Putting a pot of water on the stove, I asked if my niece wanted a cup of tea.
“We don’t drink tea, Uncle Al,” she replied. “We’re not… old.”
From the mouths of babes, indeed.
Despite the fact that I walked circles around her and my nephew as we walked the entire Freedom Trail this summer, I knew that she wasn’t wrong. I was old, or at the very least, older – and I felt it. These days, it’s my eyesight that is deteriorating at the most rapid pace, requiring reading glasses of increasing strength in every room of the house, every drawer of the office, and every car in our garage. I’ve taken to wearing two pairs at once when my contacts aren’t in, and years of voguing have made the endless switching of spectacles just another choreographed hand-dance. The levity in that, and the opportunity for further accessorizing, doesn’t quite make up for the sadness I first felt when I noticed the advancing ocular degradation – because the first thing that became more difficult was one of my favorite things to do: reading. All the crystal-bejeweled eyeglass chains can’t make up for that.
My age group is going through such things – from blood-pressure medication to colonoscopies to gout – and it’s all a part of getting older. It hasn’t really bothered me, and I haven’t invested my existence with a dependence on physical appearance or youthful exuberance. In fact, it’s been more of a point of interest and study than worry, particularly as I’ve been diving deep into the archives of photos in anticipation of the 20th anniversary commemoration of this website.
The featured photo was taken almost twenty years ago, in Boston on a winter weekend, while the shot below was taken just a year or two ago on a similar winter day, but decades and miles apart. I don’t entirely mind the differences on the outside, because I’ve been working on the differences on the inside – but they’re worth noting, because as this site continues on its 20-year-and-counting journey, I’m starting to see the arcs and the long-range trajectories of life. Certain things sharpen, certain things decline, and certain things remain the same. The seeking and searching continue in earnest…
