Being old

Who am I kidding? I was all set to title this piece “Getting Old,” with the present participle. But it wouldn’t be true. I’m already old. I’m 85, almost 86. There’s little point in fibbing about it by trying to pass as a youngster, a veritable kid of 75 or so. I just cannot fool anyone. I’m old and I look it and to be honest, I often feel it.

Long ago folks stopped calling me Miss or Ms. I’m strictly Madam or Ma’am. They could see me, an old crone, slouched over with a growing hunchback, feet shuffling as I walk. My own clumsy ballet. And just watch me at airport security, eliciting no more than a wave from the security personnel. I’m not considered even remotely dangerous. Why is it that old people are always considered to be noble and innocent?

I should remind them that our president is of the same vintage as I, and look at how incredibly dangerous he is. I suppose I qualify for more than a cursory look after all.

I dream of writing a book, a spy thriller, where the canny and still glamorous woman agent is about my age. It’s on my to-do list.

On the other hand, I can’t remember to stop forgetting things. Why is it I don’t recall the name of the person who sits across from me in shul but I know all the lyrics to a Johnny Mathis song? And why did I go to the refrigerator anyway? That so-called brain is a mysterious organ indeed!

Then there are the various fears. Fear of falling is a big one since I broke my shoulder a few years ago. That was followed by an encore performance where the winds of our Holiest City blew me over sufficiently to fracture my pelvis.

My mother, in her own old age, definitely suffered from that all too pervasive malady, but hers was not fear of falling. It was just plain falling. This got worse after her encounter with a supermarket delivery boy on a bicycle, whose casual approach to caution made Mom a major casualty. Her hip was broken, right there in the middle of Herzliya’s busy Rehov Sokolov. What a traffic jam that caused.

Mom prefaced her major fall with quite a few minis. One day, as I visited my parents’ second floor Herzliya apartment, I noticed drops of blood on the stairs. Trying, for the first time ever, to be an optimist, I thought that maybe the dentist across the hall had been a bit sloppy in patching up a patient. No such luck! When I reached the top landing, the blood went left, away from the dentist and straight to Mom.

You never see a fall coming. Be wary!

In addition to severe and permanent loss of immortality, old age brings plenty of other woes. For me, buying shoes that fit is a veritable nightmare. I’ve tried every brand, online, offline in what are now called brick and mortar stores, and custom made. Please, with heartfelt thanks, do not recommend what worked for you. It’s guaranteed that they will not work for me. If I’m hobbling or barefoot at a black-tie event, now at least you know why.

Let me discuss some of my other issues now. I’ve had one cataract removed. I didn’t enjoy the process so I’m procrastinating about doing the other. Then again, I’ve only got two eyes, and seeing well is definitely a joint process. As it is said, we shall see!

Like my father before me, my hearing is pretty negligible these days. And like my father’s, it’s guaranteed not to improve. I find hearing aids just as annoying as he did, but I’m pretty useless without them. Just another in a long list of infirmities.

And how about opening jars? Wow! What a torture. It’s the tomato sauce nightmare. The jar looks at me innocently and seems to mockingly say, now who has the upper hand? I have to time my grand openings to when the husband is near. My hero can still do it! But woe is me if he’s at Home Depot. Then I revert to cans that my nifty electric opener unlocks with ease, enabling me to evict the contents from their bondage without making a federal case out of it. Victory is sometimes mine!

Both of my parents did fairly well in the longevity arena. Mom lived to 85. Dad was almost 98 when he missed that final seder. Most importantly, both were cogent until their last moments. Our grandson Eitan, now a rabbi, husband, and father of four, was about 6 when he made a grammatical mistake in my mother’s presence. She, ensconced in a wheelchair at her Kfar Saba assisted living facility, speeding to the doorway of Olam Ha Ba, caught it and corrected him instantly. She simply could not let it slide.

What’s the big deal with staying alive anyway? All of us are on one-way tickets. Can’t we just accept it? Can’t we acknowledge that forever exists for no one at all?

For me, there’s still so much I hope to see and do. I want to see our hostages come safely home and return to their lives. I want to see peace in Israel. I want to see America return to being a democracy, instead of a dictatorship. I want to be a tourist in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, seeing wondrous places which are so near, and yet so far. And I want to dance with a new vigor at more weddings of our grandchildren. Six to go! Wonderful Jewish weddings! I want to see additional great-grandchildren, more and more and more. They alone are the reason to live. And I want to leave to them a good earth, a place to pursue their own dreams in safety, and with eternal love. I want them to inherit a better place than we’ve got now. A much better place! To life!

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of nine. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com

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