Category: My Story

Technology Is Not My Friend

Sure, the Internet has a lot of benefits, but when you’re as technology-illiterate as I am, a simple email can cause a crisis. I recently got notice that my blogging service (if that’s the right term) was shutting down at the end of the month. I panicked because if I didn’t retrieve my 450 posts, they would be lost forever, and I had no idea how to save them.

Fortunately, I found someone who could help me save those precious posts, but now I’m struggling with setting up a new blog on a new service. It’s like learning a foreign language. The new blog pages are filled with strange symbols and words I don’t recognize. As my memory has deteriorated and as technology has gotten more complex, I’ve started to feel increasingly helpless. It’s not a good feeling.

I know that younger people are completely comfortable with technology. Maybe for that reason, it’s hard to find tech people who can help. Only we older ones need assistance. And when I do find guidance, I find that my language doesn’t match theirs; we’re using different phrases to describe the same thing, so I flounder, use long explanations to match their one word: “that thing where you start out and then after that you go to the next page. . . .”

Of course, I don’t know what I’d do without the Internet. Google has helped me translate my doctor’s medical terminology into something I can understand. When I need to research butterflies’ life cycle or how salamanders in a nearby lake survive in winter, the answer is at my fingertips rather than going through numerous books. What’s the number of annual visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park? Without the Internet, retrieving this information would take many phone calls, trying to find the right person, and many hours.

I’ve tried to keep up with the Internet, but as soon as I learn one new feature, another one comes along. It took me a long time to figure out what emojis signified and then to start using them. One I use frequently is the thumbs up, but I just read that younger people use this sarcastically, so now I’m worried that the thumbs up I recently sent my neighbor in an enthusiastic gesture will be misinterpreted.

I notice the withering look from the young checker at the supermarket when I take too long to figure out how to pay for my groceries. Where do I tap the bird emblem? Does it go up or down? I know I’m not the only older person who struggles with technology. AARP offers computer help, my hometown senior center has classes, and customers at the local Geek Squad are mostly seniors who need help getting their computers working. My cell phone provider, the one aimed at seniors, has customer service staff who talk kindly and slowly without condescension when I call with another stupid question.

Sure, there are seniors who can figure out the Internet with no problem, just like there are people in their 90s who still climb mountains. But I still print out my boarding pass because I’m haven’t yet set up the “wallet” on my cell phone.

Maybe it’s all relative. I think of my mother who, in her 80s, was given an iPad to play with and explore the Internet, maybe send some emails. But she was happy just to play Solitaire on her computer. That’s as high tech as she wanted to get.

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Becoming an Old Woman

For many years, especially after I turned 70, when people asked my age, I would always reply, “But I don’t feel 70 . . .  (71, etc., fill in the blank.) But over the past year, I suddenly started feeling old. Mostly I blame it on losing some physical abilities. The arthritis in my knees has gotten bad enough that I can no longer do the hikes I used to— such as climbing up steep trails to alpine lakes. Since my knee operation last April, I’ve slowly increased the distance I can go, but now I have to be satisfied with walks around the neighborhood rather than mountain hikes. If I try longer hikes, I get winded easily.

Meanwhile, my spinal stenosis is diagnosed as “moderate,” a common condition among older people, and now I’m careful when I lean over to garden or get dishes out of the dishwasher. I’ve crossed over some threshold—the one from moving effortlessly without thinking about my body—jumping on a bike or lifting a heavy load—to being careful. I’ve had to get rid of the image of myself as strong and capable of performing any task that was needed. 

I watch younger people bound up stairs without a thought, while I slowly take each step, planting my foot in the right position so not to feel pain.  “Careful” is my motto, followed by “slow and steady.” For someone who has always loved moving—hiking, swimming, kayaking, snowshoeing–it’s hard to adjust to a slower pace. And I’ve given up skiing altogether.

In an airport recently, arriving late one night, I found myself in a swarm of travelers apparently eager to get home. I tried to keep up with the crowd’s fast pace, but I feared that if I slowed down, I would be mowed over. With the world moving so fast, it scares me to travel now.

Just over the past six months, the arthritis in my hands has gotten worse. Every door handle is a challenge to open. Turning my key in the car ignition is painful, and so is typing–my physical therapist advises using voice-to-text. When I cut vegetables, I use a padded knife and try using my left hand instead, but it’s awkward and I worry about cutting myself. When I open a jar, I have to think first: would this hurt my right or left hand more? How do I avoid the most pain? 

I grow more crooked every day, even though I do exercises to combat that, like laying on the floor and stretching out my arms. I convince myself that I won’t be like my father, who, in his later years, was so bent over that he only saw the floor when he was walking. But then I catch myself in a storefront window and am surprised to see someone who resembles an old woman painfully stooped over.

When I get up in the morning, I slowly unfold my body, find my feet and then push myself up, feeling all the aches and pains that belong to an aging body. I walk to the bathroom holding on to the dresser to steady myself. I don’t bound out of bed anymore.

It’s strange to have to constantly think about how my body works, but on a certain level it’s comforting, because I’m taking care of my body—as lovingly as possible. I no longer move heedlessly or carelessly. When I feel pain in my hands, I massage them with cream or carefully exercise them. When my knees start hurting when I walk, I’ll find a way to shift my weight to lessen the load and pain.

When I look at my hands now, I see my mother’s, thin and gnarled. What arises is a tender memory of her, now gone five years, and tenderness toward my own aging body.

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Desperately Seeking Community

When we moved to this subdivision, some 30 years ago, my friend and I were the youngest on the block, surrounded on either side by neighbors who were 20 years older than us. They were friendly, almost too friendly to the point of nosiness, but I enjoyed our conversations over the fence. Now we’re the oldest ones on the block and I long for that camaraderie.

While we’re not exactly shunned, no one seems interested in our lives. I’ll go out of my way to ask the young couple next door about their new baby daughter, exclaim how fast she’s growing. They’re polite, even friendly up to a point, but it’s obvious that they’re not interested in the lives of two old women. The family across the street totally ignores us, not even bothering to wave when we’re both out shoveling snow or gardening. Another house has become a vacation rental, while next door a good friend and her husband just moved to a different city.

I strongly feel the loss of community–one where we connect to others around us and where we’re not alone. I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else. Walking down the street, I’d wave to Mrs. Ross, see Mr. Fox in his backyard gardening, stop across the street to see if my friend Sally wanted to play or next door if our other friend Darlene wanted to join us. My parents were friends with most of the adults on the block and frequently socialized with them. That was the era (the 1950s) when people dressed up in their finest clothes to drink martinis in the bars that everyone was building in their basements.

In a two-block area, I never lacked for someone to play with or children to babysit. The boys played softball in the school fields beyond our houses. My girlfriends and I gathered together to play board games, ride to the swimming pool or walk to the ice skating rink in winter.

But when we all grew up and left home, my parents moved from the big house where they raised our family to another neighborhood where they didn’t know anyone. Maybe by that time the culture had shifted or no one was interested in a couple in their 70s. My parents complained to me that people weren’t friendly. When my father asked the man next door, in his 30s, to do him a favor every morning when the neighbor went for a jog—to throw his newspaper from the sidewalk to the front door—he refused.

I can see why my parents finally decided to move to a retirement community. They made friends quickly and enjoyed meals with their new friends. My father, a consummate musician, was delighted to play the piano for an appreciative audience during happy hour.

Today, in this world full of divisiveness, where an increasing number of people eat alone or spend all their social time online, it feels like community is needed more than ever, whether it’s among neighbors, spiritual or church groups, or book clubs. Our generation was lucky to experience togetherness when we were young.

So maybe more than other age groups, we appreciate a shared world, even if it’s something as simple as hiking with other seniors, playing cards at the senior center, or joining others for a yoga or tai chi class. When I shop in the grocery store, I notice it’s we older ones who nod to each other or even, amazingly, talk to each other (in simple phrases, like “did you notice the price has gone up on this cereal?”). I have a friend who, when she swims in the local pool, starts conversations with others. When friends and I go for a hike, we make sure to greet everyone who comes down the trail, even when they have their earbuds on.

And now friends are starting a small movement by protesting together. It’s these small actions that can make a difference, that hopefully might lead to something bigger, a society composed of people who want to be together and help each other.

Can we start a crusade? An uprising of community? We have nothing to lose by trying.

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