August 12, 2024
At 7am, it’s cool and gray outside – the temperatures are in the low fifties (I feel like there’s an age joke in there somewhere). Today is my birthday. Today I turn 50. The plan for the day is a late breakfast with my dad, hang around a bit, and then Uber over to the North Beach part of town where the Italian section mixes with the old beatnik bars and the even older red-light district (Barbary Coast) all of which is adjacent to Chinatown.
My dad is in town visiting for my birthday. I’ve been showing him around for the past few days. Yesterday, we went to the Mission. We rode in a driverless taxi – twice. They’re everywhere. When we exited the taxi, a family was waiting to get in. I’m not sure what they did or didn’t do, but the car wouldn’t go when they got in (my guess is that they got in the car too early and didn’t use the app to unlock the car properly). This meant that it sat there for a few minutes as angry divers behind it honked. I have mixed feelings about the technology. For the most part it seems safe. I was impressed by it’s ability to swerve out at the appropriate times and how it monitored vehicle and foot traffic, but I don’t know that it would drive aggressively if it needed to (speeding up to avoid an accident), and I don’t like the idea of job displacement or turning over yet another piece of our lives to a monopolistic algorithm. We’re stuck with surge pricing because ride-share apps decimated the old-school taxi business.
As I hit a milestone birthday and as I spend this time with my dad, I’m becoming increasingly aware of my “desire to stay young.” I put that phrase in quotes, because I’m not talking about trying to look young, but more about maintaining a combination of mental, physical, and psychological youthfulness. To say my father has lost a step, would be an understatement. The man who used to power walk the mile and a half walk to downtown State College from a Penn State football game now shuffles slowly through the crosswalk at intersections. The slowness probably has more to do with not being able to see where he’s stepping very well (glaucoma) than it does physical ability, but I’ve had to adjust our plans and my pace accordingly. Walking around the city with him has been a persistent reminder that I too will someday lose a step and slow down. I’m not ready for that.
But walking hasn’t been the only reminder of the aging process. From the slightly clumsy (inexperienced) way he gets out his phone to take a picture (very deliberately pushing the button on the screen), to the need to sit during or after a walk, to the difficulties reading the bill at a restaurant (a difficulty I, too, experience), the changes in how we move through the world as we grow older are on full display during his visit.
A day or two before making the trip out here, my father texted to say they might not come. At that time, it was a they trip: my father and my stepmom. At the time of the text, my stepmom was feeling anxious about traveling, anxious about being so far away from home, anxious about getting around a new city. The anxiety disrupted her eating and sleeping. She was, in my father’s words, a wreck. When I suggested that maybe she could stay back and he could come out alone, he said that there are some things that she relies on him for. I think he likes, and maybe even needs, to be needed.
Not long ago, I met a woman through a dating app. We’re not really dating, but we have become friends. It’s a meet up, walk around, grab a bite to eat type of friendship. It’s a text, “hey how’s your day going” type of friendship. We talk about being single and being independent and getting older. She’s far more independent and adventurous than I am and I’m far more independent and adventurous than I used to be. She shared that within the last year she’s been thinking more about what it means to grow older and still be single.
For both of us, the thoughts about who’s gonna take care of us if we need someone to take care of us (in twenty years) creep in. I shared with her how my thinking/situation has changed over the past few years… how there was a time when I was living with someone and liked the idea of growing old together and how that “vision” is more foreign now, less imaginable. I don’t think taking care of or being taken care of was much of a consideration then – it seemed like a given. I’m not sure how heavily it factors in now.
August 15, 2024
After a few days of showing my dad around town (in limited bursts), he said San Francisco is his new favorite city. The weather was fantastic, the neighborhoods bustled, the colors and sights were vibrant, and the food was delicious. I drove him to the airport on Tuesday and quietly resumed my “normal” life: earlier breakfasts (waiting until 11am to get my day started was an adjustment), walks, runs, sunshine, job searches and applications, etc. etc. My personal celebration for my birthday week is to see three bands: Shakey Graves, The Dead South, and Gary Clark, Jr.
When I started writing this on the 12th, I was thinking through what getting older looks and feels like. I was thinking about how we tend to become more conservative in the risks we’re willing to take, how we tend to root ourselves deeper and deeper in our comfort zones, and how those things seem to be the natural evolution of our place in the world. Yet, for some of us, there’s almost this fight against that slide into stasis. Some of us see it as fatalistic or might refer to it as a decline. Some of us fight it tooth and nail. I found myself caught between the two: giving in to slowing down while also wanting to push myself towards the unfamiliar. I am sympathetic to my stepmother’s anxiety and the conflicted feelings she’s probably experiencing. I think she’d like to travel, but the barriers to doing so are getting higher and higher. We, as a society, could be more accepting of that. On more than one occasion, I urged my father to re-frame his thinking, to not look at her fears as a problem to be solved (through therapy or medication) and to instead think about what riches might be extracted from a more localized lifestyle.
Were I to give my stepmom any advice, it would be to first let go of other’s expectations. To embrace a different type of life – one that takes advantage of her current reality (being more or less location bound). Instead of traveling or going out and trying new things, stay in and try new things. Take up painting, try some new recipes, and be deliberate about the incremental steps she can take to expand her comfort zone. As I talked with my father about these things, I suggested that it’s a use or lose it type of situation… and there’s nothing wrong with losing our ability to deal with discomfort. Most of us, at some point, do.
The irony, of course, is that humanity is continuum. Everyone has their patterns and routines. Everyone is fighting their own battles in their own ways… and we frequently fail to see our own behaviors and quirks as being similar, but maybe of a different magnitude, to the behaviors and quirks of others. None of this is a competition. As far as I can tell, there are no trophies for being the most adventurous, or the last to give in to the mental anxieties wrought by age. I think the best we can do is match up with people whose experiences, desires, and comfort levels are proximal to our own and then hope that our changes (which are bound to happen) are more or less in sync with each other. The best we can do is establish trusting relationships that will both push us and comfort us, and most of all, accept us.
The first morning of my father’s visit, we had breakfast at Mel’s, the diner across the street from his hotel. We had breakfast there every other morning as well… he had found his spot. For years, we went to the same places to eat before and after Penn State games, walked into the same stores, took the same routes. Finding comfort and familiarity is hardwired into us. It’s what keeps us sane and alive and relatively free from danger. It’s one of our default settings. It takes practice to override those defaults. As we walked around the city, I nudged lightly at the edges of my father’s comfort zones – hoping that he might see some parallels between his patterns and my stepmother’s patterns. I’m not sure I was successful.
As for turning 50… I don’t feel it (at least not fully). I have a sense of where I’ve grown and where I’ve shrunk. I know some of my abilities are on the decline (I bought my first pair of reading glasses a few weeks ago). I hope to remain adaptable and nimble. I continue to pursue kindness and grace, and position myself in the vicinity of joy. I live in a city that is teaching me about beauty, presence, patience, and independence. Change is inevitable and if I’m lucky, some of it will be of my own accord. For everything else, I hope to navigate it by remembering the mantra I found while visiting a stupa in Sedona: continued compassion, understanding, and grace (and maybe a little humor).
With that, I’ll sign off with two pics and a little Junior Kimbrough. “Well I done got old. Well I done got old. I can’t do the things I used to do.”
