Who am I?

This is what I wrote this month for my writers/ readers salon.

Who am I ?

That has been the question for me ever since I retired,  but now I have a new wrinkle.

About a month ago,   I was eating dinner with Audrey and she confided that she thinks that her dad, my ex husband who is year younger than me, is “slipping.”

So, I asked the obvious next questions – “Do you think I am slipping?”

And she looked at me with an exasperated face  and said (as if I were an idiot!) .  “Well, yeah.”

She told me that I told Steve about the fan I purchased twice the evening before and once before that.  That was her proof. 

This has been the subject of many jokes and also a deep worry underneath all the activity of my current life.

 I reported to her sisters what she had said and was pleased that they were sympathetic to me and critical of her.  That was comforting.

Unfortunately, the very next night I was cleaning the kitchen and running  tap water into dirty dishes and, like Martha in the Bible “distracted by many things.”   I went into the family room and watched TV for at least an hour.  Returning to the kitchen I found  water overflowing onto the counter, into the  drawers, puddling on he floor.  It was a real sopping mess and took a long time to clean it all up.

Before I even took it on, however,  I just sat in my chair and cried because surely this is definitive proof – “I’m slipping.”

And then, just to add a little more fuel to the fire,   Saturday I told my friends Cathy and Sara what Audrey said  and they laughed politely  and  finally  admitted that I had already told them this story a week ago.  

I write this as I prepare to leave my home and move into a retirement community.  My niece Gillian, who used to work in a place like this cannot believe I am going.  “Aunt Margot”  She says, “It is full of old people and you are way too young.”  

Again – the question – who am I?  Am I a  vital seventy year old who is active working part time and doing volunteer work or a wrinkled old lady  who cannot remember words, repeats stories and leaves the water running?

Who am I?  Am I slipping? Am I steady?  Am I too old?  Am I too young?

These questions continue to stir within me.  And I live in a mixture  of dread and wonder.