Becoming a senior
Everyone is younger and thinner than I am, I turned 65 this summer.
I couldn’t even say the sentence out loud, couldn’t say the word Medicare in a public space.
From a purely linguistic perspective, Medicare had become the new Vagina.
When I went to the Social Security office to sign up, the much younger woman who processed my forms, said
You Don’t Look as Old As That.
When she saw my income over forty years, saw that my profession was writer, had some advice.
You didn’t make much money she said. It was probably your subject matter.
Why don’t you write about Mohammad Ali?
Everyone likes him.
How about a diet book.
You don’t seem overweight.
Guess you won’t be writing a book about making money.
I don’t imagine there’s an audience for How I Didn’t Make Much Money.
Though maybe.
When I turned 40 which seemed five minutes ago, really, when I turned 40 my son was only a year old so I didn’t have much time to consider what would happen next.
I was completely and totally exhausted.
But 40 didn’t seem all that old.
Fifty was another one of those oh my god years.
I remember my mother saying, a million years ago, when you’re fifty you can’t wear white any more.
God knows the reason. At sixty I asked my husband never to say the number.
He said he’d call me Miss Sixty Plus. That sounded OK enough.
And now, I’m sixty five.
