Accepting cronehood; struggling to embrace it

I am no spring chicken. I am, in fact, well into my crone years. I've arrived here somewhat incredulous, and often in denial of the obvious. Yes, my 73-year-old sister and I still climb up and pose ourselves on the jetty at Sakonnet point (see picture, right) but certainly not on a regular basis. I am envious of people my age who live in the country and are hardy and hale souls who tromp about in the woods and find interesting bits of twig and lichen that they hang or display fecthingly in their houses. I'm envious, and yet know full well that I'd last only briefly without a bit more social interaction - although I DO like my "space", and tend to get quite frustrated when I don't have enough time to myself. I'm still in the process of figuring out who I'm supposed to be, I think, and that seems a bit affected and silly at my age, but I'm afraid that I just don't feel quite "finished" - am still wondering, I guess, if "that's all there is"? I wonder if others at my age feel quite so unfinished as I do. Increasingly - not daily, and not even monthly: more like once a year or so - I see an obituary for somebody my age, and think, Omigawd, what if I died tomorrow? It's certainly perfectly possible, and if I did, there would be so much left hanging. I feel, most of the time, like I have years and years ahead of me, but my sister, who is eleven years my senior (I thought ten, but on the trip I just took down to North Carolina to visit with her, she corrected me - it's eleven) has aged considerably since last fall - even had a valve replacement done on her heart back in February, and is now functioning with the help of a pig's valve. Odd. She seems a bit more fragile, although I went with her to her "walking place" - a sweet little park with a duck pond not far from the center of Hensersonville, and we did two laps around the park together. I had my quarterstaff, which is a tad shorter than I would like, and since she had none, I decided to find myself a new one while I was in North Carolina and leave my old (shorter) one for sis. She's 5'2 to my 5'6, and she has always been tiny and petite while I was and am sturdy and prone to the stockiness that I have battled since I was in my 20's. Part of accepting (if not yet able to embrace) cronehood has been to re-evaluate my body, which isn't all that bad, but neither is it "all that good". I have dieted on and off for years and years - frequently with success: during my pregnancy with my last child, who is now 27 years old, I gained 50 pounds, and lost it within six months on the Atkins plan. I continued with Atkins for ten years, and stayed slim and athletic all that time. Then, I was seduced one year while vacationing on Cape Cod by a jumbo hot fudge sundae, and haven't been on Atkins since. I've gradually climbed back up a good 25-odd pounds, and have taken ten off here and there, but haven't kept it off. I do well for a while, and then stop doing well. More recently, I've been wondering why I need to worry about being on the heavy side. Who cares? My (second) husband of the past seven years doesn't seem to mind the way my first husband did - that one was always commenting that it looked like I'd "gained a few pounds" no matter how thin I was. Anorexic, even, for a time. Now, I'm happy to say, I have a healthier relationship with # 2, and as a result, seem to be developing a healthier attitude towards my body. We eat quite well, actually. Lots of fresh vegetables, lots of fiber, fruit, and no more red meat. I use a lot of the soy-based meat substitutes, and if you marinate them to add a little flavor and serve then in a stir fry or salad, they are every bit as tasty, and far less fatty than real meat. We do eat chicken and turkey and I do an occasional pork roast, but we've cut the red meat out entirely, and now I don't think I could eat it even if I didn't have anything else. Too much of it, I guess, all those years on Atkins. But, back to my ambivalence about cronehood. On the one hand, I like the idea of relaxing my standards some - around appearance, I mean. I still have to dress professionally for my job, but I mean mostly about weight. There is simply no need for me to kill myself trying to be thin, even though if I had my druthers, as they say, I really WOULD be a slim and elegant old woman with silver hair in a long braid down my back. Or, with silver hair cut EXTREMELY short in a little wispy helmet, which I could do easily enough, but not being slim at this particular point in time, and NOT having a long, swan-like neck atop which to display this short wispy little helmet, I would end up looking like a scoop of ice cream with a cherry on top. Okay, not that bad, but not good, either. I need the hair to balance out the wide shoulders and thickening waist. My legs are still pretty good - reasonably sized, and with slim ankles, but there are a few quarter-sized spots where the veins have broken, and my calves aren't as firm and muscular as they used to be by a long shot. But, again. what's the difference? I'd LIKE to be slim, trim and athletic well up into my eighties or nineties, but I don't think it's so important to me that I'd work particularly hard to achieve it. I'm really in awe of those who do.

As an aside - after years and years of being an over-achiever (you know, the ones who arrive early, stay late, and spend evenings at home sending and replying to e-mails) I am finally realizing that killing yourself at work doesn't earn you much more than the occasional accolade, and the same free coffee in the employee lunchroom that even the underachievers get. I'm slowing down, thinking about what I want to do - and where I want to be - when I retire (unless I get fired or something) in three years. My husband is already retired, and keeps busy with his art (he paints, sculpts and writes) but is contemplating getting some sort of part-time job just to get himself out of the house. He's taken on a volunteer project - evaluating and redesigning the computer lab for a neighborhood center in the city where we live (He spent 35 years as a software engineer) - but it won't get started until October, and in the meantime, he's feeling a bit restless. Not to worry - I left instructions regarding preparation of a pork roast for our dinner. That will keep him busy for a time.

Over and out.