“What the young people don’t understand,” she tells me, “is that when you get to our age everything is an effort.”
My friend Judy is in her mid-eighties, a plucky, independent grandmother of five, who still bakes cookies, plays winning bridge, dresses with style and reads the newspaper cover to cover. Unlike me, she has no problem remembering names and book titles. “What was that game, we played years ago with the red whatchamacallits?” I’ll ask. And she’ll tell me. I quote Judy frequently and look to her for advice because she continues to makes the effort to keep doing, even so, the key word is effort.
It’s an effort to get up off the couch, literally. Pilates classes fell by the wayside, given hips or sciatica or whatever it was that hurt. It’s harder to bend over and adjust socks. Those boots that take an extra tug to put on, forget it. Standing around and making chitchat, I’d rather sit, thank you very much. Waiting in a longish line at the checkout counter, never mind. Effort has to be carefully scrutinized and prioritized wisely.
Recently, Judy related this story: A friend of hers joined a fitness class with a focus on balance. Balance is critical and it’s something that takes deliberate focus these days along with hand-held railings, shoes with proper traction and slow descents down stairs. “Can you stand on one foot and count to 10?” is the standard assessment. If I count fast, maybe. If I tighten my gut and finger-touch a wall? If I practice, but I don’t. Anyway, back to Judy’s story. Her friend was working on balancing in her balancing class when what happened was she lost her balance fell down and dislocated her shoulder. See what I mean, effort itself is a balancing act.
Another example. This summer, sharing a beloved week of beach time with grandchildren, I was the one who got out of the beach chair (OMG beach chairs! They are miserably low to the ground and obviously not meant to get out of). But I got out of the damn thing in order to play a racket ball game with a restless grandchild. Let his father sleep. Let his mother read. Let the other kids dig their holes, I volunteered. To be l honest, it was not a sacrifice; I love the game, used to urge the younger ones to play and to try for consecutive hits with steady back and forth, gentle-like activity. Though they quickly opted for competitive matches, carving out a sand court, keeping score, arguing ad nauseam over the legalities of “in “or “out” calls and always winning. So, I wasn’t being a total martyr when I maneuvered out of that beach chair and grabbed our rackets. We were hitting back and forth finding our rhythm, when I reached too high, leaned back too far, lost my footing and tumbled down onto the sand, turning my ankle as I fell. I actually heard it twist. It made the noise, not me. Two young men passing by stopped, to ask, “Are you OK?”
“I’m okay,” I started to say then realized I couldn’t get up. “No,” I had to admit, “I’m not OK.” With surprising competence and ease, they carefully lifted me up and were ready to do a full out rescue, when I refused. I could hobble. And hobble I did over to my family, thus reassuring my stunned grandchild that it was an accident and not anyone’s fault. What I really thought was it was my fault ashamed of my own fragility.
As Judy had said the young do not understand, but it’s hard to understand even for us seniors. This balancing act as we navigate between our limitations and the need to maintain a dignified independence. “We’re fine. Fine,” we might say when help is offered — an arm, an offer to carry a heavy grocery bag, or well-meaning advice.
It’s not a question of if we age, we age knowing it beats the alternative. And so we make the extra effort to cope with diminishing stamina, earlier bed times, later morning rising, increased “senior moments” and the more frequent physical constraints. The intention is to harness our efforts to walk the walk, to join the picket line, to invoke our passionate commitments and follow those inscrutable instructions to “face time.” And what does IMHO mean again?
And finally, to quote dear Judy again, “when all else fails, there’s always a nap.”
Ruth Charney lives in Greenfield.