Saturday, October 14, 2-23
In bed by 9:30. up at 6:20. 51°, high of 55°, AQI=23, wind NE at 22 mph, 16-24/35, 2" of rain in last 24 hours, 0.5" expected in next 24. Sunrise at 7:04 at 100°ESE, sunset at 6:10 at 259°WSW, 11+6.
Long discussion with Sarah this morning about Israel, the Palestinians, the history of the founding of the state of Israel, Leon Uris' The Haj and Exodus, the role and effects of religion in life and society. It made me want to read The Haj. My daughter is brilliant! She's such a blessing, so brillian, so talented.
I’ve noticed some balance issues. And I’ve fallen hard twice recently — once on the steep front steps of the brownstone where Janice’s son, daughter-in-law and grandson live in Brooklyn. And once onto the flagstone terrace in our small back garden. I sustained serious bruises both times. Fortunately, I didn’t hit my head, although I easily could have. . . .
I take more than a dozen pills each day during breakfast and dinner — among them vitamins and prescriptions for blood pressure and my prostate. I now need to take them with applesauce, so that I can swallow them more easily.
Walking in Battery Kemble Park this morning, I realized that I could not call up its name in my mind. Just as I couldn’t remember the name of our flowering star magnolia tree when I was writing about it earlier in this journal, until I asked our neighbor and ardent gardener, Lois — and it took a few seconds just now to remember her last name.
I frequently can’t remember names, although that’s been the case for many years. My brain now also blocks too often on words I’m trying to use in conversation, although happily that rarely happens when I’m writing.
I fell out of bed this morning. Just a little bruising on a wrist that hit my bedside dresser on my way down. I was reaching for my mobile phone on the dresser and leaned too far over. It would not be worth writing about here, except that I had just fallen harder on a playground basketball court in Brooklyn a few days ago.
I felt unusually gloomy about mortality yesterday. Barry Sussman, a Washington Post editor who worked with me on the Watergate story, died suddenly at the age of 87, . . .After hearing that news, I had one of my increasingly disturbing accidents. While standing over our open dishwasher and using a towel to dry a very large frying pan, it slipped out of my hands and fell onto a dinner plate in the dishwasher, chipping it. Why am I that clumsy? Why was I stupid enough to be standing over the open dishwasher? . . . .
It’s a cliché that you are plagued by forgetting little things as you get older, but it’s true! Why did I come into this room? Where are my keys? In my case, it’s often the second or third thing I intended to do. Yes, I moved the wash to the dryer, but I forgot the thing I intended to bring upstairs from the nearby storage room. I did remember to bring in berries from the garage fridge when I took out the trash, but I forgot the kale that Janice also had asked for.
But yesterday, something weirder happened. Janice was leaving the house and could not find her mobile phone. I joined the hunt. I decided to call the phone from my mobile. I could hear its familiar ring — the theme from the old “The Rockford Files” television show — as I was walking into our bedroom. But I still couldn’t find it anywhere as I was walking around the room. While I was calling the phone for a third or fourth time, Janice walked into the room and asked, “Is it in your pocket?” It was indeed in the pocket of the shorts I was wearing. I forgot that I had put it there for her an hour or two earlier when it needed to be rescued from some inconvenient place I could no longer remember.
As we were getting into bed last night, I decided that I should write about the incident in this journal. I scribbled a bedside note: “pocket phone.” When I woke this morning, I could not figure out why I had done that. What pocket phone? Something I wanted to buy? Not until breakfast did I suddenly remember. So, I’m writing this quickly before I forget again. . . . .
Time generally seems to be speeding up for me. Often, it feels like the week had just begun, and then the weekend is upon us. Although the year is far more than half over, it seems as though I was just writing here about the advent of spring. Are my 80s going to accelerate toward my demise? . . .
Maybe the seasonal change accounts for my preoccupation with reading obituaries these days. I’m so familiar with the remarkable lives and careers of many folks in those stories. And I’m paying more attention to their ages. So many of them in their 80s — right around the corner from me. Even those who made it into their 90s were a mere decade or so beyond where I’ve already arrived. I try not to dwell on it, but the unavoidable truth is that I’m in the late autumn of my life. . . .
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is being treated for a concussion after tripping and falling last night in the Waldorf Astoria Washington D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue, where he was attending a fundraising reception and dinner. The Kentucky Republican is 81. Although I believe I am much more physically fit than McConnell appears to be, this is exactly what I am afraid of happening with my occasional balance issues and fear of falling.
I am being increasingly careful while going up and down stairs or encountering uneven pavement and high curbs. when out walking. Inside, I hold tightly on stairwell handrails. . . . . .
According to the National Institute on Aging, more than 1 in 4 people 65 or older are injured by falling each year.
It also is becoming noticeably more difficult for me to get up from chairs and out of cars — and then stand up straight without brief muscle soreness. Once up and moving, I’m on my way, but it makes me feel my age, and I resent it. . . . .
Do\id Leonard Downie, Jr., formr editor at the WaPo write the above, or did I?
Treadmill: 20.0; 0.50, very tired today for no known reason. I watched a documentary on dancers preparing to do Merce Cunningham's August Pace on Pace.
Dinner tonight with Andy, Anh and children at HuHot in West Allis. I'll be dragging myself out the door.
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