It’s the autumn equinox. The sun rises rusty yellow, low-angle light catching prairie particles floating like fog on the horizon. We have more deer in our pastures than horses these days. A month ago, I mucked at dawn to avoid the heat. We didn’t just have a hot summer. Colorado just had its hottest in 132 years. Even as I mention it, I know so many had it worse, with high temperatures still lingering. Climate change takes all the fun out of complaining about the weather.
The days start later now. This part feels like mean-girl bragging. We’ve had a cool week of sweatshirt mornings. Every September for the last fifty-three years, the Washington rain gods have sent me the birthday gift of a few moist days to remind me of the rainforest. Like I could ever forget.
So, I’m a year older. Cue my annual birthday report from the shower, the place of truth-telling. It was over a decade ago, when in the middle of the night, somebody switched the skin on my arms with the skin of a significantly older woman. I discovered the crime while in the shower. It’s happened again, but now it’s a reptilian hijacking. My skin suddenly has a weirder texture. More dried freckling, more of that phantom crimson bruising, but definitely reptilian. At least it contrasts well with the pale scars.
As the skin on my arms gets looser, my shoes get tighter. If my feet continue to grow, will I need to buy men’s shoes? Maybe the worst bit is that my hair has been thinning. There is a growing spot on the back of my head that is balding especially thin. I apparently only look at the back of my head annually, so I can live with it. But I need to pick my teeth more now, too. I’m not growing hair in my ears yet, but am I turning into your weird uncle?
I remember my mother’s fingernails were thick and opaque. Mine are like hooves, too. My father’s hand, caught in a baler, healed with one finger joint twisted. Hyaluronic acid has unfrozen mine, but it still has the twist from hanging on to a lead rope I should have let go. But isn’t that the thing about horsewomen? We are no good at letting go. We barely try.
Mister spreads his ears wide. They are his best feature. He says, what shall we do for our anniversary? It’s our Got-Each-Other-Day. Five years and almost 40,000 road trip miles later, we reminisce during our morning ritual. Jolene is outside watching the sunrise while we noodle, reading the news. He has aged this year. Physically more than chronologically. He acts like a cantankerous old fart. Mister corrects me. He says he’s an old soul. Whatever, we pack up and head to Starbucks for pup cups all around.
After losing my hearing, I switched over to an iPhone because my audiologist said their hearing technology was the most advanced. It felt like going to the dark side, but I did it. If you call me, you know I have not mastered answering it yet. But my hearing aids no longer work on their own, so I plug in and flounder on.
I would love to have the freedom to hate technology like every other horsewoman out there. I have to keep up or give up. We’re no good at either.
Recently, a friend told me Apple has a new smartwatch with Audio Intelligence designed specifically for deaf and hard-of-hearing folks. The idea of owning one made my eyes sink so far into my head that all you could see were squinty splotches that resembled the backside of a cat. Two cats actually.
My big fear is that I can’t hear people coming in the house. Or when there is a kerfuffle in the barn. Nights are too silent. That’s the scary part.
The watch has Live Rewind that lets you instantly pull up a text transcription. It takes notes and voice memos. It has Sound Recognition for “critical environmental noises” and then sends vibrations and pop-up alerts to your wrist.
The watch listens for fifteen sounds, including sirens, car horns, glass breaking, dogs barking, and water running, to name a few. I clicked every box, not that I even have a doorbell. It turns out that the dogs don’t bark that much. In the first few hours, I got seventy individual warnings about car horns. I live on a dirt road in the country. No one honks.
The second most common warning was coughing. Thanks, but the person coughing was me.
Running water is the kind of low sound that I can’t hear. I’ll say this delicately, but it got very personal. Think of the many ways that water can run in the bathroom. This will alert you to each of them.
A torrent of false positives followed: the watch warned of a knock at the door for both using a fly swatter and closing a medicine cabinet. Glass-breaking warnings came while putting away the silverware and when I ate a cracker. Even when I had a bite of watermelon. Then I took a picture of my watermelon because it’s going out of season soon.
The watch is expensively disappointing. It seems to only warn me about sounds within arm’s reach. Worse, it’s like having an inner voice who’s bossy, but dull and repetitive. Like driving with someone who taps you while reading roadside business signs. Dry cleaners. Liquor. Sofas for Less.
I should probably be frustrated by this, but I remember Stephen Hawking speaking through a computer. It gave him his voice back. Surely this technology will eventually be more helpful. Apple promises updates by the end of the year. I’ll be waiting, along with the wait for the pond to return from drought. For the sun and the birds to return from their southern migration. For now, the earth and I rest.
They market this watch to elite athletes and health fanatics to track their numbers. Its hearing aspects are secondary, and no better than mine. But it rates last night’s sleep and keeps track of my heart rate. I get warnings to stand up if I write for too long. It says my activity level is good. What if being 72 is a lateral equivalent of being an elite athlete? Spare us all the lycra.
This year has sprinted by with an ominous warning. Summers are not endless. I can let go of dead weight, or have it stolen in the night. Better to act as if some of this had my consent. Better to see a horizon than a dead end.
I didn’t expect to relish this post-adult age, but it fits me like Crocs and baggy sweatshirts. More comfortable than adolescence, not as ambitious as adulthood. But not any less persistent in the ways that matter. None of this lessens my loudmouth party-pooper nature. Dogs and horses like me this way. We’re aging cantankerously together.
Mister asked if we can stay home for a while now. He’s investigating a criminal connection between the nefarious feral barn cat and a pack of marauding Magpies. We could watch the leaves turn, he says. Then ease our way to spring. Maybe he is a mystic after all. Jolene, who cannot tolerate such whiny dillydallying, says, can we at least take the ducks for a walk?
It’s the same answer to all the questions at this age. If not now, when?
…
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