Lucky Me
I’ve always dressed and acted to a self-image I carry around in my mind. Up until now it’s been relatively ageless, partly because it was based on the reflection I saw in my wife’s eyes. Sure, my hair color changed from brown to gray, and my styles changed to fit my body and the world around us, but to me my age always felt a bit indeterminate, because I didn’t really care. I found her when we were young, we were still together, she smiled when she saw me coming, and it was good.
Now, she’s gone and like Rip Van Winkle waking up from his long sleep I’m not the man I once was. My mental age has caught up to my physical age with a crash. It’s like walking around a place you knew as a child and finding shuttered homes, overgrown lawns, and abandoned cars. The skin on my hands has thinned, the Bells Palsy from a few years back left a sag to the left side of my face, and gravity overall has played hell with skin that no longer has the tone of youth. By anyone’s standards, I’m an old man, and a mirror is how I make sure I have all my clothes on.
Lucky me. Really. From 1961 to 1975 nearly 50,000 of my peers died in Vietnam. In the current pandemic 500,000 of my neighbors have passed on. Even the actuarial tables say the end could be nigh for no other reason than that’s how life is. Still, here I stand. That’s probably a victory of some sort. So, while it may be a crumbling body, I’m still lord of the manor, and in some quarters, there are still people who feel old guys have something to offer.