Since our aging process begins at birth, creative aging could begin at any age. Customarily people in this field define it as occuring in the second half of life, or 50. There are many heartwarming and inspiring stories of people choosing to age creatively; I met last week a provocative example of the name of Roz, an 80 year-old woman whose feet still call her to dance and whose art is literally award-winning. More about Roz in another post because I am still in awe of another example of aging, of living creatively I read about some months ago. Her name is Carol and her forte is poetry, specifically the Japanese arts of Haiku and Tanka. What gives Carol’s story such resonance is that she is living and aging creatively in an iron-lung. Yes, Carol was struck down with polio in the 1st grade, in 1955. Since then she sees the world through the window, often only through the mirror over the head of her bed, but what a world she sees.

Her sharp knife quick
to peel, core, slice the red apple
    we talk of childhood fears
           how I blocked my ears
           against the fair tale

This award-winning Tanka links the homely, yet violent act, of cooking, perhaps an apple-pie with those great Western Massachusetts Cortlands, with the terrors the children find so often in our world. I’ll never peel an apple again the same mindless way. Now that is the power of creativity and art. The old made new again.