ever tried to merge onto Route 9 South after getting off the Mid Hudson Bridge knows what I mean. These things all take time, thought, and patience.  Though the days seem to go much faster than they used to, individual actions are slowed down to allow for careful consideration and safety.

I’ll just end with the problem of the fading memory.  Of course, names and words become hard to retrieve so I make a habit of writing lists, especially to go to the grocery store.  I carefully compose the list, post it on the refrigerator door and head out only to realize when I get to Shop Rite that the list remains magnetized on my refrigerator door.  That old 60’s song, “Slow down, you move too fast….gotta make the morning last.”  That is my new theme song!

Life Accommodations

George reminds us of the adjustments we need to make to maintain our lifestyle without having to endure major changes or eliminate those things we need or want to continue to do. When I first read his piece and realized that I was also making these kinds of adaptations, oftentimes without realizing it, I was disappointed that I had reached this point in my life. But as I continued to think more about the concept, it occurred to me that I (all of us) have been making accommodations all of our lives.

When we were children and weren’t tall enough to reach something we wanted, we found something to stand on. When we wanted to go swimming but couldn’t swim, it was a flotation device. We biked with training wheels when we wanted to ride.

As young adults, we were faced with developing coping mechanisms for transitioning from being cared for by our parents to becoming independent tenants, shoppers, finance managers, etc.

As middle-aged folks, we used physical and emotional supports to address unexpected health issues, trauma, and relationship challenges.

With this mindset, I no longer felt as vulnerable and frail as when I first read George’s piece. Now, I can more readily agree that as my body and cognitive fluency are more limited than they once were, I check and adjust to continue my forward momentum in life. While I can’t think of a story to share that makes this point, I can tell you that I have made many accommodations to my daily living behaviors. Each morning as I slide out of bed, it is with greater caution than in the days of old. Before I leave the bedroom, I must put on my glasses to find and place each hearing aid in its proper ear. I no longer bound down the stairs hands-free but walk down holding the handrail (most of the time). I move more slowly, do physical work in shorter periods and with more breaks, and my list of tasks to accomplish is decidedly shorter than I’m used to.

For me, the greatest adjustment has been letting go of the shame I used to feel about getting older and allowing others to see my limitations. My ego was much larger than I believed it was and had (still has) a greater influence over my ability to be fully authentic than I thought. Getting in the pool with my looming love handles showing and wearing a hat while swimming to cover my growing bald spot was, and still is to a degree, a conscious hurdle to overcome.

“It’s not a question of how old you are, but a question of how you are old.” – Jules Renard

“Age is an issue of mind over matter; if you don’t mind it, it doesn’t matter.” – Mark Twain

Thinkey, Thinkey

I liked George’s point about needing to adapt to physical limitations as we age. Let’s face it, nothing stays the same. But what’s really amazing is our internal gyroscope which keeps us spinning true, no matter how circumstances change. I’m talking about our ability to process information and integrate it into the “new normal” of the moment. That gyroscope smooths over the vast amount of change in a manner that allows our basic organization of the world to remain consistent.

As a result, I read George’s account as almost a cheerful reckoning with limitations of a physical nature. His strategy is risk abatement and he cleverly baked in solutions to overcome vulnerable areas of his day-to-day challenges. (Except for his “War of the Roses”, which he’ll have to relate).

I’m all for the special accommodations that allows us to continue to pursue the activities that we love – or need – to do. Lately, I’ve purchased a couple of items that have made a difference: a folding rolling platform – like a dolly with a handlebar – which lets me move heavy items or lots of boxes pretty easily and a pneumatic lift table which can raise a 500 lb. object 27” off the ground (so that I don’t have to).

Super helpful! So much so, that I envisioned a method for single-handedly loading a very heavy 6’ tall storage cabinet into my truck bed. Asking myself. ‘What would Archimedes do?’ I developed a scheme to roll the cabinet next to the tailgate of my truck, pump it up with my lift table and topple it into my truck bed. What could go wrong?

Well, I don’t know what might have gone wrong, because part way through this exercise a younger and stronger friend stopped me. He said that if each of us took a side of the cabinet, we could lift it into the truck. Testosterone took over and I agreed to a team hoist. Unfortunately, he lost his grip part way through and I awkwardly handled the unexpected weight.

Now, my plan probably would not have worked well, but this approach resulted in a shoulder injury which has not fully healed after two weeks. I was moaning to Linda about my inability to do the things I really love (no tennis, no woodturning) and she simply said “Thinkey, thinkey, next time” (since this is a made-up word, I reserve the right to spell it thus). Boy, that ticked me off! But she was absolutely right – as is George: ageing means planning ahead a bit more.

But yet … what’s a life without some risk?

Risk – by Anais Nin

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.