HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Mr. Wonderful couldn’t contain himself. “Val, I just watched the best 20-minute video by Phil Mickelson on the short game!” he exclaimed. “I can’t wait to try his tips.” Off he went to the practice range — 83 years old, a golfer since age 11 who’s “shot his age” countless times, and who just found something new to lower his score. Hope springs eternal.

In President George H. W. Bush’s book, ALL THE BEST: MY LIFE IN LETTERS, he wrote to his kids, at age 74, “This letter is about aging. Not about how we should play lawn bowling, get discounts at the movies, turn into skin-conscious sunblockers, take Metamucil …” 

Bush 41 laments his memory fizzles, his wobbly legs, his grandkids suggesting “the old fogy” needs hearing aids. But he adds, “Who knows? Maybe they’ll come out with a new drug that makes legs bend easier, joints hurt less, drives go further, memory comes roaring back, and all fears about falling off fishing rocks go away.” 

Everywhere I look, friends in my “age decade” and above,are discovering and trying new stuff. They are not giving up!

Sandy B. bought a new golf training device to improve her swing over the winter. Joan started painting lessons. Lee’s husband has taken up bird photography. Ken is recently back from the mountains of Ecuador where he went to learn new techniques photographing hummingbirds.

Patti and Anne are regulars at the fitness center for strength and toning. Brother Ross walks three miles daily to ward off the effects of Parkinson disease while other brother Robert, at 79, plays trumpet in a jazz combo. Friends have started playing canasta and mahjong. Me? I bought a new bathing suit, my first in a decade, that doesn’t even have a skirt. Talk about hope springing eternal!

What motivates us Seniors to put ourselves out there and try new things? Definitely to lengthen and strengthen our lives while warding off aches, pains and that memory unit facility looming on the horizon. Certainly we hope to make our days more diverse so that Happy Hour at Ruby Tuesday and “Jeopardy” at 7:30 aren’t the only activities on our agendas. 

But we also embrace these activities to counter the ongoing flood of sadness and bad news when friends tell us their cancer has spread, that their back pain has abated only slightly from the cortisone shot, that the knee (shoulder, ankle, hip) replacement “went well, sort of.”  

We Seniors are the walking wounded. Our faces are scarred from skin cancer excisions, we can’t lift our left arm because of rotator-cuff stuff, our eyesight gets fuzzier by the hour, and our hearing — MOTHER OF GOD — our hearing!

But we take joy where we can find it. I laughed hearing that Jimmy P. exulted to his wife after dinner out with 10 friends, “I feel pretty good that I was the only one there without a cane!” 

My friend Lynn Myers recently lent me a book by Mary Ellen Sullivan titled “On the Wings of the Hummingbird: A Chronicle of Joy, Grief and Gratitude.” This exquisite writer, who died from ovarian cancer at 56, never lost her optimism. She wrote:

“If you love the life you have, please, please, practice gratitude.

Wake up every morning acknowledging just how much beauty  is in your world.

Pay attention to it, honor it and keep your heart and your eyes wide open.

You won’t regret it.”

Let hope spring eternal!