Alone in the kitchen this morning, while waiting for the kettle to boil, I raised both arms way, way up over my head in a luxurious stretch, and severely pulled a muscle in my upper back.
There is a lot going on in this opening paragraph, truly, so let me break it down for you. The first thing you might have noticed, should you know me in real life, would be the presence of a kettle. Surely, Elizabeth, you are a coffee drinker, are you not? And yes, I am. Or rather I used to be. Coffee, sadly, no longer agrees with me in the mornings, and so I have taken to brewing tea as my wake-up beverage of choice. And it’s fine, really. Although as I have said to my husband many times, “Tea is lovely, but it is not coffee.” Which is, I believe, a fair assumption. But, a hot beverage is one of the nicest things about waking up early – whether it’s for work or school or just life – and so tea it must be for me.
I can drink coffee, mind you. Just not first thing in the morning with nothing else in my stomach and not all the time and definitely not too much in one go. It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that getting older blows, yadda yadda yadda.
You might also be interested in the kitchen stretching portion of this opening sentence, but as one gets older (as one does, should one be mortal) one ought to take the opportunity to stretch whenever one can. And by one I mean me. Stretch like nobody is watching is a good motto to live by. Again, for me. I have a comfortable bed, a ridiculously-priced pillow (good for the neck and shoulder support or so I was told) and yet I wake up daily with stiffness and aches and pains. Often the root cause is one 65-lb husky who likes to lie at the end of our bed and rest her chin on my leg/hip all night long. She is a very good dog and her proximity and warm furry body are just delightful. For the first ten to fifteen minutes. If the entirety of the dog is about 65 pounds, the head of this same dog seems to be about 50% of that entirety. Dead-weight husky head clocking in at around 30 lbs, easy. I might be exaggerating. But even if she isn’t snuggled up to me all night, there are still those same – or sometimes different!? – pains each and every morning. So yes, stretching is essential and I try to do it whenever and wherever I can. Again, what a drag it is getting old.
But! The absolute horror story of stretching is that after a certain age you must, must, MUST pay close attention while you’re doing it. Failure to do so can result in severe muscle cramping and straining (like I experienced this morning) sharp pains in muscles that linger all day long (also like I experienced this morning) and death (you know, probably.)
It’s completely unfair that doing something to RELIEVE THE PAIN THAT AGEING CAUSES YOU can also cause pain – worse pain, actually – unless you apply the kind of laser focus on each tiny section of your body that is typically reserved for surgeons and air traffic controllers.
And so, to recap, I am too old to drink a damn morning coffee and too old to stretch on a whim, and the best part? Is that it only gets worse!
I don’t usually get too bothered about ageing, it’s mostly fine. There are even some perks, honestly (the virtual invisibility of the 50-something woman in society can be quite freeing) but there are days when everything seems to conspire against my body and it’s frustrating. And on those days I get a glimpse into my future and my fleeting mortality which, let’s be honest, no one really wants.
So now I sit with an increasingly stiff and sore back and I am AFRAID TO STRETCH IT OUT because that doesn’t always work out for me! And so instead I sit (and stand sometimes too because too much sitting is bad!) in the discomfort that represents the downward spiral of my ever-ageing body while I ponder what might be next on the growing list of age-related ailments and stare into the void.
Fuck it. I’m going to get a coffee.
Elizabeth Obermeyer 