But after a few minutes he stopped. “Whew,” he remarked. “Think what this is going to feel like when I’m 70.” A pause, and then… “My God. That’s only a couple of years away. I’m almost 70. Seventy.”
That’s where we are now. He’s 66; I’m on my way to 60. The epoch that was once so far in the future, that time when we’re going to be old, is more or less here. The shocking part is that something we’ve discussed on and off for years, changes in our lifestyle “when we get too old,” is no longer the comfortably distant concept that it was before “lifestyle” was a catchphrase. And speaking of catchphrases, “doing it our way” isn’t going to work indefinitely; in fact, maybe not much longer.
We’ve lived our married lives mostly on seven acres that seemed at very first sight to be intended for us. There were oak trees and azaleas, fences and a small barn, a stream and a great spot for a garden, already well cultivated. On a slope in the front pasture there was an expanse of exposed gray rock, something that allowed us to give our “estatelet” a name of its own–the shamelessly cute title of Rock Bottom.
Over the years we’ve mowed and gardened and cut brush, cared for the two horses that eat the hay we’ve hauled, patched the fences and shoveled the snow. Our pickup truck has been indispensable to take trash to the landfill, to haul dirt and rocks and mulch and to bring home the occasional piece of furniture that would have cost extra to have delivered out where we are. We’ve also washed our windows, cleaned our gutters, painted our eaves and climbed onto the roof to put wire over the chimney to keep birds out.
It’s time now to worry not so much about how long we can keep loading hay–since hay can be delivered–but about how long we can stay in our house, up our long driveway, 10 miles from town, a smallish town at that. When I contemplate it, what we’re asking seems to be, really, how much longer can we continue to be us?
I don’t think we’re particularly non-adaptable. I’ve changed jobs about five times. I’m now doing something quite different from what I did for most of my working career. My husband has retired, rather contentedly. He spent 35 years going to the same office every day, at the headquarters of the state highway department, but six or seven years back changed his routine to drive to another town to do similar work for a consulting firm. We’ve raised a child, and coped, sometimes badly, with transitional things like taking our daughter to a distant college and, more recently, helping her buy her own house.
But the changes that seem to be looming now are beyond mere adapting. Obviously, at some point we will have to surrender what has been stewardship as well as partnership with our seven acres. It’s going to be hard to change that vision of ourselves as homesteaders, with the independence of being able to say, “Oh, we can do it ourselves,” when a high-up window frame in the barn sags and needs a nail and some spackling, or when it’s time to mulch the shrubbery.
It’s not so much the immediate fear of “the home”–having to go into some kind of assisted-living arrangement–because that still seems quite a ways off. It’s more a question of how long we can live as we have chosen to. Will we at some point, with the encroaching loss of muscle and flexibility, have to confess that we are no longer able to be country people? Can we be retirement-community people? Or townhouse or apartment people?
We had no premonition of this in-between stage, this time when we can still control how we live but not how much longer we’re going to last or be able to make choices predicated on not being old. What to do with the horses is a big part of our quandary. I ride them carefully now, shadowed by the thought that aging bones are more brittle. And I wonder, too, about the pickup: is 70 the time to trade it in? Or maybe 72?
Perhaps there will be a health event that changes everything in a moment. Maybe we will be spared the slow, reluctant decision to move closer to health care and other amenities, or maybe even to go into a retirement community where there’s someone to mow our grass and climb a stepladder when need be. But either way, it’s not far off.
Suddenly we have the living proof that our bodies aren’t to be trusted in the long run. Throwing hay is a sobering experience.
