When I am old

When I am old, I will constantly remind the people I meet that I am old.

In case they hadn’t noticed my hunch and my squint and the lines carving out the promise of a smile, I will tell them that I am, in fact, very old.

I will tell my grand children, or at least whatever children I can find, that I was born before the Internet existed. I’ll tell them it was before cell phones and before the constant stream of connectivity flowing all around us. I’ll tell them about silence. I’ll tell them of being in a world where no one knew where you were and to track you took more than the touch of a button.

I’ll explain that it was so much easier to lie when I was young.

I’ll have my craggy grumpy husband by my side and together we’ll go on walks and read books and, if I’m willing to risk a broken hip, we’ll climb trees.

Or I’ll be alone without a husband and instead I’ll have cats. I’ll have one cat for every man, woman and child that I’ve ever been in love with – there will be hundreds, thousands, of them – all named for my friends who are now gone – either dead or in countries and states that I will no longer have the energy to visit.

I’ll tell stories. Long stories. Funny stories. True stories. About all of the stupid decisions I’ve made and about how, after enough time has passed, nothing at all seems to have been a mistake anymore. No mistakes, no triumphs, no right, no wrong, no good and no bad will remain – only the stories. And I promise you that they will all be true.

I’ll read books. Real books. Not the electronic kind. I’ll have a house where I can keep all of my books. They’ll have their own room. The books won’t have to all fit into a suitcase, which will then have to fit into a small car, which will then have to be driven to a completely foreign and terrifying place. The books, like me, will be content to stay in one place and to have a place where they belong. Every book will have been chosen for a time and a purpose of my life. All of the books I’ve written, all of the books my friends have written, all of the books I planned to write – they’ll all be my shadows, and they’ll live with me when I am old.

When I am old, I’ll feel the same way that I do now - only sleepier. I’ll say the years passed in a day, and that it was all a dream, and that I’m ready to die, but don’t want to die, but at the same time wouldn’t like to be uploaded to a computer to live forever.

I’ll know that everything passes, that the only desires worth obtaining require patience, that some things will never be made the way I thought they would be, and that most dreams I have will never come true. 

I will do yoga every day. Every day I will say hello to the sun. Every day I will smile.

And I will remind everyone that I am old.