I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else.
Mark Twain
At the doctor, I’d exhausted my list of complaints: right ear pain, waking headaches, sore right shoulder, lump on left wrist, knee and hip stiffness, warty eruptions on the skin. To all of it, Dr. Hunter more or less said, yeah, that happens, suggested ibuprofen and exercise or aspirin and rest. She looked bored, ready to wrap things up. But I didn’t feel like I’d had my money’s worth yet
“And,” I added, stalling, “I just keep getting older: what’ve you got for that?”
“This is your lucky day,” she exclaimed, looking up from the computer screen. “If you’d been here yesterday I couldn’t have helped you, but this morning, on my way to work there was ice, I slid into a ditch and when I stepped out of my car, my foot landed right on the fountain of youth.”
She’s a smartass, my doctor. That’s half why I keep her.
“Look,” she said briskly, “I can show you people twenty years younger than you, who are not half as healthy.” In other words, you got nothing to bitch about, so why are you in here taking my precious time?
Oh, yeah? Two can play that compare and contrast game. Forget your potato patients. Who cares about them? They do what, sit on the couch and eat bags of chips every night? How about Susan Sarandon and Tina Turner? Or—let’s get personal—Carole Kilmartin, my high school classmate, who, at the fiftieth reunion had zero body fat, played tennis daily and looked thirty-five. How sorry do I look next to those old broads? Let’s get even more personal. How do I compare to Pat Dubrava at forty? Pathetic. I’ve seen photos.
Until now, I’ve been blessed with good health, so issues my doctor sees as minor ailments are alarmingly major to me. I expect to hear the headache is due to a brain tumor and we’ll just cut that out for you, not—oh, lots of people have headaches for lots of reasons. Have you tried changing your pillow? I expect to be given a cure for the shoulder, not—try staying off the computer. Stay off the computer? You know I’m a writer, right?
I leave with a mix of frustration and renewed confidence A few days from seventy, it dawns on me that there may not be any cure for these aches and pains. They may have no cause beyond normal decline of the body, in which case they’ll just get worse. That’s the frustrating part. The confidence returning part is because a) I apparently don’t have cancer yet and b) after moving my leg around to check my hip, Dr. Hunter says, “I see people fifty years old who don’t have half this range of motion.” I strut out of there feeling pretty cocky. Check out my range of motion, slackers.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this seventieth birthday. The sixties was a wishy-washy decade: neither middle-aged nor old, too young to retire but ready to quit, not venerable enough to get respect but too past prime to be taken seriously. Seventy, though, that’s got clout. According to a recent AARP survey, people believe old age begins at seventy. Of course, it depends on whom you ask. Kids think forty’s old. And everyone over forty fools themselves into believing they look younger than their contemporaries. When I see someone in my age group, I usually think smugly, “Wow, he really shows the wear and tear, doesn’t he?” If I see Carole Kilmartin, Class of ’62, I figure she’s made a pact with the devil and blot her out of my mind.
Seventy is a significant peak from which our perspective lengthens. That horrible first marriage, those disastrous job choices? How tiny, how far away they are! From seventy, you can evaluate events more sensibly. (You can. Doesn’t mean you will.) But let’s keep this septuagenarian business in perspective too. Reaching seventy in fair shape makes me a bit arrogant. You’d think I’d won a blue ribbon. You’d think it meant something. It does. It means I didn’t die yet. Woo-hoo.
According to the Life Expectancy Calculator on the Social Security website, people my age live to, on average, 87. The good lord willing, that’s just seventeen more years. I better get busy. I have writing to do. This difficult, satisfying work of being writer and translator is something I’ve just begun in earnest. It doesn’t pay and no one cares if I do it or not. That doesn’t matter. But don’t you try it. Mark Twain was right: what cures one person is poison for another.
Not true- I’m sure I’m not the only one who cares whether you write or not! Not only do I love your posts, laugh with you, appreciate your literate references and slightly cynical wisdom, but as your friend, you’ve never seemed happier to me! I know it will keep you thriving for much more than seventeen years. Keep up the wonderful work, my dearest.
Oh yeah, I remember 70. You’re right, that’s when I began to feel old, no longer middle aged. but there was an upside to it. I no longer cared about trying to look younger. I’m glad to just be me. I love how you write about this subject so much on the minds of me and all my friends….but you never say anything that’s trite.
Thanks Pat for another glimpse into your life and into the human condition.
Love it. Love you.
If pink is the new black and 70 is the new 40/50? Then you are the new Olympian!! You make 70 something for everyone to aspire to. Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday, Pat. 70 is well worth a celebration
followed by a sweet, long and well-deserved nap.
Keep writing!
Okay, here are a few seeds for thought. Yoko Ono just turned 81 this year and she has had several top ten techno hits. She is currently known for creating the best hits to dance to. No joke. Jane, my modern dance teacher, was a primary dancer for the first Martha Graham Dance Company. She was seventy one when I trained with her and I trained with her for 9 years. She changed my life forever. And the list goes on and on.
Huzzah! Aches and pains be damned, Pat. Keep up the good work (and the great attitude).
I care that you write, ‘cuz I read. And I love reading what you write.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Grandma Moses. Louise Nevelson. Doris Lessing. Great artists, each of them, who kept right on going through the decades. Just like you! Another powerhouse punch of words that help pave the way for lots of us. I’m right behind you, sister! Keep up the good work of words. And thank you.
The year before she died I was visiting my mom in Oregon, and I mentioned that the next summer I’d be turning 60. Her eyes got real big and she snapped, “Sixty? How old does that make ME?” A personal affront!
So you’ll understand me when I say, no—NO—you aren’t 70. You CAN’T be 70 because how old would that make ME? No, no … my fingers are in my ears. La-la-la-la-la…!
I love this post, Pat. It sounds just like me!
CATHERINE comes in at the end of the foyer. She is a gaunt
woman with a face carved out of granite. She is tough,
embittered, with a history of pain and mirthless hard work
ingrained into her features.
CATHERINE
Hey! What are you doing here?
MRS. PILLETTI
I came to see you. How you feel?
The two sisters quickly embrace and release each other.
CATHERINE
I gotta pain in my left side, and my
leg throbs like a drum.
MRS. PILLETTI
I been getting a pain in my shoulder.
CATHERINE
I gotta pains in my shoulder too. I
have a pain in my hip, and my right
arm aches so much I can’t sleep.
It’s a curse to be old. How you feel?
MRS. PILLETTI
I feel fine.
CATHERINE
That’s nice.
This is from “Marty,” and old teleplay from the First Golden Age of Television (now is the Second, I hear), by Paddy Chayevsky. These two Italian-Americans complain later about how it’s “a curse to be old.” And they are in their fifties! (in the 50’s) Things have gotten better, for sure. I guess I have another ten years before I start getting those aches and pains, eh, Pat?
Oh, and Sylvia, regarding Jane Tannenbaum: I played piano for her classes close to thirty years ago. I remember thinking two things: she was the wrinkliest old white lady I’d ever seen (as wrinkly as W.H. Auden in the late 60’s: my Granny took me to a poetry reading of his), and, two: she was more flexible than any of her students!
Growing old: I haven’t even grown up yet. Damn.
Oh, and by the way, Pat: Happy Birthday!
And: it seems we have the same doctor: Denise, right?
Yep, Denise Hunter. In the small world dept. Don’t let her sell you that fountain of youth story.
Wow! Small world, I have the same doctor, Denise Hunter. She must handle a lot of
old, I mean, clientele like us! Gregg, you played the piano for Jane. T? Well, I was probably there while you were playing. Remember her large silver jewelry?
Wow! Pat, see how your blog keeps on connecting!!
Sylvia M
You baby you! Now that you’re 70 you can say or do anything you want and totally get away with it. (uh – oh, you’ve already been there, done that…….) Love and hugs.
Yes, I do, Sylvia. This must have been about thirty years ago, in an odd location around 4th and Lincoln. I was impressed with the dedication of her students. You must have been one of them!
I love this sense of growth and age, your ability to take me from old to young, to make me think about writing and moving forward….well done!