City Life!
Our move to the city has resulted in at least one twist and one turn. Who knows what'll happen next.
Now that we no longer live in the woods, I am walking and exercising much more than before. That’s the twist! After years of talking about having chickens, and my spouse saying NO-vehemently-we’re now going to get chickens (probably in March) and it is his idea. I was ambivalent initially, because all those years I talked about chickens? Most of it was just talk. That’s the turn!
You can keep chickens in Asheville. You can also tear up your lawn and put in a pumpkin patch, and nobody blinks. I love this place. Up there on the side of a mountain, in the woods, it was too shady to have much of a garden. What I miss? The sound of the creek, the smell of the damp earth on the trail that goes up along the creek, the wind rushing up the mountainside, the views, the mountain hounds chasing each other under fallen trees and over the rock formations.
Maybe we’ll pull it off-make it into a retreat center. Please come! The sounds that come through the silence are so nourishing and the air smells good.
Meanwhile back here in the city, there’s a gym right down the street so I’ve had my first zumba class. We ended up joining, and along with our membership I received one free session with a personal trainer. I met with her yesterday. She looked like a real person (she sounded overly peppy on the phone so I was wary). She asked me my age and I said “54.” She said, “NO WAY!” Apparently that surprised her. “Really?” I said. “Yes, I MEAN it!”
I smiled the way middle-aged people smile when they are being flattered, the kind of flattery that would not be happening were I not middle-aged. Later she encouraged me, “You’ll be outrunning your grandchildren in no time!” Do I really look that old? I understood because I recently said the same thing to my 88-year-old father, with regard to his GREAT-grandchildren, and he played along, running ahead of them while I videotaped. Good sport, he is. Dad’s used to it, the compliments that come with aging. It is a kind of compliment that you have to experience personally to understand how it feels, the kind that actually reminds you that you are old, rather than helping you feel young.
The truth is I don’t feel “54.” I don’t feel any age, except sometimes when I am tired and I feel that I have used up a certain amount of my gas, which is to say, my life. This year was filled with losses of parental figures, so I’ve experienced some grief-type weariness.
Overall, I am coming into that time of life when judgments lose their punch, so what happens now that I don’t care? Suddenly I find that younger people are reassuring me that I am okay. That I look young. That I can run fast. Ha! My first instinct is to smugly harbor my skepticism while I wince inwardly. But that's not necessary. Maybe instead of just tolerating the well-intended compliments, I can accept them wholeheartedly as if they were wholeheartedly sincere. Why not? That young woman taught me some new things and she had kind eyes and a nice smile.
Everything that’s good, take it in. That’s what I say these days.
And I do recommend exercise, the kind that makes you sweat. Something gets released.
Now that we no longer live in the woods, I am walking and exercising much more than before. That’s the twist! After years of talking about having chickens, and my spouse saying NO-vehemently-we’re now going to get chickens (probably in March) and it is his idea. I was ambivalent initially, because all those years I talked about chickens? Most of it was just talk. That’s the turn!
You can keep chickens in Asheville. You can also tear up your lawn and put in a pumpkin patch, and nobody blinks. I love this place. Up there on the side of a mountain, in the woods, it was too shady to have much of a garden. What I miss? The sound of the creek, the smell of the damp earth on the trail that goes up along the creek, the wind rushing up the mountainside, the views, the mountain hounds chasing each other under fallen trees and over the rock formations.
Maybe we’ll pull it off-make it into a retreat center. Please come! The sounds that come through the silence are so nourishing and the air smells good.
Meanwhile back here in the city, there’s a gym right down the street so I’ve had my first zumba class. We ended up joining, and along with our membership I received one free session with a personal trainer. I met with her yesterday. She looked like a real person (she sounded overly peppy on the phone so I was wary). She asked me my age and I said “54.” She said, “NO WAY!” Apparently that surprised her. “Really?” I said. “Yes, I MEAN it!”
I smiled the way middle-aged people smile when they are being flattered, the kind of flattery that would not be happening were I not middle-aged. Later she encouraged me, “You’ll be outrunning your grandchildren in no time!” Do I really look that old? I understood because I recently said the same thing to my 88-year-old father, with regard to his GREAT-grandchildren, and he played along, running ahead of them while I videotaped. Good sport, he is. Dad’s used to it, the compliments that come with aging. It is a kind of compliment that you have to experience personally to understand how it feels, the kind that actually reminds you that you are old, rather than helping you feel young.
The truth is I don’t feel “54.” I don’t feel any age, except sometimes when I am tired and I feel that I have used up a certain amount of my gas, which is to say, my life. This year was filled with losses of parental figures, so I’ve experienced some grief-type weariness.
Overall, I am coming into that time of life when judgments lose their punch, so what happens now that I don’t care? Suddenly I find that younger people are reassuring me that I am okay. That I look young. That I can run fast. Ha! My first instinct is to smugly harbor my skepticism while I wince inwardly. But that's not necessary. Maybe instead of just tolerating the well-intended compliments, I can accept them wholeheartedly as if they were wholeheartedly sincere. Why not? That young woman taught me some new things and she had kind eyes and a nice smile.
Everything that’s good, take it in. That’s what I say these days.
And I do recommend exercise, the kind that makes you sweat. Something gets released.