The wonder of growing old

Omigod, I have begun my 75th year of life. I am not getting old. I am old. Sometimes I wonder at the way this feels. I wake up to face a brand new day, sometimes bright and sunny, a few times windy and wet. I adjust. I work. Then day turns to night; I sleep. I wake up to face another day that turns into night again. Repeat the cycle. I have not even been aware of how time flies until one day I look in the mirror and wonder — who is that? Rudely, I realize it’s me. I wonder: what happened? Where is the pretty 15-year-old I once was? 

She’s still there in the mirror. Only now she has wrinkles under her eyes. Deep curved lines frame her mouth, I suppose from laughing too much. Her eyes have lost that look of innocence that once was there. Time behaves like forceps that pulls down your skin. Remember Joan Rivers, the American comedienne who had a lot of plastic surgery? I remember one of her jokes after she turned 80. She was lamenting how age pulled our bodies down. She said she almost fired one of her aides because he touched her nipple while fastening her anklet. I was almost hysterical with laughter. An anklet is a bracelet that fastens around your ankle. She meant her breast had sagged to her ankles. That made me grateful I’m tall. My nipples will never reach my ankles before I die. Too far to travel. I guess that’s one fun thing about getting old. You can get reckless about your language.

 When I was young, we could not. The nuns would be so upset. Our parents would be enraged and we would be punished. Now, wherever I am seated waiting for my turn at something and there are young people talking around me, I realize they have a different way of speaking. They gossip about their friends’ relationships loudly and indiscriminately, raising the eyebrows of this old woman slightly. In my youth we whispered about our friends who got pregnant in spite of always having chaperones and who were forced to marry young. Now, they don’t have to marry anymore because of their pregnancy. Or if they are older and have been seeing each other intimately for many years, maybe having a pregnancy encourages them to marry. Things have really changed since I was young. To think I always thought I had a bold life. 

 Now that I am in my 70s I have become prayerful. Oh yes, I now regularly go to Mass and every day, rain or shine, I go to my porch and pray. Isn’t that strange for a woman who once swore she would never do that again? Things change for everyone. I never wanted to get married again, got a bit upset with everyone who told me I would. Yet look at me now. I am married again and we are very happily married, my husband and I.

Now I pray the rosary every day. This harks back to my childhood. One of my earliest memories is being maybe around two years old and very fond of eating the pink shipping pages of the daily newspaper then. I loved their taste but they made me constipated. Every night then — this was 1946 — my family of widows would gather together and pray the rosary. They would put me on my little potty and sit me behind them while they prayed the rosary. 

Then we moved out of our house on Roberts Street and moved to Sta. Mesa and there Mommy and I would pray the rosary every night, walking up and down our driveway.

 Now I pray the rosary every morning. While doing that, memories of people I cherish who have crossed over float through my mind and I dedicate a decade to them. This morning it was Sister Catherine Patrice, my seventh grade teacher, the one I now hold responsible for making me the grade school valedictorian 61 years ago. She was the first one who told me I wrote well. This morning she just floated in as I prayed and I dedicated a decade to her. That was 61 years ago! Why did she float into my memory now?

These are the splendid mysteries of growing old. You switch back and forth from your childhood, your youth, your problems, your joys, your loved ones dead and alive. You remember vividly how it always rained on your birthday. My husband remembers looking out of the wide windows of his grandfather’s house, watching the rain form puddles down below and loving it. You see how much you’ve changed and how much you haven’t. You see that you have learned how to love more and dislike less. You get a fuller enriched view of your whole life as memory moves you back and forth. That makes growing old a beautiful experience.

*  *  *

Please text your comments to 0998-991-2287.