Old Age: A Jar of Preserves & A Pillbox Hat

Miss Beverly was the first patient of the day.

She arrived, as always, a few minutes early, dressed quietly in a two piece navy suit with a polka dot blouse, pearl earrings and navy pumps.  A small pillbox hat sat on her wispy white hair which curled around her ears defiantly.  She gave me a bright smile as she signed in with one trembling hand, the other clutched her shiny, plastic purse with a death grip.  

No one prepared me for being this old, she remarked more to herself than to me, My Stars, how intolerable my handwriting has become!  

You're doing fine, I assured her, Just sign for me at the bottom and come on in.

She's one of the lucky ones, I think.  At eighty-eight, she still has all her faculties and all her limbs, walks unassisted, still drives, and manages to live within her income.   She lives alone, save for an old tomcat she invited in one day, and while this makes her children fuss and worry and sometimes hover, she holds onto her independence as tightly as she does her purse.  Her little cottage in an older and very respectable part of town is paid for and neatly maintained.  On warm spring days, she likes to tell me, when her arthritis isn't too bad, she still gardens a bit, roses mostly and azaleas which need far less care.  She doesn't find life easy anymore, but she does find it precious.  The only thing I've ever heard her complain about is her handwriting - her hands are pale, blue veined and fragile looking, her rings no longer quite stay in place and it's become hard for her to grip a pen - it annoys her to be what she refers to as un-precise in her person.

Oh, well, she says with a resigned sigh, I don't suppose poor penmanship will be enough to keep me from The Promised Land.  Surely the Good Lord will overlook my scrawl but still, my dear, and she gives me a wink, I do miss being able to read my own hand.

She has brought a glass jar of preserves on this visit and a wax papered tin of biscuits.  She hands them to me though the window and makes me promise to see that the doctor shares, it being so close to the holidays.  The label on the preserves is illegible and slightly smeared and, she confesses with a small frown, she can't exactly remember whether she made apple butter or mayhaw - she thinks about this for a moment then shrugs her thin shoulders, as if to say what does it matter - and takes a seat in the waiting room.  

"Old age is like a plane flying through a storm.  Once you're aboard there's nothing you can do." ~ Golda Meir