Why Grow Old?

People want to know: "What can you possibly like about being old?"

Here comes a fistful of answers from a 74-year-old who addresses every day as a challenge tucked inside a blessing:

** I like walking the south Florida beach just before dawn, seeing another sunrise out where the water meets the sky.

** I relish it when granddaughters run at me; I grab one (I have five from whom to choose.), and hoist the squirming bundle up to eye-level. Little arms hug my neck all the while.

** Learning, from reading, remains a turn-on. Recently, I've read the best-selling "The Lovely Bones," Anna Quindlen's "Blessings" and, in my view, the best of this special trio, "Seabiscuit," by Laura Hillenbrand.

A California neuro-scientist told reporter Ron Kotulak, "People don't realize the power they have to change their brains." Author of "Inside The Brain", Kotulak writes that stimulation, and social engagement, protect the brain from disease foes, including Alzheimer's.

** I enjoy teaching an eight-week course on Memoir Writing at Emory University's college for seniors. I have just six students, but one is a survivor of the Nazi slaughter of European Jews while another lived in East Africa for years. Both have fine stories to tell.and, I want to believe I am helping them.

** It's a special moment when one of my three adult children telephones or sends word over the Internet. When we're all together, story-telling, laughing, catching up, our time becomes the best that life can provide.

** Living below the Mason-Dixon line, some of us garden 10 months out of the year. Routinely, I lace up old boots, spray on industrial strength mosquito repellant, and sink amateur's hands into dirt, mulch, compost, topsoil, fertilizer, rock-hard red clay and, on occasion, poison ivy. I subscribe to the line, "Gardening, like opera, hits us in the second half of life." Then, as I tend to azaleas, camellias, lilies, hydrangeas, crepe myrtles, mums, rhododendrons and other beauties, I accept my columnist-friend Lee May's wisdom: "A good garden comes as much from the soul as it does the pocketbook."

**Under little things mean a lot: retrieving my newspaper signals a new day and brings an immediate reward, as do good symphony music, hot morning coffee, a fine dinner, a memorable "West Wing" segment, a New Yorker piece by Dr. Jerome Groopman, a new Rick Bragg book, a pitcher's duel when Atlanta's Greg Maddux is measuring the outside corner, and a leisurely, yet invigorating, swim in a lap-pool with open lanes.

Many an afternoon finds me at a nearby state park, walking Nicky, the family dog, affectionately labeled "our four-footed son." Moreover, when the radiologist telephones a good report, any four-year survivor of prostate cancer knows it's time for celebration and thanks. So, too, is that moment when my working-wife arrives home each evening. Ahead then is a long session of small talk, plus light-reading of newspapers and magazines. Our comfortable regimen ends with a warm bath of mediocrity, courtesy of television.

The popular, socially acceptable question that touched off this round of cheerleading has several less polite counterparts: "Is aging necessary?" Or, perhaps, "Why grow old?"

To begin, aging is not a disease; rather, aging is a process of change. We, the newest Tribal Elders, are working assiduously to become successful agers.  Lamentably, there is no Master Plan; instead we must craft our own, each one aging according to his or her signature plan.

Finally, author Marc Freedman believes: "America simply lacks a compelling vision of old age... (and) despite the great gift of longevity, the third age remains a season in search of a purpose."

My purpose is to assure you, the readers of this space, that it's okay to grow old. Indeed, enjoy it; please!