So This Is 61: Notes on Aging From the Inside Out

I didn’t expect to notice it all at once. Nobody tells you that one day, getting out of a chair will require a full mental and physical commitment. Or that you’ll avoid driving at night because headlights are now earthly starbursts. Or that the first time you wake up with a stiff neck, you’ll briefly wonder if you also have a brain tumor, because the sharp pain shoots all the way up into your temple. Of course, it’s just how you slept, but the thought still crosses your mind. My neck now cracks so hard I sometimes wonder if others can hear it. This is all new.

These are notes from those realizations—honest reflections of what 61 feels like, from the outside in and the inside out.

Oh. And who IS that old woman staring back at me in the mirror?

Aging is full of these little surprises—some unsettling, some mildly amusing, and some that require a good stretch, a heating pad, and a moment of reflection. I am learning, slowly, to embrace it all. I’m slowing down, but not shutting down. Sixty is NOT the new 90, as Sarah likes to suggest to me. If anything, I’m rediscovering the joys of having time to potz around the house, sort through old pictures, take the dogs for walks, and drive my Miata around Spartanburg like it’s my own personal victory lap.

I have less—less urgency, less need to accumulate things—but I also have more. More awareness, more gratitude, more quiet moments of contentment. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still upgrade to the latest iPhone every couple of years and buy accessories for the Miata and Mini Clubman, but there’s nothing I can think of that I truly need. That’s an unsettling realization, not because it signals loss, but because it signals a kind of peace. I’ve been asked whether this feeling means I’m depressed. I don’t think so. If anything, it feels like clarity, like a settling in—like I’m moving toward a place where I don’t have to chase after the next thing. I haven’t arrived there yet, but I can tell a difference.

Aging isn’t just about collecting years; it’s about collecting perspective. There is wisdom in learning what to hold onto and what to let go of and in understanding that urgency is often self-imposed. It is true that contentment is “not about having what you want but wanting what you have”–that is, it’s in perspective. I remember when I was about 9 years old, I stood by eavesdropping, as children do, when Mother and Daddy were visiting with the preacher after Sunday night church. I don’t know how the conversation turned toward me–probably because I tried to join in the adult’s conversation. But I still recall Daddy telling the preacher, “Ugena can’t be content.” Even then, I wanted the next thing, to go to the next place–I just plain wanted. I realize now it’s a quality that must be cultivated. I am working on it.

I’ve learned that not every battle is worth fighting–not every hill is one to die on. Very few are. And against a life of doing otherwise, I’ve come to understand that silence can be more powerful than a quick, clever retort (which, I admit, is a talent of mine). Although Sarah probably say it’s taking too long, I’m also learning to take myself less seriously–to laugh at myself when I can.

And yet, aging isn’t just about accumulating (waiting patiently for?) wisdom—it’s also about watching my body become a stranger to me. The aches, the slower reflexes, the shifting body shape that seems to have a mind of its own. And let’s not even talk about hair loss and the horrifying reality of what gravity does to internal organs. I wonder if everybody, like me, sees someone and thinks “old person,” only to discover that she or he is younger than I am. I die a little on the inside when that happens, and it does regularly.

I’ve inherited certain characteristics from my father—beyond just looking more and more like a little old man every day. If I’m not careful, I can be short-tempered and convinced my way is obviously best. I don’t always filter my thoughts the way I should—not snapping, exactly, but sometimes speaking too bluntly, unaware in the moment of how my words might land. And yet, also like him, I’ve also mellowed. I am more nostalgic, more sentimental, more conscious of time slipping through my fingers like sand. I find joy in familiar places, in the sound of a bird’s song. I think I am figuring out the face in the mirror. It’s starting to look like me. The trick is learning to love the aging face.

When I married at 18, I could imagine “50 years from now.” Now, I understand, in a way I didn’t before, that the time ahead is finite. There’s an end of the road. My parents, whose mortality would have been unimaginable to me 20 years ago, are fading—fragile, frail. My father still has a prolific memory of a shirt he was wearing when he was talking to a particular person at a specific place in 1957 while a specific song played on the radio, but he struggles to remember which channel is which on the TV. My mother, who was heavy-set all my life, is growing thin. It’s probably healthier, but it’s startling to me. Even the house, now 50 years old, is a little less kempt, as houses tend to become when the priority is simply to live in them rather than maintain them. These things are bittersweet to see.

There’s a void where the future used to be. I can’t plan for 50 years down the road anymore. Twenty years, maybe. Ten, certainly (no, not certainly, more…hope-fully). But the open-ended future that once stretched ahead indefinitely has become something else entirely. Maybe the saddest thought—and why do I allow my ruminations to go here—is that one day, not too far into the future, the last people on earth who call me by the nickname that Daddy pronounced upon me when I was born, will be gone. He and Mother call me Miss Bean. I’ll never hear it spoken naturally to me again. This is, by the way, a very Daddy way of thinking, and I have to stop it. It’s dangerous, depressing, and yet, sometimes, it sneaks in anyway.

And yet, there is joy to be found in all of this. There is humor. There is, finally and blessedly, contentment. There is the deep love I have for my family–and a conviction to see every minute they are in the world as a gift. Time doesn’t march on–that heifer tears out like her tail is on fire. Aging isn’t a slow march toward irrelevance—it’s a shift in focus, a new way of seeing. I am still learning, still growing, still moving—albeit with a few more creaks and groans along the way. And in the meantime, I’ll keep driving my Miata and cracking my neck like like a walnut. I’ll keep striving toward the Big Three attributes of sanity: gratitude, contentment, and humor as I remind myself that I’m still here. And I’m still going.