A few days ago my refrigerator broke down. There was a fair bit of food in the freezer compartment – well, I don’t need to go into details. It was a disruption in the complex and delicate structure of my life as an 87-year-old single woman living in a seniors’ apartment: a structure that includes the way my belongings are arranged, the pattern of my days (the pattern that underlies all the daily variations), the little routines and procedures – and, yes, the carefully planned and important stockpile of food in the freezer.
Old age, as they say, is a different country, hard to imagine for anyone who isn’t living there. Some of the differences have become clichés, but even the clichés turn out to have unexpected angles.
One of the most frequent commonplaces is that the old are set in their ways. Yes, they are. I am. A thought-out arrangement of belongings saves time and steps. Established, workable ways of doing things are time-savers and brain-savers. Habits and routines provide an element of familiarity and comfort in an old person’s constantly changing and frightening configuration. They help to bridge short memory lapses.
Everyone notices the generational differences. Again, yes, of course. Younger generations simply haven’t been where we are, and we can’t experience their lives and their world from where we are.
And, yes, the world moves too fast for us, leaves us behind. Actually, “behind” is where I’ve always lived – by choice, and very comfortably - because I’m a historian. But that imaginative framework, the one through which I look at the present, makes me in some ways even “older” than my years. It means that cutting-edge technology is a constant challenge: I use what I need and what works for me and ignore the rest. Nothing forces us to be right up there owning and doing it all. (However, I did buy a new laptop recently.)
In this new country, what I’m observing and exploring with great interest are experiences that nothing prepared me for.
The front burner is smaller than it used to be. Limited energy forces me to choose what I can – or need to – deal with, and I do it more slowly. In daily life, energy often runs out before time.
I live with less future but with a lot of past and – again as a historian – I’m comfortable with that. I write memoirs and reflections and family history. And every day is a bit of the present – a present in both senses of the word – that I still have.
Time has other facets. “Some day” has become “now.” Anything postponed now may never get done, and I may regret that. There are still to-do lists, but there is also the waste-basket. Like the eraser and the backspace key, it’s an important part of where I am now. Some disposals and deletions are accidental but many are deliberate.
Time moves differently. We’re so used to living in cycles – days, weeks, months, years, seasons – that at a certain point it’s a shock to realize that life itself I not cyclical but linear.
It’s still possible to shape my what’s left of my life. I’ve lost capabilities but take pleasure in what I still can do. I observe, I pay attention. Unless I’m doing routine things I try to avoid going on automatic pilot. Having recently moved all my belongings (what was left after severe pruning) to this seniors’ apartment I’m newly in touch with them and taking pleasure in them.
I’m constantly navigating the boundary between “I can” and “I can’t.” It shifts from day to day, sometimes hour to hour. I can do a certain task now, but this afternoon I might not have the energy.
My mobility is increasingly limited. I can’t walk far; a hundred yards or so before pausing for breath, then another hundred yards, then turn around and come back. But I appreciate every step. I can still drive; my radius is a few kilometers but I value it. Within that radius there isn’t much variety but I observe changes in what I see: trees, light, clouds, seasons, weather. Books provide infinite variety; reading is travelling, both in space and in experience, and they keep me in touch with the craft of words which has been one of the cores of my life.
There’s a nose-to-the-ground quality to my life now: this week, this limited world. I cherish what I still have in this square yard of my life.