Is Older Really Better?

Having started this blog I find myself coming to grips occasionally with the title of it. “Your blog has to have a name, Mom,” my daughter said as she set it up. The whole idea of blogging was new to me but I thought, what do I have to offer in words? The answer was ideas. Especially ones I’m most wrestling with today. That way I get to keep a record of some of my conclusions and share them with others who are my contemporaries. I suspect that would include everyone since no one can escape the clocks and calendars of life.

A big part of the senior senior’s life is getting to know oneself. It’s inescapable. Eventually most of us have to face living alone. No longer do we live to support another, be supported by another, live with another, keep company with another. Some have lived alone most of their lives and know what that means. Only when you experience independent living do you face up to yourself.

Tommy, my canary, is a case of that. At the pet shop where I found him he shared the cage with another male canary in the vicinity of other cages occupied by other birds. Then I brought him home where his cage stood next to another cage with two Gouldian finches I’d had for a number of years. After about a year Freddy and Fannie left for bird heaven or bird hereafter. Now Tommy is alone. He doesn’t seem to know it though because he hops up to a small toy’s mirror the first thing every morning  and talks to it. I’d give anything to know what he’s saying.

Just so, my pen and journal or the computer keyboard and monitor serve me as mirrors to my thoughts. I am alone in my house, but these “mirrors” keep me company. They keep me on track. They demand a certain standard of thought. I cannot treat them like our writing teacher tells us to by letting every shabby thought that passes by get written down randomly and then torn up. With me, pride or self-protection or propriety, whatever, has kept shabbiness at such a distance that I never dignify it by my pen or keyboard. The TV and newspapers do a good enough job for that. 

No, my kind of word-company is one of elucidation, problem-solving, getting things right in my mental household. This spills out in my little condo too. Like yesterday. Starting out with a shampoo and shower, I proceeded to tidy up my rooms. I don’t stick to some dogged rule about housework. I let myself get side-tracked freely and it’s all fun and games. A darling photo of my latest great grand-baby boy needed to be framed. I did it in a charmingly innovative way. Side-tracks like that in housework make the job go happily. 

Life is full of puzzles, unsolved problems and inequities. I’ve found that taking them one at a time and writing about them in a positive way helps to sort things out in my mind. It’s a lot like taking life’s perplexities to a sage and talking them out. That’s the way it is with the subject of age.

“Older,” let’s face it, has a bad reputation because of its accompaniments, not its substance. Taken in substance it should mean all kinds of good things. Like getting older is getting smarter. Getting older is getting wiser. Getting older is getting sweeter, riper, gentler, kinder. Getting older should not be getting lonely but rather getting better acquainted with one’s truer self. This can result in making small and large changes for the better in one’s person, in one’s mind, in one’s house, in one’s attitudes, in one’s habits, in every way possible. It’s art. It’s entertainment. It’s fun.

As I write this Tommy is no longer sitting in front of his mirror. He’s no longer chit-chatting as he was the first thing this morning. He’s bursting in song. He’s seen himself and liked what he saw. He’s enjoying his own company and that is not narcism, it’s simply that he is the only company he has. Except me. He likes me because I take care of him, talk to him once in a while, and put him in the best spot in the house. I do the same for myself. 

As I get older I am happier. Especially in the morning. That’s all I need to say today.