On Turning 70

 

Turning 70. There really is no way around it. That’s a big number. I know that many of my Facebook friends, members of the class of ’71, face the same reality this year. With the exception of my old friend from NYU film school, Carol, and my BFF Marsha, I have no idea how any of them feel about that.

I consider the number with disbelief. How did this happen?  Most days, as I flit around from one task to the next, I feel like I’m about 34. That’s where I am in my head. But this does not align with reality.  

I’ve dreaded this birthday for a good part of the past year. It may have something to do with my rather glib proclamation for the past 10 years – ‘mostly you can count on your 60s to stay healthy and do what you want – but the 70s are a crap shoot.’   I have reached the age of the crap shoot.

My dad died at 80, my mother just shy of 83. Despite being math-challenged, I am very aware those ages are just 10 and 13 years away.   Both of my parents fought deadly cancers. My father smoked heavily all his life. I’ve never smoked anything in my entire life. But for my first 18 years, I was trapped in a car with his smoke. Will his behaviors determine my fate?  My mother had ovarian cancer. I know the year she was diagnosed that she had been to her gynecologist but that after doing her pap smear, the doctor failed to do an internal exam – usually pro forma activity but apparently neglected that one time.  I religiously have annual physicals, go for all the recommended mammograms, colonoscopies, and skin checks. I do all of these things with an awareness of the cruel randomness of the universe, and that no matter how hard I try to head disaster off at the pass, I’m deluding myself if I think I’m personally in control of any of it.

There is so much I still want to do – and so many places I still want to go. I took the imposed covid travel interruption rather personally – and feel in a rush to catch up. Will I get to see everything in this world I want to see? I’m surely trying.

I used to feel fully confident that I would outlive my brother. Now I worry that I won’t. I can say with confidence that there is no one else in the universe who wakes up wondering what can be done to expand his universe – there is no one who will find a Memorial Day parade to take him to or put together the Halloween costume he envisions or wonders if he would like to go on a picnic for lunch. If I die first, he will follow soon and it will be due to failure to thrive.  I do not pray. But if I did, it would be that he go first. I would be fine. He would not.

My daughter and her husband own a cabin/cottage on Otsego Lake in Cooperstown. Since they bought it, my son-in-law has always encouraged me to bring my bathing suit when I visit and has said he’ll take me waterskiing. Although I’ve been to visit a handful of times, I’ve had the unfortunate bad luck to be there in the summer when it’s been relatively cold, windy, and rainy – not at all the kind of weather in which I want to be pulled behind a boat. They recently bought a new boat – bigger and more powerful than their old one. This week while I was in Cooperstown to turn 70 in their presence,  I indicated that it was definitely part of my plan to be able to waterski behind that beautiful boat. His response was unexpected and way less than enthusiastic.  My daughter explained – he doesn’t want to be responsible if something happens to you.  Now that I’m 70, I have become somebody to worry about.  There are water activities that I wouldn’t have the confidence or audacity to try – knee-boarding comes to mind. I nearly ruined my knees about 8 years ago taking a surfing lesson. So that’s off the table. I need to walk without pain. But I learned to waterski when I was 16 or 17. I skied in my late 20s behind a friend’s boat in the St Lawrence River. It feels like just yesterday even though it isn’t. I am confident I still remember the ‘trick’ to getting up and staying up.  I hope I will be allowed to try.

I think of my Aunt Berniece who talked about a friend whose life changed in a moment with a tumble taken after she climbed on a precariously balanced chair to accomplish a task. When people asked why she had done it – why she had climbed up on that chair to do what she did, her answer was simple, “Because I always have.” As I bound up and down stairs in my own home, often with my arms full of stuff, I think about that statement and wonder if I should hold the railing.  Maybe I ought not to wrestle with the heavy window air conditioner this season trying to move that monstrous piece of equipment  from my basement to my office. My daughter would say very authoritatively not to dare try  it. And I would think, as did my aunt’s friend – “but I always do.”   My feisty self thinks – don’t tell me what to do. And my cautious self warns me how mad at myself I will be if I injure myself and change my life for the worse because I did something stupid. 

My Uncle Marvin who lived to the age of 96  -- and golfed and read voraciously up until the last six months of his life, used to say “This age thing is all mental. I have younger friends who think they’re old. As for me,  well, I don’t get on roofs anymore because I’m over 85.”  

That makes sense. I think I will stay off roofs. And I won’t try to carry the air conditioner upstairs by myself. But, I’m pretty sure I can still ski behind a boat.