From Guns to Chicken Wings
When I began this blog a few years ago, I promised to write about senior-sorts-of-things. Not surprisingly, whereas health and fiduciary matters are often rubricked as concerns belonging to “ancient” folks, it turns out that all kinds of goings-on are pertinent to us. Like younger people, oldsters care about internal and international conflicts, seasonal groceries, and personal development. It’s not so much that aging subtracts categories of disquiet from lives as it is that it adds to them.
So, while I still loathe automatic checkouts at supermarkets and wish that Moshiach would arrive today, I’m more recently preoccupied with the lack of available chewing gum and duct tape; I need to hold together my bits and pieces. As I’ve advanced in years, I’ve developed blood sugar issues, respiratory distresses, ambulation difficulties, and other tribulations. In short, I’m typical, for my age, in the rate at which, and in the number of ways, that I’m “falling apart.”
One change that especially upsets me is my overall deficit of muscle tone. Although I’ve consistently been more of a nerd than an athlete during my lifespan, I had also been, for decades, a gym rat. Unfortunately, ever since the advent of COVID I’ve been disabled (recall my breathing problems, the ones that literally kept me home for much of the virus’ duration, precluding my seeking help for all but potentially lethal complications).
More exactly, the combination of an unhealed ankle injury and of an untreated, acutely inflamed knee meant my ability to walk eroded more and more while I hid in my apartment from the lethal pandemic. By the time that the sickness was no longer dangerous, I had to be provided with a handicapped (parking) sticker (for a car which I could no longer drive), and with ongoing physical therapy. To boot, even at present, I remain in pain.
Computer Cowboy, my dear spouse, offered to drive me round trip, several times per week, to the closest gym and/or pool, but he works full-time and still needs to be my wheels for medical appointments. So, it’s been years since I lifted a barbell or pedaled an elliptical bike.
The fallout has been sad plus unhealthy. Per the dismal facet of this forfeiture, since I’m mostly a mesomorphic somatotype, it ordinarily takes me merely six weeks to evidence renewed workout efforts following a vacation from regular exercise. During such times, my trapezius, lats, and rhomboids fill out. My pecs and quads firm. My triceps and biceps grow; I have “guns.”
At the moment, though, I no longer have overall definition. Specifically, I no longer have “guns.” Simply, I’ve become incredibly unfit. I don’t have the strength to open certain containers. I must carry fairly light loads. Moreover, I miss being able to drive. I wish for the capability to walk unassisted. I’d like to sleep through a night instead of repeatedly waking every few hours. Age has altered my body.
For the most part, except for my husband and the lone child of ours who still lives at home, no one is aware of or responsive to these corporeal challenges of mine. First, as a full-time writer, one who works entirely at home, I have no bosses, colleagues, students, or administrative assistants to notice the changes I am incurring as did various groups and individuals when I was a gestating professor.
Second, my writing about physical loss is an exception to my normal tendency to not refer to my somatic transformation. My own grown children complain that they can’t understand why I show up less and less often to shared events; they claim that if I don’t detail my woes, my afflictions will remain hidden to them. Third, I’ve shared even less information with friends than with family members.
See, I’m usually uncomfortable talking about my nisayonot; everyone has “growth opportunities” of one kind or another and, most often, the majority of us doesn’t have the capacity to do anything more than witness and validate each other’s struggles. So, staying quiet about such matters, i.e., not expecting anyone else to be able to provide support on a long-term basis, generally, suits me best.
Sometimes, however, like this week, I surprise myself by paying attention to the degree to which my conditions limit my being. At such times, I allow myself to noise off, i.e., to be sufficiently “loud enough” for other people to “hear” me.
On balance, getting older means accumulating insights, all of which, in my case, I’ve tried to be grateful to receive. The transmogrification that accompanies successive birthdays is real as well as is a process that modifies existence. Additionally, while such revisions can be a ladder to greater self-acceptance, such transformations concurrently impose a kind of surrender.
Our grasp of ourselves as necessarily (operative) fleshly beings shifts when we’re blessed to experience decades of days and nights. It’s up to us to use our newly formed “chicken wings” to fly.
