Small Town News

Try to be patient with those who are older

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Escapades of Emily

Retirement or aging has some remarkable advantages: if you say you don't feel well enough to do something, no one argues; if you don't show up for an event or place you meant to go, the world doesn't stop spinning; and if you think about it at bedtime, is there really some pressing detail you and you alone must take care of the next morning.

This time of our lives is a battle of mind and body. Which will outlast the other? Emotional ability or limb control (which involves too much to mention).

I would really enjoy meeting the great aunt of a friend here. She was the great aunt of the friend's late husband, living in another locale. This once or twice removed family niece of Iter's heard about the aunt becoming 100. She went and learned more. This woman lives alone, will still ride a motorcycle behind a driver, and quit steering her car at 98.

One day a daughter came to see this mother with her own motorized scoot-about and said she would like to take a nap. As the daughter slept, her mother took the propelled outfit outside and rode it to a grocery store. While she wan gone, the daughter awoke, became frantic at not finding her mother, even bad neighbors looking for ths missing woman as her mother rode into the yard. Auntie could not understand all the fuss and ado. She had only been to a market.

That woman has control, evidently, of the body and mind (and soul), which we almost do not have any say-so over now. Control would have meant multiple changes in our thirties and forties which likely we could not do or our genetic influence of hundreds of other occurrences.

It would be nice at this time to have more respect for our slower driving, our inability to count change at the check-out counter of stores, our impossibility of having the ritht word simultaneous with the open mouth. Sorry.

A good friind, not retired from teaching, called one day to see how I was doing. I gave her examples of my days and said I drove (yes, it's a pun) my husband "nuttier" when we went somewhere in the car because I usually had to dig in my purse. Don't try to separate a woman, especially older, from that purse. A woman can live out of it and not be able to survive without it because of what it contains: tweezers, scissors, medicine vials, address book, bragging-rights photo album, tissues, breath mints, perhaps a bridge of teeth, hand creme, pens, writing paper, maybe a folded, unworked crossword puzzle as driver seldom talks, a toy or two in case a grandbaby becomes involved, brush, makeup, other keys, flash light, billfold, money in bottom for later surprise, emergency anything ....

The friend retorted, "Come on, the first time I met you thirty years ago, you were a purse digger. Don't blame 'that' on age!"

OK, but it would be really nice to have in all stores, even dress shops, a buggy to hold the heavy bag and let a shopper like me lean on something movable. I'm saving those riders until I'm "really" old.



Copyright 2010 The Malakoff News, Malakoff, Texas. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2010 The Malakoff News Malakoff, Texas. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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