Clickety Click

The bingo call for 66 in 50's London used to be clickety click, and that's the new number assigned to my time thus far on this old earth. More like rickety chick if you ask me. To mark this passage, I asked my grownup children to join me at a demonstration of Japanese flower arranging and lunch last week, in place of receiving a wrapped birthday present from them. Mostly because I value their presence over anything else but partly because there's nothing I want that could fit into a box that a person could carry. What I sometimes wish I still had is my own house, one that's all paid up and decorated to reflect the complicated but artistically inclined me and keeps itself clean and tidy. The stores are a bit short on those this year, so I settled for ikebana and a salad. My children will never appreciate how hard I try to make things easy for them.

But yesterday was the real birthday and I hogged it mostly to myself. I drove the pretty forty minutes backroads route to the coast, walked on a glassy smooth beach in my tall wellie boots, overtipped the handsome but offhand waiter at lunch, forcing myself to be forgiving and less critical of others, just for practice, bought a few small luxuries for special Christmas stockings and took a nap in my car in a parking lot.

I also went to a hardware store, a secret guilty pleasure of mine, and bought a smoke detector, wire cutters, solar powered flashlight and insulating strips for the front door. Although I've been desperately trying to simplify my life, by the time I got home, an octopus would have come in handy to help bring in all the stuff. I'd taken along a bag of chips and a flask of apple juice as my drive time snack, so the sticky bottle and ripped apart plastic bag had to be juggled in with hat, keys, gloves, sunglasses, used up tissues for the perennial runny nose, windbreaker jacket, long scarf, and shopping bags.

I try my best to bring things in from the car in one trip, because I'm lazy to begin with but also, when I get home, usually the first thing I have to do is run to the loo. Somehow, struggling out of sandy wellies at the door with hands clawed around bags, shoulders draped in excess gear, seems to exert acute pressure on my bladder, obliterating the benefits of a lovely outing surer than gritty sand (oops)wiches at the beach. In hindsight, I now realize I could have just worn everything and jammed excess stuff into my pockets but I was too tired to think of that at the time. I'm afraid I can only expect more of the same at my new age: naps in parking lots, the need for spare arms and brain parts, pre-emptive visits to the loo.

I'm taking more short cuts when I can, too: for instance, I'm wondering if the new smoke alarm will work just as well if I don't actually wrestle it out of the welded plastic package and just leave it propped on a shelf someplace. Due to my decreased strength, I'm not sure I'll stick the self adhesive weather stripping on properly and I imagine it will end up dangling in the doorway like some newfangled fly trap. Larry's not the type to notice things like that, bless him. I've already figured out I'll need to use two hands to operate the scissor shaped wire cutters, not that I'm dealing with barbed wire fences around an old folks' funny farm. At least not yet. I bought them for the chicken wire I sometimes use in flower arrangements, unlikely but true story. I can barely lift the arranged vases onto the tall pedestals at church these days and wonder how much longer I'll be able to keep it up. When I noticed that the elderly Japanese lady giving the flower demonstration last week had her son and daughter plus three others helping out, I knew my flower power days were numbered.

When I first read about 15 years ago that old age wasn't for sissies, I hadn't thought it through carefully enough. I always thought it applied to everyone else. Like death. Somehow I'd have a free pass. I suppose it isn't too late to rebuild lost muscle but I'm not so sure about the brain part. Results on test games and exercises for the brain are inconclusive as they say. I hope I read and write well, but I did that in elementary school, so that's hardly a comfort. Does it count if you're still aware that you actually are breathing even if you are in fact slower and weaker?

I thought I was being pretty damned smart yesterday by avoiding a Denny's birthday freebie grand slam heart attack breakfast, before walking on a deserted beach out of cell phone range. In fact I forgot about it altogether and opted instead for seafood stew in a garlic broth, served by a waiter far easier on my old lady eye than Denny's in tennies. Oh, and I'm embarrassed to admit, that's another thing: I've started noticing the strong muscled bodies of younger men, something I never thought about before, honestly. But what earthly good is that to me these days? Is that just God's way of helping women forgive the roving eye of their menfolk? Well just shut up God.

So here's what I am looking forward to. The little luxuries I bought in the overpriced heavenly designed boutique are stocking stuffers for the team of lovely young women who assist my desperately adorable daughter as she staggers unpredictably through her day, trying to make sense of her body and mind's unreliable reactions (rather like myself). I'm planning a modest Christmas gathering for them, a thank you for the gift of peace of mind they give me and the fantasy of hope that when I'm gone, my son and one of them will eventually fall madly in love and they'll all live happily ever after. Now that's what I'd really like for all birthdays and Christmases from now until the date of my final departure. But that doesn't fit into a box any more than my dream house. So meanwhile, I'll have to settle for little gatherings and small celebrations for as long as I can, making them loving and beautiful and say thank you and I love you a million times. As my body seems to weaken and my logic becomes more eccentric, my heart seems to want to fatten up with gratitude and sentiment and I think I'll just let that happen.