Senior
Slant...
Was I Wrong!
by
Hilda Maston
When I was young I often wondered what it
would be like to be old. I was an observant child, and
I often watched old people to see what they were really
like.
Great aunts came to visit. I had one
such aunt who had a strange habit. Before retiring she
would put her rings and her money in a handkerchief and
pint it to her nightgown. Is that what old people did I
wondered! I had another great aunt who would give me a
piece of cake when I visited her. The fact that she
spread a newspaper on the floor and made me stand on it
while I ate that cake didn't seem strange at the time --
I just thought that was what all old people from Norway
did.
When I was young, old people were
deferred to. Any off-beat thing they did was excused
with "he or she is 'getting old you know.' " I remember
thinking that when I get old I will do anything I want.
I'm going to sleep late, ride my bike after dark, cuss,
and eat my dessert first. Everybody will say "she is
getting old you know" and let me get away with it.
When I was young I had a picture of that
ideal old person who I thought I would be. I saw myself
as a tall patrician lady who wore wonderful long
dresses and a pince-nez. It didn't turn out that way,
I turned out to be a short dumpy female who wears
slacks, sweatshirts, and bifocals.
When I was a young adult I thought that
as soon as I retired I would hike up mountains, amble
down forest trails, and take part in every fund-raising
walk that came along. Wrong again! I turned out to be
a retired person who walks with the aid of a cane and
has to sit down and rest halfway through a shopping
trip.
There is another picture I had of myself
as an old woman, that of the gentle gray-haired
Whistler's mother type who sits in a rocking chair and
knits, who is content to have the grandchildren come
over for cookies. I'm not that old person either. I
can't knit, rocking makes me nauseated, and my cookies
are inedible: I am definitely not the Whistler type.
No one prepares for old-age except
perhaps financially. We blunder along life's highway
with all its mysteries, delays, and side-roads.
Suddenly we are in old-age, not really sure how we got
there, but willing to be there and make the best of it,
which is usually pretty good.
