It might not come on as gradually as you might suppose

This weekend my Gen X son and daughter-in-law are visiting. It’s been over five years since our last in-person between all the flyover states separating our two coasts and pandemic and his starting a new architecture practice and all.

I had a flash — we say goodbye and as soon as they’re alone

Gosh, Dad is really starting to show his age.

Because that’s what happened at a similar point with my dad. One holiday he’s roaring like a bull moose and the next the bellows are still heartfelt, but feebler. So, despite how I see myself (pictured above), I’m starting to look more like this.

The added fillip was I was loading groceries and having trouble getting a back out from the bottom of the cart because it was hanging up on a box of pretzels. I hear a “Sir?” and look up to find a young couple (late 20s, early 30s?) looking concerned and she was offering to help me unload. What’s next, Boy Scouts offering an arm for me to cross the street? Oh, wait.

The concern was touching and a somewhat warming moment of social visibility. Aside from baristas asking what I’d like, I can’t think of another cross-generation conversation initiated by a stranger in years. It’s rare to even have eye contact.

I’m taking it all in good spirit, I hope. I’m still sharp as a tack, but the corkboard is starting to crumble. All the cliches, and then some.

I do, however, have a social-psychological theory to go with my adventure. Over the years, I’ve noticed women of the age of my would-be helper acquire a dog as sort of a surrogate child. A few years later, they can be seen where I live out and about carrying, pushing or peddling with an infant with the very demoralized dog following abashed. Perhaps my helper is in a prodromal phase of beginning to think of parenthood and found her parental instincts stirred by my plight. If old Rudyard were still working, he’d have a Just So story about that. Sam Clemens would snort at my generalization, I suppose. But it’s a definite FWIW, more of a comment on the trope of baby fever rather than her or anyone else’s feelings, if any. After all, a woman’s place is wherever she damned well takes it.

Mascot of the Day