Are You There, God? It's Me, J, and I'm Getting Old
In her mid-70s, Judith Hannah Weiss mulls the state of her mind, the state of world and the media covering it, and life at a continuing care retirement community.
If, on a certain evening about sixty-six million years ago, you looked up at the sky, you would have seen something that looked like a star, but was, in fact, an asteroid headed for earth at 45,000 miles per hour. It was at least six miles wide.
Sixty hours later, it hit. The energy released, like a billion Hiroshima bombs, sent twenty-five trillion metric tons of debris back to the sky and destroyed 99.99999% of all living things on Earth. The world that emerged after the impact was a much simpler place, mostly covered by ferns.
This could happen again with something even bigger. Say you have a great week or a great month or a great life, and then you’re hit by a meteor. Or it could be a nuke.
In my first life, I wrote for magazines and TV. Some clients were insanely rich. Some were just rich, or just insane. Some clients were pretty strung out, like they’d just snorted lines of coke cut on the copy machine. (They had.) Then there were the icons. They had a bevy of bodyguards, multiple homes, and, at times, a bit of a sting. Mark Twain said some people bring joy wherever they go, and some people bring joy whenever they go.
In my first life, I wrote for magazines and TV. Some clients were insanely rich. Some were just rich, or just insane. Some clients were pretty strung out, like they’d just snorted lines of coke cut on the copy machine. (They had.)
In the world of media, nothing anchors you. It’s just relentless, never-ending swirls, spinning off screens near you. The number of nukes is growing while the number of tampons is shrinking. A felon with orange hair is running neck and neck with his opponent to run the government he tried to overthrow while he was still running it.
The real news is so crazy, I decide to invent other news I prefer. Man Smuggles 10 Birds in his Pants.Maybe he looks like that guy in the Calvin Klein underwear ads. Cop on the Beat is a Bot. EPA Closes Down After Running out of Environment to Save. Chunk of Wyoming Disappears: It Was Called the Teton Pass.
When I began, media used pen, paper, and news judgment. We had IBM Selectrics and Kodachrome days. Words work hard. Words raise the bar, the stakes and the roof. They raise marks and kids and sales and brows and skirts and standards.
Words rise to occasions, fit every event, and come in all sizes. Words have teeth and pack a punch. They heat you up and chill you out. They ask every question and answer a few. They can be used to say what your client means or to say what your client doesn’t mean so it sounds like he means it.
Words open, unlace, arouse. They come in a pinch, a jam, a nutshell, a mad rush, a month of Sundays. They bring you the heartbreaking something of a tragic whatever and the transcendent magic of something else. Words make history.
Do you enjoy unsolicited opinions? Folks a few decades younger will tell you how to age way better than you are. FYI, I used to live in a farmhouse built in 1895. Now I live in a sprawling very faux chateau known as a CCRC – Continuing Care Retirement Community. A pseudo Downton Abbey boasting premium personal care, companionship, and management of seniors like me when we need management.
I used to live in a farmhouse built in 1895. Now I live in a sprawling very faux chateau known as a CCRC – Continuing Care Retirement Community. A pseudo Downton Abbey boasting premium personal care, companionship, and management of seniors like me when we need management.
Yes, something has gone wrong with our heart, brain, blood, lungs, knees, shoulders, hips, skin, hair, eyes, hands, feet, vagina, uterus, breast, cervix, follicles, testicles, molecules. But we bounce back from each bum body part, and some bum brain parts, known as lobes, as in long-lost lobe, or two.
Some of us ran states, cities, special forces, banks, bake sales, Brownie troops, clandestine operations. We married, divorced and remarried. We built careers, lost careers, and built new ones. We parented kids and buried our parents. We bought houses, then sold them to buy different houses. Then we came here, to this CCRC and places like it. We brought gadgets and gizmos aplenty plus whozits and whatsits galore. But we left way more behind.
The last time I was in Manhattan someone asked me if I had change. Rather, if I had changed. Oh, yes, quite a bit. I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name and God knows where else. I’ve looked at things from both sides now, from up and down, and still, somehow, I got old. My feet ache like my mom’s. My daughter looks a bit like me and has little time for me. My financial advisor suggests putting plans in place in the “event of my demise.” Like my demise is optional.
Meanwhile in Florida frozen iguanas are falling from trees. Seems they, too, are losing their grip. Everyday A New World Disorder is followed by another New World Disorder. Ripped from the headlines means ripped by the headlines now. But here, where I live now? Someone smells like lavender. Someone likes wearing lace. Someone looks like Helen Mirren. Judi Dench. Dame Maggie Smith.
Seven million years ago, our earliest relatives took their first steps on two feet. Every day some of our residents take their last steps or their last breaths. Marketing calls this our “forever home.” Which means we stay til death do us part, and leave feet first. We are all dying. Even the sun is dying. And the moon? It’s littered with golf balls.
Long-term plans? What does long-term mean now? A month, a year, one more Christmas? Alfred Hitchcock said when there’s a bomb under a table, and it explodes, that’s action. When we know the bomb is there, and the people at the table are playing cards, and it hasn’t exploded, that’s suspense.
It’s twenty years ago and I’m at the shore with my child. She is 4, no 7, no, 10. We love this beach and come back every year. Correction, we loved this beach and went back every year until twenty years ago. It’s twenty minutes ago. My child has been mad at me for thirty years, but she needs cash. I’m old and confused. Plus I can’t multitask. Should I screw myself or send a check? I can’t do two things at once.
Some of us ran states, cities, special forces, banks, bake sales, Brownie troops, clandestine operations. We married, divorced and remarried. We built careers, lost careers, and built new ones. We parented kids and buried our parents. We bought houses, then sold them to buy different houses. Then we came here, to this CCRC and places like it.
Silly Putty arrived in 1949 and so did I. I thought I’d feel a lot older when I got to this age. If I got to this age. Back then, cars didn’t drive themselves, spacecraft couldn’t land on comets, no one was beating bots or eating “bacon” made from seaweed that is “healthier than kale.”
Things change when you’re getting old. I lost a few inches of height and a few trillion neurons. Broke my brain and five bones in my back. Most of us are aging — no, all of us are aging. I figured this out staring at 8,000 hamsters on 8,000 wheels in an MRI machine. That’s not true, but this is: every day every cell in our body changes, ages, marches toward the day it will give out. Species do, too.
Of the billions of species that have lived and died since life began on earth, only one created media. That required humans and about four billion years. During 99.9% of that time, life forms managed to evolve without news, views, or infotainment.
In fact, all living things other than humans hit upon relatively simple solutions that didn’t require media. They nailed them a billion years ago and have somehow managed ever since.
They don’t read headlines or heed them or need them. Not even great headlines like:
Are You Wearing the Wrong Bra?
or
8 Things Not to Keep in Your Wallet
or
5 Sites That Shouldn't Pop up on Your Partner's Browser
or
Let's Not Talk About Sex
Back at the CCRC, we’re in the elegant dining room. Posh, but not oppressively so. There is no oppression here. The dining room is spacious, vaulted, airy, and scented with pine. Huge bouquets sprout from giant faux Chinese urns. Delete the defibrillators and it really looks like Downton Abbey, the chamomile of costume drama from across the pond. Nothing is overdone, except the occasional piece of salmon left a bit too long on the grill.
Seven million years ago, our earliest relatives took their first steps on two feet. Every day some of our residents take their last steps or their last breaths. Marketing calls this our “forever home.” Which means we stay til death do us part, and leave feet first. We are all dying. Even the sun is dying. And the moon? It’s littered with golf balls.
Getting old is great. I mean it sucks. But being alive is great. When you feel especially good, you also feel especially averse to dying. The average lifespan in the West is 80 years, or 2.5 billion seconds. My friend Gail is 86. She’s also a great ping-pong player and long-distance walker. My friend Ruth plays killer tennis. My friend Peter plays a mean game of billiards. Their combined age is 265.
I’m seated at a screen and must choose between clicking on the woman who discovered 14 years late that she wore the wrong wedding dress or the woman who told her mate, Just Kiss Me and Do the Laundry. It’s about subtraction, your hearing, your sight, your balance, your friends. Downsizing? When I moved, I had to shed 750 books that were part of me. Plus my own buried selves, all the girls and women I didn’t get to be. The love I didn’t have or find or know.
But there’s good news, too. I can still sport boots and jeans. My body? It’s great. Great I still have one. One more thing. My expiration date. Insurers recently revised the expected date of my demise. It’s July, but not this July and I’m grateful for that. Plus I’m still moving. I’m moving 64,800 miles per hour as I write these words today. Really I am. I’m orbiting the sun. So are you.
Consider the snow crystal or the monarch butterfly. Consider your breath or your fingertips. I did not. I did not consider them. I saw type fly past screens, but missed the forest and the trees, leapt continents and constellations at the speed of consonants, but missed what is right with the world.
Consider the snow crystal or the monarch butterfly. Each one-of-a-kind. Consider your breath or your fingertips. I did not. I did not consider them. I saw type fly past screens, but missed the forest and the trees, leapt continents and constellations at the speed of consonants, but missed what is right with the world. Birds soaring skyward, plants poking through earth, buds stretching toward sun.
Now, I can’t juggle the blowouts, holdouts, buyouts, brush-offs, trade-offs, stand-offs, sell-offs — let alone connect the dots. But I make new connections among things I hadn’t noticed before, like roses of Sharon, raspberries, periwinkle vines, sweet potatoes sprouting up just as fast as groundhogs can eat them, baby finches fledging, swallows circling overhead. In my first life, I didn’t stop to smell the roses. Now I do.
Previously wrote “It Took Six Years for Me to Say Two Words” for Oldster Magazine.
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My kudos to Sari, too.
Thank you. I am very grateful to you.