Wednes­day, De­cem­ber 31. To­mor­row, my 81st birth­day. And I feel it. I feel the weight of the years press­ing down on me. I feel it when I wake in the morn­ing and have dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting out of bed. I feel it when I need to take a nap in the af­ter­noon. I feel it when 9 pm comes and I feel the sleep pull of the so­fa or the bed and drowsi­ness grad­u­al­ly over­comes me with­out much of a fight.

Is this prepa­ra­tion for the long sleep?

We’ve long known that chil­dren do not grow or de­vel­op at a steady rate. They go through phys­i­cal and brain growth spurts. Phys­i­cal growth spurts are short pe­ri­ods of rapid growth in chil­dren, marked by quick height and weight gains, in­creased ap­petite, sleep changes, fussi­ness and mus­cle fa­tigue or “grow­ing pains.” They oc­cur most no­tice­ably in in­fants around four months, then in ear­ly child­hood, 6 to 8 years and es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing pu­ber­ty (girls 9-11; boys 11-13 plus). The clas­sic ex­am­ple is the Form One stu­dent who re­turns to Form Two in Sep­tem­ber al­most un­recog­nis­able be­cause he’s grown three inch­es and put on 20 pounds.

De­vel­op­men­tal spurts are sim­i­lar but re­lat­ed to brain ac­tiv­i­ty, a sud­den in­crease in brain cell con­nec­tions. Pon­der the 11-month-old, crawl­ing around your kitchen, who sud­den­ly stands up one day and be­gins to walk around. Or the 11-year-old whose abil­i­ty to rea­son and plan dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­creas­es in pro­por­tion to the sud­den en­large­ment of her frontal lobe.

Sim­i­lar things hap­pen in old age. One goes along quite hap­pi­ly if a bit slow­er than usu­al, and sud­den­ly, one finds that get­ting out of the car or go­ing up steps is hard­er to do than be­fore.

Up to five years ago, I worked out in the gym or walked up Chan­cel­lor reg­u­lar­ly and got up the next morn­ing with lit­tle stiff­ness or aches. In the last two or three years, that’s gone. Af­ter a work­out, stiff­ness and pain are a con­stant, morn­ing and evening, and be­fore, if I did have some pain, it would be gone in a day or two. Not any­more.

Since all this de­vel­oped dur­ing the time of the COVID lock­down, when it was dif­fi­cult to con­tin­ue ex­er­cis­ing, one won­ders if this too is an­oth­er side ef­fect of the shut­down de­ci­sions tak­en by desk politi­cians in the Min­istry of Health. That shut­down must be blamed for a lot of things.

In fact, sar­cope­nia has tak­en hold of me. Sar­cope­nia is the pro­gres­sive loss of skele­tal mus­cle mass, strength, and func­tion. It’s a usu­al ef­fect of age­ing but it’s al­so linked to dis­eases, in­ac­tiv­i­ty, and poor nu­tri­tion. That com­bi­na­tion is lethal. It leads to re­duced mo­bil­i­ty, falls, frailty, and im­paired qual­i­ty of life. It re­quires ex­er­cise (es­pe­cial­ly re­sis­tance train­ing) and ad­e­quate pro­tein/calo­ries for man­age­ment at a time when all you want to do is rest and eat ice cream. It’s the equiv­a­lent of “grow­ing pains” but in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. Mus­cle fa­tigue is the com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor.

And when I look in the mir­ror in the morn­ing and see my sag­ging cheeks and fur­rowed brow, I won­der, like my good friend, Ju­nior, “Who the hell is that?” Our lan­guage is more colour­ful.

Eat­ing is a wor­ry. A few years ago, I could eat any­thing and any amount. Now, my stom­ach seems to have shrunk. It fills eas­i­ly. My in­testines re­act in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. Gas, the old man’s jester, is a ma­jor prob­lem.

What about old age and vi­sion? Dri­ving home from San­ta Cruz one Christ­mas Eve some years ago, I re­alised I could not see the mar­gin of an al­ready dif­fi­cult dri­ve. Cataracts, said my op­tometrist, and sent me for surgery. So, now I need shades for the glare. And presto, this year I need spec­ta­cles for close read­ing. I walk around with three pairs of spec­ta­cles and when I leave T&T, car­ry re­serves.

For­tu­nate­ly, I have not, as yet, got to the stage of my fa­ther, who, in his fi­nal years, went around hold­ing a bag of med­ica­tions with­out which he would pan­ic.

But I sup­pose I am lucky. I work with chil­dren and chil­dren keep you young or at least feel­ing young at times. It’s ex­hil­a­rat­ing to see them grow and de­vel­op, and that ex­cite­ment re­leas­es all those pow­er­ful hor­mones that keep us healthy. The ba­bies with their in­no­cence. The three-year-olds with their free­dom of move­ment. The six-year-olds with their en­er­gy. The 11-year-olds with their en­thu­si­asm and the 16-year-olds with their wor­ries and yet, voila, along comes a for­mer pa­tient, a con­fi­dent 26-year-old who some­how or the oth­er has come through his wor­ries and is ea­ger for life. It’s ex­hil­a­rat­ing. Bless them all!