Memories are made of this

Yoga Northwest yoga dancers

Yesterday evening I attended a party to celebrate B.K.S. Iyengar's birthday. Although he died four years ago, he would have been 100 on the 14th, so Yoga Northwest held a 100-day yoga challenge, starting on September 5 and going all the way to December 14. I managed to do all 100 days, even though many times it was tough. You committed to do fifteen minutes or more a day of yoga. I set the timer on my iPhone for fifteen minutes and found a way to fit it in.

There were prizes given out in a raffle for those who completed every day, those who made it for 80 days, and 50 days. I was thrilled when I won an hour of private yoga with my favorite teacher, Denise! (She is the one on her head in front.) Some of the teachers and advanced students performed a yoga dance for us during the festivities, and I captured a few pictures.

Although it was only 6:30 when I left, it was so dark, and there were so many Christmas lights everywhere, that I was very glad it wasn't raining, which would have made the drive home even harder. It was the first time this season that I've been somewhere after dark and needing to navigate the busy streets to get home. I won't do that again, since I realize how much harder it's become for me to process all the hazards around me and stay safe. Before the cataract surgery last year, I could not have driven at night in any circumstance, but I'm realizing that old age is beginning to steal other things I've always taken for granted. Sight is not the only thing you need to drive safely at night.

I find myself getting confused when too many distractions come up at once, and forgetting the names of things and the inability to articulate events is beginning to happen more often. Not all the time, but occasionally, and I notice how much I resist the realization that this is the natural order of things. You have a full life, decades of experiences, and then you begin to see it all begin to fall away, a little at a time. Perhaps that's what is necessary in order to make the transition to real, true infirmity. I wonder if this is what I'll be finding out as the years go by.

I will continue to keep up my exercise routine, my enjoyment of the outdoors, and try to keep myself from feeling distressed about it, since that not only doesn't help things, it also exacerbates the symptoms of old age. Fortunately, almost everyone I know is in the same boat: when you hang out with septuagenarians, you see it happening to those you love, too. Looking in the mirror, I see that I have become someone other than my own image of myself. When did that happen? Incrementally, of course, but happen it did.

This upcoming week is the final one of fall, and the first days of the winter season will occur next week. I'm thinking it might be a good time when I sit here next Sunday to take stock of what has happened in my life this past year. Contemplate the moments that I cherish so that they won't just fade into the distance. One really great thing about keeping a blog is that I can go back and read what I wrote on previous Sundays, and that always jogs my memory and reminds me about all the good stuff I would otherwise have forgotten. The end of a calendar year is always an appropriate time to have a retrospective.

I will start the upcoming year with a visit to Florida to see my sister, to swim alongside her in the mornings and walk with her during the day. We'll have time to visit to our heart's content, and it will also be a time for appreciating our shared history. We are the only ones left who remember the time when we were young, when we grew up in tandem with one another. Our parents and other older relatives are all gone now, and our younger siblings weren't there when the two of us were little. How strange that now it's all just memories, and most of them have been forgotten. When we reminisce and discuss things that happened to us both, it's been long enough now that they have become two different events. Memory is fungible and not to be trusted. Who is to say what really happened when we remember events so differently? And who cares, really? I'm just glad I get to spend time with Norma Jean and make some new memories together.

Mark Twain once said, "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not." That's similar to some of the conversations my sister and I have about past events. "That's not the way it happened," she might say, and I would have no way of knowing if she is right or not. I think sometimes my inability to remember is just one more sign of growing old. Maybe it's true that once your head gets too full of memories, they begin to spill out your ears because there's no room left inside. It makes me smile to think of it. Whatever the reason, I've forgotten much more about my full life than most people would believe possible. Memories might be in there somewhere (if they haven't already spilled out my ears) and something will bring it all back, in whatever form they might take for today.

Today I'll make some new memories with my friends. First a trip to the coffee shop (of course), and later a movie with my friend Judy. We'll see that new Robert Redford movie, The Old Man and the Gun. Who would have believed that Redford would still be making movies, and his advanced age? It gives me hope for my own future, since he's even older than I am (he's 82). So I've got at least a few more years of creative juice, right?

However, no one can see the future, and we're all different. I heard someone say the other day that seventy is the new sixty, but eighty is still eighty. So true! The decline that begins in our middle years builds up steam as we approach the latter decades of life. I like to think that I've lived a good life all these years, and I look forward to the future with happiness, even knowing that somewhere in my future that will change. Or maybe not. Who knows?

In any event, another post has written itself as I sit here in the dark with my beloved sleeping beside me. Tea is gone, the day beckons, and the change to make some new memories is calling me.  I hope that your day will be a good one, and that you will have lots of happy memories being created, even if, in the words of Twain, they really happen or not. Be well until we meet again next week, dear friends.