Stick and Stones May Break My Bones….
But I have surgeons to fix them!
40 days today since my latest (and last, please?) hip repair surgery. I noticed, or rather DIDN’T notice my hip at all this morning as I was walking Bella with her neighborhood dog buddies!
I guess this means I’m done.
I still cannot lift anything significant (railroad ties) or do a complete gym workout but I did actually get back on the Precor elliptical yesterday and do a scant 10 minutes to get back into that routine.
Baby steps.
A sad truth; the more Boomerish we all become, the more baby steps we have to accommodate ourselves to.
As the generation that knew no limits, in drugs, in fun, in money, in extremes, in life, in possibilities……we suddenly and without much warning or any preamble, are having limits thrust upon us willy-nilly .
Was it really 20, 30, 40 years ago that we would stagger out of bed on a Saturday morning after a night of debauchery and dance at the I Beam and stumble off to meet those same kindred revelers for Brunch and Bloodies at the Patio Café and head straight on into a weekend of roller skating in Golden Gate park, hiking up Mt Tam or down Stinson Beach, prowling the endless swap meets for treasures and making plans for dinner out in the City…..and more dancing?
Really?
And then do it all again on Sunday?
Really?
If I can get the dog walked, the paper fetched and the bed made (yes, mom, I still make the bed every morning) then I consider my morning hours a success.
It is now a choice, clean the house OR do a garden project, usually not both.
And dancing?
Dancing With The Stars, maybe….on Tivo…..if I can ever make peace with the technology that I must use to manage my life now and not raise the blood pressure over “programming” and “preset” buttons. We won’t even mention that the clock on my desk has been flashing 12:00…12:00…12:00 for the past 3 ½ years now but thanks to conditioned response therapy, I can absolutely block it from my conscious thought.
That and the that fact that the optometrist did mention a thing called cataracts during my last exam which may have something to do with my just not SEEING the damned clock all that clearly. The up side to cataracts (bet you didn’t think there WAS one, eh?) is that when they do indeed progress enough to require surgery (there’s that “surgery” word again), they can correct the astigmatism and other ailments that have required lens all my life and free me from glasses forever!
But wait, then the horrendous hereditary bags under my eyes and droopy lids (thanks mom and dad) will be freed from the disguise of the frames and on display for all to see. I knew I should have had a separate account all these years for that facelift. Sadly, the “medically necessary” lid lift they did 15 years ago now needs a redo itself! And therein lies the flaw with all “work”, good or not, it eventually fails and requires more…and more….and more….ad infinitum.
Age in place.
That was why we moved to Portland although our dear friend John is quite fond of pointing out all the plastic surgeons and life enhancement techniques available here in Geezerville as he calls it.
The one really great line about ageing and plastic surgery I’ve ever heard was when Oprah asked Jane Fonda at 72 what she sees when she looks in the mirror. “Good work!” was Jane’s succinct reply.
So the lesson is unless we’re blessed with great genetics (we’ve established this to be not the case), a great career and thus a substantial plastic surgery savings account (again, not the case) and the access to the best surgeons and makeup men in Hollywood (again……well you get the idea), then our options are limited.
Age in place.
Gracefully.
And I might add, gratefully.
For as much as it pains us sometimes to see the ravages in the mirror or feel the actual pains in our joints and in our psyches as well, know that they were hard fought, honorably won and bear testament to lives that were lived as well as we knew how at the time and in the times that we were living them.
It is enough.
The rest is gravy.
From Mel:
This is both beautifully written and true. I would rather have a used face that is still my own than the plastic surgery mask worn by so many these days. And while many of them do look brilliant for awhile, when the failure of over doing it sets in, there is little than can hide the artificiality. I’m all for replacing parts that no longer work, or removing parts that have turned on us causing life threatening conditions, but to voluntarily go under the knife, NO WAY. If people don’t love us for who we really are, then the hell with them. And that logic has to start with ourselves. And there are times when I count myself lucky that I’ve gotten warnings to slow down and do things in moderation (like with my back), because without the warnings I might have gone straight into doing something that would cause permanent irreparable injury. Now I do at least have options. And if we’re not feeling up to doing all the chores we should do, we just need to redefine what the word “should” means. Maybe I shouldn’t garden so hard. You can garden beautifully without making a career of manual labor out of it. And with all that time I’m saving I can become killer on the bongos or do a myriad of other things. The choices we now have to make as we age don’t have to feel or even be limiting if we embrace the idea of choice. If one thing becomes not so easy to do, just cross it off the list and replace it with something equally or even more enjoyable. It’s all about attitude, and you couldn’t have said any of this more brilliantly. You should contact Oprah…..her network isn’t doing that great…..she could use Dr. Robby.