Tag: Aging Page 1 of 8

Sleeping late

On December 30, 2024

I’ve never been a natural early morning riser. There is something so nice about waking from a poor night of sleep at around 8 in the morning, going out to the bathroom to pee and then coming back to bed to once again fall back to sleep, to dream, to wake again around 11 to start the day and eat what others would call lunch but I call breakfast.

This kind of routine was of course impossible once I had my son. Back then I woke at 6am, got myself ready for work, woke the boy at 7 to get him dressed and fed and then it was off to take him to Dagis or school and then be at a heavy day of work by 9. When he was still in Dagis we picked him up at 3pm. Once he started school, we would pick him up just before 5 from his after-school program. The hours at home were filled with making dinner, bathing the kid, doing homework with him, putting him to bed and often, many nights, going back to the computer to finish the work I didn’t get done before leaving for the day. And finally getting back into bed myself until the next day started bright and early. Well, maybe not so brightly during Stockholm’s dark winters.

But those days are gone – its rare now that I have to be at an early morning meeting – I can still do it if I have to – if it is out of my control to plan it. I don’t like it, but I can still get up early if forced to.

In 1974, I was working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the upper east side of Manhattan. It was just part-time. I was still attending art school at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn – it was my last year there, my fifth year actually. I had switched from the Fashion Design program to Commercial Art after my second year at Pratt and in the process had lost a number of credits I needed to graduate. I had a choice of stuffing my final fourth school year with those extra needed credits or spreading my last batch of credited courses out into a fifth year. I loved being at Pratt and I was not in any great hurry of being out there in the real world, plus… I was and still am, a bit of a sluggard. So I decided to take that extra year and work part time at the Museum at the same time.

The way I worked at the Met was called per-diem, meaning on a day by day basis. The Admissions Department (the department where I worked, not one of the fancy curated art departments) gave me a schedule of days and times I was to come in, based on when I had no classes. But they could also call me at the last minute and ask me to come in to work on the same day. I skipped a lot of classes by going in to the museum instead of appearing in a classroom. It was the early 70s which were really still the 60s, so nobody really noticed if I was sitting in a classroom or not. I preferred to sit at the cash register giving out buttons to everyone who paid to visit the museum.

If you have ever seen or been to the Metropolitan Museum you would know that the front of that massive, pale stone building is faced with a wide array of many low steps leading from the front door to the fifth avenue sidewalks where all the hot dog venders sell their wares. We used to joke that the vendors filled their carts with water from the fountains that sprayed water on both sides of the staircase. They probably didn’t but I never bought their hot dogs. I mean…why take a chance. The stairs were the perfect place for natives and tourists alike to sit there in the sun to rest and chat and watch the stream of people walking by.

Back then, in 1974, when called in to work, I would take the hour long subway ride from my dingy and very slummy Park Slope Brooklyn neighborhood to exit the underground darkness at the 86th Street subway stop in the very fancy Upper East Side. A short walk got me to the museum on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. I would bound up the staircase, often taking 2 steps at a time, to finally arrive at the entrance where the guards nodded hello and let me in.

But that was then. Now when I find myself faced with a flight of steps, I immediately go looking for the elevator or escalator. At 73, stairs have become something to avoid if possible. It doesn’t mean that I am unable to climb them – I still can. But slowly.

And it seems that everything else I do is happening slowly too. Just getting out of bed is taking longer. Getting dressed too. If I don’t need to be anywhere past the borders of my island of Reimersholmen for days at a time I will just wear the exact same clothes over and over again. I rarely spend hours in front of the closet, deciding on how to assemble the perfect wardrobe for the day. Now it’s just a matter of taking that old cotton shirt and the cat hair covered sweatpants from the chair in the bedroom that they were tossed on the night before and if it’s chilly in the apartment, adding the bulky black cable-knit sweater that I bought with my mom the last time she was here visiting me in Stockholm. The holes in the elbows are now big enough to fit an entire cat through them but if my long sleeve t-shirt underneath is also black…who’s gonna notice. Just the process of putting everything on takes longer. And now, I make sure to sit down when putting on the pants.

I used to move quickly. I was spontaneous. I reacted to things instantly. I spoke rapidly, having been taught by growing up in my family to never let anyone finish their sentence. I was damn quick on my feet as I moved in three dimensional space. But that seems to be all gone now or at least on its way out the door. Except for the talking. I still talk fast, still not letting people finish their sentences. And this is something I get reprimanded for, especially here in Sweden where it is considered an unspoken sin. But I can’t fight upbringing.

So now…no longer moving quickly and frequently checking the ground while walking – I don’t want to be surprised by some uneven stretch of earth that will send me sprawling. I used to be able to hop over obstacles – now I go down like a sack of potatoes. And getting up again. That takes a lot longer. I no longer turn around suddenly – I might lose my balance. I check that the chair is under my butt before I even start to lower it. Chairs with arm rests are a great invention – as are railings along staircases. And things hurt when I walk. Thanks Mom for passing on to me your arthritic knees. Last week the back of my calf started to hurt when I walked – it started at the back of my ankle and slowly worked its way up to the middle of the calf. How did that happen? I don’t remember twisting anything or spraining a muscle. It just appeared. Was it because my leg wanted to remind me that I had a calf? Just in case I had forgotten?

All this slow moving is very tiring. It takes a lot of effort to just get started doing something. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to do. And then by the time I am done thinking about it, it seems to be just the right time to take a nap. And I can sleep as long as I want and dream about racing up a long flight of stairs.

Life after life

By Hilarie

On July 8, 2023

In Uncategorized

My strawberries

Amongst my parent’s generation, there were a few men who, though they had reached the age when they could retire, they didn’t. Their wives had retired already, if they had worked, but not these few men. Their workplace was still willing to have them even though they might have passed their best before date. I assume they must have liked their jobs enough to keep working even when they didn’t need to. My parents retired as soon as they were old enough to do so, leaving behind them jobs that were just jobs and looked forward to doing something that they really wanted to do. But my parent’s friend continued working and kept on traveling to his job every day. If you asked him why he continued to take the hour and a half bus ride in to the city from the retirement community he had recently moved to, leaving behind wife and new friends, he would stare at you with a look on his face of incomprehension. Finally, he said, in a very quiet tone of voice, “If I retire, I am afraid that I will die.” He wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He was serious. He was sure that if he should stop working, the next day or week or month after his retirement party, he would die…of something. He eventually did retire. He and his wife got to spend more time with their kids and grandchildren. They traveled a bit together. They spent time at the clubhouse of their retirement community. And eventually in the fullness of time, his wife died and soon after so did he.

I have worked since I was about 17 – nothing serious until I was about 25, when I got my first job in the field that I had studied in college. Since then I have managed to support myself as an Art Director, Illustrator, Production manager, Board artist, Speaker support slide maker, Website designer, Powerpoint designer, magazine designer and in general, whatever one can do in the commercial art field. I have never needed the typing skills my mother insisted I acquire to help put food on my table – which is a good thing since my typing skills are really not all that much to write home about.

But all that professional working life is now 7 years behind me…and I am definitely retired. Am I dead yet?

I am not completely without things to do. I have 2 pro bono clients for whom I volunteer my skills and knowledge. I basically work for free now. But I get a pension, so I’m OK.

One of these groups, a Writers Festival, thinks I’m great. They love what I do for them. They are fun to work with. The project is something I am also interested in. I feel like I am doing a good job for them. But that little nagging voice that always lives in the back of my head says, “Of course they like you. You are free.” But the important thing is mostly they listen to my suggestions and often do what I suggest. That satisfies my control freak tendencies. So I’m OK.

The other group is a Jewish group working to bring Reform Judaism to Stockholm. It is a group that I have been involved with since before I retired – almost 2 decades, actually – a long time. I feel I know most of those people well. We have been on on the same board of directors together for so long that many of them have become friends. There are a lot of tasks on that board that I can not do. No one in their right mind would ask me to take the meeting minutes – the mishmash of swenglish would be illegible. Neither would I be useful to do anything in regards to religious tasks for my knowledge of such things is extremely superficial, a la carte and personal. To be the contact with the greater Jewish community is also something I would not be well suited to due to my poor comprehension of how Swedish society works and my latent phone fear. My only real usefulness lies in my years of work experience as a graphic designer. So that is what I have been on the board – a graphic designer. I designed their logo, I designed the now very out of date website and made a new one in WordPress. I make whatever graphics they need for promoting the group. And I try to maintain the look of the brand. These are things I know how to do. These are things I have experience in doing. With this group I feel like I am doing something important. So I’m OK.

Unlike my parent’s friend, my concern about my post-working life – and my fear – is metaphorical. I am still walking around. I am still breathing. I am not worried – at least not too much, that I will imminently drop dead any minute now. But…am I still alive? Do I still have worth? Does what I know have any value? And why aren’t people doing what I tell them?

In the summers, I have been spending most of my time at our country house with my husband. We have filled our planters with topsoil and I have bought plants to grow there. There are 3 requirements I insist on for any plants I might bring home: The plant has to be an almost indestructible perennial and need very little care from me, the plant has to have flowers, and finally if it has a wonderful scent that’s great. I have planted two small lilac bushes, 3 mock orange bushes, a flowering bush called Ölandstok in Swedish and two strawberry plants. I also planted 3 clematis plants to climb up the wall behind the planters. So far none of my plants have died yet and this year one of the lilac bushes had wonderful, scented flowers and my strawberry plant had strawberries. I spend a lot of time looking at these plants. This seems to be my new thing-to-do. It seems to pacify my anxiety about what I am doing with my post-work life. For the moment at least.

I guess with my two pro bono “jobs” and my green, planted friends, I have found my life after my life. I hope, as I work to keep all of these things alive, they will also keep me alive.

Mindful of one’s nature

By Hilarie

On July 8, 2023

In Uncategorized

It rained yesterday – on and off for most of the day. It was the first rain we have had here in Stockholm and out at the country house in almost a month. In fact, I can’t remember when it last rained but that might be more a problem with my memory than anything to do with weather.

The skies have cleared up. The wood deck is drying. The air is humid and still tanktop-and-shorts warm. I’m glad we planted clover together with the grass seed when we made a lawn. Now, after the rain is over, it’s the clover that has recovered the quickest from the mini-drought. It is lush and green and soft underfoot and sprouting everywhere with globular white flowers. Dozens of bumble bees are hopping from flower to flower, doing what bumble bees do. Together with Håkan, I sat on our discolored, almost 30 year old, white plastic chairs in the middle of all this activity, watching the bees work, listening to the deep hum of their drumming, impossible wings. After a while we got up to have a very late lunch. While I am not complaining about the lack of rain, all the nature around me, has missed it a lot – everything was so dry. I have had to tend my planted babies with a regular hosing down.

I recently posted on Facebook a picture of me, (well, just my legs) lying on an ancient lounge chair, doing nothing but reading and eating watermelon. All the responses were positive, with friends leaving comments such as; Perfection, Sounds ideal, Good on ya, My hero, I second your choice, and more variations on those themes. Everyone seemed to be agreed that it is a good thing to be able to take the time to just lounge around, reading a book, snacking on food, basically doing nothing – thinking of nothing other than the moment I was in. Some people might call that being Mindful. And Mindfulness is supposed to be a good thing.

But is it?
I suppose if one is a true busy extrovert, unable to sit still, always on the go, I guess choosing to just sit down and live in just that moment – doing nothing but reading and eating watermelon, that that is a really good change from what is normal in your life.

But I am not that – a busy extrovert – always on the go. I’m an introvert who knows how to act like an extrovert when I am among people. But I am a sluggard when alone. Sitting and doing nothing is easy for me. Almost too easy. My natural state of being is to be at rest and to let my foggy brain wander, instead of my feet. That afternoon spent reading and eating watermelon was just standard operating procedure. For me. Was I being Mindful, if Mindfulness means living in the present moment?

Now, I’m sitting in the shade, on the small deck outside the kitchen window. For the past 2 months, I have been living here at the house with only brief forays into town. Climate Change or maybe just the weather gods have given us amazing summer weather – dry, sunny, and warm – instead of the normal Swedish summer weather – damp, rainy, chilly, with only brief moments of sunny warmth. It’s the kind of weather where you can spend a lot of time outside – enjoying morning coffee at the lake, eating dinner on the deck, even wearing shorts while gardening. The kind of weather when you invite friends to visit and share food and conversation with, while sitting outside on the deck.

But have I?? Invited friends to join me? No, I have not. I have had very few friends out to join us on our deck, to share a drink or a cup of tea with pastries, to walk down to the beach or even eat a whole meal together. And I ponder…why not?

Do I have no friends? I don’t think that is the reason – I have a lot of friends who I like a lot. Why have I not invited them out to us? Is it just too much work to clean up the house & yard and buy food and serve it? Well, maybe the cleaning and straightening up is a pain in the neck but its not that bad. And I like sharing food with friends.

Or is it just too much work to make a phone call or send an email, to plan a visit? And now I think we are getting somewhere. I have to make that phone call. I have to send that email. I have to plan and schedule my time. Have I mentioned I am a sluggard??

When I think about what kinds of people have been my closest friends I realize that many of them are extroverts, FOMOs (People who “suffer” from the Fear Of Missing Out), people who are always busy – who’s natural state of being is not to be idle but to be active and always on the go and maybe not spending a lot of time being Mindful of the moment. Back when I lived in Manhattan, friends would have to venture up to my apartment on the Upper West Side, ring my doorbell and practically drag me out, Saying, “Put on your shoes, Hilarie. We’re going to the movies now.”

And 40 years later, after so much life lived, I am still the same – I spend a lot of time just thinking about what I am doing rather than going out and doing things. I guess you could call that Mindfulness. But I don’t. I don’t like the term. I need my extroverted friends to come ringing my virtual doorbell, texting my smart phone, writing an email and saying…”What the hell have you been doing kiddo??? Want to meet for a drink/lunch/dinner? Can we come out to visit you at the house?”

After all is said and done, I am an introvert by nature who is usually content to just sit and think. And all this Mindfulness, to my mind, is just a bunch of hooey designed to make busy extroverts slow down.

But I’ve been spending a lot of time out here in the garden, trying to figure out what I am going to be in this next phase of my life. Call me. Ask me to do something…I just might say yes…

New body parts

By Hilarie

On February 23, 2023

In Uncategorized

So…I am now minus another body part and the recipient of something human-made replacing it.

A few months ago an optometrist informed me that I had cataracts. That was the reason my long-distance vision had gotten so terrible and also the reason I suddenly (it seemed) could read again without reading glasses. It was a perfect example that sometimes you win some and sometimes you lose some. I couldn’t recognize a friend a half block away but I could read labels in the grocery store – as long as I was close enough that is.

When the optometrist who examined my eyes told me about the cataracts, I was surprised and disappointed. I had already spent quite a bit of time looking at all the frames available and had found a pair I liked and was looking forward to wearing them.

“No new glasses for you,” he said. “I’ll write a referral for you to have your eyes checked at a place that treats cataracts.” And so he did.

The eye doctor at the eye specialist place did his own examination of my eyes and confirmed that, yes, I was the possessor of two cloudy, yellowish, thickened lenses through which I was looking and that it was time to have them fixed. Actually they don’t really fix them. Like a broken, worn-out brake pad in your car that needs to be replaced, they just remove the old worn out lens and put in a new one – made of plastic.

Once I started telling people that I had cataracts (because I am a blabber mouth and tell people things like that) I discovered that so many of the people I knew had already had the procedure done. Cataract surgery is one of the most common types of surgery done worldwide and supposedly its success rate is about 99 percent. Cataracts start developing around age 60, and the average age for cataract surgery in the United States is 73. That explains why so many of the people I know have had it done – a lot of my friends are 60+ and it seems that I fit right in that age box, being just one year short ot the average age.

So today was the day. I showered in the morning, made sure to wear clothes not covered in cat fur, scrubbed my face well and refrained from wearing any eye makeup. Håkan drove me to the building where my appointment was. I was actually pretty glad he did that – that way I didn’t have to go out in public makeup-less.

First the nurse comes over and puts drops in my eye and then you just sit and wait. A little while later she comes back and puts more drops in. And then a third time she comes with her small eye drop bottle and waters my eye once more. The nurse then asked me if I would like to have something to calm me. I said yes and she came back with a plastic shot glass containing a tiny slurp of clear liquid – barely enough to swallow. It tasted like grapefruit juice and left a bitter taste in my mouth. By this time my pupil was humongous – could barely see any iris at all. The waiting room had about 5 other people when I arrived. Most of them sitting there with blue plastic on their shoes and white paper caps on their heads. One of the patients was very chatty and she got us all talking as we sat there with nothing to do except wait for our pupils to expand. I of course jumped right into the conversations through feeling a bit self-conscious with my American accent. Everyone was in my general age group and all were there to have a cataract replaced. It was nice to be in a talkative waiting room – friendly.

Finally after almost an hour of waiting around, the surgeon came and lead me into the operating room. It looked like a dentist office with a big, bright green chair. After scrubbing my face with alcohol they put a sterile cloth of some kind on my face leaving my eye uncovered and went to work. Ultrasound is used to break up the faulty lens and then the surgeon takes out the pieces thru a small incision. Sitting there in the green chair, I couldn’t tell what was going on but as she worked on my eye I was seeing the most amazing psychedelic light show – pretty cool and didn’t hurt a bit. And then she slipped in the new lens, sloshed lots of liquid in my eye and was finally done. The nurse suggested I get a cup of coffee and sit in the waiting room for a bit till I felt ok to leave. Håkan came and picked me up and we drove home.

Since my eye upgrade, I’ve noticed that the color of the world as seen with my undoctored eye and the color seen thru my new lens is very different. I had gotten used to the yellowish tint that the cloudy lens had cast over everything I looked at. My new body part makes everything look bluer and brighter. In a few weeks I’ll have them fix the other eye too. I am looking forward to a bright new world with my new body parts. And a new pair of glasses.