Living Life at 70

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).

We work long hours. We meet at meetings. We focus on things to be done. And then we are tired. We come home and sleep. Our social life, if it exists at all, is sporadic at best. I have found that breakfast is an excellent time  to get friends around, except those who sleep in and are night birds; I have quite a few of those friends who wake up only around lunch, having gone to bed around 3.00am or so!.

For me breakfast is easy; there is no need for involved preparations. A good cup of coffee ( and I make  excellent coffee!) is a sure winner and then there are the special breakfast that I make.  Ask my friends who have come to my home, chatted around my kitchen table and enjoyed, appam, puttu or pancake for breakfast.

I hadn’t done it for a while but this morning I was again reminded of the joy of getting friends together around a breakfast table. There is another thing about breakfast on a weekend - there is no rush to go off and do something. We linger and have yet another cup of coffee. There is delight in that lingering…

Living Life at 70 and I am faced with a whole lot of new vulnerabilities. I can pretend and behave like I have the energy of somebody much younger than me -My body reminds me that I don’t. Is the pain in my arm signaling an imminent heart attack or could the pain result from moving furniture around? ( remember I have been de-cluttering? I think I have no serious health issues. Then I read about people who  in their 60s and 70s dying. These deaths remind me that I am not invincible. I think I should get a medical check-up. Then I hear of healthy, happy people discovering  health problems on  just such a medical check-up. Then they suddenly ‘wither’ away.

Yesterday I missed a great dinner party and today i am going to miss another one. I am wondering which of the above is the cause. Suddenly I feel the need to slow down.

The ‘gift’ of the hot season.

Along the CTE ( The Central Expressway), during the hot season, there is a delightful distraction (from stress and idiot drivers) – the ‘cratoxylum formusum’. Known commonly as the ‘Pink Mempat’ or even as Singapore’s own Cherry- Blossom (Singapore Sakura), the ‘Pink Mempat” is a very attractive and stunningly beautiful tree when it flowers. The book “Trees of our Garden city” a publication of the National Parks Board, informs that ‘the wood is durable and is used to build houses in Java. A decoction of the bark can be used to cure colic. The resin from the bark is used for itch. The leaves, when pounded with coconut oil, can be applied for skin complaints’. So the “Pink Mempat” is not just a pretty face!

The vision of this row of beautiful pink blossoms is a pretty wonderful sight to behold. They unfailingly lift my spirits as I struggle the predictable traffic jams along the CTE.

Imagine my shock, no distress, that all these beautiful trees, have been chopped down.I am sure instant trees will re-appear once the roadworks are complete.

But the story our lives is that very little in Singapore is allowed to take root.