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Feeling Your Age

My mother will be 84 next month, and she's feeling fine. I spoke to her last week just after she'd been to see the doctor for a checkup, and her heart and blood pressure are A-OK. The doctor was impressed that she lives alone and keeps her own house. She's still picking okra from her garden and is looking forward to having the old Linoleum in her house replaced with tile. She even offered to strip the wallpaper in her bathroom before a sister convinced her that was a job best suited for professionals.

I'm feeling pretty old today, though. I'm tired and tired of being unwell. So, here is today's editorial—I'd be honored if you'd read it, and then tell me how old you feel regardless of your calendar age.

Additional note: never underestimate the potential for my town's people to be mean spirited.

Comments

savannah said…
great piece, sugar! today, i feel ageless. i know, that isn't an answer, but there is a reason why. i have a 2nd chance. yep, i had some ohygawd health issues that turned out to be just a misread x-ray! yep, so, today i get to start again and do it right! i'll be 60(when the hell did that happen?) on 12/31, so i'm making every damn day count and i'm gonna keep on truckin! xoxoxxo
Shan said…
Let me just say I could NEVER handle the criticism articles written for the paper tend to receive! Gee whiz, people are always ready to get their dukes up and go straight to fist-to-cuffs! :D

Age is a boggling thing. My grandma(and only living g-parent) is in her 90's and has a social calender that makes my head spin.

I never imagined I'd live past forty because the type- I diabetics I knew growing up never did.

This year I also have a new lease on life(oh dear Savvy!) and realize it is very precious indeed. With all the people around me facing Cancer and other sudden ailments, I try not to take any day for granted.

I have always acted embarrassingly young for my age but it is probably the Peter Pan Syndrome that keeps me healthy to an extent so I won't try too hard to mature at this point.

There are definitely those days when you feel like you are falling apart at the seems but it is nice to capitalize on energy when it comes!

Great article Robyn! I don't think aging will stop you from anything!
Scout said…
Savannah, First, I'm so sorry to hear you had to live in fear waiting for test results. But second, I'm so happy you are in the clear. Good for you!!

Shan, you really do have to take those comments with a grain of salt. The editor puts my stuff on the editorial page as a break from politics, and a couple of people complain. If the page was nothing but politics, other people would complain. Some people are just jerks. Long live the Peter Pan Syndrome.
dive said…
Robyn: That was a lovely piece, beautifully written as always and it really made me want to join a cruise (and feel young among the oldies).

I read a few of your comments and a lot of them were nice, but of course every town has its share of ignorant and downright spiteful morons.

I was amused by THE UPPER CASE SHOUTER. WHAT WOULD GOD THINK OF THIS PIECE? I rather think He'd enjoy it. As for the self-righteous, if they had a brain cell to share between them they'd realise that any God worth worshipping would kick them straight down the chute to the Hot Place as soon as they opened their bigoted and vicious mouths.

There was another one there who seemed to be criticising the fact that you'd written a charming and intelligent article rather than what a dumb, self-centered little jobsworth thinks you should have written.
If they're so much better than you why do you have the editorial job and a life full of interests and good deeds while they sit at home typing bile into their computer?

The opinions of people like that are not worth reading except perhaps as an anthropological exercise observing what happens to the ignorant and vicious when they leave school and find that life doesn't want them.
Writing that kind of drivel to a local newspaper only serves to make their neighbours shudder and avoid them more (and deservedly so).

Keep on writing your wonderful pieces, Robyn. You know from the reaction you get from people in the street and around town that you are greatly appreciated by all but the very dumbest dregs.
Scout said…
Wow, Dive! Thank you. Your comment here more than made up for the jerky remarks on the newspaper site. Most of the comments were positive, but only takes one bugger to ruin the punch, as they say.
I am amazed at the amount of comments your paper receives online. Ours only get one or two per article. They don't seem to bother much in the UK it seems.

Great article Robyn. I agree with one of your readers, you've missed out not dancing. Sign up to a Salsa class without delay. Like you, though, I'm not completely well some of the time and fed up with it! I aim to sign up to Salsa once again, when I can.

At the docs the other day, I was outlining some of my symptoms. How old are you again? she asked, peering at my notes.
50, I told her.
Hmm, she said, that's probably part of the problem.

Great.
Savannah Thank God I have found someone who is a bit older than me, i will be 60 on March 25th 2010, I say this without being snide or a smartarse, I just assune from what I have read that I must be the oldest blogger. Feeling my age - at the moment I really feel blank because I just buried my beautiful mama on the 28th September 2009. I am now an orphan, with Dad passing in 2005. It is hard losing a parent, BUT when you lose your mum that is something else entirely. I wanted to call her yesterday & realized I couldn't. Yesterday I was 30, but today I really feel every bit of 59. One consolation is that I live in beautiful Sydney in Australia, we are in the start of Spring & its not too hot yet, but I do love fall in New York & I would go take myself for a drive to Princeton to see the beautifil trees changing colour with their golden leaves, after the kids I was looking after would be dropped off at school. Well with this bit of useless info that I have passed on to others I wish you all Great days love Krystyna
Scout said…
Lynn, I can't believe your doctor would say "that could be part of the problem." Ouch. I hope you get to feeling well very soon!

Krystyna, I have to admit I have been thinking about this idea of becoming an adult orphan quite a bit lately. I am always relieved to hear that my mother is well, but this fear is always in the back of my mind because it's inevitable.

And I have discovered that most bloggers in this little circle here are hovering on either side of 50—it's a middle-aged blogville, and you're welcome here.

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