Didn't My Skin Used to Fit? (6 page)

YOU KNOW YOU’RE
GETTING OLD WHEN . . .

you start buying Geritol by the six-pack.

16
Thanks for the Memory . . . Loss

Memory is another thing that dulls with age. But more importantly, memory is another thing that dulls with age. As you grow older, you’ll find yourself repeating things and forgetting where you put your glasses, your car keys, your checkbook . . . your teeth. I heard of one older gentleman who looked all over the house for his dentures. He finally found them hours later when he sat down on his sofa. Imagine explaining that one to the emergency room team:
‘‘I don’t care if it is physically impossible,
doctor, I’m telling you the truth. The bite was self-inflicted.’’

We all know the negatives about losing our memory, but believe it or not, there are some positives. For one thing, think of all the new cars you get to drive home.

‘‘Whaddya mean we don’t own a Lexus, honey? It was parked in the same parking space I distinctly remember parking in. It’s got to be our car!’’

One night you get to drive home a Lexus, the next night a Suburban, the next night a BMW convertible. For some reason, though, if you find a Yugo parked in your spot, your memory usually comes back to you.

Another plus to memory loss is the fact that there always seems to be more money in your checkbook than there should be. That’s because you don’t remember to record amounts written and to whom. I’m still working off the deposits I made six months ago. I think I’ve spent the same money five or six times. Maybe that’s why my bank keeps sending me all those letters . . . and here all this time I thought they were just being neighborly!

There are other good things about losing your memory. When your memory goes, your Christmas list gets cut in half. ‘‘How many kids did you say we had again?’’

And without a good memory, you only have to mail in your taxes
every other
April 15 or whenever you happen to remember you’ve got an Uncle Sam. That alone should take some of the sting out of aging.

You even start visiting your neighbors more often. Of course, it’s because you think that’s where you live, but they don’t know that. They might, however, get a little suspicious when an entire season passes before you say you need to go home.

It hasn’t been proven yet, but I’m fairly certain our memory cells die faster with physical exertion. They must. Think about it: How many times have you walked into a room to get something only to stand there looking around wondering what it was you went into the room to get?

I think it’s the walking that does it. If you would have stayed in your chair just thinking about getting up to get whatever it was you needed to get up and get, you would have remembered what it was you were going to get up and get in the first place.

Memory cells die off while using the telephone, too. Has this ever happened to you? You dial a number, then completely forget who it is you’re calling. You don’t hang up, of course, because you’re sure you’ll remember who you called the minute you hear the voice on the other end of the line. Unfortunately, though, a six-year-old answers, and you’re still clueless. The kid doesn’t help you out, either, when you ask him who his parents are because he’s been taught not to talk to strangers. So you simply pretend to have dialed the wrong number, until the six-year-old finally recognizes
your
voice and says, ‘‘Grandpa!’’

What I don’t get is why our memory has to go on the blink at a time when we’re given so much to remember. Our doctors tell us to take three of one pill four times a day, four of another pill three times a day, and one of yet another every ten hours for twelve days. How are we supposed to remember all that? Why can’t they just put all our medications into one giant capsule that’s set to release the proper dosage at the proper time? Sure, they make those little containers marked Sunday, Monday, Tuesday . . . but what good are they if you don’t know what day it is?

Then there are all those other numbers we have to memorize nowadays: our bank account number, our driver’s license number, our Social Security number, the PIN numbers for twelve credit cards, our previous three addresses, our age, and our frequent-flyer account numbers. I don’t know why we can’t be assigned one number for all of it and stay with that for the rest of our lives. Like twenty-five. I’d be happy to keep the number twenty-five for my PIN, my phone card number, and my permanent age.

Long-term memory doesn’t seem to be as big a problem as short-term memory. While we may not be able to remember what we said to someone five minutes ago, we can clearly recall the hurtful comment our spouse made back in 1984, what he was wearing at the time, and the barometric pressure that day. Some people call that selective memory. Maybe it is. Maybe as we grow older we get better and better at selective memory. We remember in vivid detail those few things that brought us pain, while forgetting the hundreds of blessings that come our way every day.

I think we’ve got it backward.

None are as old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
—Henry David Thoreau

17
You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore

It happens over a period of time, a change so slow you hardly notice it. First, it’s your birthday gift. Instead of getting that cute little nightie with the embroidered hearts, you open the gift bag and discover a lovely pair of flannel pajamas, complete with feet. You tell your husband you love them, and to a certain extent, it’s true.

You appreciate the fact that the pajamas will keep you warm when he sets the thermostat to twenty degrees (minus-four degrees wind chill factor with the ceiling fan). But flannel pajamas, no matter how well crafted, could mean more than toasty warmth on those chilly summer nights. They could be a warning sign that something has changed in your relationship—not a serious change, just a notable one.

Christmas gifts are affected next. Maybe you get an egg poacher instead of those marcasite earrings you had your heart set on. Or maybe it’s an industrial-size container of Spray ’n’ Wash instead of the perfume you wanted.

Anniversary presents are the last to change. Instead of pearls, it’s plumbing supplies; a makeup kit is replaced with oven cleaner; and that romantic weekend getaway you’ve been hinting about for months has become a pass for an all-night bowling session.

When these gift changes start to happen in a relationship, there’s no denying it—you have a problem. It’s called practicality. Now on the surface there’s nothing wrong with practicality. After all, why buy your sweetheart a box of chocolates when you really need a new toilet plunger? And with roses costing up to seventy-five dollars a dozen, why waste that kind of money when you can rent a carpet shampooer for half the price?

If we’re not careful, by the time we reach middle age the romance in our lives can be virtually nonexistent. We can become too comfortable with our spouse, taking him or her so much for granted that we stop doing those little things that are so necessary to keep love alive. We can easily fall into the trap of never paying attention to our loved ones until they walk in front of the TV while we’re watching our favorite show or tie up the telephone when we’re expecting a call.

Think about it—when was the last time you went for a walk with your husband? (Helping him take out the garbage doesn’t count.) Did the last note you left on the dresser tell him you love him or was it a reminder to pay the electric bill? And husbands, when was the last time you brought your wife flowers, besides that packet of seeds you gave her to plant last spring?

The good news is your romance doesn’t have to grow cold. You may not be the young starry-eyed couple you used to be, but you’re still a couple. Some of the most romantic couples I’ve seen are in their seventies and eighties.

There’s something wonderful that develops between a man and a woman who have survived all the storms of life together. They can celebrate their fortieth, fiftieth, or even their seventy-fifth wedding anniversary and look back on a
good
marriage— no marriage is perfect—to which they have stayed true. Their disagreements taught them how to compromise, and through their disappointments they learned to appreciate the good times. Instead of growing out of marriage, they persevered and grew in it.

To endure is the first thing a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

18
Regrets

One of my favorite songs is George Burns’ ‘‘I Wish I Were Eighteen Again.’’ It’s the kind of song that makes you feel good and sad at the same time. (‘‘You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly’’ does that, too, but in a different way.)

Whether you’ve just turned forty or you’re nudging one hundred, by now you’ve no doubt accumulated your share of regrets. When you look back on your life, there are things you’d do differently if you were eighteen again. Or twenty-five. Or thirty. You know the things you wish you had done but didn’t and the things you wish you hadn’t done but did. There are people you’d like to have spent more time with and a few with whom you might regret having spent so much time. There are places you wish you had visited and a few you might wish you had skipped.

Maybe you regret having taken so many risks. Maybe you wish you had taken more. Now that you see the bigger picture, you wish you hadn’t wasted so much time worrying, because what you worried about never came about and the difficulties you did face never could have been imagined.

If you could do it all over again, maybe you’d want to make more money, save more money, or give more away. Maybe you’d have the same friends; maybe you’d choose different ones. You’d surely trust some people more because you can see now that they are trustworthy and you’d trust some people less because of your experience with them. Maybe this time around you wouldn’t treat each day as cavalierly as you have in the past.

As much as we’d like to do a better job the second time around, the truth is
this is it
. Whatever regrets we have now are going to go with us into eternity unless we take steps now to change them.

I have regrets I need to deal with.

I regret the time I spent waiting for the other person to call when I had the power to pick up the phone myself.

I regret not verbalizing my opinions instead of verbalizing my frustration with not being able to verbalize my opinions.

I regret not keeping more journals. I had plenty of blank books but usually forgot to write in them. Journals are not meant to remain blank. A blank journal gives the impression you’ve had a blank life. Nobody leads a blank life. Even if it feels blank some days, it’s really not. If you woke up on Wednesday morning, May 14, that’s noteworthy. If you didn’t wake up, you wouldn’t be able to write that in your journal; in fact, it’s the only viable excuse for not writing in your journal.

I regret not trying out all the recipes I tore out of magazines. What was I saving them for?

I regret the time I wasted wishing I had more time.

I regret not standing up to the bullies who crossed my path. It takes a lot of courage to confront a bully. That courage never came easy for me.

What I don’t regret is the time I’ve spent with my family and friends. I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done that might in some small way have had an eternal significance in someone else’s life. And I don’t regret dedicating my life to God at the age of six and the fact that I am still trying my best to honor that commitment today at age . . . well, you know, somewhere over forty.