In the last few months, I've noticed that my eyesight has changed. When I'm tired, I find it hard or slow to focus on things that are closer to my eyes. The optimal minimum focal point has always been less than a foot away, but now it's more like 14 or 15 inches. This isn't a big deal for most anything that I do on a day to day basis, but sometimes now the small print on a product label has to be a little further away. Everything is otherwise sharp the way it has always been, and far away things I can generally read without any effort. This is actually amazing, because genetically, I should have terrible sight. Both of my parents wore glasses very early in childhood, and my boy started wearing glasses in the last year.
This degrading of sight happens normally after 40, I've learned. While it isn't functionally troubling, or requiring glasses yet, it doesn't feel good to know that it's happening. To date, the only age-related thing I've really been able to complain about is controlling ear hairs. But this feels like a betrayal by my body, and I don't like it. Sometimes I find my knee hurts for no apparent reason at all (likely all the volleyball stops and jumping back in the day), and that's even more scary because I saw what bad knees did to the quality of life of my step-father. I worry that my body could do something else terrible, like make cancer or reject my appendix or make carpal tunnel come back or make my mind go soft.
I really do try to be zen about aging. I'm likely halfway between diapers and diapers again, and I can't do anything about it. I'm just not arrogant enough to believe I'm so important as to be bigger than the circle of life. But I want all the parts to work as well as possible until such time that I don't need them anymore. Dare to dream, right?
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