AGE IS JUST A NUMBER

Age is just a number and mine, at 80, is screaming in agony. Where did all the decades go? I demand a do-over. I wasn’t ready the first time around and I know more now-like where the quicksand is hiding. Now i need to use a cane and stairs are my enemy. Falls now trump divorce and moving to a new home and speaking in front of a large crowd as the most frightening thing. At my advanced age, people who fall don’t always get up no matter how many life saving buttons they push. At a recent trip to the post office a man who was leaving, stopped, got out of his van, and opened the door for me. A female employee took the package of books I was mailing and carried them to the counter for me. On the way out, she scurried to proceed me and open the doors. What was I helpless? Where is that vibrant self-sufficient woman I once was? Is she hiding in the closet or under the bed? Can I go to a fortune teller and summon her magnificent return? I’m afraid not. Maybe she is on display at Madame Troussant’s Wax Museum, but she is not here. For someone who never wanted to ask for help, I seem to be wearing a sign “Help Wanted and Needed. Take Pity on This Poor Soul.” Gone are the glorious days of independence. I can no longer drive a car at night or a vacuum cleaner during the day. I now need to depend on Depends One errand a day exhausts me, when I used to go non-stop from morning to midnight. Now I am a perpetual non-stop at Monopoly’s GO. Today I will take a deep breathe or at least as deep as my lungs will permit and stop and smell the roses and daffodils and linger a long while, thank those younger folks who are so ready to help us oldsters and just be thankful I won’t have to read my own obituary any time soon. After all I just paid $92 to renew my driver’s license until 2030 and I don’t want it to go to waste.