Will you still love me when I'm 64?<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): The setting is a coffee shop in a Bandung hotel
\nlast Saturday night.<\/p>\n
"So you have massage downstairs?" The inquirer's voice is
\nmale, older, foreign (perhaps southern European?), but the
\nunderlying intent crosses all borders and cultures.<\/p>\n
Respondent, female, local, is polite, sweet but firm. Yes, he
\ncan get a rub down at the fitness center on the third floor.<\/p>\n
Before she can move out of harm's way, would-be Casanova does
\naway with the formalities and says what he really means, any
\ninhibitions cast aside by the big glass of whisky he is guzzling.<\/p>\n
"You know, I have to have a massage from a beautiful woman. I
\nmay be an old man in years, but I'm still a young man in body."<\/p>\n
Nothing more is heard from the woman, but she may have been
\nthinking, "Well, darling, why don't you just stay here and give
\nme a history lesson on what it was like way back then, when we
\ndidn't have CD players and the web referred to things spiders
\nmade. It would help me understand my parents better."<\/p>\n
Harsh, I know, because, deep down, all that drunken old man
\nwas trying to say was, "Look, I may be covered in age spots and
\nmost of my body parts have headed south, but there is still life
\nin the old boy yet."<\/p>\n
When we are young, in the bloom of youth and with the whole
\nworld at our feet, we don't think, or want to think, that older
\npeople have romantic feelings too. When you are 18, somebody aged
\n25 seems mature, 40-somethings are positively middle aged
\n(they've really lived) and anyone over 50 is ancient and should
\nbe sitting in a rocking chair, hugging their grandkids, like the
\nold smiling man on that insurance commercial.<\/p>\n
We assume "that" part of their life is brought to a quiet
\nclose when they reach the age of 50, or else they could probably
\ndo themselves a life-threatening injury.<\/p>\n
When we start to really experience life for ourselves --
\nmeaning we are also getting old -- we realize that it is not
\ntrue. After all, there is no unspoken voluntary age of retirement
\nfrom the ranks of those who want to love and be loved, defined by
\nwhen our hair starts turning gray and those 32-inch waist jeans
\nwe wore in college cannot get past our knees.<\/p>\n
And it drives us to do strange things in the name of love,
\nwhich most of the time means trying our darnedest to look
\n"younger". Some of us dye our hair, take up fitness classes to
\nfight the forces of gravity and, if we have the money in the
\nbank, do a little "cosmetic enhancement". A colleague swears that
\nmen past the age of 40 suddenly discover the power of cologne
\nwhen their physical charms start disappearing.<\/p>\n
Ages which once upon a time seemed over the hill (better start
\nlooking into those retirement plans) suddenly do not seem too old
\nafter all. You turn 34, a marker for the descent into middle age.
\nWell, Julia Roberts is 34 and she doesn't look half bad. Creeping
\nup into the late 50s? Michael Douglas is in that ballpark, and
\nlook who he landed as a bride.<\/p>\n
Some of us, like Michael, also look for younger partners, and
\nin doing so we often change our perspective on the right and
\nproper behavior of older people.<\/p>\n
Years ago, there was a much-married admiral who went and
\nmarried a quite beautiful TV actress young enough to be his
\ndaughter (if I'm not mistaken she was actually younger than some
\nof his children).<\/p>\n
She lived in an apartment across from where I worked in South
\nJakarta at the time, and then she went off to Australia and
\nunceremoniously dumped the admiral for a younger man. At the
\ntime, my feelings were probably along the lines of "Well, what
\ndid he expect?" (let's just say he is no Ali Sadikin in the looks
\ndepartment). Now, a little older myself, there is a bit of pity
\nmixed in with the feeling that he had it coming to him.<\/p>\n
True love, as they say, comes down to sticking together
\nthrough thick and thin, or, probably, as we get older, thin and
\nthen thick. It weathers all storms, creases out the wrinkles in
\nour relationships and lives on despite the fact that we will one
\nday, inevitably, no matter what we try to do to ourselves, come
\nto look like a shadow of our former selves.<\/p>\n
The meaning of it came to me during a call to my mother a
\ncouple of weeks ago. An inquiry about how my Dad is (he recently
\nunderwent radical prostate surgery) was met with a simple aside
\nthat he was in the bathroom. Learning to pee again.<\/p>\n
On the other end of the line, I winced a little at the
\nstatement. But then they have been married for nearly 40 years
\nand have gone through so much together, the good and the bad.
\nDealing with this, at their age, is no doubt just another step in
\ntheir journey of growing old and loving together.<\/p>\n
-- Bruce Emond<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/will-you-still-love-me-when-im-64-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }