On Aging
They say age is just a number. I believe there's a lot of truth to that, although genetics, life choices, and health play a role. Through my life, I've almost always found myself in groups with people 20-30 years older than me: in my young mother's group with my first children; in the big band I played in, in my writers' group where I and two others, were the 'youngsters' in our late thirties and early forties. In my 20+ years in the group, I have seen some of them reach their mid- and even late- 90s and continue to thrive.
In both music and writing, I believe keeping active physically and mentally has a lot to do with not aging.
While I find it funny that I somehow never managed to be among people of my own age, I appreciate learning from those with more experience than me, and being inspired by them.
In our Glenmirral Beta Site, as one of my sons calls it, here in the Appalachians, I saw it again yesterday. Terry helped us regularly on our farm until he wanted to work more on his own homestead. The day I hired him, after I hired him, he sort of winked at me and 'confessed,' I'm seventy-five. He was turning seventy-six just days later.
In the months he worked six days a week, he teased me that I was paying him to learn homesteading and get good workouts--that he really should be paying me. At his age, my grandparents were doing crosswords and watching Wheel of Fortune. He was building new cages inside our chicken barn for our young chicks and wrestling a young ram to the ground, holding it down, so I could treat its bleeding horn.
Yesterday, he came to help me get rams to the meat processing facility. I had already isolated the three that would go, with some help from my husband, and built the chute that would guide them from the isolation area to the gate where we had backed up the livestock trailer.
In theory, these three rams would simply follow the siren song of the rattle of feed in the feed bucket right into the livestock trailer. And we laughed and we laughed! Yeah, nothing goes according to plan. Not in life and especially not on a farm.
When Terry, now age 77, arrived, I had a few finishing touches to put on the chute. October in the Appalachians can still be very warm--and it was. I was already not doing well from three days working in the hot sun, despite much water and many breaks in the cool house, when he arrived. He helped me do the last tying in of the fencing to the posts along the chute.
Cinnamon, my beautiful auburn ram, followed the food bucket into the trailer, as planned. Salt, one of our pure white rams, and Brownie Junior, were much more suspicious--or shall we say, copped on to our devious plan. Terry got them out of the milking area and into the chute, and closed the gate to the milking area behind them. But despite wanting food, they simply would not follow Cinnamon to the trailer and the luscious feast awaiting them there.
I was working from the outside of the chute, Terry from inside, trying to encourage them toward the food awaiting them. They were having none of it. Terry ended up trying to deal with them until I could figure out a way to get into the chute to help him. At 77, he was wrestling two 100 pound rams as they tried to evade him. Salt got himself caught in the netting of the electric fencing (not electrified at that pont so it was just netting) while Brownie Junior managed to leap over the netting and wire fencing that Salt had collapsed, and escape into the bigger field.
Terry worked to free Salt from the netting, while also holding him down, while I tried to find a way into the chute to help. The boards on the outer fence were not sufficient to support my weight. We'd blocked many other ways in, in order to guide the sheep to the trailer. But I finally got in, got my legs around Salt's body and held his horns while Terry tried to free him from the netting he'd gotten himself hopelessly entangled in.
Hopeless is the word. The sun was pounding down. I was not feeling well. And I knew from previous experience that even though Salt finally seemed docile, he might suddenly throw his head up and try to bolt at any moment--and his horns or head could catch either me or Terry if he did so.
Last time I loaded rams for processing, I panicked Amenhotep, who outweighed me, and he knocked me flat on my back and trampled me, running straight over me toe to head. Sheep are not aggressive at all. But I've learned a healthy respect for what can happen when they get scared.
We finally cut the netting, it was so tangled around Salt's head, neck, nose, and horns, that there was no way to disentangle it. Once he was freed, we started working him toward the trailer. Terry pulled him from his horns, while I pushed him from behind.
Here's where we learn what we're really capable of--or when to draw the line. Years ago, I marched a mile in 102 degree heat the day after being trampled by a horse. I learned just how much I could do. Yet we need to learn over and over. It was just me and Terry. I had deliberately spaced the work over many days, knowing I couldn't do it all at once in the heat. Yet I was still on the brink of collapse.
The last time we loaded sheep into the trailer was when Terry bought ten of our ewes and Marshell helped load them. Although three of us worked together opening and closing gates, I counted on Marshell to dive in and literally pick them up and carry them if need be. Marshell wasn't here this time and I had to step up. I found I was able to get in there, lift Salt's hind legs, despite being very much on the brink of heat exhaustion because it needed to be done and hoist him into the trailer to help Terry who was pulling him from the front.
When to draw the line? I was scheduled to bring three rams in. Even though we had several hours clearance before we had to have them there, I drew the line at trying to retrieve the third ram, who had escaped.
With the rams loaded, Terry hauled the livestock trailer 40 miles to the meat processing facility. Terry got the livestock trailer backed up to the loading dock. The employees there helped. We then opened the gates of our livestock trailer. Cinnamon and Salt needed some encouragement to bolt out into the small space between trailer and scale. Salt ran first onto the scale. They weighed him and marked his ear to identify him. Cinnamon spent that time knowing he wanted to bolt somewhere--but there was really nowhere to bolt--until Salt was finally let off the scale and he dashed onto it, quite sure he'd outwitted us.
Terry and I went into the office--a polite word for a chilly space where multiple tasks take place. I chose how I wanted various parts processed and we headed home.
The day makes me reflect again on how we spend our years. I've often heard that people die when they stop having purpose. I have seen people in these 'elder' years with great purpose--writing books, playing music, starting homesteads, wrestling sheep. The last I saw of Buz Whiteley, the leader of the big band I played in, in Poulsbo, Washington, he was in his 90s and still directing the band he'd formed decades ago, from his wheelchair. One of my sons' godfathers is a drummer in a jazz combo. We last saw him drumming, singing, and dancing at a performance in his late 70s, full of joy and energy. It was a beautiful sight!
I've been blessed to know many people who have been healthy and strong into their 70s, 80s, and even 90s, and in every case, it's that they have purpose.
What is our purpose for the world? What are we contributing? Yes, some of us will die young regardless, but I believe having purpose leads to a longer and healthier life. What is your purpose?
If you like this article, you may also like:
Literature & Life: Throwing Stones
Eating Medieval: Cookies of Joy
Medieval Devotions, Moose, and the Four Last Things
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