Magic foo-foo powder

Tillie has been sick. She’s had pneumonia and spit up blood, which horrified Nora. She eventually went to the doctor but told Nora she’s had pneumonia several times before and has been coughing up blood for years.

“Good Lord!” said Nora, “why don’t you take better care of yourself?”

Tillie said she didn’t much give a hoot, as she lit up another cigarette.

“Are you depressed?” Nora asked.

“Always,” Tillie said.

“Ohhh—what can I do?”

“Nothing. Just don’t lecture me.”

So Nora didn’t any more. But she worried about her friend, who, in the number of days seen and been with in the last several years, was one of long standing. This was because in the Twilight Zone, one saw people practically daily, like they were family members. A crazy, mixed-up family, but nonetheless, people you were stuck with for good or ill. But of course Nora didn’t feel her relationship with Tillie was an ill one; but, quite possibly, a peculiar one. Because in the bigger world, the life that was gone for them now, they likely might not have been friends. They were so different.

For one thing, Nora, as Tillie often enough told her and anyone else within earshot, was “healthy as a horse.” Well, she did eat her oats most mornings for breakfast, steel-cut ones that required longer cooking than the impatient Tillie would bother with. The point was that Nora had always taken good care of herself while Tillie—who was seven years younger than Nora--seemed to do everything that wasn’t healthful. Her diet was heavy on prepared foods, short on fruits and vegetables, topped off with Oreos or M&Ms. And the smoking, of course. Cigarettes were not called “coffin nails” for nothing. And, also, a certain attitude of mind.

Tillie met old age with a smack in its face. She did not want to be old and did not gracefully embrace the changes in her body, mind, and spirit that an accumulation of years brings. During her illness, which seemed to last at least two weeks, Tillie lost weight. Nora commented on this. She did not say though that Tillie still had her slight, flabby paunch, which she did.

“Damn right I’ve lost weight,” Tillie said, “and I’m going to lose some more to get rid of this stomach.”

Nora sighed over the hardheadedness of her friend. No matter how much weight an older person lost, the old tummy would still be there, like a spider’s abdomen, because the muscle tone one had in youth was gone. She wondered anew how Tillie had ever reached the age of seventy-five; well, kicking and screaming every year of the way.

In contrast, some Zoners aged gracefully, seemingly fully entering into what the poet called “The Best” (that was yet to be). The Golden Years, as younger people called them. Perhaps the Leaden Years would be a better name. Or the Lump of Coal Years.

But Nora didn’t feel this way. Some beneficent attitude had taken her over so that she felt better than she’d ever felt as a younger person. What was there not to like about old age? (If one is healthy as a horse?)

She had all the time in the world to do whatever she cared to do or to do nothing. She had no more financial worries because of her social security and her small nest egg. She no longer “burned at white heat” as she’d used to raising children, pleasing a husband, getting along with contemporaries, keeping a house, nurturing fruitless ambitions, holding onto her looks, leaving footprints on the sands of time.

None of these things bothered her now. She slept and ate well, had people to be with and activities to partake of. Her figure and face were not all that bad, her kids did not distress her so much, they even seemed to take a protective attitude toward her at times that touched her, and her mind seemed to be as good as ever unless she was fooling herself.

Yes, by and large, except for Tillie, most Zoners seemed content. But then it suddenly came to Nora that that could be because of some magic foo-foo powder, like in Disney movies, that settled upon old folks; shimmering gold flakes that put them into a beatific trance.

Well, if that was so, let it be; let it rain down upon her.