Senior columnist reminisces about her earlier senior years

This is a good time of year to set up the card table and organize a photo album or sort out my address book. What I would really feel good about is the sorting out of my writing with the aim at coming up with a feature or two about what I have learned.

My notes are scattered with recipes like Wacky Cake and I can attest to the fact seniors love references to food and wine.

I thoroughly intend to look back over the years I have written about senior life and the challenges of the aging process.

I have loose-leaf folders, plastic binders and tons of files in my computer, still I resist sitting down and pursuing this goal.

I would love an assistant or secretary to help me sort out columns from years past and come up with a summary of what I have learned.

Working alone I find I quickly tire of the re-reading and am easily distracted by a phone call or someone at the door.

So the effort to note titles of interest only results in a blur of newsprint that does not hold my attention long enough to launch an epilogue of sorts that would provide me an overview of what I have observed writing about the everyday life of everyday seniors.

Reading early columns from years back that had the heading Silver Hair Crowd, I smiled to recall sex and seniors were the subjects that initiated the most response.

I amused my readers with the results of the National Sex Institute guide. According to the sexual pie chart, people our age are still filled with life and vitality. Fifty per cent of seniors are remembering it, 20 per cent are dreaming about sex, 15 per cent are talking about it, 10 per cent are thinking about it and five per cent are doing it.

My favourite New Yorker cartoon has a pair of seniors at the door of a condo. The caption reads, “OK, I’ll come in for one drink and maybe sex, but that’s it.”

So seniors are still filled with life and vitality. Even though the hair has thinned, the face is a study in lines and strange spots, eyelids and lashes have disappeared and breasts have fallen at different rates, we are surprised the exterior of our bodies belies the youthful creature alive and well on the interior.

Every senior feels a sense of surprise. How did I get to be this old? Middle age was tough enough, loss of family, friends, job, and then retirement which represented huge losses in the financial market.

How did I get to be old and broke? Financial gurus contend we need a minimum $400,000 portfolio to retire. Good luck.

Our bodies are falling apart, we are in a continual state of surprise and yet we grow old and smart.

In my own case, I find that now in my dotage, I know the answers to everything. Only problem is the fact absolutely no one is interested in asking me anything.

I hear women half my age complaining how long it takes them to get up and out of the house .

They bemoan the fact that don’t have kids to get out the door, the routine of a job and the inability to spend 10 minutes in the bathroom and feel ready to fly out and hit the road running.

Senior women know flying out the door is no longer an option and getting ready to greet the day takes almost the entire morning.

So we are slow, we are smart, and our emotional needs no longer take front and centre.

We like this. We don’t look to others for respect or acclaim.

The sheer confidence that comes from years of living and solving problems as best we can confers a real sense of contentment and inner-peace.

Old age provides us with time to relax and reflect not only on our past mistakes, but the numerous, sometimes glorious, accomplishments that still await us in the present.

Poet Mary Oliver writes that she does not fear death. Rather she is curious about it. Who knows? Perhaps death will be as surprising as life. Perhaps seniors will still be calling out across a heavenly parking lot and instructing me to “write more about sex.”

As for spending the day at my desk in front of the fireplace, organizing my life, wait a minute. It stopped snowing, the sun is shining, soon we will be swimming, we will be sailing.

We will be clearing out the garage and we will be digging out the crawl space. Now isn’t that better?

Jeanette Dunagan has lived in Kelowna for more than 40 years. Email her at jd2399@telus.net.