That Kind of Time

A dressing-room encounter made me get real about aging

- Anne Lamott

DO I THINK the sky is falling?

Sort of.
My husband and I were recently in Egypt, where the temperature reached 113 degrees, a bit warm for my tiny princess self. Medic, medic! We left Egypt one day before the war broke out in Israel and Gaza. Back home, my dearest friends struggled with health stuff, with family craziness, with damaged children both young and grown.

The game of life is hard, and a lot of us are playing hurt.

I ache for the world but naturally I'm mostly watching the "me" movie, where balance and strength are beginning to ebb and, on the surface, things are descending into grandma pudding. (One morning 10 years ago, my young grandchild asked, "Nana, can I take a shower with you, if I promise not to laugh?" I repeat: 10 gravity-dragging years ago.)

What can we do as the creaking elevators of age slowly descend? The main solution is to not google new symptoms late at night. But I also try to get outside every day, ideally with friends. Old friends-even thoughts of them—are my ballast; all that love and loyalty, those delicious memories, the gossip.

When I can no longer walk, I will sit outside with them, gaze into their faces and look up. That is the perennial instruction: Look up! Looking up gives us freedom and causes the shadows to slip right down our backs.

Recently I was walking along the cliffs above the Pacific with one of these old friends, named Neshama. We go back 50 years. She is 84, short and sturdy with fuzzy hair like mine. Every so often, she bent down somewhat tentatively and picked up small items that she'd then tuck into a cloth pouch that dangled from her belt.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm picking up microlitter: bottle caps and bits of wrappers. I try to help where I can."