Horizontal Compatibility
Online dating, at my age, raises questions one does not always anticipate. Some of them, it turns out, are… positional.
A woman on OurTime (a dating site for seniors) recently “liked” my profile. I liked her back and sent a message suggesting that we meet. Then… nothing. Four weeks passed. I ultimately filed the whole thing away under “oh, well.” I admit, I forgot all about her.
But eventually she wrote.
So then I found myself, somewhat to my own surprise, heading out for my first first date since March 2019. This fact alone felt like an event worth noting.
The meeting itself, at a local Starbucks, went well. More than well, actually. We talked for more than an hour and a half without effort. The conversation had range, some depth, even a bit of spark. At the end, there was a hug that she initiated. Not the standard-issue, socially-prescribed hug, but a long, sustained, quietly-mutual embrace. The kind of physical contact that lingers just enough to suggest possibility.
I drove home thinking, well, that was nice.
The next day, I wrote to say I’d enjoyed meeting her and would be glad to get together again.
Her reply was, and I quote:
“id like to meet again if we spend most of that time hugging. Hmm where would that be possible”
Now, as suggestions go, this was not one I was inclined to reject. I even confessed, in a moment of candor, that I might qualify as a very touch-deprived individual. And so it seemed that we had entered into a mildly flirtatious exchange, one with a surprisingly clear agenda.
But then came the practical question: where does one go to engage in sustained, low-ambiguity hugging?
She thought maybe a park. A blanket. Perhaps a picnic.
And now it is here is where the narrative takes a decisive turn toward the absurd.
I explained, as plainly as I could, that lying on the ground — grass, sand, or any other surface that requires one to interface directly with the planet — is not something my back, hip, and leg nerves are inclined to negotiate well. This was not about getting up afterward. This was about being down there in the first place. So, yep, I had reservations about this idea.
And let’s be clear: we are talking about two 78-year-olds here. The image of both of us gracefully arranging ourselves on a blanket, then remaining there in some extended state of horizontal embrace, begins to feel less like romance and more like a logistical exercise requiring advance planning and possibly a small crane.
Her response was brief and decisive. Again, I quote:
“Regretfully, if you’re not capable of laying down on a blanket with me, I guess we’re not a match”
And just like that, a door closed.
There is something almost admirable in the specificity, the cleanness, of the rejection. Not conversation. Not compatibility. Not chemistry. Rather: blanket viability.
One imagines her revising her profile to include: “Must enjoy meaningful conversation and prolonged horizontal hugging in outdoor settings.”
Rejection, however it arrives, still has a way of landing, though. And land it did. Not dramatically, but just enough to be noticed, a small shift in the internal weather. And then, as these things tend to do, the storm passed, leaving behind the memory of that unexpectedly good hug.
Thank you, universe, for that.
Shrinking
“Shrinking.” noun: a popular series on Apple TV.
“Shrinking.” adjective: becoming smaller in size or amount.
Lately, the word brings the TV show to mind first. Harrison Ford, Jason Segel, and Jessica Williams play therapists sharing a small private practice. I’m quite fond of it. It manages to be funny while taking on friendship, parenting, grief, and the frequent ethical angle. I really look forward to each episode.
But there is also a more personal meaning these days: becoming smaller in size. It turns out that is not just a definition; it is my life.
The older I get, the smaller my world becomes.
Last fall I traveled to my high school reunion, only the second trip I’ve taken since the pandemic. Both trips have been to small-town northern Wisconsin. Travel has become such a physical ordeal that I now approach it with the strategic planning of a minor military operation. Fortunately, I had enough frequent flier miles to upgrade to first class each time. I am not sure I would have survived the cattle-car-in-the-back alternative. Or at least with not much dignity; my claustrophobic tendencies would likely have taken up too much attention.
Closer to home, my world has settled into a familiar circuit. The UPS store for my Amazon packages. Three grocery stores in regular rotation. And then the medical offices. So many medical offices! I seem to have assembled quite an impressive team of specialists, each responsible for a different body part that is no longer performing as originally advertised. Most of these businesses and offices are in North Eugene where I live. My ophthalmologist, pain doc, and therapist are in South Eugene.
Yes, I have a therapist. At this age. I still have issues.
There is also my daily walk, which remains essential for body, mind and spirit. Not that long ago I was walking three miles a day, more than a thousand miles a year. These days I manage about one mile, often pausing halfway to stretch and negotiate with my back. Spinal stenosis and its accompanying nerve pain have reset expectations. They have also reduced how often I attend protests or head out with a camera, both once reliable parts of my routine.
And then there is my height. I used to measure 5 foot 7 at my annual physical. Last month, even standing as tall as I could, I came in just under 5 foot 5. Apparently, I am not only aging, I am compressing. Yes, I have osteoporosis. I do not like this. In high school I was among the shortest in my class, often the last chosen for teams. I remember the feelings of inadequacy that resulted. While I am no longer being chosen for teams, the world is still a different place for a short man. It always has been.
What I am left with, it seems, is a smaller map. Fewer miles traveled, fewer places to go, fewer things I can easily do. Even a shorter reach upward.
Despite everything, though, I seem to be getting a better look at what’s right in front of me.
And if necessary, I suppose, I can always stand on tiptoe.
Soundtrack Suggestion
Well, I don’t want no short people
Don’t want no short people
Don’t want no short people
‘Round here
Short people got nobody
Short people got nobody
Short people got nobody
To love
(“Short People” — Randy Newman)
The Executor Dilemma
A Boy Scout’s Guide to Late-life Logistics
In my previous essay, I found myself reflecting on the subject of time. Writing it left me thinking much more seriously about how much of it I may have left. At my age — I’m now in my 79th year — existential angst is to be expected. Many friends and colleagues are now gone, while those of us still here seem increasingly occupied with managing one physical malady or another.
Ah yes, the maladies. They arrive in clusters at this stage of life, don’t they? For example, my walking regimen, once integral to both my physical and mental health, has become disturbingly limited. Chronic nerve pain from spinal stenosis now restricts my mobility, and more recently I have added compression stockings to my wardrobe to deal with peripheral edema. It really is no secret that a senior-citizen’s body is a full-time maintenance project.
Now, as it happens, I was a Boy Scout in my youth, and the motto drilled into every Scout was simple: Be Prepared.
Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, did not mean that only in the sense of carrying the right gear on a camping trip. He meant it as a way of approaching life itself. Think ahead. Get things in order before the moment arrives.
So. Let’s get real. It definitely is time for me to get serious about preparing for my Final Exit.
The pandemic, of course, had previously served to sharpen this realization. In 2020 I was well into the category of people considered highly vulnerable to COVID. Although we did not know the precise statistics at the time, we now know that people over 65 accounted for the vast majority of deaths from the disease. I behaved cautiously and, for whatever reason, never contracted the virus.
However, during that unsettling time, I did make a few modest strides toward “getting my affairs in order.” Ever since then, a white 9×12 envelope labeled “Important Stuff” has been attached to my refrigerator door, quietly waiting to be needed. Inside it are my Advance Directive, which I prepared back in 2014 (upon retirement), along with some basic information about my finances and where funds should be directed upon my death.
Of course, one rather obvious detail remained unresolved. Who exactly would carry out these wishes? I never actually completed a Will.
Not that I didn’t try. I went to the FreeWill website and started working through the prompts. Everything went smoothly until I reached the section asking me to name an Executor. Who would that be? I do not have a spouse or significant other, and most of my relatives live far away. Asking friends to take on the administrative burden of settling someone’s affairs felt like a rather large favor to request.
So the process stalled.
But I have just recently discovered that there are professionals who can perform this role. Licensed Professional Fiduciaries can serve as a Personal Representative, handling the various financial, legal, and logistical details that follow a person’s death. In cases like mine, where the estate is modest, the process may even be handled through a Simple Estate Affidavit rather than a lengthy probate proceeding.
I am still learning about how all of this works, of course, but I have already contacted a local firm that provides fiduciary services and requested an initial consultation.
None of this is especially dramatic; it is simply the quiet work of tidying up important details. It’s the kind of effort that is easy to postpone because the moment requiring it always seems far away. Yet eventually the time arrives. Deep down, we all know that.
And so I find myself returning to bits of advice first learned long ago in the Boy Scout Handbook. The lessons were about life. And now death.
Be prepared.
Soundtrack Suggestion
I’m not scared of dying
And I don't really care
If it’s peace you find in dying
Well, then let the time be near
If it’s peace you find in dying
And if dying time is near
Just bundle up my coffin cause
It’s cold way down there
I hear that's it’s cold way down there
Yeah, crazy cold way down there
(“And When I Die” — Laura Nyro; Blood, Sweat & Tears)
Meditations on Time
Here I am, at age 78, seemingly surrounded by stories about time. These stories naturally have a way of turning my thoughts toward how short my own time may be.
I just reread a novel in which every adult on the planet receives a box containing a string that reveals exactly how long they will live. And I’m recalling the television comedy about a moral accounting system that tracks a person’s life here on Earth. Finally, there’s the recent film that imagines we get to choose the precise form our eternity will take.
I did not set out to braid these snippets of our popular culture together. They braided themselves. At this age, time insists on being the subject.
The reminders are constant. Obituary columns, for one. My personal calendar, for another, which now includes far more medical appointments than it once did. Routine blood work. MRI, CT and DEXA scans. Follow-ups, with each visit carrying the distinct possibility that this will be the one where the doctor pauses too long before speaking. Most of the time the news is ordinary. “See you in six months.” But the suspense never quite disappears.
In Nikki Erlick’s 2022 novel The Measure, a mid-life character suggests that a string long enough to reach age eighty would count as good news. When I read that passage, I felt a small jolt. Eighty no longer feels like a distant horizon. It is a number that is uncomfortably close.
If I opened my box today, I would automatically have a long string. The real question would be: how much longer? A year? Five years? Ten? More? Though If I died today, surely no one would lament that I was gone before my time.
All of which leads to other concerns. How many more years would I want if they are shadowed by increasing pain — or other physical or mental decline? Longevity, at this stage, is not automatically the goal. There are conditions.
The Good Place, the four-season television series originally airing on NBC (and now available on Peacock), begins with a moral scoring system; every human action or interaction earns positive or negative points. An endless array of cosmic accountants supposedly keeps track of these tallies someplace up there in the sky, and when you die your final count decides your destiny. It is morality, and judgment day, rendered as a dispassionate spreadsheet.
At 78, that premise feels less like satire and more like a quiet audit. I find myself reviewing my own ledger. Have I been good? Not necessarily accomplished. Nor productive. But good?
My entries must be mixed. I have lived and loved imperfectly. I have hurt people I did not intend to hurt. There are relationships that did not endure. Some ended gently. Others did not. Even now there is sadness attached to those chapters, a sense that certain conversations might have gone differently if I had been wiser, braver or simply more skilled.
I sometimes wonder whether those endings count against me, or whether they merely show that I kept trying to connect and sometimes failed.
The show ultimately dismantles its point system, though. Life, it suggests, is far too entangled for simple math. Growth matters more than totals; it matters more than being flawless.
What lingers for me now is the series’ ending. Even paradise becomes hollow if it stretches on forever. In the final season, the characters are offered an exit. They step through one last door when they feel complete. Eternity with no ending, the show suggests, flattens meaning.
So, I wonder: How, ultimately, will I measure my existence? Will there ever be a time when will I feel complete?
Those questions followed me into the 2025 film Eternity, now on Apple TV, where humanity is invited to choose the form one’s forever will take. The idea sounds appealing at first. Pick your paradise. A tropical beach, for example. Perfect weather. Endless calm.
But what would that mean after a thousand years? Ten thousand? How could any single scene, no matter how beautiful, sustain significance without limit? Without scarcity?
Part of what makes a late-life conversation more vivid is precisely that it may not be repeated endlessly. Scarcity is what gives weight to life’s ordinary moments.
If I knew the precise length of my string, maybe I would live differently. I might rush to repair what remains frayed. Or I might grow cautious, conserving energy. Uncertainty leaves me in between. Aware of the limit, but not of its measure. Isn’t it that uncertainty that keeps life from becoming either frantic or complacent?
If there is a ledger somewhere, I hope it records effort. That it shows I kept revising myself. That I tried to mend what I could. That I did not stop growing simply because the horizon drew closer.
I am not eager to open the box. And I am not certain I want a tropical eternity with no horizon. I only know that the ticking is audible now. Doctor visits. Quiet evenings. Old relationships to ponder. Meditations on time.
Age 78. Still adding to the ledger.
Poetry Selection: The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver
Sardines in the Back Bar: My High School Reunion
I graduated from high school in 1965, right in the middle of that turbulent, unforgettable decade. Last month, I made the cross-country trek from Eugene, Oregon, to Rice Lake, Wisconsin, for my 60-year reunion.
Traveling to rural northern Wisconsin isn’t easy. These days, I take two days just to get there. This time I flew to Minneapolis via Seattle, rented a car, and drove to a nearby hotel in the dark. Car rentals, of course, come with their own set of challenges. I drive a 2020 Subaru Crosstrek at home, so when I found myself behind the wheel of a 2025 Nissan Rogue, I had to pause in the airport lot, dig out the 600-page manual, and acquaint myself with the vehicle’s basics. Eventually, I made it to the airport Holiday Inn Express, tired but in one piece.
Day two was the drive to Rice Lake. I stopped in Menomonie to see my friend “BA,” a classmate I’ve known since I was 12. We’ve been in steady contact — often over Zoom during and since the pandemic — so our conversation flowed easily, even if it wasn’t about anything in particular. Politics and religion are off-limits between us, so our chatter resembled a Seinfeld-style “conversation about nothing.” Still, it was grounding to reconnect before the busy weekend ahead.
On day three, I had breakfast with another classmate, “CJ.” We first reconnected at our 40th reunion and in recent times have grown a bit closer through regular Zoom calls. Our conversations are different from most — personal, probing, unafraid of difficult topics like family dynamics, belonging, and the choices that shaped our lives. Sitting across from her in person gave those exchanges a richness I rarely find elsewhere.
That evening was the first group gathering at a local pizza place. I had gone in with low expectations, and still, the chaotic setup surprised me: thirty or so people crammed into the back corner of a bar with no clear plan for how to mingle or sit together. Consequently, BA and I retreated to a booth for dinner before cautiously rejoining the group once the crowd thinned. To my relief, I found a few familiar faces and even received a warm hug from a female classmate who had been reading my writings over the years. Those small moments of recognition helped balance out the initial frustration.
The next morning, BA and I met again for breakfast, this time joined by “WJ.” Our conversation took a surprising turn when, at one point, he asked, “Do you believe in vaccines?” The question startled me, but to my relief, all three of us agreed. Still, it was a reminder of the cultural divide I often feel when I return to Rice Lake — a blue-leaning visitor navigating a visit to a deeply red part of the country.
Saturday night was the main event at Lehman’s Supper Club, the classic Rice Lake venue for special occasions. Drinks started at five, but I stuck with ginger ale while classmates sipped their cocktails. I chatted briefly with a few people, but the connections felt fleeting. Dinner was buffet-style, serviceable but unremarkable, and I found myself at a table where conversation was scarce. By 7:30, much of the room had emptied out.
