Getting younger every day

“If you start adventure, and you are absolutely certain you will succeed; why bother starting?” This question was asked by Sir Edmund Hillary in Washington DC about ten years ago. Somehow, as life goes on this question seems to take on more meaning.my mother was visiting two weeks ago, and we took a trip from Phoenix to Tucson to have lunch with a woman who had been a neighbor when I was growing up in Illinois. I won’t disclose either of their ages, but I am 59 and our former neighbor’s oldest daughter… for whom I used to babysit…is now 54. At lunch we started talking about aging.

This is a topic, but I and many of my friends also discuss. And everyone seems to be in agreement on one point: we are getting younger every day. Today’s seniors are very different than the seniors when my mother and her friend were my age. Even my mother has gotten younger. When my daughter was born in 1976, she was the first granddaughter, and the first child of the next generation. My mother, who will probably deny this, started letting her hair go gray, because grandmothers have gray hair. Both of my grandmothers have gray hair as far back as I can remember them.

Our former neighbor has her hair the same color that I remember she had when I was babysitting, and it looks great. My mother has beautiful silver hair, and so does nothing to its color. Mine is going to be the same silver. No bluing, please.

This article, however is not about graying hair. It’s about the fact that today’s seniors are a lot more active than last generation’s seniors. My mom goes to the gym three days a week and works out. I ride my bike 12 to 30 miles every other day, and on the alternate days. I am lifting heavier weights more times than I did when I was in my 40s. I have a friend, 55, who climb a 1500 foot mountain every morning. The neighbor down the street, 52 years old, rides his road bike 65 miles every morning. Three acquaintances from a meet up group over 60 years old, hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back in one day.

Even in terms of clothing, style, hair color, and general lifestyle, today’s seniors aren’t.

Skipping the blueberries

Blueberries? I'd rather eat fish.

Sprawled on the floor between the char and the overhang on the counter, my chocolate lab, Hershey, patiently awaits the cereal bowl she knows placed in front of her when I’ve finished. I’m full, and there’s maybe a half-dozen Wheat Chex left with a puddle of milk. Interspersed among the Chex are five blueberries.

Tail wagging, Hershey gets up, circles the chair once and then snout into chow she goes. Within seconds, the pre-rinse cycle complete, the bowl licked clean–except for the blueberries. Even the milk cleaned from the blueberries, but the five plump pieces of fruit remain (let’s not get into why they were left by me in the bowl).

Since three cups of coffee were already working through my system, I immediately saw a business metaphor in the bowl. Sometimes we leave some plump fruit behind when we’ve finished prospecting. It made me add “re-call old prospects” to the ToodleDo list. Always makes sense to make a second sweep through the market. I did not, however, eat the blueberries Hershey left in the bowl.

Do it now

Grand Canyon National Park. It’s been there since time memorial, but chances to visit the Park don’t always come easy. I look around at many of my friends and realize how lucky I am to still have a living parent; a healthy, active, unconstrained parent. Early in the visit, she mentioned a desire to come for a longer stay next time in order to see the Grand Canyon. “I’ve always wanted to see it.”

A couple of days later, we were driving to Tucson to see a former neighbor from back in Park Forest, Illinois, where I grew up. During the two hour drive, we were talking about others from the neighborhood. There was Mildred, who has serious hearing and memory challenges and is rehabbing from a broken femur. She may never live independently again, and she is younger than my mom. There’s Nan, who seems to be in early stages of Alzheimer. Another friend has a debilitating illness, a second is in early stages of dementia. My aunt is bedridden and may never be able to get out of bed again. Even our former neighbor has her issues. All of these women are anywhere from a couple of years to more than ten years younger than my mom. This doesn’t count the deaths among my mother’s friends.

After listening to this litany, I looked at my mom and said, “Can you handle a long day in the car?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Want to go see the Grand Canyon tomorrow?”

“Isn’t that a long day driving for you?”

“I can manage.”

And so, Friday morning we set off early towards the Grand Canyon (and a 25-degree drop in temperature from Scottsdale). I took her in through the east entrance, Desert View, and working our way towards Grand Canyon Village, we stopped at every other overlook. My mom was just thrilled with the views. Nature cooperated and gave us a couple of thunderstorms on the North Rim and a downpour while we were ensconced in a restaurant for lunch. The monsoon ended just as we finished lunch, and we drove back to the Valley of the Sun.

My mom got to see the Canyon, and I will never have the regret that “I wish I had taken mom to the Canyon when it was possible.”

The magic number: “X” number of words

One thousand words every day. When delving into a writing career, advice comes from many different corners of the World Wide Web and the traditional forms of media—books, magazines, print. One universal recommendation: write every day. It doesn’t even matter what’s written, just write every day. So what’s the magic number? No one writer seems to agree on a single universal number. There appear to be some agreements, however—whatever, 500, and 1,000.

Whatever advocates suggest the act of writing anything—even a daily journal—wrings words from the mind. The evolution of creation is the important objective.

Five hundred word advocates push for blogs—even unpublished—maintaining the rhythm creating a lead, a thesis, and a conclusion. These advocates point to the Internet idiom that 500 words is the most that will be read.

One thousand word advocates believe the longer writing allows for strong flow, better stimulation of creative juices, and an opportunity to create an ongoing work that could result in a project.

However many are written, there is always one person in the house willing to sit and listen to whatever I have to say.