Prepare yourself. I am going to be a bit crabby. I recently made an investigative expedition to my local library to see what the experts were writing on aging. I not only perused the books, but also the periodical shelves as well as the internet. I have two takeaways from all of this research.
First, I am amazed that any of us are still alive after our 70th birthday. The various books and articles remind me of currently running television ads for various drugs. After extolling their wonders as smiling people frolic to happy music, all their health cares gone, a subversive voice comes in low and fast letting you know that use of this drug may cause your nose to fall off, your hair to turn green, and many other disasters that one cannot quite hear. We older people are supposedly entering our golden years (once again cue the happy frolicking music), but what about the long list of age–related problems I saw in the library? Now you need to read this out loud very quickly in a low, urgent voice which anyone with a hearing aid would never be able to hear: elder abuse, financial hardship, social isolation, depression, dementia, and acres of other health problems.
Second, the great majority of these examinations of the old were written by people who definitely were not. Old, that is. I made a point of looking the authors up, examining pictures, and exploring them on the internet. I am sure that many of them have wonderful degrees, are very able in their fields, and have helped many people. But they really do not understand the small, everyday aspects of being older. Do they sink to the floor to play with a child, gravity doing much of the work, only to find that gravity will not get them back up on their feet again? Or do they poise on the edge of their bed in the morning to make sure that all their various parts will participate in getting them to their bathrobe? Or, do they now garden for half a day, when once a whole day of weeding and planting would pass unnoticed? Is their hair falling out or cropping up in unlikely places, or are they cutely addressed as ‘young lady’ or ‘young man’ when everyone knows they are not?
I am reminded of the dark ages, back when I had my first baby in a Naval Hospital. We pregnant ladies were required to take a four part class before we could enter the delivery room. I faithfully went so that I could get my certificate, but a small rebellious part of me wanted to know if they would have actually turned me away at the door if I had not had that little piece of paper. I went with a neighbor to the last class in which a very young, slim Naval doctor described child birth to a room full of female humans whose resemblance to beached whales was striking. As his hand slid across his very flat stomach, and a gleaming brass belt buckle, he described, with great authority, the labor pains we could expect to experience. I promptly got a terrible case of the giggles, the kind that gets worse the more one tries to suppress it. My neighbor was similarly affected and it got so bad our male instructor had to ask us to leave the room, which we did, collapsing in the hall outside the meeting room with tears running down our faces.
I do not think that would happen today as the medical profession is now more inclusive of female practitioners. But the old age community will never be similarly represented on the shelves of the library. So we can at least get together over a cup of coffee and laugh about the small irritations of our lives: high heels that reside unused in our closets, the irritation of teeny, tiny hearing aid batteries, and a time when that cup of coffee we are drinking was twenty-five cents. And that crabbiness will dissipate in the warmth and laughter of those who are living through these small irritations, and truly understand them.