Living Life at 70

My apologies for taking so long. So many things have happened since my last visit to the blog. Any way here’s is the final and longest part of the story I started. Hope you enjoy it.

Final Part.

On this  particular Sunday evening she felt the need to go to church. It had been a long hard day as had been many days before that. She had often been angry with God for all the things that had gone wrong with her life. But sometimes her Catholic upbringing surfaces. This was one of those Sundays. She decided to walk to Church, St Joseph’s in Malvern, the next suburb.

As she started out the winter sun had already set but twilight lingered. In Singapore it would still be hot with the afternoon sun, she thought. How she enjoyed, especially after a cold Melbourne winter, the feel of the sun on her skin. How she savoured that sensual feeling.

But in that comfortable Melbourne suburb that afternoon the streets were quiet as it usually is on winter evenings. She saw an Art Gallery open and walked into it, wandered around and wandered out. Nothing caught her interest. She was in one of those moods. Families and children had taken refuge in the comfort of their warm homes and settled in for early dinner. Doors and windows were shut, and gates locked behind high garden walls.  Sometimes one could catch a glimpse of the interior which she enjoyed looking into.

She walked on and crossed Glenferrie Road into Stanhope street. Always on the alert for any sign of danger something caught her attention. Ahead of her, along her path, stood a dog. A dog is not her best friend, to say the least. In fact she is quite scared of strange dogs. She thought she would cross the street to avoid the dog. No, she decided. She will just ignore it and then it will ignore her and go away.

As she bravely approached, the dog too pretended she was not there. I wish she would go away. Why doesn’t she cross the road? He must have thought. So there they were, two beings, one a woman, on the paved footpath and another a dog, on the grass verge, walking along parallel lines, trying their best to ignore each other and pretending the other didn’t exist. She was fully aware, of course, of his presence. The dog did what dogs usually do, sniffing the grass, this way and that way with great concentration as though his life depended on finding something in the grass.

Why doesn’t he go away? She thought and quickened her stride and the dog kept up with her, his head bowed, his nose sniffing the grass. Not once did he look in her direction while she kept her guard up and kept the dog in her side view. She avoided looking directly at him. They walked on, the dog keeping pace with her, and because the dog maintained his distance she began to relax. As they continued she became comfortable with his presence. She stopped worrying.

The next thing she realized was that the dog had begun to hold his head up. A while later, she noticed a spring in her walk and in his walk. And then he started scampering beside her and around her and ahead of her. When he had sprinted ahead he looked back to find her falling behind and he came running back to keep pace with her. He continued to do that. At one stage, arriving at a junction ahead of her, he turned the corner and disappeared. She thought she had lost him just when she was actually beginning to enjoy his company. But he was there waiting to see if she was following and came running back to catch up with her when she didn’t follow him.

They were having fun, enjoying each other’s company. He scampered; he bounced; he galloped. He galloped ahead, looked back at her and came running back. She couldn’t do any of those of course, not being a dog but her heart and her head danced with him in their shared joy. At one stage he got a bit carried away and ran across the road in front of an on-coming car. Oh. No. she screamed in her head. But it was too late. He was running and the car screeched to a halt. You silly dog, she thought. What on earth do you think you are doing. The driver would think you are mine. He would think that these Asians didn’t know how to train their dogs. He is not mine. He is not mine. She protested in her head.

The dog, none the wiser, allowed nothing to dampen his spirit and came sprinting back, his head bobbing up and down and his tail swinging, and the car drove away. They kept on in this gay mood throughout the walk till they reached the Church.

It was time for the service to start and late worshipers were entering the Church. She followed through the gate and on to the steps at the entrance of the Church. The dog followed . She went up to the holy water font and crossed herself, hoping that the dog wouldn’t follow her into the church. Please don’t follow. She had these visions of the dog following her into the Church and disturbing the worshippers. She felt helpless at the thought. She looked behind her. The dog stood on the topflight of the steps, on his front legs, paused, looked at her for a while and as though sensing her anxiety, turned around and to her immense relief, left.

The mass took about an hour but her mind was on the dog. She marveled at that experience. Will it be waiting for her, she wondered.  As she came out of the church, her eyes searched for the dog. But the dog had gone. Over the next week she walked the same walk at different times of the day looking for that dog. Every day she returned home disappointed. It bothered her – why couldn’t she find that dog!

Two weeks later she started her walk early in the afternoon to catch the warmth of the winter sun. On such afternoons she would treat herself to an afternoon tea in one of the little cafes along High Street and watch people passing by. This particular day after a treat of freshly made scones with marmalade and cream she started out for her walk along the suburbs admiring the sun on the trees and flowers. It was a beautiful afternoon. The kind of weather she liked in Melbourne: mild and sunny and perfect. The Australian native trees and plants don’t shed in winter and keep their colour. Flowers continue to bloom in abundance. The trees that shed are the ones imported by home-sick Anglo-Saxons. But most Australians are proud of their native trees and passionately protective of them.

School had just been let out and there were kids walking and biking home from school. Up ahead of her she spotted a group of boys about nine or ten years old, some walking and some riding. Lagging behind the group was a boy of the same age on a bike with a dog scampering along side. She came closer, she was sure it was the dog. Yes, she thought, it was. It looked the same, the same colour, the same height. They came closer, and she looked at the dog, trying to catch his eyes.

The dog, however, put his head down and passed by without recognition and her heart sank. But a few seconds after they passed each other she thought again. She was sure it was the dog and turned around to take a second look. At that same instant the dog too turned around, caught her eye, paused, wagged its tail in recognition and then went on his way.
The dog remembered! The dog remembered!

Constance Singam

26th Oct  03

This is the second part of the story that I started a couple of weeks ago. The last part I shall post tomorrow.

‘The one break she gave herself was at the end of the afternoon when she would wrap herself in warm clothes to face the evening cold of a Melbourne winter and go for a walk. On most days nothing happens. She walks, comes back, goes back to her computer and resumes her work. But the walks were her salvation from descending into depression. The brisk walks she took after months in mourning had lifted her and helped her through her grief.

She took great delight in her walks in the afternoon. Sometimes she walked along High Street and Glenferrie Road, window shopping. High Street, Armadale, is an elegant Street. Rows of double storey buildings line both sides of the street. It has a casual charm of age not plastic, shiny, big and impersonal that one finds in Singapore she thought - a more elegant version of High Street in the Singapore of her teenage years. She liked elegance, the understated elegance, the leisurely pace that Melbourne offered.

She liked the shops filled with beautiful clothes, that she couldn’t afford but which she could admire. Anyway she never paid more than $60/ for a piece of clothing. That’s how much her conscious would allow her to pay. The one extravagance in Melbourne was a $150/ purchase of lingerie from the French Lingerie shop in Malvern. It was an indulgence she allowed herself before her dreaded return to reality in Singapore.

But on most days, her diversion, was to wander around the galleries and shops along High Street. Antique book and map shops were her favourites. Her hunt in the antique book shops yielded many a fine collection at a price she could afford.  The pride of her collection, now sitting on the shelves in her HDB flat are an 1891 edition of Mrs. Gaskell’s“Cranford” 1907 edition of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” the first colonial edition ( 1898) of Conrad’s “ Tales of Unrest’ and  a  copy of the first edition of E.M.Forster’s “Aspect of the Novel”. A map of India, from the antique map shop, the only map she could find which marked her father’s village in India, now hangs on her wall.

On this  particular Sunday evening she felt the need to go to church. It had been a long hard day as had been many days before that. She had often been angry with God for all the things that had gone wrong with her life. But sometimes her Catholic upbringing surfaces. This was one of those Sundays. She decided to walk to Church, St Joseph’s in Malvern, the next suburb.’

A sunbird hovered near my window, over the plants that I have on my balcony : a truly beautiful distraction which made me move from my computer and watch it as it hovered from plant to plant. It made my day.

I also had a haircut. There is something about haircuts in my family. It seems to have the immediate effect  of changing my mood and making me look better.

I needed both - the sunbird and the haircut after a bad week. Last week saw the deaths of two of my close relationships: the death of my Aunt at the age of 88 and the death one of closese friends at  78. They both died the way they would have wanted - in their sleep.

But for me it is a reminder that the longer I live the more I am going to see the loss of friends I have spend time with and depended on for my social life and well-being. That is the loneliness of old age.

On being alone:

Here in this strange city she was alone. When most women of her age would be settling down to a comfortable middle age she was starting a new life. Here in this strange city, though, she can be alone without being pitied. Sometimes days would pass without her speaking to anyone. She had her research, her writing, which absorbed her and sometimes exhausted and depressed her. She had left her home in Singapore to learn to be independent. To even enjoy it. Will she ever though? Living alone was an experiment – an experiment in aloneness the rest of her life. She had always done things in excess. And so she picked a city where she knew nobody to wean her of her dependencies.

Her computer, sitting on the dinning table, an Ikea table, in her two-roomed apartment, was the focal point of her life. It sat in front of the bay window, the best feature of the apartment, framed by two trees -  a Bottle Brush and a Ficus tree. Many a time she had watched entranced as the sun played on the waxy, dark, green leaves of the Ficus and caught glimpses of the cookoo as it hopped shyly from branch to branch. More often she heard it than saw it.

The bay window was the reason she bought the apartment, along Kooyong Road in Armadale, five minutes walking distance from one of Melbourne’s elegant suburban shopping streets. This was a major purchase and the first independent decision of her life. How she agonized over that decision.  But the bay window with the sun streaming into the apartment on a winter’s day is a delight. These days little things delighted her.  It always did. Only she wasn’t aware that it is the little things that delight.

I am really confused between the reality of living my age and the general perception about older people. Yesterday, I was with a young women and i pointed out a sport car ( B&W I think it was) which I thought was a good-looking car. Her reaction was ” are you still admiring sports cars” implying that I was too old to keep admiring old cars. I didn’t want to confess to her that I still admire good-looking men!! She would have been aghast. Here I should confess…no, on second thoughts I won’t. That would be too revealing!!!

That’s it. In the afternoon a reporter from the newspapers, who was writing a feature about perceptions about aging and how the general perception of men and women is different, asked me about my views on the subject. I readily agreed with her that it is very different and  that older men have more advantages. But surely, I said, it has also got to do with one’s level of confidence and health.

Now when it comes to the choice of clothes I have a real problem. I certainly don’t want to look like a “mutton dressed as a lamb”.

I wonder if older people experience similar questions about identity as teenagers do ( which really is worrying) or is it just me who has the problem ( which should really worry me).