STEPPING INTO A LIBERATED AGE…

Just the other day we were sitting in front of the TV watching some serial, when they interrupted the programme with an announcement, which went something like this…` Silver Alert! An elderly man has gone missing. Anyone who knows his whereabouts please contact….’ His photo and details flashed in front of our eyes. He was 65. Yiannis looked at me and said…` They’re calling us elderly now.’… That came as bit of a shock. We’re in our sixties but… ELDERLY?… When did we become that word? But what does elderly mean anyway? I googled it and several websites appeared with a myriad of definitions, confusing, contradictory and uncomplimentary, with shifting numerical thresholds as to what constitutes ELDERLY. When does middle age come to a screeching halt and elderly starts hobbling downhill?  Then there are all these concessions for those who won’t stay in the box, like in the case of world leaders… …where 70 is the new 50. The world has never been short of these…mature politicians… never referred to as elderly. Some were even believed to have steered the course of powerful nations with Alzheimer fogged brains, making bold and daring decisions, where their younger counterparts would shudder in hesitation. This reminds me of what Bernard Shaw once said…` Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen in the world.’ But when it comes to mature women in positions of power, Emerson sums it up so well…` The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddle.’

On a more serious note, however, what about the rest of us, the commoners, neither politicians nor fiddles? When do they slap the word elderly on us? After some more googling and skimming through the net, I’ve come up with some fuzzy guidelines. You’re ELDERLY… an extremely ageist term… or you’re a SENIOR… equally ageist and crushingly  patronizing … both being euphemisms for just PLAIN OLD… if you have limited regenerative abilities, you’re susceptible to illnesses, you’re retired and living off the state, you’ve got wrinkles and your laugh lines are now called crow’s feet, or you’re ancient, hoary, been around, declining, long in tooth, no spring chicken and over the hill…At this point, I stopped looking and pondered reinventing the definitions.

Why don’t we see this age as the AGE OF LIBERATION? We’re done with all that feeding and bringing up children and balancing them with our careers and all that jazz. We’ve now evolved into LIBERADS …short for LIBERATED ADULTS…ready to explore new possibilities. Yiannis and I have become avid gardeners. But you already know that if you’ve been following this blog. Besides digging and growing, he also doctors our ailing plants. He goes into the internet and researches into all the maladies and ailments of our flowering plants and vegetables, downloads them, complete with detailed illustrations of…downy mildew, powdery mildew, early blight, late blight, all the moulds and wilts and canker diseases and ghost spots, leaf spots and black spots and their attendant therapies and cures. I don’t go too much into that. I just do a little pruning and digging and smelling the roses and herbs. Two weeks ago he used a strimmer to cut the grass and couldn’t straighten his back for a couple of days. I told him not to worry about it. I would attend to the grass around the slabs with my little trimmer. I plied it vigorously and something got unhinged somewhere in the back, in the lower pelvic region, and I walked like a crab… sideways for a couple of days. I googled it and had to choose between bursitis and piriformis syndrome. I finally rejected them and settled for strained muscle and  searched no further. But we’ve both bounced back and I assure you it’s not an elderly syndrome.

There’s this other thing we do as liberated adults, which is to go for long evening promenades. We sometimes take this route towards the old tanneries, where we stroll along the stone walls snaking up the cliff and watch the waves rush against the pebbled beach far below, frothing and receding. Beyond that it’s dark, except for the distant beams from the lighthouse which shine into the vast blackness of the sea and pinpricks of light from small fishing boats. We stand mesmerized by the powerfully hypnotic ebb and flow of the waves… until certain apparitions come crashing into the scene and startle us out of our reverie…the GO GETTERS…the newly ordained LIBERADS. They are always donned in tracksuits and white trainers and have become athletic in recent retirement… …quick trotting in the dark…rushing past us and creating a draught.

This reminds me of yet another group of liberated adults that we stumbled upon in one of our recently adopted pursuits…exploring ancient sites in Crete. Last summer, before the lockdown, we hastily packed a few things and drove to the eastern end of Crete…a backdrop of towering  mountains, scorched brown by the relentless summer sun, craggy limestone cliffs, plunging into blue waters and plains, far below, stretching into a shimmering sea. After a week of an idyllic getaway, we slowly made our way back, but not before throwing in a bit of archaeology into the trip. We stopped to visit the Dikteon Andron cave, which is high up on the Lassithi Plateau, holed in the Dikti mountain range. According to Greek mythology, it is the cave where the God of Olympus, Zeus, was born. His father, Cronus, gobbled up his newborn infants as they popped out, for fear of being dethroned at some future date. However, Rea, his wife, stole away in the dead of night to the cave of Dikteon Andron and there gave birth to her last child, Zeus. To muffle the sharp cries of the baby, she employed the giant half gods, the Kourites, to bang their copper shields and enact a war dance, thumping the ground with legs as thick as tree trunks, sending tremors through mountains. So that was how Zeus lived to fulfill his destiny and that’s what got us interested in following the trail to the cave, retracing the path that Rea trekked with her entourage, to save her unborn child.

It was mid August in the middle of a blistering hot day. We wore lose clothing, comfortable trainers and had our hats secured on our heads. We started on the path with a motley of other people …some tourists walking next to their children seated on hired donkeys pulled by their owners, one or two fathers with their children perched high on their shoulders and some other local tourists like us. After walking for a about five minutes, the path suddenly got very steep and we negotiated it all very bravely, with our bodies bent slightly forward and the muscles of our calves a little taut. It reminded me a little of our hike up the Great Wall Of China [ Travellers In China…1997]. It was the same feeling but we thought the incline would level off after a few metres. But instead, it got steeper and winding and more challenging and we started breathing loudly through our mouths…` Let’s stop for a bit.’ I said, panting. So we found a shady spot under an oak tree and sat on a boulder and others started joining us. On the other side there were some donkeys for hire. Yiannis looked at me to suggest that it may not be such a bad idea to ride the donkeys the rest of the way… and I was considering it.

Just then, these two couples, older than us, walked past with sturdy measured steps…` Well if they can do it so can we.’ I muttered. So off we went again, with grim determination… and in a few minutes started panting and wheezing and I thought my lungs would seize up. We took several stops on the way and fortunately, the incline did level off after some time. But I have no idea how we made it. We couldn’t even admire the flora around us, the bushes of sage and oregano and other clumps of herbs because we were busy breathing, swallowing large gulps of air. Once we got to the cave, it was much easier. The two hundred slippery steps into the enormous damp cavern with stalagmites and stalactites, where Zeus ingested his first lungful of air and the other two hundred steps going up…were not as bad compared to that uphill climb.

 Just as we emerged from the dark wet cavern and blinked into the bright sunlight, we saw those other LIBERADS, who had put us to shame previously, standing under some trees and taking swigs of water from their bottles. Who were these people who could walk tirelessly all the way up without stopping to catch their breath? Were they born of the gods or descendants of those giant half god creatures? We finally surmised that they were either mountain hikers or winter swimmers, who swim not only in summer but throughout winter as well. Strangely enough, many of them belong to an older age group. While the rest of us spend Sunday afternoons in winter at taverns by the sea, stuffing our faces with seafood, this driven lot, with leathery brine soaked skins, browned by the sun, plunge into the cold surf and battle with the waves. These are the people who set the bar well beyond our reach and we are the people who have no bars.

While we were seeking sustenance at the canteen outside the cave, these wonder men and women walked briskly down the path to a fresh conquest. We, however, sat slumped on the low stone wall, 200 metres above the breathtaking plains of Lassithi, dotted with white windmills, drank in the scenery and gulped our pomegranate juice, sweet and pink, sending surges of energy through our tired bodies. The friendly woman from the canteen asked if we wanted our photo taken and we nodded eagerly.

We… the LIBERADS… are too laid back to keep up with anyone or set any bars… but enjoy pursuits at our own pace and laugh in the face of our failures… and as Gratiano says in the Merchant Of Venice…`With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.’

Cheers!