I’ve been eating cherries and peaches-the luscious summer fruits, which dye our chins and fingertips with dribbling juice. Peaches and cherries are pricey, even when they’re in season-costing more than apples or even the lovely clementines that we get in winter. I’m treating us to cherries and peaches because we’re old.

As we grow older, we have a different perspective on life. A gerontologist put it this way: at a certain age, we start counting years, not so much in chronological age, but in how many more years we might live. Of course, the number of our years is a mystery. But what old people know is that our time is finite.

Theoretically, young people know this too. But when we’re young, time seems like it will go on forever. We dream about what we might be and what we might accomplish, and anything and everything seems possible. We jog on hard surfaces, play tennis or football, and use our fingers, elbows and knees as if they would never rust.

When we’re old, we understand finiteness in a visceral way. We’ve loved and lost. We’ve had our share of successes and failures. Various of our body parts have broken down.

What old people understand is the passage of time. We’ve seen how babies grow into middle aged men and how accidents or sickness can come with no warning-or how good things can happen too. History is something we’ve lived-we’ve seen men walking on the moon and watched the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I used to teach classes on the “Sociology of Aging” to college students, most of whom were 19 year olds. For them, aging was something that happened to their grandparents-it wasn’t real for them. They could learn the facts, the statistics and the theories. But old age was like a far off planet they never would visit.

I’ve been lucky, extraordinarily lucky-I’ve had a great life. I’m grateful. And, now in my 70s, I still have dreams and work to do: books I’m writing, art I’m creating, places I want to go. So, I’m not preparing my epilogue-not quite yet.

But somewhere there’s a stopwatch with my name on it. My number of summers is finite. So, I’m eating peaches and cherries-lots of peaches and cherries.

Jul 12, 2018