It started when I began to need reading glasses. Then my brown hair bleached out grey, popping up in weird places… like my ears, nose and eyebrows… all of which grew larger in relation to my face. Soon it took extra effort to bend over to put on my socks. I’d walk into a room to get something and forget what, or put down my keys and they’d disappear.
At the high school reunion I obviously walked into the wrong room to find a bunch of old people in spastic seizures on the dance floor making believe they knew me. And in the mirror some dirty old man stared back in disbelief and laughed.
Flirting doesn’t work anymore either. Smiling at a pretty girl no longer elicits the desired response, usually just ignored or worse… And little by little life has changed …
Gone the sexual marathons, now down to fifteen minutes, if I’m lucky. Gone the gooey hot fudge Sundays dripping with caramel, whipped cream and a maraschino cherry, now replaced with sugar-free frozen yogurt and nuts. Gone the late night clubs and rock concerts, now its computer downloads and an occasional glass of wine before bed. Gone the dynamic stage performer and musician, now listening to digitally restored tapes from the past. And gone are the words that used to flow so effortlessly, now often just out of reach.
On the other hand…
There’s still the thrill of driving a golf ball straight down the fairway, hitting the exacta at the track, the joy of cooking, experiencing a brilliant new musician or film, the warmth of sunlight on my skin on sunny days, the cleansing smell of rebirth after a rainstorm, little life lessons like putting soap on a screw to ease its way or the stomach soothing property of ginger, sleeping with (and married to) my best friend holding my tummy at night, and the power and majesty of waves breaking on coastlines simultaneously around a world caught up in emotional and political turmoil with the aged wisdom to accept that, no matter how scary or unpredictable everything seems at any given moment… this too shall pass.
L.E. Kalikow's "Sex, No Drugs and Rock n’ Roll (Memoirs of a Music Junkie)" is available in paperback, iBook, Kindle, & AudioBook online.
You can follow L.E. Kalikow on Twitter at @LEKalikow or Facebook at LEKalikowAuthor