Flying blind

My aunt eats slowly, her morning spoon pushing squares of cereal and rounds of banana around the bowl until she captures one--though which one she won't know until it reaches her tongue.  Her slowness is a matter of habit, certainly not lack of interest nor even her 98 years (she's always been the last one finished at table); her appetite is as keen as ever, though she eats, I notice, a speck less every few days.

For me, sitting across our grandmother's table from her, it seems that each bite must be a surprise, though she takes it in unflappable stride.  She expects oat squares and bananas; therefore they come, albeit in their own time, until she is finished the bowl. At lunch, for which we have dinner, she is a bit more questioning:  "Where is the meat?  Is my wine here?  A piece of bread, please."  The last of which she uses as a "pusher" to help along the small, miscellaneous hills of food she has gathered from across the plate, fork from the right, knife from the left.  The last bite on the plate is the most challenging, but with an extra hand she achieves that, too.

Eating blind is an exercise in traversing the unknown, as most of her doings are these days.  A stalwart defender of her independence, she can still admit her incapacity and yet demand her rights to have what she needs and wants.  Everything in its place is our goal for her ease, and yet that, too, has its adventures.  A coffee cup returned after a sip to the slope of the saucer, the cut halves of toast (buttered as she likes, thickly and right to the corners) slid hither and yon on the plate.  Ice cream (one of her favorite desserts) seems to have little trouble gathering into the spoon, but carrot cake, even without the raisins which she dislikes, scatters across the plate like frozen sand on a winter beach.

As slowly as she dines, so she walks, tentative, halting steps, though with purpose.  She has mastered the light switches that only vaguely assist direction, the furniture that serves as her guideposts along the paths from bedroom to kitchen, from den to porch.  Only in the last few weeks has she begun to lose her way in our small house; even a small missed turn will send her to the kitchen instead of the den; to the den instead of the bedroom (the dining room, the center of it all, is not usually missable), and the surprise at not being where she aimed.  And yet, nothing diminishes the ambition to arrive where she intends.  "George!" she calls to my uncle in a voice as unblunted as a general's on review, "Where are you?"  And then, with the response, her direction reinstates itself.

Even for her, blindness can be quickly tiring.  The row of stitches she painstakingly knits, counting carefully at the end to be sure she hasn't dropped or added, can be all she accomplishes in half an hour's sitting, her hands directing the circular needles she prefers.  Even with the day lamp over her left shoulder, positioned to help the most, a single row is an achievement.  Every day she picks it up, determined to make the 33 inches the strip should be for its inclusion in one of the lap robes my sister always has in process.  And every day she rues her failing (mostly failed now) sight. "Don't get old!" she admonishes anyone in hearing range.  After the row, it isn't long until her head falls forward, slowly, the sun warming her nap from behind.

The same occurs with reading her large-print book, one or two sentences at time.  She doesn't give up either her interest in it or her attempts to garner the clues to the mystery, but after a page, she rests.

This morning, rising earlier than usual, she gets herself weighed and into slippers and robe, and calls the rest of us to organize breakfast, on which she dines heartily.  Then, though it hadn't been her habit until lately, tiredness descends and she announces that she'll go back to bed for a while.  After an hour or so, I don't hear her at her ablutions yet, so I will peek in to see whether she's still relaxing.  Though she will berate me later for letting her stay in bed so long, I will counter by telling her that it's Saturday, and there are no appointments, no company coming, nothing ahead but relaxation and perhaps a walk in the sun when it warms up a bit.  She can, I will assure her, take it easy for the morning.  After a life ordering and doing and managing, managing far beyond, and far more fervently than what most people would give in to, she's certainly entitled to that.

My sister asked me the other day, "What do you think we will be like when we're that age?"  A few years ago, I'd have laughed and answered ironically:  Just like them!  Thinking of my mother, aunts, uncles, all of whom attained their nineties, minds intact if bodies tended to betray them, annoyingly.  Each trying as hard as her/his personality dictated to stay the course of time.

Now I don't quite take that resilience, determination, fortitude...not to mention the quick spurts of good humor...for granted.  I would be lucky to be that healthy of spirit and drive if the next quarter century finds me still on this earth.  Every day, watching my aunt (and uncle, too) is another lesson in how best to get old...if not always with the painless vision we imagine when we say we admire those who are "growing old gracefully".  It isn't a sweet, indulgent capitulation to age that seems to matter, or that is even possible.

Instead, we ought, I will tell my sister next, be practicing for speaking our minds as loudly as we can, and demanding, as she does, that life go on as usual.