VENERATION

Whether I like it or not, I have stepped into old age! And I don't even wear old lady shoes. It's true I no longer wear stiletto heels and ankle strap sandals, and that at my thrice weekly Jazzercise sessions my feet are shod in clunky Rockports instead of cute Keds, but the fact that I just purchased my first pair of toeless pantyhose should count for something, right? Why toeless pantyhose? To show off my painted toenails, of course, though I have to admit that my belly and my butt need the control top. I was going to say tummy and derriere, however in old age euphemisms are no longer derigueur.

How does the above signify my decent into a state that calls for my veneration? Well my daughter has started protesting that "that" is too heavy for me to lift and that my visits to her home in Sacramento should end before nightfall or turn into a sleepover because at I shouldn't be driving at night.

Last week my grand niece, a junior hi high school, called to set up an appointment to interview me for a school project about what life was like in the the olden days during the great depression. Her mother, my niece informs me she will come and transport me from Stockton to Santa Cruz and back on my next visit, as she doesn't want me driving on the Freeway or trying to negotiate Highway 17 over the hill.

The list goes on and on and brings back memories of similar conversations with my mother about the appropriateness of her washing down her kitchen walls let alone ceiling. What if she fell off the chair she was using as a stepstool? And spending all afternoon in the broiling sun weeding her backyard vegetable garden could bring on a sun stroke, and a home grown tomato wasn't worth that, I reminded her.

Now my neighbors gather like mother hens at the foot of my stepladder clucking about the precariousness of pruning my own shrubs and telling me I should let my lawn man clean my rain gutters. What goes round comes round. This time around it is called concern and veneration whether I like it or not.