Goodbye, my youthful attributes

Part of a daily countdown to my 50s.

91. There are a lot of things I’m looking forward to in the coming decade – I’ve had a lot of personal growth and I see more of it coming – but there are definitely some things I’m going to miss. Hell, I’m missing a lot of them now.

• My eyes. It’s been about four years since I got tired of squinting at the TV trying to see the score of a football game or moving my phone around just so I could read a text without difficulty and decided to go to the eye doctor. I was expecting glasses, but I wasn’t expecting bifocals. Those are for old people – you know, people whose kids are grown, who are … oh. Nevermind. I’ve gotten used to using bifocals, but I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to admitting that I have them.
• The ability to stand up without noise or difficulty. I used to love sitting on the floor – I’d turn down a chair in favor of the floor if there weren’t enough chairs to go around, and I spent many Sunday afternoons playing solitaire on the floor. I could stretch out, lean against the sofa or a wall, it was all good. Now, I cringe at the thought. Getting up from the floor now means using the sofa or the wall as a brace to help boost me up. Low-sitting chairs and sofas are the same. Part of it is due to osteoarthritis, but I know age plays a part, too.
• Not knowing what osteoarthritis feels like. I had just done a story about a woman who’d had surgery for OA and thought how painful it sounded. Then I went in to talk to my doctor about a constant pain I’d been having in my knee. I did have a torn meniscus, he said, but we couldn’t do surgery because of advanced OA. Yippee.
• My memory. I’m not at risk of Alzheimer’s, but I have to admit I find myself sometimes telling a story and I get to a point where I just stop and … it’s gone. The word I was going to use has disappeared from my brain.
• Being the youngest at the office. When I started my first journalism job in 1989, I was the youngest person in the newsroom. Despite working at a newspaper with somewhat of a revolving door – it was good training ground for rookie reporters – I managed to stay the youngest, or among the youngest, for quite some time. Now I find myself working alongside coworkers who are the same age as my children. It’s … humbling.
• Being able to have just one drink too many and not have a headache in the morning. This one needs no explanation, really.
• My metabolism. Why can you put five pounds on in a week, but it takes a month to take it off? I blame new math.

There are more, I’m sure, but I’ve forgotten them. And I need to spend the next three minutes trying to stand up so I can go switch my laundry.