My step-daughter Rachel is worried about her mom and me these days. I am sure she worries about us other days, as well, because that is who she is, but in this time of COVID-19 and orders to shelter-in-place she is especially on edge.
We tell her we need to go to the grocery for food. “Mom, you and Norman really shouldn’t go out,” she argues with a worried tone of parental concern in her voice. She understands she can’t easily help us when she lives an hour north and has four kids who because of said virus must be home-schooled. She understands it’s not practical for her to drive down here to do our grocery shopping for us. All she knows is Becky and I fall into the category experts in the media use when then talk about coronavirus and at-risk groups. She is aware her mom and I are in the “over 60” cohort. She understands the two of us are more susceptible to life-threatening complications from the virus. She also assumes, no doubt, we will venture out for food or medical necessities if we must.
A few of our over-60 friends are having similar conversations with their adult children. When a good friend’s son who lives several states away heard his dad had volunteered to drive a truck for the local food bank, he told him he really should quit that job and stay home. “It’s not safe, Dad,” his son worried.
A friend from Anderson relayed to us how she offered to drive a couple of hours to her son and daughter-in-law’s house to help with her four grandkids and was told, “No, thanks. That would not be wise considering the present emergency situation — and considering your age.”
It’s all done out of love, we know. And it the right thing for us to do, we know that, too. But being confined to the house during this crisis has given this over-60 person some time to think about a couple of things.
One thing I ponder is the concept of “old.” I get it that this novel virus puts some in more danger than others and if you have to group people, doing it by age makes sense. I trust the data are there to prove we over-60s are statistically more likely to die from the virus than other age groups. But one thing I can’t quite wrap my head around is how in my own mind I don’t really feel “old.”
I have long carried around a quote attributed to pitcher Satchel Paige: “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” I answer that to myself in different ways depending on how I am feeling at a particular time, but the word “old” rarely seems to be part of my answer. I think I am lucky to feel this way, to be relatively healthy. Still, my sense of how old I feel may cause some issues during this quarantine.
Another thing I think about is parents vis-a-vis adult children. I am curious about how and when it happens that parents become the receivers of care rather than the dispensers of it. Is there is a tipping point? A certain age when the adult children start making the family decisions? Perhaps a ratio of child’s age to parent’s age? My guess is it depends on specific family situations and dynamics. Studies are out there, I am sure.
I have always been a collector of quotes. I recently read one by the French writer Collette that I keep with me as I ponder my over-60 status: “To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.”
Even in these sheltering-in-place, “new normal” times we are living through, I pray that I may stay astonished.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
