Getting older is challenging. 
The image of seniors running through fields of flowers while the narrator of the drug du jour is naming all the side effects is both complete fantasy (we don’t run through fields much) and sort of true (we do need more drugs than we used to). No matter how we eat or exercise, our body does change over time. We may need to take drugs we never even heard of before. There are definitely more aches and pains that Advil or Tylenol can’t erase. We move more slowly, get up off the floor with more grunts (if we can get up off the floor at all), digest more slowly, sometimes don’t hear as well as we used to. In an evolutionary sense, I’m not sure we were meant to live to 100 or even our 90s, although many of us do. In past times, people died appropriately before they couldn’t do all the things they used to do.
Probably the most uncomfortable part of being considered “older” or “elderly” is the patronism of the young. “Sweetie,” “dearie,” they call you, or “young woman”. They may try to flatter us by telling us how much younger we look than we really are. It’s well meaning, but it doesn’t ring true. When we look in the mirror, we see the wrinkles, all of them! One of the pleasures of occasional flattery, I must admit, is going through Security in an airport and being told you have to take your shoes off, when you are actually over 75 and no longer need to do that. “My, I would have thought you were much younger,” they might say. Not really, you think, although you may secretly love that they say it.
Growing old does have some perks. We get discounts on a lot of things. People open doors or carry heavy things for us. We don’t have to worry as much about how we look, because there are limits to what we can do about it anyway. And we have Medicare which is really better than good. It’s great, compared to what we had before.
But being older doesn’t mean we have lost our minds, and we don’t need people to speak loudly in front of us, no matter what the state of our hearing is. We can ask for help if we need it, but don’t assume we can’t cross the street on our own or figure out how to use the DVR. Some of us are quite adept at electronics and might even know the latest song our grandkids are singing. Some of us actually start a blog!
When the three of us decided to start this blog, we called it “proud aging women,” because we wanted to dispel the idea that being older is something to dread or be ashamed of. It’s inevitable and pretending it is not happening is folly. We know that we all age in different ways, and it should not be a competition. We have the genes we were dealt with, some of which we can improve on and others we are doomed to live with. That woman in my exercise class who can put her leg behind her head? She’s in her mid 80s. Me? I’m lucky if I get my leg up to mid-thigh level!
So yes, the three of us are old and we are actually fine with it (most of the time). How about you?