Aging Thursday

I know I have reached a stage in life where kids and college students might only see me as a balding grey older man.  When we don't know a person from the time they were young, then we are perhaps left with nothing but an image of them being their older selves. As if they were born old.

All of us age.

We go grey, bald.
Our skin dries up and wrinkles all over. 
We return the teeth to the cosmos.
The eyes that were once bright and mischievous become dull and lifeless. 
The ears hear not the faint sounds as if there is no more sweet whispers in life.
The fancy colognes of the youth make no difference to the nose that does not pick up any scent, including our own odor.

When we are young and energetic, we do not pause to think that we, too, would one day begin to look like those at the old-age homes.  And, worse, we fail to understand deep within ourselves that after the appointed hour, we will cease to exist even as the wrinkled, toothless, bald, grey, shuffling, smelly versions.

Near my home--yes, the only home I have, which is in Eugene--is a complex that houses quite a few super-senior citizens.  When I see them shuffling along on the bike path, or in their motorized transport, all I see are the old people.  It is not easy to visualize them as crazy kids diving into the river, or as young men and women in love.  We forget that they also went through childhood, adolescence, and youth, and everything else like the rest of us mortals.

When visiting with the folks over the winter break, I helped my parents get rid of a few things and re-organize a few others.  

"You told me not to throw out the photo negatives," my father reminded me.  "So, I retained them.  You decide."

They were mostly garbage.  Every once in a while, a negative seemed promising.  The garbage piled up as I emptied the contents.

And then I saw a couple of negatives.  I, too, was a kid once.

I brought them with me. 

I followed up on M's suggestion.

"I would like to get prints from these negatives, and also get them scanned," I told the older woman at the shop.  She, too, was young once.  But, all I saw now was an older woman.

She held them up against the light.   

"It is me from my younger days, back in India."

She smiled, as if agreeing with me that we were young once, even though we look old now.

As this wonderful song from Romeo and Juliet put it, 
A rose will bloom; 
it then will fade 
so does a youth; 
so does the fairest maid

A "pappu face" me in 1980!

Into the swing of things ...a year later

My neighbor who joked that I had a job of milking the cows early in the morning--all because I told him I wake up every day well before six--perhaps will be convinced that I am really out milking cows here in the old country because I have been up every morning between 415 and 430.  For all I know, even the cows are taking it easy at that hour.

Weekday, weekend, vacation, shmacation, it does not matter to me; I wake up early.  Even if it means that soon after coffee I wonder why I had to be up when it is still REM time for most.  But, stupid is as stupid does!

As always, after the fresh coffee and a little bit of reading, I headed to the park for a few laps of brisk walking.  Every round, as I passed the swings, I wondered whether I should take the chance to swing away blissfully.  All these days, I have been avoiding it because of the experience from a summer ago, when I was yelled at--"The swing is for children, and you should not be swinging" a guy scolded me in Tamil.  Once bitten, twice shy, they say.

So, there I was today, yet again passing the swings. And drooling for some good old merriment.  

Finally, I could not take it.

I stepped off the walking path.  I walked up to a swing.  I sat there.  Across from me on another swing was a young boy, perhaps about ten years old.  He smiled at me.  

My feet pressed against the ground.  And with one strong push, I started swinging.  

My feet were now off the ground.  I started gaining speed.  I became the boy that I was back in Neyveli--the only difference is that I did not stand while swinging.

I was lost to the world.  It was heavenly.  If Eliza Doolittle thought she could have danced all night, I know I could have swung all day.

And then came the sounds from behind me.

"Stop.  This is for children only."  

I dragged my feet on the ground in order to slow the swing.  I was crawling to a stop when another man--the local security guy with a mustache that could be a typical National Geographic feature--yelled at me.  "This is for children less than six years old. You will break it" he said in Tamil.  
I got off the swing and started walking away.  There was a sense of public humiliation that I had to wash off.  But, I simply had to swing today.  

As I was walking, the security guy ordered the ten-year old boy also off the swing.  I suppose the guy was not going to relax the rule.  But then, it is not as if there are swings in the park for ten year olds and teenagers and for middle aged folks, or even for the old who might want to gently swing recalling their years.

Tomorrow I will go to the other park ;)