Let's Not Split the Difference - Aging and Fitness Belong Together

A good friend, Sue Orris, is a hiking fanatic along with many of our mutual friends. Here she is in May 2018 trekking up a steep trail, with her knee braced, above our camp on Oregon's John Day River. To Sue, fitness is a lifestyle that a pesky knee is not going to wreck. She's committed to staying strong long. Me too. 

Yesterday was my 76th birthday. By now I'm accustomed to elder status. Hmmm. Not sure about status because regardless of my advanced age, I do not consider myself an "elder" in the sense of being a font of wisdom, doling out life lessons to seekers of such. 

I have, however, hammered out numerous posts about aging through the years, mostly kicking and screaming all the way to decrepitude.

2020, however, during quiet and contemplative moments hiding from Covid at home, inspired a different take. I have come around to accepting aging on my own terms, which is good because if I follow my family's longevity trajectory, I will be getting a lot older. I want to feel perky enough to dance along the way.

If I make it to my late 90s, as did my mother and her mother, I may look back on age 76 as my juicy youth when I began, in earnest, to prepare for the next two decades, Ruth Bader Ginsburg style. 

Ginsburg, who died of cancer at age 87, had a personal trainer who put her through challenging physical training twice weekly. I'll stick with intermediate yoga, strength-training, and-or charging up the neighborhood hills for 30 minutes most days. Gardening counts.

We'll see how it goes. I'll post a splits photo every year, as long as I can still do them. By the way, I practice the splits and a few push-ups most nights before bed. Five minutes max. Helps me sleep, I think.

I'm not making momentous life changes, but doubling down on commitment to stick with my current plan and, at the same time, rid myself of the foregone conclusion that age-related weakness is inevitable. Robust and rowdy until the end! Or as long as possible. 

December 15, 2020, age 76.

EARLIER POSTS ABOUT AGING

Do I Want to Die at 75? 

Not last year when I turned that age. Not this year, either.

Harold and Maude Revisited

One of my favorite posts about a quirky film starring a young man who kept pretending to do himself in and an older woman who had her end all figured out. 

Ditch the Hair Dye - plus an article about Working to Disarm Women's Anti-aging Demons 
I was into the Clairol bottle half of my adult life until PK persuaded me to stop. I'm glad I did. 

Camping with Gray-haired girlfriends - fun times outdoors  and moments of truth

Pauline - Is 90 the New 70?   In her early 90s when I met her, the first thing she wanted to tell me was how much men like sex. This is one of my favorite posts ever. 

Yoga - a Defense Against Aging - Yes, it is. Check it out. A post about a yoga class I've frequented for about 20 years. Lots of older people doing the splits and more!

Attitude and Aging - Lighten Up!  It matters how you think about getting older.

Sister's Aging Advice All Too True  I've changed my mind about what I wrote in this post a couple years ago. Rather than accepting my sister's aging angst and predictions, I'm attempting to persuade her to be more positive and proactive. 

Travel Tips for Geezers  Just go and don't worry about it.

Older sister's warnings about aging all too true

My dear sister, Monette Johnson, alongside the Mississippi River in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, not far from where she lives. To my knowledge, she has never addressed the river regarding unpleasant changes it may encounter as it meanders through the eons. Not so with me, her way younger sister, as I grind along behind her through the decades. She has issued multiple dire warnings, and lo, they are coming to pass. 

The first time Monette alerted me about aging, she was perhaps in her fifties and I, my forties. She sent me a birthday card with the thoughtful message: If you think you're old now, wait five years.

Later her warnings had to do with cringing at the mirror and seeing "new wrinkles every day." She was closing in on 70. I was a mere 61, which you must believe, if you are younger, really does make a huge difference. 

Now, at almost 73, "new wrinkles" is my every-day mirror experience. And also divots, shadows, sags, rough spots, or food particles lodged between my crowded teeth.  And let's not talk about the neck.

Nora Ephron, a fabulous funny writer already did that in her 2006 book, I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.

On second thought, let's do talk about it.

From a NYT July 2006 review, an excerpt from Ephron's book:

“Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn’t if it had a neck.”

This is true. I had a friend who was married to a plastic surgeon. He often  told her, his hand hiding his mouth because the object of his observation was near by, "There's one," he'd whisper. "A 35-year-old face, a 50-year-old neck."  

When my sister, way back in 2006, saw that Nora Ephron had a new book called "I Feel Bad About My Neck," it fed her angst about aging. But instead of rushing to read it, she wrote her reaction to the title, which revealed her own wicked sense of humor, as you shall see. (She has since read the book and recommends it, especially to women over 60 who need a laugh as they experience their own quibbles with Time.)

  Nora's Neck

      By Monette Johnson 

When I first read that Nora Ephron wrote a book called I Feel Bad about My Neck, I knew what she meant, but had to wonder how she picked her neck when there's so much else to feel bad about that's so much worse. 

I haven't yet read her book, so maybe she covers some of the other stuff too. But still. I would have thought a professional writer like Nora would  have picked something equally bad that at least could have led to a snappier title, something alliterative such as I Feel Bad about My Belly. Or better yet, I Feel Bad about My Bulging Belly or why not My Bulging Belly and My Behemoth Butt.

And I guess her whole point is what's happening as she ages, so bad bellies and butts aren't really pertinent since they happen to the young, too, although I swear my belly was as flat as the proverbial pancake until it started to get old and the older it gets, the badder it makes me feel. My butt is a whole other story.

Maybe Nora picked her neck because necks are usually naked whereas bellies and butts usually aren't, at least not for any woman over 16 or so if she's got an ounce of sense after sagging and bulging starts to set in. 

You can always attempt to camouflage bad necks with scarves, and bad butts and bellies with long, loose-fitting garments. No one is fooled by this, of course. But it makes women of a certain age feel as though spending an outrageous amount of cash on a stylish tunic and still more on a fashionable scarf is somehow worth the expense. 

Or maybe Nora focused on her neck because some of the other stuff hasn't happened to her yet. Maybe her belly is still flat, her butt nicely rounded, and her boobs firm and perky. Maybe she looks in the mirror, sees the skin sagging around the prominent neck tendons and thinks this is as bad as it's going to get. 

I've got news for Nora. It gets way worse.

On the other hand, Nora is rich. She must be after all those successful books and screenplays. Maybe she's had it all fixed. That must be it! 

Yes, she's had her belly and butt liposuctioned and her boobs lifted along with parts of her face. Or maybe she's a Jane Fonda follower and keeps it all properly in place working out 10 hours a day. 

If her neck truly is all she's got to feel bad about, she's a woman to be envied. I know women who feel bad about varicose veins, thick, ropy blue things that wind and coil around legs that are way more unattractive than scrawny necks. 

Some women even feel bad about brown spots on their hands; this is probably because they're referred to as liver spots. Calling them large freckles instead might have prevented at least a bit of angst.

Some women feel bad about thinning and/or graying hair. Of course, there's an easy fix here with wigs and hair dyes but again, no one is really fooled. 

 Others feel bad about disappearing libidos, especially now that studies have revealed hormone therapy could be deadly. 

Then there are women who feel bad about knees, hips, and shoulders that need replacement. Or hands and feet that no longer work with dexterity and without pain 

And some women feel bad just because they feel bad, dammit. So there you have it, Nora. Buck up, buy a spiffy new scarf and try not to think about what lies ahead.

Monette and me about 10 years ago. We knew that if we lifted our chins, our necks would look better. If not, then a little more wine would help.

North Cascades National Park with guilt, bone spurs, and a bad hip

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When I think about our three camping trips to Washington's North Cascades over four decades, spectacular peaks come to mind. And also rushing turquoise rivers, glaciers hanging on for dear life, old growth forests, profuse wildflowers in mountain meadows, and campgrounds draped in the lush foliage of the mountainous Pacific Northwest. I also remember guilt. And pain.

2014 Guilt Trip. With turquoise river. Thunder Creek Trail.

Unwelcome "peaks" in my foot are bone spurs, which I recently had removed. They'd plagued me

for years and finally got bad enough that I chose surgery over letting them take charge of my mobility. They're the reason that I wore Birkenstocks almost exclusively as described in an earlier post, Beloved Birkenstocks Bite the Dust. I've worn sandals year round for dancing, biking, and, yes, hiking mountain trails. Plus ordinary everyday life. It has not been ideal. I'm hobbling around now in an orthopedic post-surgery "shoe" hoping and praying the surgery works for the long haul. Bone spurs have been known to grow back. Mine recurred with a vengeance after an earlier surgery.

The mountains are little changed since we first visited in 1978. The Cascades is a youngish range, only 200 million years old. Eons and ages will likely pass before it starts going downhill, so to speak. The peaks won't be so pointy in a zillion years after wind and water, quakes, shakes  and glaciers have their relentless way. This is a stretch, but in 1978 we were sorta like the North Cascades—we'd been around for awhile but were still youngish, vigorous, pointy, and, well, pretty. We fit right in.

Diablo Lake is a reservoir and a major feature in the North Cascade's alpine landscape.

Family history as measured by North Cascades National Park visits

August 1978 - Poor Young Family Trip

PK and I fired up our orange and white Volkswagen pop-top van and, with our one-year-old baby boy, Quinn, headed to the North Cascades to camp and hike before veering west to visit my Grandmother Dorothea, now long gone, but who then lived in Everett, Washington.

Those were the days.  So young! I was 32 and PK, like now, was 4.5 years younger. I know. Thirty-two does not seem young. I didn't think 32 was young until I was that age and glorying in every new day. Now any time between 30 and 45 seems a wonderful age. Not that I don't like being 70, and that I don't relish life, but there is a lot less to look forward to. And there are bone spurs. And other things.

It rained. No problem! We erected the portable playpen we'd squeezed into the van, and set the kid out there in the drizzle to gurgle and coo. We have some old-fashioned photos in which little Quinn is delighted in his enclosure and kept warm by a hand-knitted blue and white cap. In another photo PK poses on a steep trail with Quinn in a funky baby backpack that would  certainly not meet the standards of finicky modern-day parents. Remember. This was 1978, long before child safety restraints were required in vehicles and child backpacks became wonders of safety and convenience. Not that we could have afforded one if they existed.

In those days we lived paycheck to paycheck, made do in a tin-can trailer where, for a time,  you could see the ground  between the metal siding and flooring. I discovered Diet for a Small Planet, which offered a sane and frugal way to eat. We  consumed countless meals based on combining beans and rice into complete proteins. I sometimes had to return cans and bottles to buy food or gas. We had trouble keeping the lights on, but we somehow smiled a lot. We had love and a beautiful baby, if not a lot of groceries.

The North Cascades are part of a young mountain range whose peaks are still pointy and whose glaciers, while diminished , continue to gouge and scour.

Then, all of a sudden, it was 1989. Hooray! We'd survived the leanest years. PK ascended the ladder at his job, and continued to do so until his retirement in 2007.
I progressed from unemployment to teaching English to newspaper journalism. I still reported and made photos for the Grant Pass Daily Courier in 1986, when, shockingly, we had another baby! I was 41. This was appalling, even to me.

 But at the same time, I felt a stirring about this child, prompted in part by a vivid dream. In the dream, before I knew I was pregnant, a magnificent but fearsome tiger was stalking around the house, trying to get in. I was curious but afraid. I awoke with a start and couldn't get back to sleep, thinking about the tiger dream.

Quinn and Chris Korbulic, June 1986

A week or so later, I bought the drugstore pregnancy test, and there it was— a little red circle closing around my future. When baby Christopher turned three, I quit the newspaper and substitute taught while developing  a writing and editing business. This turned out to be a great decision, and I enjoyed more mothering time and greater income  while serving numerous wonderful clients until I retired fully in 2013.
During our lean child-rearing years, our family recreation centered not too far from home, the Rogue River and the many beautiful outdoor opportunities afforded by Southern Oregon.
It took us a few decades to return to the North Cascades, one of the West's most beautiful and dramatic parks.

Flash! What was that!? Life blazing past like a freaking comet

August 2014 - The Guilt Trip

Fast forward. A lot forward, to August 2014. PK and I, empty-nesters for years, retired, and solidly in the elder demographic, traveled to the North Cascades for the second time. Quinn was, and is, a grown man with a quirky little family and a doctorate degree. Son Chris travels the world as a professional kayaker with various accolades including being recognized as one of the World's Most Adventurous Men. (A tiger!) My mother, LaVone, was then 98.5 and lived a mile away. I was her touchstone and only family member close by. I was the light in her increasingly dim world. Thus guilt cast a pallor on my emotional landscape.

One of numerous glaciers in the North Cascades, this one viewed from The Cascade Pass trail in 2014.  Our hike was only 3.7 miles one way, but 3 miles with 31 switchbacks was a bit daunting for one just shy of 70 whose foot harbored peaks that look something like the mountains.  Along the way we saw marmots, butterflies, wildflowers, glaciers, and a handful of hikers. The air was hazy from the 2014 wildfires in Washington. The fires are even worse this year, and a few days ago, the North Cascades Park was closed due to fires and smoke..

It gets worse. When we left for the North Cascades and to visit relatives in Bellingham, my mom was in hospice. I didn't understand exactly why. She was 98, but I somehow believed she would live to 100 because there was nothing wrong with her. She did not have cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, Alzheimer's, COPD, pneumonia or any of the other afflictions that kill so many elderly. Her innards were just fine. Her doctor shook his head in disbelief at her great labs.

The Cascade Pass trail with sandals, bone spurs, and guilt 2014.

However. She did have disabilities. She could barely see or hear and was unable to walk without assistance. She needed help with every physical task. Her muscles had turned to mush. Hospice provided an extra level of attention and care, for which I was grateful. But I secretly doubted she was near death.

What does my mother have to do with a vacation to the North Cascades?

Everything. This is complicated, as are all situations that force people to decide between what they want to do and what think they should do. I struggled whether to stay close to mom or go with my mate, PK, to revisit the North Cascades. I wanted desperately to go.

Seven years earlier, PK had retired the very month that we traveled to Minnesota to relocate my then lively 93-year-old mom to Oregon. Since then, many a trip had been deferred or shortened because I felt I needed to be nearby. To his credit, he went to Spain without me. Also to his credit, he never failed me.

And so, despite the fact that my mother was in what turned out to be her final decline, PK and headed to the North Cascades. This was just over a year ago. We spent a few glorious days that included a seriously steep and beautiful hike. I only thought about my mother every other minute.

PK hiking the Cascade Pass trail in 2014, before his hip went straight to hell.

Awesome views in every direction along the Cascades Pass Trail.

So fun to see butterflies near tree line.

Columbine along the trail.

June 2015 - Bad Hip and Bone Spurs Trip

My mother passed away September 7, 2014, about two weeks after our return from the Guilt Trip. I was able to spend time with her and assuage my misgivings about having been absent for a time before her end arrived.

In late May this year, we headed out for a month-long road trip that included a family reunion in Minnesota and a return trip via Canada to the North Cascades. We were fortunate to be there in June, long before fires closed roads, obscured views, and recently, closed the park. Our journey across the USA to Minnesota and back West via Canada and the Canadian Rockies was great. Only a couple little things....PK's hip was giving him major grief and my bone spur was testing my endurance. It's not that we can't handle a little discomfort. But.....the things we're accustomed to doing, like hiking five or six miles on mountain trails, well, that wasn't going to happen. And it didn't.

View from our bad hip and bone spurs hike in the North Cascades.

We managed several short walks, and even a couple hikes that included a four-mile round trip in the North Cascades on a clear, cool and beautiful morning, a gift from the universe.

Now I am gimping around with an awkward orthopedic shoe hoping that this procedure will leave me without  peaks in my foot and pain in my step
 PK? He's  awaiting a surgery date for a hip replacement. People are always saying,  Do what you can while you're still able. Yes, do it.

There's no more identifying with the North Cascades for us. They're as young and beautiful and thrilling  as ever. We're not. Plus we're going downhill fast. No more guilt, as my mom was released from her decaying physical body a year ago. (Not that guilt can't be called into play for a number of other reasons, and I wasn't even brought up Catholic.)
Resignation has now entered the aging vocabulary. Maybe reality is a better word? If I live as long as my mom did, and I'm not sure I want to, I hope to get  another crack at the North Cascades' hundreds of miles of hiking trails.
And  also trails into other parts of a full life that are without physical landscapes.

Gotta get to it because, as we know, no matter now long you live, life is short.

Earlier posts about 2015 road trips

After Banff and Jasper, Canada has More

Banff and Jasper


Road Notes, first couple days across the Great Plains of Canada

Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Changing Times in North Dakota

Getting Along on the road, and Yellowstone Park

Riding the Trail of the Couer d' Alenes

Road tripping in the Four-Wheel Camper

Revisiting Harold and Maude

I've watched this quirky movie, my all-time favorite, half a dozen times since it was released in 1971. I saw the film again recently, and my, my, my, how times have changed. My times, that is. Actress Ruth Gordon was 75 when she starred as its eccentric life-affirming and hilarious heroine. For the film's purposes, she turned 80 as the story evolved.

When I first saw the film—and my pretty little unlined face ached from laughing—I was 27.  I don't remember the other times I saw it, but I'm certain that I still regarded 80 as a distant impossible-to-reach and hideous age. The difference between earlier viewings and seeing the film now? I identify with Maude! And 80? Considering how times jets past, that "impossible age" is just around the bend.

Maude used to look "old" to me. She was a fabulous person trapped in wrinkles and sags. I loved her spirit and verve, her outrageous antics and her gentle but over-the-top handling of the suicide-staging teen played by Bud Cort.

In my twenties, Maude was wonderful but old. End of story. I could not relate. Upon my most recent viewing, I admired Maude's youthfulness, although I did note that someone supposedly on the cusp of 80 with nary a gray hair is using hair dye, a perfectly acceptable tool to chisel a few years off her appearance. (Hair Dye, the Fall Garden, and the Cruel March of Time) Overall, though, it was, and is, unsettling to face the fact that at 68, I am cruising the last third of my life, fast approaching the age that Ruth Gordon was when she was so wondrous in Harold and Maude.

Longevity runs in my family. My father died at 93 and my mom is nearly 98. She's still doing relatively well, by the way, and I would not be surprised if she reaches 100+. Her heart, lungs, blood work, blood pressure, thyroid, etc. etc. are nearly perfect. She has but one mild (and generic) prescription drug. However, she's almost blind, essentially deaf, can't walk, and needs assistance with the "activities of daily living." Her mind is good (mild dementia only). She is sweet and funny and I love her, but I am not sure I want to go there.

Maude was POSITIVE she didn't want to go there. She knew she was going to die before she got too  decrepit—on her 80th birthday to be exact. She knew because she'd been saving the pills and calculating the time it would take for the pills to ease her into forever.  Since she knew when and how she was going to go, she didn't worry about it, and every moment was a joy. She was in control. She didn't give a damn about what people thought or what was legal or illegal or why anyone should try to stop her from liberating a city tree and relocating it to the forest whilst careening down the middle of the highway in a stolen truck. Maude embraced life so thoroughly it was breathtaking. And also inspirational.

I know better than anyone that I need to get over mourning my lost youth and and my disappeared middle age and proceed with the rest of my life. But here's something nobody ever tells you about getting older: age does not necessarily impart wisdom, nor does it bestow acceptance of the inevitable.

I've discovered, at all the milestones, that I have to figure out again how to be OK, or even happy, with the person that aging has delivered to my mirror. Every birthday presents a new challenge about "how should I live" more than "how should I look." Because there comes a time when, without spending thousands on having "work" done, everything is going to sag. I have friends who are "spending the thousands," or contemplating doing so. I'm not going there, either. One thing I have figured out is that physical decline and "beauty down the tubes" is inevitable and a nip here and tuck there isn't going to matter the least in the end.

I'm figuring out now how to think about being almost 70, which is "terribly strange" as Simon and Garfunkel observed in their wonderful song, Old Friends.  That song brought tears in my twenties and it still does. How bittersweet that I've become reconnected with a dear friend from that period of my life, the person I imagined I'd be sitting on the park bench with in my old age. Marcy's turning 70 this year. Unbelievable. (It would be difficult to find a person with more vitality than Marcy Tilton. She's a top-selling Vogue pattern designer, entrepreneur, and "everyday creative." Check her out.) She also tears up on Old Friends, by the way.

Am I stockpiling sedatives? No. Not yet. And even if I did, 80 is too young. I now have friends who are 80, or almost 80. They're not even close to doing "a Maude." I guess I should take a lesson from my mother, LaVone. Even though she can hardy see or hear, can't walk and so on, she still takes pleasure in life. Somehow.

My mom greeting her new great granddaughter, Hadley Rose.
She was seriously delighted by the baby.

When she was my age, a mere 68, my mom was still active in church, walked the neighborhood with friends, played bridge, did all sorts of intricate crafts, cooked up a storm, read books and magazines daily, traveled with my father, and was always making something or doing something for family. Had she known that she would live another 30+ years and be so diminished, I wonder what she would have said or done or thought.

I'm wondering the same about myself.

Mom with some of her family in June, 2013.

Note: If you've never seen Harold and Maude, you must. No matter your age. Here's some info from Wikipedia. 

Old friends..... like bookends

Here were are with some of our "old" friends after a spring Rogue River trip in 2008 (PK and me on the far right). Some of us are getting grey around the gills, long of tooth, and short on synapse. I'm not naming names, except for me. Our kids are grown and gone, many of us are grandparents, and we're advancing reluctantly into the next stage.

Do you remember this great Simon and Garfunkel song?

Old friends, old friends sat on their parkbench like bookends A newspaper blowin' through the grass, Falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends . . .[ Ls from: http://www.l Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a parkbench quietly?  How terribly strange to be seventy. Old friends, memory brushes the same years, silently sharing the same fears

When I first heard that song (and wept) I was just 20-something living in St. Paul, Minnesota, and my best friend was Marcy. I imagined the two of us as crones in voile dresses with wispy hair staring down the specter of 70. And here we are, lookin' at it.  Marcy lives not far away, although I rarely see her, but I remember and value the intensity of our youthful alliance. I dare say that neither one of us considers ourselves "old." Marcy has developed an incredibly creative life and business, and I can't imagine that she's obsessing about old age. Or is she?

When you enter into a friendship, you never know where it will lead or how long it will last. PK and I have lived for nearly four decades in the same spot (except for 4 years when we  defected to a nearby town to spare our youngest kid the local high school.) Anyway, we've been rooted in rural Southern Oregon since 1973. We didn't mean to stay, and were, in fact, planning an adventure to South America, but baby Quinn! came along, then jobs and entanglements, then baby Chris! and lo, 38 years passed. Thirty-eight years.

When you're young, you have no idea how this can happen, and probably don't believe it will. But it does, in an appalling flash, and the days and months and years form a dark distant cloud to which you have limited access. You look into the mirror, into your photo archives, and the faces of your adult children and say, What?! 

Except, of course, if you have had the same friends for nearly 40 years, and maybe even a few going back to high school, and you can sit around like old-timers and rehash the shared memories of when you were young, your kids were small, or maybe before you had them, or when you did this or that river trip or camping excursion, or when you shared meals and games and adventures that helped to shape the kids into who they are today. And also you into who you are today—we're all still works in progress.

Our now-adult children are amazing, of course. Even kids who have struggled share rich common experiences that helped to lift them into adulthood. I recognize that PK and I and our two sons have been incredibly fortunate to have long-term family friendships and live on the edge of so much accessible wilderness and a piece of land that has fed and sustained us through many seasons.

But there's more to old friendships than reveling in those great times. There's the going forward together, whether we want to or not, and honoring in one another the inevitability of gray hair and wrinkles and, dare I say it? physical decline and maybe even cognitive lapses.
 Old friends, memory brushes the same years, silently sharing the same fears.
There's the continued joy in sharing with one another our adult children's lives and the sweetness of grandchildren, as well as the maturation of our friendships. Same goes for our childless friends. We're all sharing now the transition from middle age to seniorhood, and for me, frankly,  it sucks.
I'm adjusting to this inevitability with my old friends. We're all in various stages of denial and acceptance, and riding our bikes, walking our butts, and doing yoga like crazy. We'll stave this off, right?!

I never thought I'd be here, climbing the hill to 70. Or is that descending the hill? Of course it is descending. I need to stop kidding myself. At age 66, I have lived more than half of my life.

Spending quality time now with my almost-96-year-old mother reveals how it is to be really old. All her "old' friends have died, or have been left behind as she's moved from independent to assisted living over three states during the past decade. Her dearest friend, my father Floyd, died in 2006 at age 93. She has no deep ties to anyone but family, but she has new friends, a handful of wonderful people who do what they can to enhance their own lives and hers. New friends are good!

But there's no replacing old ones. For at least 20 years, PK and I, along with some others, have kicked around the idea of establishing the Purple Sage retirement home, where we could live commune-style, take charge of our aging selves, and kick some butt. Despite lively conversations, we have yet to make a move. It's too complex, and besides, we're not there yet. It seems unlikely the Purple Haze will ever happen. For now, my friends, let's stay connected, hold hands into the future, and ski our withering flanks off this winter.

Happy @ 95.8

Here's LaVone, on the right, intent on bingo at her new digs, Morrow Heights,
an assisted living facility close to  my home in Rogue River, Oregon. 

My somewhat-older sister and I often discuss the probability that we will live into our nineties. Our father died at 93 and our mother is 95.8 and going strong. However, we've sorta decided we don't want to go there. What we'll do to prevent it, I don't know. I've told her I'm not going to be the one to do her in when/if she decides to check out. But I'm still in disbelief that I'm approaching 70, my sister, of course, is somewhat older. Age denial began decades ago and continues. Stupid, I know, not to "be here now", and sometimes I can be. But other times I look in the mirror and say, Who, me? My mother doesn't look in the mirror (she can't really see that well) and that's a lesson. She just IS here now, almost free of vanity* and distilled to her most essential needs: eating—her appetite is keen, seeing me, and playing games. Bingo every day! Yes! And dice two or three times daily and also a plastic-wand themed noodle-cize class. Between these activities and eating, showering, physical therapy,and pushing herself around in a wheelchair, she's occupied and has found her own elderly version of happy. I do not doubt that she is enjoying life, despite all the crappy details.

She forges ahead despite being almost deaf, nearly blind, stooped with severe osteoporosis, and having endured a recent pelvic fracture, a brief hospitalization, and 21 tortuous rehab days in a nursing home. Now she's installed in her fourth "home" in less than three years, and what does she do? She scrutinizes the activity schedule and jumps into every slot that will accommodate her. She's found her place, and I hope she never has to  move again. I'm learning from her. I don't know if I want to BE her. I'm not big on bingo or dice. But her ability to find pleasure in what some would consider a very thin medium is instructive and even inspirational. You go, LaVone. When (and if) I become 90, I will remember your example. Maybe my sister will too, and we won't have to deal with the messy details of euthanasia.


*While in the nursing home, she took my hand one day and implored, How do I look? Are my wrinkles really deep? I told her the truth. She is still attractive. Good bone structure doesn't lie. Her back may be stooped, but her cheekbones are still proud. 

LaVone a couple years ago, only 93, going with the flow.

Fading into fall - Gardeners witness life on the fast track

A glowering sky, a stiff breeze, and plummeting temperatures brought an early look at what was to come.

Clear skies soon returned, which meant glorious Indian summer afternoons but also frost and serious trouble for tender tomatoes and peppers.

Fall  arrived in Southern Oregon in its usual drama queen fashion on Sept. 29. After weeks and months of dry heat and scorching sun, it was suddenly cold, damp, windy, and dark. In 24 hours we went from shuttering the house against the sun to firing up the wood stove, from shorts to sweaters,  from gin and tonics to hot toddies. The seemingly endless summer was over, and the gushing garden was sputtering toward dormancy. Still, it looked great hanging on under the glowering sky.

To coax a few more days of ripening from our cold-sensitive babies, we covered them with blankies. (2016 update. We still do this, but not this year as it is already Nov. 13, and we haven't had a frost.) 

Attempting to stave off veggie decline is kinda like plastic surgery for the garden. You know that  the annual plants that so recently vibrated with life and glory are soon-to-be-goners. They're fading into twisted vines and dusky crumbles, and within a couple months will have disintegrated into compost to live again as nutrients for next year's garden—small comfort as they face the inevitable. But still, in the fall, you try to save them with props and denial.

This may be a stretch, but I see something similar happening with my peers as we too dry into dusky crumbles. We have the major props going on, and I am not above hair dye and serious exercise, but I have to say. Why bother? (2016 update. I still bother!)

What's going to happen is inescapable. Gardens are teachers. They are life on the fast track.

 For most of my garden friends, it's eight or nine months max, start to finish. We gardeners see all these beings through from their astonishing emergence from seeds in February and March to lusty water-drinking sun-soaking life hounds in July and August to dying dogs tripping on their tongues in late September and October. Check out these I'm-going-to-live-forever-sunflowers in July, then on their last legs in mid-October.

We're so beautiful! they seem to shout with all that July color and drama.

Same beings a few months later. Sad, yes? But that's life.

Then into the garden refuse heap awaiting the grinder and, finally, the garden, where they're tossed onto rows to decompose over the winter. Could they even imagine such a thing back in July?

The garden heaped with leaves and refuse from the garden that just died.

2016 update. We deduced that feeding one year's garden refuse directly into the next year's garden likely promoted disease and insect infestation. We now spread the fall garden onto the orchard/pasture and use cover crops, manure, compost, and fall leaves to enrich the soil for the coming year. 

It's hard to watch, but damn, you can't help but draw the parallels. Do you know anybody who's heading into fall? Me? I think I'm probably late August, early September. Too early to sniff out the compost, but about ready to look into frost protection. And I'm not even thinking about winter.

2016 update

Now watching spinach and lettuce emerge in the cold frame, eagerly searching for light.

Late fall has arrived, but in true optimist fashion, I think that winter will be a long time coming. I'm looking forward to seeing the spinach finally emerge and enjoying a tender salad of winter greens come March. 

Dancing Into Fall

This is my young friend Katarina dancing joyfully in the mint-scented grass last night while cool winds blew fall into Southern Oregon. Rain was in the forecast, chill was in the air, and we celebrated the shift with our favorite thing. We cranked up the outside speakers and twirled, twisted and stomped til exhaustion to the musical mix she'd put together for me from her favorite dance tunes—18 high-octane gotta-boogie songs by artists ranging from The Who and The Police to Sublime and Bloc Party. Fueled by a little syrah and a lot of synergy that happens when two girls who love to dance get together, dusk turned to dark and the hours fell away and I didn't think too much about the fact that she's 40 years younger. Than I am.

Fall always dredges up that fading-into-old-age crap that's difficult to ignore when the flowers wither, the corn stalks rattle, the squash vines crumble, and the tomato and pepper plants shrink in dread of the soon-to-bite first frost. It's a little too easy to draw parallels with the waning hair color, the wrinkling skin, and the sagging unmentionables. In the garden, it won't be long before all but the insect-and-disease-affected plants will be tossed into the compost or ground up to plow right back into the garden from whence they came. Their energy doesn't vanish, though, it just changes. Their life current persists, and they'll return next year in other vibrant forms.

That's how I think about music and dancing—as current that persists and wells up in rhythm that feels like life itself moving. Switch on the right music, and it plays me. It plays Katarina, too, and my son Chris, and yoga teacher, Denise, and another young friend, Parker, and a few others I know who are blessed (some might say cursed) with the irresistible need to move to music. It is good to reaffirm that since I am undeniably in my own fall season, I can channel the unfathomable power of rhythm and dance to juice things up and keep the green going and going and going. Will it ever be gone? Not as long as I can hear and move and turn on the music. Loud.