AGING IS GETTING OLD

Grave at Mt. View Cemetery by ARP

I am sick and tired of thinking about aging.  I have spent far too much of this homebound year of wondering if I am going to be too old to travel to far places when the pandemic ends. After all, at 75 I am technically “old.”  I hadn’t thought about myself in that way until the CDC put me and many of my friends in a very special vaccination category because of age.  

With winter weather, shuttered gyms, and a cat who sits in front of the screen whenever I try to stream exercise videos, I feel pretty creaky (and cranky).  Somehow, I got this far in life thinking that if ate a healthy diet, watched my alcohol intake and did no harm, I wouldn’t have the aches and pains of aging.  That notion has gone the way of my original hair color, bikinis and tap dancing lessons.  Often stuck inside, it is all I can do to sit down without groaning.  Where did this pain come from?  Surely not aging!

Books on aging are all over the place—hundreds of them. I have several unopened volumes in my bookcase.  One I have partially read because I like its title and respect the author is So Far So Good by Ursula LeGuin.  It is a collection of poems— some funny, some poignant—written between 2014-2018.  Lastly, of the many quotations about aging I have read in the course of writing this little piece, I think the best ones were by (of all people) George Burns.  My favorite is this:  “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.”

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!

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About Alexis

Alexis Rankin Popik, author of Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate, is an award-winning short story writer whose work has appeared in The Berkshire Review and Potpourri Magazine. She has penned numerous articles about local history that have been published in Connecticut Explored and the University of Connecticut School of Law and The Hartford Seminary publications. A former union organizer, Popik traveled the country educating shipyard workers about health and safety and founded a labor-management health plan before turning to writing fiction full-time. She lives with her husband in New England.
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