He was the 70-something version of many of the males in Harvard Square, arriving on his bicycle dressed in khakis, worn running shoes, a polo shirt, helmet, and backpack. A retired NYU physicist, he had asked to talk with me over lunch about my time at MIT for a book he was writing about the history of its physics department. After a bit of animated discussion about MIT it became clear I couldn’t help him much; my work had been in mathematics education research, not physics. Our talk soon turned to Trump’s latest atrocities, by now a ritual among the liberal-minded.

As our conversation wound down he got up to leave. “It’s time to take a nap,” he said, “the rest of the day is much better if I have a nap.” We paid our bill and he took off into the crowded streets. As I watched him maneuver his way around pedestrians and cars I was taken by his last statement – not that a 70-something man needed to take a nap, but that he had mentioned it so casually. Napping is one of the conditions of aging that is not often mentioned in public. It is a discussion to be avoided, especially amongst younger folk, lest one be thought of, and treated as, older than one wants.

 

Loss of stamina is a feature of aging that plays out differently in different people’s lives. But it happens to all eventually. In general, aging is affected by genetics, body maintenance over time, conditions of life such as disease or the residue of accidents, and attitude or personality. There are many pathways. The older we get and the less active we are, the faster stamina fades. Evidently, muscle strength is well preserved up to about age 45. From there on we lose about 5% in performance every decade so that now, at 75, it is predicted that I would have lost 15% of the level of performance I had when I was younger. We exchange about 1/4 pound of muscle for fat every year.

 

Not only do I now nap, but bedtime itself rushes forward. Over the years my New Year’s Eve dinner parties have ended earlier and earlier. My friends and I haven’t seen the ball come down in Times Square for quite a while. Nine is the new midnight. Becoming weary earlier in the evening, we now prefer the matinee performances of movies, concerts and plays. The last time I was at a Friday matinee concert of the Boston Symphony the young-looking grey-haired woman sitting beside me confided that she and her husband, who live in Maine, used to drive down and back for evening concerts. They can’t do that any more. We shared a moment of wistfulness but also solidarity. We were among the disproportionate number of grey heads at this afternoon concert.

 

While stamina inexorably decreases over the years, the process is somewhat reversible through exercise. When we consistently ask more of our bodies every cell rises to the challenge. The cardiovascular system delivers more blood to our muscles, and the heart begins to recover more quickly after activity. Muscles become more efficient at burning fat and storing glycogen so we can work longer and harder without tiring. Older people have the same ability to respond to strength and endurance training as do people in their twenties and thirties, though we may not return to the levels we had achieved when younger. Of course, like everyone, if we stop exercising, the process reverses.

 

Because of injuries sustained about a decade ago when I was smashed by a van while crossing a street, while I am generally quite healthy and active the only vigorous exercise I can do is to walk. Running and swimming, which I love, are out; upper bodywork is out. So I try to walk briskly for at least half an hour every day as an investment in increased stamina and better overall health. My neighborhood is colorful and active, often full of out-of-towners pulling suitcases; backpack-laden students careening around corners on bikes; the Harvard crew practicing on the river, the clank of oars in oarlocks echoing the coxswain’s call. My quest for increased stamina takes me out and joins me to this youthful, energetic community, bringing out the youthfulness and energy in me.

Energy levels vary a lot among 70 and 80-year olds. My Fit bit tells me that I typically walk about 7,000 steps or 3 miles each day, about half of which comes from that half-hour exercise walk. A more active friend, who walks her dog several times a day, swims laps for half an hour most days, and runs around town doing more errands than I do, logs in about 17,000 steps each day.

 

Loss of stamina means doing less in a day. Even taking into account my exercise investment, to my regret I find that now, at 75, I can do in a day only about two-thirds of what I used to do.   Not only must time be set aside for napping, but also I move more slowly and everything takes longer. Doing less in a day is hard for me, partly a feature of my personality, I suspect. Years ago my mother told me that when we were young, my sister would just go to sleep if she were tired. I, on the other hand, would stay up, fighting weariness, if anything of the slightest interest were going on. That is still true. There is always something more interesting than sleep – one more phone call to a friend, the reveal in my current whodunit, the last episode of Mad Men. Exhaustion follows the next day.

In what I remember as my glory days energy was abundant. When I was mid-way in my career, conducting research on how children learn mathematics and developing instructional programs for teachers based on that research, I often travelled around the country to visit research field sites, present academic papers, or hobnob with colleagues at conferences. At that time, one of my research team’s games was to see who could waste the least time in the airport. In those pre-9/11 days when there was no airport security the idea was that our work, or that last drink at the bar, was much preferable to languishing in the airport, so we aimed to get to the plane just before its door closed. The last one on the plane won. The image in 1970’s TV commercials of handsome, NFL running back OJ Simpson, not yet infamous, decked out in a tan three-piece suit, racing through the Atlanta airport, leaping over turnstiles, briefcase a-fly, conveyed the general spirit of the thing as we gulped that last drink and ran for the plane.

I now forgo the airport game. Not only does airport security slow things down, but also so does my changed muscle/fat ratio. Less of me is trying to lug more of me around. I don’t pack my daily schedule as tightly as I used to, allowing time for moderate moving, relaxing moments, and naps. Some things scheduled for one day get moved out to another and may even fall off into the next week. This slower pace is enjoyable but I miss the zest of days packed with activity and stimulation. It’s a bittersweet time.

While I do less in a day than I used to, it is still quite a full and rich life. On a recent Monday I had early morning coffee with the young man who winds my grandfather clock, cleaned up the kitchen from a large-scale cooking enterprise the day before and wrote for a couple of hours. I then took a brisk, half-hour exercise walk during which my unconscious mind worked on the sentence structure snarl that I had left on the page, ate lunch and took a nap. In the afternoon I went to a meeting about the Sanctuary work in which I, and others, look after an immigrant mother and her two young children who have sought sanctuary from ICE in a nearby church. It’s my one regular anti-Trump activity. In the evening I phoned a long-time friend to catch up. We exchanged stories about having cancelled this or that because of weariness and about our evolving plans for housing at the next stage of our lives. I wound up the day around nine.

 

Doing less in a day requires making choices. One way to cope with the diminution of energy and retain a pleasurable and happy life is to use the available energy for things one cares about and minimize or off-load the things one doesn’t like to do. For me, that’s all the household things – grocery shopping, cleaning, paying bills, running errands. I am fortunate to be able to hire helpers to take care of many of these tasks. During my working years I put in long hours, earned a reasonable salary, lived modestly, and saved up, anticipating extra needs in retirement. I did not have the expense of putting children through college and I was good at deferred gratification. I am fortunate to now be able to tailor my life to my liking, within reason. Many of us are able to achieve some degree of such control through a variety of arrangements, others, unfortunately, very little. I am grateful.

One becomes aware of loss of stamina gradually, through one’s 60’s and 70’s, and it is only now, as I look back and take note of it, that I realize the degree to which helpers have become part of my life, adding color and zing. Rosalita is a lovely Brazilian woman who comes every other week so that my apartment is always sparkling clean and neat. She has been coming for twenty years and we are now friends. Now a U.S. citizen, she is full of stories of how dysfunctional the Brazilian government is compared to the United States, though she is no more admiring than I of our current political situation. I am also learning some Portuguese.

The grocery delivery service has been in my life for about five years. They take orders online and I do internet chats with the shoppers about what to substitute for my favorite Kashi Go Lean cereal that is out of stock or the bananas that don’t look as good this week as usual. When they deliver the groceries I learn that most do occasional grocery shopping as a way to add a little money on the side of their work in IT, or as sales people at places like Radio Shack, or as students. Some arrive with toddlers in tow. We talk about how shopping for others fits into their lives (makes life a hassle), whether the pay is good (no), what it’s like on a very rainy day (messy).

For three years Steve has been coming once a week to wind my grandfather clock and do other things I can’t reach like change the smoke alarm battery, which he can do without a ladder or stool. Steve is a Harvard undergraduate who majors in economics, writes modern music, and plays on the football team. He brings the breeze of youth into my house. He also acknowledges being somewhat obsessive, which may explain his willingness to help me keep the boxes of batteries and light bulbs on a high closet shelf carefully arranged. “This helps me more than you,“ he quips. He is taking a course on the ‘60’s (yikes) and is interested in hearing what it was like to be part of it. He knows my limitations and offers to help with any thing, any time.

The work the helpers do changes over time as my needs change. Eventually, when I move there, staff at a Continuous Care Retirement Community in New Hampshire will do these tasks. My current helpers enable me to save energy for the things I love to do – reading, writing these essays, going to films and concerts, having coffee with friends, meeting with my writing group, doing political work. They also add variety and richness to my life beyond what I might choose on my own. I’m not sure I would have watched this year’s Harvard-Yale game were it not for my clock winder, nor seen my Sanctuary work as a human as well as political enterprise if I did not have a Portuguese-speaking helper from Brazil.

 

Along with reducing the number of things one does in a day, and changing the mix of the pleasurable and the annoying, another way to construct a pleasurable life in the face of decreasing energy is to savor what one does. The dominant ethos of American culture is to work hard, get lots done in a day, keep on schedule; aspects of the Protestant ethic that have become built in to our society and our expectations of ourselves. We rush through every day, always slightly out of breath. Work sits like a big box, plunk in the middle of our lives, deforming the shape of everything else. We squeeze family activities, leisure, household work, and church or community life around its edges. By and large, we have accepted this as the way of our lives.

However, this is only one way to live and, in the face of declining energy and with the delicious freedom of retirement, I choose another. I can do less, do the things I enjoy, and also do them more slowly, savoring them. When I can, I linger in my morning shower and revel in it – sheets of hot water stream over my head and down my back, loosening tight and achy muscles along the way. A roughly textured washcloth scratches my skin, warm lotions soften and lubricate afterwards. I walk on a winter day, taking in the impeccable whiteness of new fallen snow, its crunch underfoot, the crisp of the cold. Even an otherwise tedious task that can’t be avoided can be savored. Stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the dentist I notice the brightness of the sunlight, glinting off the edges of cars, tracing them in diamonds.

Such savoring is often called L’Art de Vivre – the art of living, from a French point of view. Taking the time to slowly drink tea with a friend, quietly enjoying both the friend and the tea. The deepening affection and love of long-time friends with whom I have shared the coming and going of husbands, the destruction of a home in a flood, the tragic fading of a father with Alzheimer’s. These, too, add richness and depth to living and a larger sense of significance.

 

There are forces in our society that do not accommodate older people, neither our wisdom nor our limitations, and make it difficult for us to adjust ourselves to declining stamina – inflexible working hours and retirement ages, the need to do physical labor long after our bodies can tolerate it, the bureaucratization and rigidity of many social services. Those of us for whom political activism is gratifying could well devote some of our energy in this direction.

But all of us can contribute to the battle against ageism not only by living well but also by being transparent about it, like my physicist friend who was quite open and straightforward about the benefit of naps, the lady at the symphony who talked about her need for afternoon performances, or Steve, the clock winder, who sees in my life different images of aging than he finds at home. Travel agents, hotels, and those who run senior living establishments advertise the possibilities of a youthful retirement – skiing, going on exotic and energetic vacations, cocktails at sunset after a day of golf. In better health than previous generations, many of us can maintain very active lives for many years. But a focus on staying young forever obscures the realities. Age does bring a lack of stamina and other physical ailments that eventually slow us down. The more my generation can age well with transparency and not shut our limitations away, out of view, the more we can support each other and give the next generation images of how to age wisely. Here we are, over seventy, and this is what it looks like. We are a big generation that has dominated each age level it passed through, changing definitions along the way. Well, old age, here we come!