A Certain Age

"When you reach a Certain Age, then the Time goes by even quicker." Sour Hot Tub Woman pronounces this into the air, positioning her large chocolate thigh to undulate next to one of the tub’s hardy jets. I just nod, not really responding. It’s such a cliché’ right? That as we get older, the time goes by faster.

How had DL and I even gotten on to this topic anyway? Was it my swimming?

Lately, I’ve just felt like I’m swimming in frozen molasses uphill. It’s a struggle to move through the water. I do remember when I used to glide effortlessly along the tops of the smooth green waters of pools.

What has happened?

Is it the aging process? Is it inevitable that we are all ‘slowing down’?

DL nodded when I asked her this upstairs at the torture machines. “My world just seems to be getting smaller and smaller and narrower and narrower. It’s all downhill from here I guess,” I’d whined, adjusting the weight poundage down 5 pounds from where I’d had it in the weeks before.
“I just try to poke holes in the boundaries of the narrowness,” DL had murmured.

And at the time, I’d just nodded, thinking, okay, that sounds like a plan. But then later I wondered, what the hell did she mean? If my world is a narrow little box, and I poke a few holes in its sides, then it gets a little bigger?

Would that work with swimming?

I can’t see how. The effort it takes to swim my usual yardage is so great. If I poked holes in it, I think it’d just leak.

Okay, that cracks me up. But still, do you see what I mean?

And so, after the hot tub time cliché and the Utopia without Sandy or BLN (both other blogs), I ask DL, why is it that time seems like it moves quicker as we age.

She had an answer of course. Having to do with the Brain. Her area of expertise. “It has to do with the fact that our brains actually change as we age so that we really do perceive time as going by quicker.”
“Oh….” I shake my head. “That’s a gyp! But at least now I know there’s a physiological reason for it.”
Can I poke holes through the physiology? I doubt it.

My brain, though, I think, at least metaphorically, I can poke holes through. As DL said upstairs earlier, “We need to reframe this,” when I’d complained about the ‘narrowing of my life’; the loss of strength and stamina so dramatic as I spin into my late 50’s.

Can this be so? Late 50’s?

Damn! I better reframe something. I think it has to be an Abstract Expressionist painting, like Rothko. One with luscious cobalts and limes and violets. I want the frame to show my love of color and swimming and to hell with the physiology of the Brain, or the loss of weight stamina or the hellish effort of swimming from one side of the pool to the other.

I will call my painting, “Reframe with Holes.” It will be my inspiration and my muse.

Now if I can only get time to slow down. Just for a day. So I can paint my Reframing and get it hung up in my Brain.

You have to reach a Certain Age to create such a vision, don't you agree? Hell, I'd never have thought of this 20 years ago. And this gives me hope. That a Certain Age can be full of creativity, imagination, fun, and yes, strength!

I'll let Sour Hot Tub Woman know about my idea next time I see her.
Or not....