Older not Old

When we moved to La Paz fourteen years ago, I was 51.  I wasn’t OLDER then but I did notice La Paz was full of older Ex-pats and even a few really, truly Old people.  Generally, I hung out with others my age.  We studied Spanish, we learned to paint and we planned parties. For the last thirteen years eight women friends and I have met for breakfast every week.  We share secrets and concerns.  We gossip.  We talk politics.  But mostly we chat.  Often everyone talks at once. 

Last month I was in the kitchen putting the final touches on Huevos Rancheros and I heard a rare thing - absolute silence.  I rushed into the dining room. 

“What’s wrong?”  I asked.    Everyone was looking at Sandra.  

 “I just said that now that I’m old, I’m not going to wear shorts anymore”. 

Seven voices corrected, “You mean OLDER”. 

She replied, “No, I mean OLD”.  Sandra is one year older than I am. 

“Are you sick?  Are you depressed?  Did you have an argument with Steve?” we asked.

 She said, “No” to each question. 

“You have almost no wrinkles and your boobs are perky”, a friend reasoned, “so you’re not old”.  The only question we didn’t ask her was, “How do you know that you’re old?”

The eight of us have grown older together but Sandra has entered Taboo territory.  Janice told me that she had a nightmare that she woke up “old”.  And I did a foolish thing.  I put a mirror flat on the table and dared to look down at my face (do not try this at home).   We agreed that, even thought we knew that we’d be old someday, we aren’t now.  But would we know it when it happened to us?  How could a person tell?   Is the solution hidden behind the cataracts of our resistance? 

Oh, we kid about being forgetful. Every day I receive at least one e-mail joke about aging.  Some of us can’t eat salt.  Or fatty meat.  Most take pills.   Others prick their fingers every day and then celebrate the results with a glass of red wine. Chocolate helps.  And so does plastic surgery.  Having a man smile at you can do wonders, also. 

I read an article claiming that when a man we’ve never met enters a room, women’s posture changes. They sit up straighter.  They lift their breasts and hold in their tummies.  It doesn’t matter if the women are married or single. Could this be one of the keys?  Do OLD women take no note when a guy comes into the room?  Perhaps we become OLD when we have no interest in impressing the opposite sex?

Like Sandra, I no longer wear shorts in public but not because I’m old….it’s because I have old knees.  I also have old arm.  But they are only a small part of me….my mind, enthusiasm, and my sense of adventure is not old.  Not yet.

 I wish there was an appropriate and polite way of asking people, “Do you consider yourself older or old?”

And if they answer, “I’m old”, I would ask, “How did you know when you slipped from one to the other”? Who knows, maybe people would like the opportunity to talk about this forbidden subject.     

Learning To Swim

How is it possible that a 65 year old woman, who’s been living one block from the Bay of La Paz for fourteen years, and who has owned a boat most of her married life, is a terrible swimmer?  Last year I decided to learn to swim – properly.

I still remember the frigid Atlantic.  But the huge waves never kept my friends and me out of the water. Our lips turned blue, our teeth chattered and our mothers waved their arms and I imaged them saying, “If you kids don’t get out of that water right this minute, we’ll leave you at home the next time we come to the beach!”  But kids are deaf when they’re having fun.  Plus, we weren’t within grabbing distance.  With the exception of Shirley Winters, I never saw any woman go into the water deeper than her ankles.  They’d stand in the shallow water with blood red toe nails twinkling like minnows.    Talking and watching.  Guarding their children from disaster.  Could they swim?  Or save us?  I never thought to ask but now I believe they served as sentries; their job was to warn:  “Don’t go any deeper…look at the wave behind you….are you cold?  Okay, five more minutes”…and, ”Don’t think I’m going to take care of you if you catch pneumonia”. We ignored them. Only the aroma of almost burned hot dogs enticed us back onto dry land.

But Shirley was different.  She had no children to guard.  She’d walk right into that icy water, cut through a wave and bob up on the other side of it.  She’s swim fast and far. I watched and worried.  Who could save Shirley?  I would.  But first I needed to learn to swim. One day I asked her, “Shirley, how long can you hold your breath?”  She answered, “Judy, Lesson one:  take a deep breath, relax, and put you face into the water…I’ll hold you”.   Lesson two: Floating face down.  Lesson three:  Kicking. But a chubby Greek girl’s genes aren’t made for kicking.  My Mediterranean butt made it impossible to keep my legs from sinking.  Shirley would yell, “Kick.  Kick”.  But my kicks never produced a splash.  Lesson four:  Moving arms.  Lesson Five:  Putting It All Together -  Floating face down, (for now forget about your sinking legs) move your arms like this and turn your head from side to side.” I got dizzy. Shirley sighed.  Then she smiled.  “Judy, turn onto your back, relax and kick”.  It worked.  My toes splashed water onto my chest.  I was moving.  Later, she said, “Now move your arms like windmills going backwards”.  I was swimming.  And for fifty four years I swam that way.  But swimming on my back presented several problems.  I’d often smash my head into the end of the pool because I had no way to judge how close I was to the edge.  Also, because my right arm is stronger than the left, I swam in circles.

Last year I decided to learn to swim properly.  I bought goggles. I observed Marilyn.  She takes long slow strokes and makes tiny splashes with her feet, keeps her face in the water for four strokes, gently turns her head to the right, takes a breath, then returns her face to the water.  Back and forth for thirty minutes without stopping.  She isn’t breathless when she leaves the water.  I tried to copy.  I was aerobic within 5 seconds.  I swallowed salt.  They say the Sea of Cortez is so salty it’s like a natural floatation device but Marilyn suggested a pool might be safer.   I drank chlorine.  But I tried over and over. 

I’ll be sixty six in September.  I’ve learned that swimming, like learning a second language, comes easier before the age of ten. I now accept tools that make life easier.  So, if you see an older woman swimming face down at Costa Baja’s pool, if  her legs are dragging the bottom, if she’s wearing a mask, a snorkel and a yellow life preserver…and if she’s swimming in circles, don’t call the life guard; it’s just me.