Tag: boomers

Aging Well

by jcafesin, posted in aging

I’m a ‘sit on the couch and eat ice cream’ type of person. I don’t live that way. I workout 5 days a week, 5 miles or more a day, watch little TV and rarely stream ’cept when I’m working out and weekend movies. If I had no desire to live an active life, I would have continued to sit on the couch in front of the TV and eat a lot more than just ice cream as I did throughout much of my childhood.

Thing is, no matter how healthy I live, I’m still going to die. And while we all know this fact, generally by the time we are 5 yrs old, we don’t think about it much unless there is a life-threatening scare or we’re facing old age, like when we turn 60 or so. Then, regardless of what older folks tell you, and how we distract ourselves with work or hobbies or relationships, we think about death a LOT.

Am I living right? Getting the most out of this short life? Have I experienced enough? Have I loved enough? Have I had enough fun? What can I do to get the most out of the few years I have left?

What to do with aging…

The idea of heaven is vulgar. I think The Good Place played that hand well. At the end of the series, they were all up in heaven and got so bored after doing everything they could conceive they elected to become nothing, or ‘one with everything’ depending on how you view the afterlife. And ‘getting to see’ people you’ve loved in the hereafter is equally vulgar. Sure, you’ve loved them, but I bet you’ve fought with them too. Can you imagine spending eternity — forever — with your mom and dad and siblings and spouses? No thank you!

I am a devout Atheist, meaning I don’t believe in god, or even the possibility of one. I don’t believe in an afterlife, or spirituality, whatever that means. Hitler (Trump) and I end up the same. Dead is dead. End of game. Life is over and there is no ME anymore. I did not exist before my birth and I cease to exist after I die.

It’s easier to believe in the Christian version of death. Less scary thinking your existence is eternal. That’s why, to date, 31+% of this planet identifies as Christian. Muslims, the second largest religion on Earth, also offers an afterlife in paradise or hell. Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism also preach forms of life after death, so it’s no wonder that 84% of humanity identifies with a religion.

The roughly 14+% of the rest of us living day-to-day knowing that we all become nothing after death is core scary at best.

We all want to feel our lives have significance. Substance. Meaning. That we matter! It is why social media exists — it plays on our desire to be seen. Every time we get a Like on our instastory, or see a high view or engagement count we all get a hit of dopamine straight into our brains. We may be shy, or awkward in groups or crowds, but no one wants to be invisible through life. We revel in being seen.

Now, facing old age, and likely 20 to 30 yrs on the outside before ceasing to exist, I’m at war with myself daily on how to spend the limited time I have to live, to BE ALIVE. To matter.

What does it really mean to MATTER? Three generation drops from now and most won’t remember today’s trending influencers, to our current or past pop/rockstars, to our great grandfathers. I know this intellectually, but emotionally I too want to be remembered by more than just my remaining family, and when they go, so does my memory, my significance. It’s hard, if not impossible to imagine not existing, though at 4:00am I lay in bed too often now panicked by the notion.

Kick back, honey, I tell myself as I stare at the glowing stars I stuck on the bedroom ceiling during the series Heroes when it got too bloody to watch throughout. I should just do what I feel like doing when I get up in the morning and quit pressuring myself to be someone. I already am to my kids, and a few friends. The problem, the war in my head that loops till twilight: ‘Why isn’t that enough for me?’

Close to 30 yrs ago a friend asked me to describe my perfect day a decade forward. From waking up till falling asleep that night, describe in detail what that day looked like to me. Let’s just say I didn’t get close. [Expectations. They’ll screw you every time.] I was supposed to be a known author long ago. I was supposed to have a house in Marin to leave to my well-adjusted, accomplished children. Married to the love of my life. My work read by tens of thousands, my words helping my readers become more personally and socially aware, live better lives.

Did I want too much? I lay in bed wondering why it matters to me that I’ll leave no real imprint on history. Who does, really. Albert Einstein comes to mind. Hitler does too, but oh so very few. And even those names will fade with time, buried under layers of more history.

I want to fall asleep and stay asleep through the night like I used to. I don’t want to be getting up 4 times a night to pee! I’d like to tell you that impending death looming doesn’t feel like the proverbial ax over my head since no one knows when they’ll die, or that age is ‘just a number’ and ‘it only matters how young you feel,’ but that’s all bullshit. You can skydive on your 90th but that doesn’t keep you from being old, and likely rather reckless with fragile bones.

I sigh heavily, then throw the blanket back and roll on my side trying to cool down with my third hot flash of the night. The weight of aging gets harder to bear with each passing year, month, day. Hate to tell ya, there ain’t much upside to getting old. We likely have more life experience, but we aren’t any wiser, most of us stuck in patterns of behavior we adopted in childhood, and the reason history keeps repeating itself.

Look at my phone on the nightstand next to my bed. It’s only 5:10am. I can get up and spend much of the day SMM my latest work to get read and try to ignore the fact that I viscerally hate marketing. Or I can laze the day away writing whatever moves me, reading, baking, building, get a massage, stream Netflix if I feel like it because why the hell not enjoy BEING ALIVE with the limited time I have left…

Missing My Period

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

My period is six days late. I check throughout the day, hoping, but my old friend isn’t coming. There was a time when I would have been ecstatic it was late, gotten a pregnancy test and peed on the stick anticipating the plus sign. And there were times I would have been horrified I may be pregnant, too afraid to take the test while anxiously waiting for my period to start. But today there is a quiet sorrow, like mourning a loss. It’s possible I’ll never see my period again. Menopause has taken my friend and is robbing me of my youth.

Never in my life have I had the affection for my period I do now that it’s going away. Like most girls, I couldn’t wait for it to start. Menstruating turned a girl into woman, our mothers assured us. What my mother didn’t fill me in on were the cramps, the bloating, the wild mood swings, and the total hassle of bleeding for five days every single month. Once I became sexually active there was the constant concern of getting pregnant, regardless of using birth control. Everyone knows stories of women who claimed to be on the pill, or said they were using a condom but got pregnant anyway.

My period was more than a minor inconvenience; it was a major disruption to my life. I was one of the few women unable to take the Pill. Regardless of the dosage, it made me ill. I felt the full force of menstruation monthly. The gross mess and disgusting smell of the physical bleeding, on top of the intense cramping from passing clumps of bloody tissue were nothing compared to the mental ride every three weeks or so. Like clockwork after ovulation I’d get ravenously hungry, overwhelmingly tired, anxious, bitchy, with sudden bursts of manic energy. The closer I got to my period the more intense my feelings, all feelings would get. Right before I began bleeding, I often experienced bouts of deep sadness, wept with little provocation. But literally the moment my period began my darkness would lift as if it never existed.

Thirty seven years of this and I thought I’d be thrilled when menopause came along. It surprised me to feel so differently while waiting for my period to come and thinking it may not. Despite that I was one of those unlucky women with severe PMS, or PMDD, or whatever they’re calling it these days, my period gave me my kids. Having a period gave me the capacity to produce life. And though my two extraordinary children are all I’ll ever want, when my period goes I’ll lose the ability to have any ever again. What kind of woman will I be without the exclusive, inherently female capability to reproduce?

Menopause steals more than our ability to have children. According to Wikipedia, as women age our ovaries gradually produce lower levels of the natural sex hormones estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone until they diminish almost entirely. These are the hormones of youth. They keep our immune system and other vital body functions healthy so we are physiologically able to carry and bear a child, fulfill our biological imperative.

Estrogen accelerates metabolism (to burn fat faster). It increases bone density, and vaginal lubrication for better sex. Estrogen promotes healthy cholesterol levels. It helps regulate fluid balance which controls water retention. It aids lung function and reduces the risk of several kinds of cancers.

Progesterone acts as an anti-inflammatory and regulates the immune response. It normalizes blood clotting and cell oxygen levels, and use of fat stores for energy. It decreases risk of gingivitis and tooth decay. It appears to affect synaptic functioning, improve memory and cognitive ability. And progesterone also seems to reduce the risk of several deadly cancers.

And everyone knows testosterone is the premiere sex hormone — that sweet, dense scent that leeches through the pours right before orgasm. It also controls libido and clitoral engorgement. It increases muscle strength and mass, mental and physical energy. Maintaining testosterone levels has been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, decrease fat and increase lean body mass.

The payoff to enduring my menstrual cycle was clearly much more than producing kids. In losing my period, I am not only grieving the loss of childbearing but the hormones that provided me privileges and protections. The end of menstruation feels harder, darker than the onset. Girls speculate in wonder waiting for their periods to begin. In menopause, women must undergo drenching sweats, memory loss, weight gain, and phantom pain. Get through all that and the light at the end of this ordeal turns out to be a death bullet. Perimenopause begins in our early 50’s and full menopause last upwards of 10 years or more. Surviving menopause means then confronting the perils of old age, and coming to terms with my eminently closer demise.

Dye my hair, work out daily, dress casual but chic, and still, losing my period means unequivocally, undeniably I am no longer young. I miss my old friend right now and wonder if like my youth it is gone forever.

The Layering of Life

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Hiking on the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska a few weeks ago, I was trying to capture the iridescent blue/green light coming through the ice below my feet with my Canon Digital SLR. I took a few shots, with different apertures, from different P.O.V.s, but knew when I put them on the computer the picture would flatten. The spectacular translucence would be lost—look like a blue/green patch on dirty white ice.

At a photography store in Anchorage a few days later, I asked the guy behind the counter how one could pick up that exquisite depth of field of the light coming through the glacial ice on camera. Can’t, he said. But you can create it in Photoshop. Layering the image multiple times should bring back some of the depth the camera can’t pick up.

Layering…

It was like a light bulb went on in my head. He was right, of course. The camera can’t pick up the photons moving through ice, only the ones reflecting off the surface. But the word LAYERING reverberated in my head, as I’d been thinking about layering for quite some time.

When I’m not writing fiction [or blogs], I’m developing and designing marketing and advertising campaigns. I recently created an illustration of sound waves using an image off Google. Simply adding filters to the image made it brighter, or weirder, but still left it rather…flat. I lifted another image of radio waves, and layered it over the sound wave, filtering it to 50% opacity so the base image showed through. Then I went back to Google Images and got another light wave, and another, and layered them with effects too. As I built out the image, layer upon layer, the picture became richer, deeper, more 3D, almost in motion.

Layering made the image alive.

A while back my father took a painting class where students replicated a favorite work of a Great Master. Dad picked Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. It took him five months to paint, which upon completion looked virtually identical to the real one.

How did you do that? I inquired upon seeing his work. Did you know you could paint like that? My dad had been a weekend painter most of his adult life. This class, a first since college, was his attempt in retirement to reinvent himself as an artist.

No! He practically giggled with delight. Honestly, this teacher was fantastic. She taught us all about Layering, from when the Romans began using it, to the Masters, to the Impressionists. I’ve been painting for 40 plus years layering two, maybe three colors or tones. But in some areas on this canvas I must have used fifty. He proudly showed me highlights on the girl’s face that nearly glowed, bringing her right off the canvas, as in Vermeer’s original. It’s all in the layering, my dear, he’d said back then with a grin.

Layering… hmm… As I considered it, the more I could see how integral layering is to being alive.

I’ve always been scared of old age. The prospect of getting old is so terrifying, at times not getting there seems the better option— hasten the end instead of dragging it out with modern medicine. Watching my mother die of cancer and my father age hasn’t been pretty. It’s pretty scary. And I’m right behind them. Other than senior discounts, the upside of aging seems rather illusive.

Driving my daughter and her teammates to soccer last Friday, they chatted in the back seat about science class. They were amazed by the video of Neil Armstrong on the moon, each trying to quote his words upon stepping on the lunar surface, required for their test on Monday. They didn’t know we all heard him grammatically wrong—that he said, “One small step for [a] man,” not man in general. They hadn’t been there to see the grainy black and white image turn upside down on TV. They hadn’t held their breaths, or felt the collective sigh of a nation, and of the world, when our astronauts returned safely home. They hadn’t experienced the layers of that moment, that day, all the days of the moon mission, or the ones leading up to it, or since, for the most part.

Mankind’s first steps on anything but our home planet is a mere footnote to the 5th graders in the back seat of my car. The video image they watched in Science was a flat view of a definitive leap in human history. I’ve learned an undeniable gift of adulthood is understanding the significance of a given moment because of the layers of experience proceeding it. At 10, kids images are still just forming, their depth of field still limited to what reflects them, like the photons on the glacial ice.

Experiencing the moon landing as it was happening created a page, a layer, a memorable slice of my time. Aging’s saving grace may be the collection of these moments of living, layered upon each other, giving, if not wisdom, at least a broader range of awareness, and experience, for a rich, vibrant life picture.