Growing pains

Ever heard the story of the Greek goddess who fell in love with a mortal and begged Zeus to give him immortality? The twist is she forgot to include eternal youth in her request so the man lived forever but he just became older and older and more and more decrepit until finally he transformed into a cricket. Reading that story as a kid I thought it was explaining the existence of crickets but now I realize it was speaking about something else entirely: growing old is inevitable. 

I hear advancing in years is a tough journey and I figured I would experience it for myself ... a long way down the road. HA! Turns out I was just as foolish as that Greek goddess to overlook aging.

On Monday, I hobbled like a old hermit out of bed. My back felt stiff and sore. The discomfort dragged down to my low back and made sitting in my desk chair at work a miserable experience. I thought aspirin would be the cure and things did improve Tuesday and Wednesday but the pain came back with a vengeance. A more serious remedy was needed, I decided. I bought a heat wrap at the grocery store. Wrapping the thing around my waist did give a comforting, warm feeling but looked absolutely ridiculous. It had a thick bandage-like material with Velcro strips and mysterious black ovals embedded in the material that radiated the heat. Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, wearing this contraption, I appeared as a wrestler who so past her prime and senile that she now wore the championship wrestling belt backwards.

Comfort, I reminded myself, was more important than vanity. Unfortunately, the discomfort stubbornly stuck to me. Friday, when the pains zipped and zoomed around my back, I decided to call my father who has suffered his share of back pain. He told me it could be my mattress that is the root of the problem. 

It hit me at the moment that something had dramatically changed. There was a time when I could sleep on the floor of my sister's bedroom and be perfectly comfortable. My back never ached - it tolerated whatever I threw at it. I realized, a little sadly, that those youthful, carefree days are in the dust. 

Then again, with age comes wisdom. For instance, I now know there's is a patch for back pain that is applied like a giant band-aid. It is slicked with medicine that feels cool and refreshing. Sitting tonight on my couch with this new patch, I feel most comfortable I felt all week. That pleasant, satisfied feeling trumps trying to grasp onto a stage life that will always slip through the fingers.

Eos, the goddess who did not think through her request to keep her lover alive forever