In each life there comes a time when steps taken cease to make sense, neither do they serve as naive guidance–unlike sums or Latin drills, that are always on call, just in case.  Personal history should be full of meaning, not simply full.

Aging is itself a process sometimes gentle, always cumulative in influence and impact and sometimes lulling.  Function of mind and body, physical range of motion, curtail by lesser degrees before any protest or alarm may be sounded.  The flurry and blur of unnumbered images, dreamy thought forms, which distract and entertain and confuse the inner eye, the observing one behind the eyes which look out to the river, the road and faces of others–dreams thus deferred gradually become replaced by a benign numbness when there is no seeing clearly at all–and it becomes more difficult to assay the original import of youthful fancy; recollection may become nagging and no longer possible by will–and the folly of senescence commences the occasional surprise at the unlocking o f name or place or facts once lived-like a bird flitting overhead to be momentarily enjoyed with no way to savor or study as the links to the bird, while personal, are now untethered; the self is lost to its own history.   kind of ephemeral gratefulness can settle over the traveler, like the dusting of landscape with autumn’s first gentle snow, and it is worn as a quiet weariness.  Resignation, like a metaphysical deep sigh may now present itself as a newfound capacity for wisdom not previously known or suspected by the individual.  Children watching their parents age sometimes wonder what has changed, the father becomes more tolerant and for no good and apparent reason, the mother less anxious; the dread subsumed by all the years of cold heat poured over issues too trivial to recall, and always too nominal to support any notion a life can emote largely around and about them.  The chores, the time, the chores.  It is possible, even as one ages, to be afraid is a capacity one may never lose even if it ceases to thrill, to push adrenaline quickly into vein stiff with abuse, but because so much fear, so many spikes of panic and angst unsupported by the facts has been inventoried along the way, even this feeling, the feeling of fear seems odd and out of place, not to be taken too seriously–the capacity to be afraid fades, ceases to be crisp and jolting, the frailty of one’s frame seems to know limits never suspected in halcyon days.  Sleep, dear condition of release, at day’s end becomes a sweet liqueur quenching any concerns which have attempted to derail or hijack the mind throughout the day.  The eyes roll upward to the mezzanine of the mind and are shut off from light and life for a few hours; for even as sleep assumes its station as the drug of choice, like all the capacities which are diminished with time, there is now only napping –as the body is beyond recovery.  Zest, the reward for along rest is per se another experience relegated to one’s past; instead the graying life assumes a gradual state of incomplete wakefulness and then decline, having never reached any altitude of note during the day–into an early stage of restfulness beginning each late afternoon.  The long days of summer, the bliss and joy of youthful legs and endless games with friends, becomes only the challenge left for the window shade drawn long to block slanting rays of the sun reluctant to be hidden by the rotating earth and time itself.  Legs become heavy and the flexion of the body is lost, not altogether, some slow stretching is still pleasant–the reach to the floor to grab a pillow.  There is no jumping, no quick bouncing recovery, only slow pirouettes and short steps in the direction of the current goal–the train, the curb, the house, the stairs.  Comfortable shoes become one of life’s great luxuries.