Boo boo in select company

Boo boo in select company
Something to say?

Tuesday 4 May 2021

Age -- Has it Withered Me?

Age -- Has it Withered Me?


 I think getting old is like giving birth -- you cannot know it unless you are in it.

  I cannot believe I have lasted eighty-six years. The wear and tear are showing of course. Bits and pieces of me are definitely falling off. My family get exasperated at my lack of hearing -- they repeat words and phrases to accommodate me, but I can see the weariness in them. Small print in Maths books are beyond me, especially indices. The T V is occasionally less clear than I would wish. I blame my spectacles and clean the lens, without much improvement. Thankfully, I can still smell the lavender in my garden and the bees and wasps around the Lobelia are perfectly visible. Selective hearing, I know, but can I have selective vision as well?

  I have recently acquired a stair-lift. How the mighty have fallen! It is an ugly monstrosity, desecrating a graceful stairway. And, when I sit on it, it is one ugliness on top of another. But the choice was moving downstairs, out of my familiar bedroom and its familiar chaos. My cat, Pepper,would miss her place at the foot of the bed and the window ledge to sit on to survey the cat-world. I cling to the familiar.

  I should be glad my memory still holds, though names of people, with whom I don't  deal frequently, escape me. And the words too sometimes, that word I need for my writing, which fits perfectly in that phrase. The Maths I learned half a century ago is easy to recall. The formula for the solution of quadratic equations, the Cosine rule, all the mental acrobatics that schools inflict on unsuspecting children, they are fresh in my mind. But I tried to remember the lines of Milton's sonnet, On His blindness, and did not succeed. I had one phrase haunting me, but the lines were gone.  'They also serve who only stand and wait.'  That has been my excuse, in past years, for the garden full of weeds, the dishwasher not loaded... Now, of course I can plead age and senility.

  I am, at the moment, writing some pages on my life in Nigeria and Zambia, and I remember the taste of fufu and groundnut sauce, the music blaring in the drinking haunts, the colours of the Kente cloth in the market... My colleagues had names like Egwele and Nebedem, but they are still alive in my mind. But I forget the name of the Peace Corps lady who sat next to me in the staff room. We were good friends.

  As age advances, I become more and more of an attention seeker. Possibly because I am more ignored than before. I say I don't want birthday presents or wishes, and the sixth diary, the tenth T-shirt, are all surplus to need... All Oxfam fodder in a few weeks time. But I slip my birth-date on to Facebook and wait for my family and friends to spoil me. And they write in, so many of them, I am overwhelmed by their affection. I am lucky.

  So, I am writing this blog for that wonderful crowd of people who wished me Happy Birthday yesterday. Old age is a lot better than I thought it might be. And I am lucky to be allowed the years, one after the other. And thank you, my clan, my tribe, my friends. Thank you for the wishes; I am too lazy to thank each one of you separately.