There is a feeling that I get each year when November rolls around. I find myself wondering how we are already rolling into the Thanksgiving/Christmas season. Wasn’t it just yesterday that it was January? Did I somehow fall asleep like Rip Van Winkle and miss the ten months leading to this moment? In fact, wasn’t it 2020 a few seconds ago? How can we be suddenly moving toward 2024? 

These days I feel as though I am moving on a speeding train. Even the length of a single day seems shorter than ever before. It feels as though I am running from one moment to the next barely keeping up. I am mostly retired or was supposed to be, but somehow I find myself frantically filling every hour of every day with tasks commanded by my to do list. I feel the need to keep apace with my duties because the unexpected comes along with more and more frequency. I have to be as prepared for whatever happens as I was when I’d rise before the sun came up to prepare for my job and return after dark for an hours long marathon of juggling family responsibilities with the demands of my career. As strange as it may sound those days felt longer and more generous in providing me with the time to get things done than I am now experiencing. Is there some magic that shortens the number of hours in the day as we age? That is certainly how it seems to be.

Yesterday I was a senior in high school like my youngest grandson and a godson. Did I somehow time travel to my future without ever realizing that I was on the fast track of life? I blinked and the wide eyed young version of me was transformed into an old woman with droopy eyelids. Sure I am wiser than I once was, but the sad part is that there are no do overs. The mistakes that I have made cannot be undone. I can only forgive myself for my ignorance and thoughtlessness rather than living in a haze of regret. Nonetheless I feel pressured to engage in a marathon of fulfilling my bucket list before I reach a point of being unable to do so. I still have so many dreams and so little time. Somehow I am racing from one day to the next to get this done. 

I suppose that my Baby Boomer generation is a bit more loathe to hang up our spurs and just sit back to enjoy the quiet of growing older. I remember my mother and grandmothers embracing a slower pace of life with gratitude. They reveled in sleeping late in the morning, taking little naps in the afternoon, letting dishes pile up in the sink, making as few appointments as possible. They let chores and duties slide to make time for sitting in their gardens just watching the birds and observing the bursting of blooms. They were always open for surprise visits from family and friends. They’d keep coffee and tea on hand for anyone who knocked on their doors. They did not worry about answering with bare feet, messy hair, and styleless clothing. They were simply happy to see someone that they loved any day, any time. 

My generation of women was on the front line of change from a patriarchy to shared power with men. We don’t need someone to hold open doors for us. We were challenged to do it all and we learned how to balance a thousand different tasks in a single day. Turning off the energy that it took to achieve that level of productivity is not easy, especially for a Type A personality like me. To be successful in both the old world and the new I had to toughen up, to have the resiliency of an Olympic athlete. I learned to survive on six hours of sleep at night. I had to become a planner down to the minute. I was able to pace myself by never stopping. It was the price I fully accepted in order to change the status of women from stay at home housewives and moms to human dynamos able of wearing dozens of hats. It was not easy, but a whole generation of us did it and now that we are retired we do not know how to just relax. We have to keep ourselves busy or we may fall apart. 

I suppose the day will come when I am forced to accept my age, embrace the fact that I am old in the eyes of the young. Still, I am not yet ready to surrender until I have to do so. I presume that the old men running for President of the United States see themselves as I see myself. We all still believe that we must keep working, accomplishing, doing. I wonder if that is good thing or if maybe it is bad. 

My husband is content with his retirement years. He does not feel a pressing need to keep pushing. He has learned how to relax. He smells the roses when they bloom. He is ready for random adventures that serve no purpose other than to make him smile. I suppose that he has found the key to aging gracefully while I am still trying to learn how to do so. 

Some of us have personalities that push us to make every day purposeful or we feel somehow unfulfilled and maybe even a bit guilty. We have a very hard time doing absolutely nothing or skipping routines for a day just because. Perhaps I would do well to begin practicing those things so that it will not be as traumatic when I have to let things go. I probably need to leave the laundry in a pile and take a drive to the ocean. Maybe I can skip one task each day just to prove to myself that I won’t be less than for doing so. Anyway, I am going to try to relax.