Image by Chen from Pixabay

**This is an initial blog of a series I am starting, on Aging and Agility?  Healthy Aging?  Welcome to the Evening?  I don’t have a title yet, but you get the idea.  Thoughts and readings I share on the process of living and celebrating and coping with the last third of life.   I commence with the Sphinx’s riddle to Oedipus and use that as a framework for this first blog.**

“What walks on 4 legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?”

The Sphinx to Oedipus

Morning 

Eight days before my birth, J. P. Richardson, 28, Buddy Holly, 22 and Richie Valens 17, were killed in a plane crash on “The Day the Music Died.”  I was due on Valentine’s Day, but couldn’t wait and arrived early.  On February 11, my first day,  The Cincinnati Redlegs team changed the team name back to the Reds.  In 1953, they chose the name Redlegs to avoid any confusion with “the Russian Reds.”

I was blissfully unaware of any of these issues for the next decade or more.  I joined my two older sisters and parents in the suburbs.  I share my birthday with Thomas Edison and a decade later, Jennifer Anniston joined us on February 11.

Mid-Morning

I attended Elementary School during the Space Age, drawing pictures of Apollo rockets and watching the moon landing on TV as 10-year-old.  I wrote my first research paper on Pollution with illustrations and a cover in 5th grade.  A year later the first Earth Day April 21, 1970 was celebrated.  Growing up near the Hudson River, I remember the stench of its pollution and I was shocked by the 1978 articles reporting the tragedy of Love Canal near Niagra, NY.  The development was built on property sold by the chemical company for a dollar.  They did not know barrels of toxic agents were buried there, leaching out.  Then residents developed cancers and ailments.

Noon

I worked as a summer camp director in 1981, and I co-led a group of teens on a 5 day canoe and camping trip on the now clean Hudson River.  Magnificent!  I still wouldn’t drink that water, but it amazed me that it really was safe to paddle canoes.

I grew up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud in the Cold War.  My older sisters had to “duck and cover” in elementary school, but that nonsense was dropped by the time I went to kindergarten.  On the good side, nobody was shooting school children back then!  My schools’ doors were unlocked and unmonitored during the school day.

A High School class on ICBMs (InterContinental Ballistic Missiles) was terrifying to lesson.  I quickly realized the only good news was that I lived 10 miles from Ground Zero.   I felt some small comfort that living next door to NYC meant I would survive about 1 minute after a nuke was dropped.  At least it would be quick.

Afternoon

I attended graduate school in the 1980s and worked my first career as a Presbyterian Pastor for 13 years.  In the 90s I returned to graduate school and then became a Psychologist.  I was a Hospice bereavement coordinator, volunteering leading grief support groups for people with AIDS and their partners.  It was the Death Sentence era of AIDS, before any effective treatments were developed.  In the late 90s, I came out as a lesbian, and married the love of my life in 1997.  I opened my part time private practice in 1999.  That practice became full time by 2004 and continues.  Today, my marriage is dissolving, and divorce is in process.

Evening

This past February, I turned 64!  A whole new third of my life lies ahead of me, my “golden years,” the Evening phase.  Retirement was something I never thought I could afford. my Graduate student loans continue for 2 more years, when I achieve 25 years repayment.   Finally, the end of those loans is in sight. I am a year from qualifying for Medicare, saving me private insurance cost I have paid for years.  Then, Social Security is on the horizon, something my dad told us girls would not last until we needed it.  I qualify for full benefits in in 2.5 years!

So potential retirement is an unexpected positive.  And becoming single again allows me to reconnect with the single woman I was before my marriage.  These major shifts contribute to my confusion as well as excitement I feel as I enter my senior citizen phase.  Instead of my usual paralyzing, exhausting anxiety,  I feel centered and calm in this transition.  What a welcome improvement!   And it looks like I may reap the fruits of my labors in the form of Medicare, Social Security and my 401K, and be free from the cost of paying all health insurance and loan repayments.

How is it I am not sleepless with worries or anxious about my future alone?  I have no clear idea.  But aging into these government programs I have paid into since I was 18 years old, gives me some hope of economic security.  Now I can choose to work in my last third of my life, as much or as little as I want.  There is the possibility of balance emotionally, socially and financially.  I can cut back hours of seeing clients only and focus more of my time into writing.  And music.  I purchased a “tired” 98 year old baby grand piano last summer, living alone in a house that felt spacious.  For the first time in 45 years, I practice piano daily again.

I studied piano from 8 – 18 years old, and in adulthood I had a spinet and another time I owned a behemoth of an upright piano.  But I was focused on career development and figuring out “adulting” and never practiced with any regularity. Married life was too busy and crowded with career and relationship and just stuff.  There was no free time to even miss piano, life was so busy.  And I gave away those pianos.

Playing piano is opening up my inner world, helping me reconnect with my teenage years of intense piano instruction, my young adult, single years when I picked melodies from CDs and the radio on my piano.  Playing piano allows me to observe my brain becoming “plastic” and relearn old neural networks that are overgrown with rocks and weeds.  The sound vibrations move through my cells, my body, and not just my ears.  The vibration soothes my spirit.

I want to share this journey with readers, developing my thoughts and responses to my life, and to to look at research and writings on successful aging and what keeps the brain active and healthy.  I welcome questions, thoughts and stories from readers, as well as suggestions of topics.  Let’s explore how to (continue) creating our individual lives, friendships and community that keeps our minds learning, socializing, and our bodies exercising and connecting with each other for human touch and comfort.

Christine C. Cantrell, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Prism of Possibilities Psychotherapy
248-591-2888
www.christinecantrell.com
[email protected]