Alive Until You're Dead by Susan Moon

Author:Susan Moon [Moon, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2022-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

Adapt

Adaptation is key to aging. As one of the Tibetan mind-training slogans says, “Turn all difficulties into the path.”

My siblings and I persuaded our mother to stop driving when she was about eighty. She liked to be out and about, and this was a terrible loss for her. She got upset with us, and now I think it was not just because she had to stop driving but because we didn’t understand how great the deprivation was.

“You can take the bus,” I said.

“No, I can’t! It hurts my back to walk to the bus stop!”

Oh, right. I’d forgotten that her back hurt after walking just one block. “Well, you can take a cab,” I suggested.

“It takes forever to get a cab here!” she said, with tears in her voice.

Then she discovered that the senior housing facility where she lived had one of those motorized scooter chairs available for residents, and she learned to take herself to the bus stop, get on an accessible bus, ride to downtown Chicago, and take the scooter to a concert or poetry reading without having to worry about parking. She was proud of having figured out this way to be independent. It was a triumph. She had turned a difficulty into the path—the path of the mobility scooter.

As for myself, I’m making a number of adaptations. Take my shrinking vocabulary, for example. When I’m writing, I make frequent use of the thesaurus as I search for a forgotten word. In this way I remind myself of all sorts of other words, often more interesting than the one I was looking for. When I’m talking, it’s not feasible to interrupt the conversation while I search the thesaurus on my cell phone, so I use short words. I learned the short words first, and the first words learned are the last to go, so they are still in my head. Hey, look at that last sentence—all one-syllable words! English is a great language for one-syllable words. It’s time to speak and write more simply now, and perhaps more freshly. It’s also a good time to listen more and talk less.

Here’s a very practical adaptation that I’m proud of. I enjoy cooking, but I can’t hold the list of ingredients in my head. I find myself checking the recipe repeatedly, interrupting the flow and taking the time to fetch each ingredient as I go along. I’ve had the melting butter burn while I was looking for the can of diced chiles.

I’m pleased with my solution. Before I start cooking, I go down the list of ingredients and bring each one to the counter, along with whatever measuring cups, spoons, whisks, knives, or bowls I’ll need. I line up the cast on the kitchen counter in order of appearance, and I’m ready to begin.

I have instituted some further protocols: I try to have only one pot on the heat at a time, and I don’t listen to audiobooks or talk radio or even songs with words, unless they are in a foreign language I don’t understand.

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