I’M JULES OLDER. I’m nearly 85. It feels a good time to think about what’s been lost, gained and kept as I’ve aged. I’ll start with a chart, then talk turkey. Ready?
Lost
- Downhill skiing
- Cross-country skiing
- Biking
- Running
- Skating
- Taking care of family
- Restaurant reviewing
- Svelte figure
- Not peeing at night
- Memory
Gained
- Publicising skill
- Learning to use AI
- Family taking care of me
- Eating more at home
- Puku
- Nocturia
- Awareness of death
Kept
- Sense of humour
- Writing skill
- Editing skill
- Walking
- Dancing with Effin
- Laughing
- Making others laugh
- Gamesmanship
- My ideal weight
- Memory
Okay, that’s my chart, and that’s the easy part. Now down to business, the business of how all this makes me feel. And how it’s changed my life.
Let’s start with skiing. It’s been such a big part of my life – our lives – that when we decided to live for a while outside the US, one of the absolute criteria was that the place must have ski hills.
I learned to ski at the University of Vermont. Over the years, I became a decent skier and a more-than-decent ski writer and editor. Effin taught herself to become an accomplished ski photographer, then learned to snowboard as she wrote a book called Snowboarding. What’s more, when we lived in Vermont, we cross-country skied from our back door most winter days, usually with our half-husky, Sophie.
Then, when we moved in 1972, we skied the mountains of New Zealand. I gave up skiing in 2019 after a trip to Austria. For the first time ever, I couldn’t handle the altitude, couldn’t keep up with the rest of the group, couldn’t ski more than a few hundred yards without stopping to draw a breath. Do I miss it? I do, I do. Would I love to ski again? I would, I would.
I miss biking too. Not only did I author Back-road and Off-road Biking, I wrote articles on enjoying that pleasure from the top of Vermont to an island in New Zealand. So, why did I quit? When I was 80, I started feeling kind of wobbly, tense, unbalanced in the saddle. Then, a neighbour offered this: “I’m a physiotherapist. Most of the folks I see are old. The main reason I see them? They’ve fallen off their bike. Terrible injuries, just awful!” The very next day, I gave my (new!) mountain bike to my grandson.
Running? Skating? Vigorous walking is a good-enough replacement. But … when walking with my family, instead of leading from the front, I’m usually at the back of the pack. Don’t like it, but I guess things happen that way.
Dancing? Yes, but now, we mainly do it at home. Whenever the opening chords of Earth Angel, American Pie, In Spite of Ourselves, most soul songs or slow rock ‘n roll stream out of the Amazon Dot, the dish towels go down and the dancing begins.
Laughing and Making others laugh. I’m mightily glad these abilities have hung on.
Publicising and AI. Effin and I are both writers. So are our twin daughters, Amber and Willow. None of us are shy, solitary, pure writers; we all believe in maximising the number of eyes and ears that reach our creations. In the Digital, then AI ages, I’ve grown much better at making that happen.
Here’s a prime example of my publicising and learning to use artificial intelligence at age 84.
Gamesmanship. Our family plays games: Rummikub, Bananagrams, the New York Times’ Spelling Bee and Connections. I’m still playing, occasionally winning … though, these days, Effin and I both play at half the speed of our 54-year-old daughters.
The transition from Taking care of family to Family taking care of me has not been easy for any of us. The first part came naturally. Of course, I took care of family. I did so through earnings, teachings, cheering on successes, hugging away sorrows. The primo example (and one now firmly established in Older family lore) took place on a trip to the zoo. One of my young daughters managed to drop one of her brand-new clogs into the hippo enclosure. In what is regarded as my dumbest moment ever, I leapt down after it. I did clamber back up before the hippos responded to my unwelcome presence, but that good fortune didn’t un-win me the Dumbest Father Award.
The shift from taking-care-of to being taken-care-of came not directly through aging but from taking a bad spill on an uneven sidewalk. That resulted in a concussion, bilateral subdural haematoma, a.k.a. a bleed around the brain, emergency surgery and the recovery from all that. The surgery was a success, and I’m now way better.
But not entirely. When we walk, I’m much, much more careful of sidewalk cracks, which makes me safer, but also makes walking less fun. Getting into the water at the beach, I feel more secure if Effin holds one arm and a daughter steadies the other. Swirling currents feel a lot like that bike imbalance.
I know this support is a blessing, but the obviousness of my declining balance leaves me feeling saddened and old.
As for Restaurant reviewing vs Eating more at home, here’s the story: Just as I’d discovered that if I wanted to travel on a writer’s earnings, I needed to become a travel writer, and if I intended to ski, I had to be a ski writer; when we moved to food-obsessed San Francisco, I became a restaurant reviewer. Effin, of course, became a food photographer.
Age isn’t what ended this career. What did was the devastating effect of the Covid crisis both on restaurants and on the publications where our words and images appeared.
But while we’re on the subject of eating, while my weight has stayed the same as when I was 50, my figure has not. For the first time, I’ve developed what in New Zealand is called a puku, a (slightly, so far) protruding tummy. This does not please me.
Another change that does not please is going from a full night’s sleep to nocturia. Nocturia means getting up to pee at night; the urge to urinate wakes me up two or three times most nights. This would be more had I not come up with a solution I call Nocturia, Take Three. To see if it worked for others and not just me, I ran a field study. Yes, it helps other old guys get a good night’s sleep, even if we are up and down more than we used to be.
Ah, and then there’s the bane of aging humans – Memory. This is a complicated one. Almost everybody I know who’s over 80 has trouble calling up names – names of people, books, objects, movies. We get there after a while: “Ocean’s Eleven!” “George Clooney!” “The young actress in … in … that movie about college friends getting together for a wedd — no, a funeral … Meg Tilly! In Two Weddings and — no, The Big Chill!”
Though oldies worry that this recall delay is the start of some awful disease, they need not. When just about everyone in an age group has the same condition, it’s not a symptom, just a sign of normal aging.
Like many of my age mates, I’ve hung on to old memories; it’s the recent ones – and those infernal names – that give us problems. What complicates it for me is this: in addition to aging, I’ve had that brain injury. I know I’ve lost important memories thanks to that. For example, at our annual family gathering, we all wear identical T-shirts for the family photo, and the shirts are different each year. My grandson reminded me that last year we wore the Pancakes shirts. I had no recall of that. Or of the toasts we gave at last year’s dinner. This loss brings me sorrow. But, as I say time after time, “It’s a whole lot better than the alternative.”
My final gain is Awareness of death. I don’t fear it, but I don’t relish the thought either. Here’s what I believe about death:
- We all die. I don’t expect to be the first exception.
- This eternal life thing, which I heard once more on a recent visit to church, is hokum.
- While I know I’ll live on for a while in the thoughts of my family and friends, students and readers, I’d much rather be hanging out with them in the flesh. Maybe even making them laugh.
Jules Older is a clinical psychologist, executive consultant, crisis counsellor and writer. He’s a dual citizen of the United States and New Zealand. He lives with his wife, Effin Older, in Auckland, New Zealand.
Related:
Osher Günsberg on the highs and lows of ageing
Finding balance: how yoga can help you defy ageing
