TIME
On January 1 we have to remember to change the date on bank checks. And it looks like many people, becoming aware of the passing of time, feel a need to make New Year resolutions, using this awareness of the passing of time to resolve in the New Year to do things differently, to eat less or drink less or whatever, usually to no avail.
But at 87 I am becoming more and more aware of time, or rather of my time left. Of course, I have no knowledge of how long I have, except that I know it must be getting shorter and shorter as people die right and left around me and on the news. Celebrities that I was aware of in my youth and must have considered eternally young, are suddenly, after disappearing for decades, dying in their late 80’s.
But somehow the death of other people suddenly dying doesn’t seem to apply to me. By good luck, and it can only be luck, certainly not anything I have done that keeps my knees still working and my brain, to me anyway, still functioning, I just keep going.
But I don’t fool myself. Yesterday I was given a free ultrasound, just to check on my condition as I enter the VA system, I assume, I hope only that. But next week I could find that my ticker is about to shut down, that my good luck has run out. The very vivacious 40 year old woman who put a warm device on my bare chest attached to a long cord to a big machine said she could see everything going on within my heart and arteries and veins but that she wasn’t permitted to clue me in whether I was about to kick off or not, only a cardiologist could do that. But she said before we started that the fact that I was 87 and my heart was still beating was a sign that things must be going pretty well. Most 80 year olds she examined were already in trouble and were there for ominous reasons. That was intended to cheer me up and keep me calm while she peered into me. She did say that no car managed to keep going for 87 years, that the heart lasting this long was a kind of miracle. I don’t know whether that was to cheer me up or not. But she kept calling me honey and sweetie, which did cheer me up. She continued even after I told her that I had read an article on ageism in the New York Times in which being called darling or cute was something that you had to call a person out on, because it somehow demeaned you and put you in the category of being soft in the head. But I didn’t mind when she kept on doing it. We had a good time, probably because of that same softening in the head I was supposed to deny. I liked being noticed.
In any case I keep track of time in a different way. January 1 passes unnoticed. I was born on August ll. I notice the passing of every month on the 11th, I also pay particular notice to November 11th and February 11, coming up next, and May 11, the quarter and half and three quarters of a year.
This means that I am paying more attention to time than most other people, but I’m not sure why. One thing that I don’t do is anticipate the future except in the very short term. Right now I anticipate Mexico in ten days and it quickens my spirit, and while I am there I am going to enjoy each day and push the future away. When I get back I’ll savor the trip for awhile and then dream of another trip two more months down the road. A step at a time. I am not considering 2026 at all.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 