Foreshadowing

Taking my new hip out for a walk yesterday, I passed a group of familiar runners, all men, all older than I.

"Why the cane?" they asked.

I explained about my hip.

"You look GREAT!" said one of the men, who has seen me hiking the trails with my dog for years. "You'll be back in no time."

I smiled and walked on, hot tears filling my eyes.

It wasn't the first time since returning from the hospital that I'd wept. Queries from two dear friends about my well-being also made me cry. Each time, I was surprised.

When I had my first hip replaced eight years ago, I was 47 years old and on a mission to do everything phyiscially possible to reclaim my life in all its dimensions as fast as possible. I have the same mission this time, but with an emotional fragility that I hadn't felt before.

At 47, getting a new hip is unusual and walking with a cane, anomalous. At 55, it feels like a precursor to a future of frailty and dependence, a bump-up against mortality.

I wept not from physical pain, but from a sense of foreshadowing: when needing help to put on my socks and shoes, or to get in and out of the car, will be typical; when I will grab F's arm not out of romantic impulse, but to steady myself. Inevitable as it is, pondering these aspects of the future is frightening.

I remember being with my mother shortly after she'd received a diagnosis of end-stage lung cancer. We were in the oncology waiting room of Jackson-Memorial Hospital in Miami, where several other cancer patients, mostly women, were chatting with their families. They were all hairless, wearing brightly-colored head scarves. My mother, who was 72 at the time (and died soon after her diagnosis) and always vain about her looks, had not begun treatment. After scanning the room of bald women, she looked at me, and wept.

Seeing the future, whatever decline it portends, brings us to our knees.

This is not to suggest that we peak at 50 and slide steadily downhill thereafter. It is to say that after 50, it is impossible to be unaware of mortality; and because of that, life feels more fragile, more precious.

Being where I am humbles me, and I ponder the future with a prayer for continued good health and strength, and for the wisdom and humor to help me negotiate the peaks and valleys ahead.

Squeaky Wheel

I’m at the age where I don’t care what strangers think of me. I’ve been this way for most of my adult life. But at 55, it’s set in stone. I speak my mind, sometimes too loudly. I ask for what I want, question what I don’t understand and challenge what I find unreasonable. Sometimes, like now, when I’m in post-op pain and feeling angry about being physically dependent on others, I'm brazen. But either way, I don’t care, because wherever I go, I’m usually old enough to be somebody’s mother.

Like the doctors and nurses milling around me in the emergency room, where I languished for hours yesterday afternoon. I had busted out of the hospital early after my hip replacement, and after spending a little too much time sitting at my writer’s desk, my legs swelled.

Post-op legs are tree trunks. They must move every hour to keep the circulation going. I lost track of time and soon noticed that I could not flex my ankles. Fluid and blood had pooled in both legs, turning the one with the new hip orange.

Panic struck. The highest risk for me right now is a blood clot.

So off we went to the ER, where I was quickly ushered into a room and told to wait for a doctor.

They were busy. It was Good Friday, and there were people on gurneys and in wheelchairs much worse off than I. Still, after nearly 2 hours of laying with my legs propped high on pillows, I was getting cranky.

When a woman came to take my $200 (!) co-pay, I said, “I’m not giving you $200 because at this rate, I’m not sure I’m even staying here,” I said.

“Haven’t you seen a doctor?” she asked, trying again to secure my credit card number.

“I’m not paying for care I haven’t received.”

Within minutes, a doctor shuffled in, looking irritated and disinterested, as if just having been awoken from a nap.

How pathetic and wrong is it that the threat of my not spending my $200 in their ER brought the doctor, however reluctantly, to my room?

And what of the rest of the patients waiting for care, not to mention people everywhere, who cannot speak up for themselves? 

Legacy

It almost always happens in a doctor’s office. Is there a history of ____ in your family? Has anyone ever had diabetes or heart disease?

I am quick to recite the illnesses in my mother’s family. Then I am silent.

I didn’t know my father, I offer.

The doctor stares at me, with some mixture of surprise and pity, as I stare at my hands, twisting around each other in my lap.

At 55, I’m still ashamed about my father’s absence, and I don’t know why. It’s not my fault that his marriage to my mother didn’t make it out of the starting gate. 

I don’t know why I feel humiliated when it was she who was belittled and battered. I should feel proud of her for having had the sense to pack us up and leave.

Still, it would be nice to be able to say my parents divorced or my father died when I was young, instead of, I only met my father twice (and that’s because the courts ordered it). After that second visit, I never saw him again. He never even tried to see me.

That could make a kid feel unlovable.

Maybe that’s where the shame comes from.

Aqua Women

Yesterday I had a cortisone epidural to relieve sciatica caused by a herniated disc.

Next week, I am having my left hip replaced.

Eight years ago, I had my right hip replaced.

I feel like an old jalopy that keeps landing in the shop for repairs.

It’s not so much age as it is years of athletics and an unlucky genetic draw that has worn me down. So, I no longer run or cross-country ski. I swim for exercise, because it hurts the least. It also soothes me like nothing else.

For as long as I can remember, water has been my salve. Seeing it, hearing it, touching it. As a homesick child at sleep-away camp, I swam laps in the lake to keep from crying. When my nerves are jangled, when I can’t make a decision, when I’m inexplicably blue, I swim.

No matter how cold or tired or irritable or resistant I feel, I submerge myself in the nearest body of water. And without fail, after the first stroke, I am at peace.

I am not alone.

I swim in a community pool alongside a handful of women every morning, many of them older than I by a decade or more. They are heavier, frailer, slower, more arthritic than I. Some have new hips and some, new knees. Some of them I know by name and most, by their water routines, the way they tread or kick in place.

We are compatriots, bound to our morning ritual. We tote our suits and caps and goggles and fins; peel back layers of down jackets and wool scarfs; toss our hats and mittens; slide off our furry boots. We gingerly tip-toe poolside to avoid stepping down on the cold wet tile floor, and sit along the edge, quietly negotiating with ourselves about how good it will feel once we’re in, nodding to each other across lanes that the water is indeed chilly, and groaning in unison before sliding in. As a rule, we do not chat, because we have a job to do: lapping back and forth, back and forth, like a mantra. When we’re done, we high-tail it to hot showers, whooping and hollering; so deserving, so relieved, feeling accomplished and proud of ourselves.

Funny how, at 55, my role models have changed: no more pining to be a tall, thin, dressed-for-success woman who can sail down the sidewalk on high, stacked heels, I draw inspiration from an older crowd, for whom working joints and a good day's swim are reasons to celebrate. 

Being Here

Now that Obama is tucked into his second term, everyone is already talking about whether Hillary (or who else) will run in 2016. 

It’s like the Oscars. No sooner is the awards show over, then a new crop of movies start the buzz about who will win next near.

When people ask me how it feels to be 55, my knee-jerk response is to say that in five years I’ll be 60.

Like many, I have trouble being here now.

Twist

The human resources director sent me an e-mail, inviting me to attend a second interview. Kudos for them: They hadn’t written me off because of my age.

This time I met with a woman—the would-be supervisor—who had been on the job for all of one week. I couldn’t tell how old she was, but she had to be at least 15 years younger than I. She kept talking about competencies and buckets.

Throughout our hour together, we had unbroken eye contact. Looking someone directly in the eyes usually reveals something about them, something other than what their words tell. But I couldn’t read her.

I suppose that was her job, as an interviewer: to ask the questions and reveal nothing. I suppose it is unrealistic, perhaps even unreasonable, for me to expect more. But that’s what I do: look for the story behind the headline, the person inside the suit.

Now they say I’m a top contender for the job.

Despite my best efforts to champion myself, there is nothing like external validation to put a spring in my step.

We’re nowhere near a decision; still, it's nice to be wanted.

Frosting on the Cake

And now it’s over, although F. insists on making this a weeklong birthday celebration, culminating in dinner out Saturday night, and who am I to turn down being fussed over so?

But nothing will top last night: Home after walking the dog, the table set for sushi (my birthday request) and Chinese take-out, I went to open the closed bathroom door and found R. hiding inside, home from college to surprise me for birthday dinner. And then, a “card” from E., hand-scribbled on torn out spiral notebook paper, so beautifully written and full of love that I couldn’t stop hugging him.

Finally, from F., an exquisite card with just the words I’d longed to hear about our love—his love—20 years into this marriage.

Middle age be damned. It just doesn’t get better than this.

Birthday Blessing

Happy Birthday to me. I am 55 today. I’ve spent the past few weeks dreading this day, moaning over the age, even though I always say that age is just a number and there’s no ducking it. 

But this birthday, before it got here, felt big and heavy. Now that it’s here, it feels surreal.

When my mother was 55 I was 17, in between my kids’ ages. For many reasons that had to do with her being a single mom, we didn’t get along. She was angry and depressed. A smoker and a drinker, sour when she got drunk, which only took one sip of Scotch.

I left for college at 18 and never went back to her house, not even to visit. I swore I’d never have kids. My greatest fear was ending up like her.

But here I am: 55, happily (most of the time) married, with two remarkable teenagers who I love more than life.

As a gift to myself, I’m not going to overthink this one. I am blessed.

Partners

He chipped his tooth on an olive pit, and for a minute, I thought he would cry. He didn’t yell or say much; just went into the bathroom and came out, holding a tiny off-white fleck between his thumb and forefinger. Dinner was quiet. He tried to join the conversation, but spent much of the time staring into space, afraid to eat, afraid that chewing would shear off more of his crumbly tooth.

I forget that he is aging too.

We are about the same age but experience it so differently: Me, with my tweezers, face creams and hair dye; he, with more salt than pepper in his hair and full beard, not a line in his smooth skin, but a growing paunch.

Seeing extra weight on myself horrifies me. He shrugs and has another cookie. I exercise mercilessly, punishing my body for slowing down, for feeling stiff. He takes more naps.

We both forget the names of people we know, of movies we’ve recently seen; I marvel at the random memory loss; he tries to joke about it, but despairs over losing his mind.

He is not one to verbalize sadness or fear.  Mostly, he folds into himself. But chipping his tooth was more than he could bear.

No one has prepared us for this: for being neither young nor old; for the slow decline and creeping deficits that surface like daily insults.

Dreaming Backwards

In more than one dream this week I have seen E. as a baby; a cross between and infant and a toddler; all smiles and hugs, happiest in my arms.

It is probably no coincidence that my mind is traveling backwards in time, the older and closer he gets to leaving home. In a perverse twist, part of me enjoyed nursing him last week, although my heart broke to see him in such swollen, searing pain. His need was naked and raw. He was grateful to have me swoop in every few hours with pudding or ice packs or water, like a hungry baby bird, desperate for its mama to deposit a bug into its wide-open mouth. But as he heals, his softness, like the puffiness of his cheeks, recedes.

Saturday night, in a moment of sleeplessness, I strolled around the house and happened upon him as he came in a little too late from seeing friends. We exchanged a few words and he began to open his arms for a hug. Then he thought better of it.

This is what my dreams are for. 

Impotence Redux

At his 21-year-married mark, my brother Steven said, “Every morning, when J. and I wake up, we look at each other and say, ‘Whaddya think: Will this marriage last?’” Then he gave me his wide, Cheshire cat smile. 

At his death at age 59, my brother had been married 33 years. At his graveside, a few months later, as we blessed and buried his ashes, F. prayed for the gift of a marriage that was as resilient and full of humor and love as was my beloved brother’s.

Of course, Steven and J. had their discord and their clashes. And his 15-year illness, the last four years of which were death in slow motion, tore at their seams. Still, to my eyes, they were a model.

“We fall in and out of love all the time,” Steven had assured me during one of the many times I’d sought his marital advice.

Falling out of love? After two decades or more of marriage? Nothing seemed more improbable, or terrified me more.

And yet, here I am, nearing the 20-year married mark, frightened by the swing of my own emotional pendulum.

Besides raising children, nothing is more difficult than sustaining marital love, especially as aging, illness, and career fray its edges.

We change. Who we were at 35, when passion paved the way for generosity, is not who we are at 55, when self-doubt chips away at acceptance.

We need more, but not necessarily from each other. Our universe has shifted. We still rotate around each other but our orbits are wider. We are growing, aching, questioning in new ways. Our struggles are not about the marriage; fidelity has never been an issue. Still, we grapple with pain that the marriage cannot heal.

F. needs space. I need closeness. F. feels squeezed. I feel threatened.

This has been our dance, always. And for 20 years, we have worked it out. We are not who we were, and yet, we are.

Impotence

E. had his first ear infection at five months of age. It came on suddenly, the fussing, the fever, the plaintive wails.

Our regular pediatrician was off that day, so I rushed to the office of the pediatrician on call. They said they could see him but the office was packed with the doctor’s regular clientele. We would have to wait.

I held my baby boy close, walking and rocking him as he whimpered and we both wept.

I wasn’t a first-time mom. But it had been 2 ½ year since R. had been born, and everything felt new again.

By the time the nurse called us into the examining room I was crying freely. Fortunately, the doctor was generous. She had us in and out in minutes, with a prescription for Amoxicillin in hand. I was wrung out from hours of living through my child’s pain that I could not heal.

Today, E. had oral surgery—four wisdom teeth pulled and hardware inserted in preparation for braces. He is battered and bruised; swollen and sad. And though, at 16, he is more man than boy, his pain wilts me, in my impotence.