This summer I’ll mark a significant birthday, and for the past few months my mailbox has been flooded with brokers trying to sell me Medicare plans. Yep, it’s that birthday, and the idea of it is impacting how I feel about life. It’s a clear demarcation of the Before Times and the After Times. The one-foot-in-the-grave times, if I’m being dramatic.

This is the stage of life when many of us worry every time we can’t think of a word or forget where we left something. Thoughts are increasingly ephemeral. (Why did I come in this room?) The haunting specter of possible dementia is always lingering in the back of my mind. Losing my independence is one of my biggest fears but I try not to dwell on it.

One thing that’s a positive in my corner is that I’ve had a lifelong love of learning, and I enjoy doing crosswords and other word puzzles to keep my mind agile. But I do sometimes wonder if there are declines in my brain function that I’m not yet aware of. Today I had a moment that restored some of my confidence though, after I had to learn a new plug-in for a WordPress website that I manage. I had procrastinated for a couple weeks because I just didn’t feel like struggling through yet another technology learning curve. But today I sat down and forced myself up that learning curve, and after a couple hours felt euphoric that I had figured it out. I’ve still got it, baby!

But it’s not just mental decline that I have to be concerned about now, of course. Every day it seems I deal with new aches and pains and mysterious injuries that I don’t recall happening. I always make a list of things to discuss with my doctor before my regular appointments, and lately I find myself filtering them by priority because there are so many. There are those that need immediate attention and those that can wait, because I know the doctor only has so much time for each appointment. If I tried to talk to her about everything at once I’d be in there all day!

For good or for bad, I’ve started using YouTube and general internet searching to find tips on physical therapy exercises I can try at home. My search history is full of things like “sudden pain on the front of my ankle” and “itching ear driving me crazy” and “burning pain on outside of elbow.” (I think this one might be radial tunnel syndrome, which is similar to tennis elbow, I guess. I might have caused this by indulging in too many marathon knitting sessions, so I’m going to call it “knitter’s elbow” until I get checked out by the doctor next week.) I know not to rely too heavily on internet advice, but it does help to know that my problems are shared by lots of others.

Conversations with my friends almost always include aging concerns or updates on our latest ailments. Sometimes I pause and wonder how I got to this point in the blink of an eye. One day you’re a young, vibrant girl who thinks nothing of riding her bike for two hours after working an 8-hour day, and the next you’re a gray-haired woman with achy knees who can’t sleep through the night. Life really does seem to speed up as you get older; my sense of the passage of time feels distorted. Growing old is such a mind-blowing experience, and something that a person can’t really understand until it happens to them. I still get startled when I catch a glimpse of myself in a store mirror; who is that old lady and how did she get my clothes?!

Retirement advice always stresses the importance of having a sense of purpose to your days after you no longer have the structure of a regular job. Having spent five years living in Japan, I have a fondness for anything related to the culture of that fascinating island nation and lately I’ve been drawn to the Japanese notion of ikigai.*

But contrary to the way my culture thinks about a sense of purpose, to the Japanese, ikigai isn’t necessarily about something grand. Your ikigai could be as simple as maintaining a garden or volunteering as a poll worker to support your community. What’s important is that it gives you a reason to get up in the morning and do something positive for your mental and physical health.

My ikigai obviously involves learning and writing about the bugs in my native garden, but while I’m waiting for the insect explosion that will happen later this summer, there are other things that support my sense of purpose. One of them is my knitting, because it’s well known that making things by hand can be meaningful and creatively fulfilling. I love everything about making my own garments with beautiful wools, and I’ve been happy to make hats for the unhoused in my community too. Whatever I’m making, I look forward to any time I can spend with my yarn and needles. It feels good to maintain ties to a craft with such a rich history around the world.

Each spring as I enjoy the ephemeral wildflowers, I’m reminded that our lives are also fleeting and that we should enjoy every moment while we’re here. I’m so grateful that I seem to be coming back to my writing after struggling to find a reason to write for the past year. My little space on the internet has meant a great deal to me for the past two decades, and I’m glad you’re here with me.

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*I was using talk-to-text to draft this post, and when I said “ikigai,” it typed “icky guy.”  That gave me a good chuckle!

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The flower photos in this post are all spring ephemerals I photographed at Goll Woods State Nature Preserve in Archbold, Ohio. They only last a short time, so I always try to take in their beauty while I can. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.