I'm 70 and the worst part of aging isn't that things stop working—it's that they stop working one at a time, slowly, like your body is a house where someone keeps quietly removing light bulbs and you don't notice until you're standing in the dark

Last week, I was trying to open a jar of pasta sauce. Nothing fancy, just the regular Tuesday night dinner routine I've done a thousand times.

But my hands wouldn't cooperate. The arthritis that's been creeping into my fingers like fog rolling over a hill had decided this was the moment to announce itself properly.

I stood there in my kitchen, holding that jar like it was some kind of puzzle I'd forgotten how to solve, and I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it was so perfectly, absurdly gradual. Six months ago, I could open that jar. Three months ago, it was getting harder. And now? Now I keep a rubber grip in the drawer.

That's the thing about aging that nobody really prepares you for. It's not some dramatic cliff you fall off on your 65th birthday. It's more like someone's been secretly loosening the screws on everything, one quarter turn at a time, and you don't notice until the whole chair wobbles when you sit down.

The slow fade nobody talks about

When I was teaching high school English, I used to love how Shakespeare described aging in his sonnets. All that poetry about autumn leaves and twilight. Beautiful stuff, really. But old Will left out the part where you're squinting at the menu in a dimly lit restaurant, pretending you can totally see it while secretly waiting for someone else to order first so you can just say, "I'll have the same."

The bifocals came first, somewhere around 58. I remember joking with my optometrist that at least now I could see my wrinkles clearly.

But it wasn't just about seeing. It was about that moment when you realize your body has started keeping secrets from you. When did my arms get too short to read the newspaper? When did the fine print on medicine bottles become actually impossible instead of just annoying?

Then came the knees. Oh, the knees. Teaching means standing, walking, crouching down to help students, climbing stairs between classes. For thirty-two years, my knees were silent partners in this daily dance. Until they weren't.

First it was just a twinge here and there. Then it was ibuprofen before school. Then stronger painkillers. Then that awful morning when I literally couldn't get out of bed without crying.

Learning to negotiate with your own body

Have you ever had to bargain with your own body? "Okay knees, just get me through this one more semester." "Hands, I promise I'll ice you tonight if you just let me grade these papers." It's like being in a relationship where the other person keeps changing the rules, except that other person is you.

After my first knee replacement at 65, I spent a lot of time in physical therapy. There's something profoundly humbling about having to relearn how to walk up stairs. The twenty-something therapist kept cheerfully telling me, "You're doing great!" while I gripped the railing like my life depended on it, sweating through the simple act of lifting my leg twelve inches.

The second knee replacement came two years later, and by then I was an old pro. I knew exactly how many days until I could shower standing up, when the weird clicking sounds would stop, how long before I could garden again. But knowing didn't make it easier. If anything, it made it harder because I knew exactly how long the road ahead was.

The things we don't say goodbye to

Nobody holds a funeral for your flexibility. There's no memorial service for your ability to stay up past 10 PM. You don't get condolence cards when you have to give up your high heels. (Though honestly, after teaching in heels for three decades, my feet threw a party when I finally switched to sensible shoes.)

These losses sneak up on you.

One day you're bending down to tie your shoes without thinking about it. Then you're sitting down to tie them. Then you're buying slip-ons. It happens so gradually that you don't even realize you're adapting until someone points it out. My daughter watched me getting dressed last month and said, "Mom, when did you start sitting down to put on your pants?" I couldn't tell her. I had no idea.

Writing has become my new challenge. The arthritis that defeated the pasta sauce jar is now eyeing my keyboard with malicious intent. Some mornings, my fingers feel like they're wrapped in invisible gloves, thick and clumsy.

The flowing handwritten notes I used to make are now chicken scratches. I've had to learn to type differently, to take breaks, to accept that some days the words have to stay in my head because my hands won't cooperate.

Finding light in unexpected places

But here's what that metaphor about the house and the light bulbs misses: when some lights go out, you learn to see differently. You find light in places you never looked before.

When I couldn't stand all day teaching anymore and took early retirement at 64, I mourned. Really mourned. Who was I if I wasn't Miss Peterson, the English teacher? But then I found writing, really writing, not just grading papers and making lesson plans.

At 66, I started putting words on paper (well, screen) for myself, and discovered that all those years of teaching others to write had been preparing me for this.

When my knees forced me to slow down, I started noticing things I'd been rushing past for years. The way morning light comes through the kitchen window. How my neighbor's cat sits in the exact same spot every afternoon. The particular sound rain makes on different surfaces.

My garden has changed too. I can't kneel like I used to, so I've raised the beds. I can't grip the tools the same way, so I've found ergonomic ones that actually work better. The garden doesn't care that I'm slower now. The tomatoes still grow. The roses still bloom.

Final thoughts

Yes, aging is like living in a house where someone keeps removing the light bulbs. But maybe that's not the whole story. Maybe it's also about learning to navigate in different light, finding new paths through familiar rooms, discovering that some darkness isn't as scary as we thought.

I'm 70 now, and things are definitely not working like they used to. But I'm still here, still writing, still opening jars (with help from my rubber grip), still climbing stairs (one at a time, thank you very much). The house might be getting darker, but I'm learning to see in new ways. And sometimes, in that quieter light, you can see things you missed when everything was bright and loud and fast.

The slow fade of aging isn't what any of us would choose. But it's what we get. And maybe, just maybe, there's a strange grace in that gradual letting go, one light bulb at a time.