Division Essay or was it Example? I'll get back to you.

Alright! Alright! Alright, already! I get it! I’m old. Enough of the fates or the gods or the fairies proving it. I’ve been saying for years that this wouldn’t happen to me. Oh, I’d see the look in the eyes of anyone over 40 when I’d declare it, but I was determined, dammit! I didn’t give in to the vanity of it all without quite losing the shadow of the 30’s. Until recently, I still half expected to need my id when I bought booze or went to a bar. Yeah…until recently. Age is an interesting thing now, like a compound under a microscope. I don’t quite know what I think of it, other than that I do now think of it. What it does to the mind amazes me down to my purple painted toes and demands my thoughts. My mind skips beats and stumbles and makes unannounced u-turns quite frequently these days.

I was talking to my son last week while I was cooking. We were talking about the Halo tournament at Geekzilla. I was going to have to take them and pick them up and oh - would I mind getting Aska before Matt was done with the tournament and – well you get the idea. In the meantime, I was browning sausage and chopping black olives and draining spinach and shaping the pizza dough and making sure that Hagen wasn’t doing chemistry experiments with the dog’s water and it happened – I looked at my son of nearly 15 years and forgot his name. Absolutely forgot for more than a minute. I can’t trust myself to remember much of anything though there’s so much that I need to remember. If it isn’t written down and carried with me, and sometimes even when it is, I can’t be expected to know. I didn’t realize that I needed to keep my son’s names in that same little binder. I know now.

I’ve known for three weeks that we’re out of tea bags. Several times I’ve gone to Doug’s specifically for tea bags. I come home with bread and cereal or milk and fish but still haven’t gotten the teabags. Twice I’ve gone to the cupboard in the last two days and, realizing that I STILL haven’t gotten tea bags, I immediately go to the desk and write them on what’s meant to become my shopping list. Both times, when I actually sit down to write the list' I pull out a different sheet of paper. Neither time have tea bags appeared on the list. I go in Doug's knowing that I’m forgetting something and stand in the aisles like an idiot hoping that it will come to me. It doesn’t do any good. I don’t ever remember tea bags and wouldn’t a cup of tea be lovely right about now?

Keith and I were having a discussion about meditation the other night. I was thinking about getting a set of cd’s to help me learn to relax and breathe better. I ardently defended my need to have someone outside of me (I simply can’t trust myself right now) to say over and over the words that would bring me to that quiet place…or something. About 10 minutes into my spiel I did a u-turn and adamantly, vehemently berated his thinking that I needed them. I don’t think he even had much of a chance to say anything at all either way. I don’t know even now which side of the fence I landed on. I can spend weeks bouncing back and forth and not in a quiet, questioning sort of way. Either side I’m on, I’m right and damned be those that think otherwise! Bet I’m a real joy to live with, no?

Okay. I’ll admit it. Age, no matter how I walk up to it, whether it’s full faced and open armed or cowardly pulled kicking and screaming into its greedy arms, is going to win. It’ll take pieces of my mind only subtly at first. Then - BAM! - one day, maybe I’m cooking supper or standing dumbstruck in Doug’s or in the middle of a conversation - I’m older and I can feel it in my eyes when I hear some 30 something woman say she intends to age gracefully. Yeah. The minute she figures that out, I’m buying the book.