Growing old

NO, IT’S not all about graying hair. I remember my father all salt-and-pepper in his 30’s. And yes, good friend Lincoln Baluyut, once The Voice publisher now Canada immigrant having a shockful of silver streaks in his early 20’s.
Nor does it solely concern an expanding forehead. Generations removed from mine already display shining pates.
The physiological changes do become more pronounced, I concede. The second or third chin and the mid-section bulge become great sources of jokes for the kids. The specs get either thicker or duo-fold, doble vista, that is. But not the double-vision kind of dwRW’s Deng Pangilinan. Tiredness comes easy. Sleep, at mid-morning, even easier.
But the greater changes that come with aging are on the emotional plane. It simply is supremely difficult to let go. To grow gracefully and act graciously old.
Holding on to the last vestiges of youth, you still treat your prep-school grandson like an infant, and your keep tabs on your college son’s late-night comings. To their consternation, both.
You start growing your thinning hair long. Reviving your flower-power days of psychedelic rage. At one point, you even consider renewing your horticultural talent with the beloved plant of your youth, the five-fingered cannabis sativa.
Finding no solace there, you morph into a curmudgeon. Fixed one-track mind. Fast in judgment. Slow in forgiveness. Easy to resentment. Hard and obstinate in opinion of others. The kids grimacing every time you shout “Stupid monkey” at just every driver on the road.
A digression. No gender discrimination here. But one point has to be cited on the great divide between men and women growing old.
An aging woman, finding herself unattractive to men, turns to God. See the number of manangs going to early morning Mass?
An aging man, finding his aging wife unattractive, turns to young sweet things. See the world full of DOMs with willing YDGs, that’s young gold diggers, dummy. Trophy wives, they are called too.
In recent years though, the gender chasm has narrowed. As I have written in articles past, a large number of aging women have traded the church velo for Vicky Belo. And providing some equalizer in the gender game is the ballroom dancing craze and its resident DI’s or “attorneys.” Wrinkled matrons tripping the night fantastic, if not erotic, with dashing swains. Toupeed chaps swinging, sashaying with succulent young jezebels.
Back to track. Shucks, if this is the way of growing old, who wouldn’t desire to die young?
I remember – that word again, truly remembering is for the old. Anyways, I remember an essay I wrote in college Creative Writing – nearly 40 years back – on my greatest obsession in life. To die at an early age, I penned. So that I shall experience the ultimate in greatness: that of being young, gifted, and dead.
I am not young anymore. I wasted a lot of the little gifts I have. I am not yet dead. I am aging. And trying to come to grips with it.
It is not all bitterness there is to growing old though. So long as one also grows up. There is a truism to that clichéd birthday wish to grow in grace as one grows in age.
So I still greet myself happy birthday then. Thanks to all who remember. And find me still one chap to be happy with.