[Come summer heat, much of my blogging momentum melts away. Hence an experiment until Labor Day: fifty minimalist posts about whatever.]
A charming Hungarian once told me that men and women grow more alike as they get old. I was in therapy with him at the time and the transference was positive, so I never thought to question him. It didn’t seem relevant anyway, as he was forty-six when he said it and I was thirty-five.
In any event, he was never able personally to verify his observation. He died of a massive stroke at the age of 71 while walking vigorously along the shore at Clearwater Beach, Florida, to which he had retired about eighteen months before. When I met with his small wren of a widow fifteen years later, she declared him a fine figure of a man to the end, still virile and erect as he strode over the sand, nodding at attractive passing ladies.
Bill and I now both qualify as “old.” Have we grown more alike since the salad days before we met? Well, yes. I tell him all the time we would have been entirely incompatible had we come across each other thirty, forty, or fifty years earlier – when he was always thinking nooky, wherever he might find it, whereas I was always thinking nest-building and settling on the nest. I would have called him a swine; he would (eventually) have called me a bore.
On the other hand, the hunky Hungarian was perhaps not quite right. The body’s fires, whether wandering or domestic, may indeed be banking after eighty — bringing both sexes to the living-room couch after dinner, two versions of the same generic old person, slightly different in appearance thanks to bone structure and haircut, but who both hold hands (or not) while surfing channels till it’s okay to go to sleep.
However, our minds remain differently hard-wired. No matter how impossible a favorable outcome, even philosophical old men still covertly eye hot young things who flaunt their this and that, the urge to propagate their genes undying. Even bookish old women still secretly covet well-muscled bodies of shirtless young men seen ripping up streets with the brute physical strength required to protect a nest against marauders.
I bet you think I’m making all this up. Give it some time. Getting old doesn’t happen overnight. Sooner or later, you’ll see.
ON BEING OLD 
I love the term, “generic old person.” I strongly concur with (and approve of) the respective visual preferences you describe. The banking of the fires may take place on an individual schedule. I’m beginning to suspect that the fires begin to cool, at least, well before eighty.
The big difference between the genders as we age is that life expectancy is shorter for men. A pity that we can’t all live to happy old ages and slip peacefully away in our sleep.
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Take heart, John. Someone is always ahead of the bell curve for male mortality, and it might as well be you! About your last sentence — I’ll certainly second that!
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Nina, I’m there, and I don’t think you’re making it up! This one got a chuckle! Chryssa
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Your chuckle has me chuckling too, Chryssa! What else can we do at this stage?
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Keep on chuckling! Makes it more tolerable!
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P.S. When did “Christine” become “Chryssa?”
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Long story, Nina! It’s in two recent fun awards blog posts (Liebster #4 & Dragon’s Loyalty). Check them out when you have time. http://cerobinsonauthor.com
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Not so easy to find. There’s no “search” function on your webpage, Chryssa.
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The posts are under Awards on the menu bar under the sunset header. Just click on Awards and you’re there. Chryssa
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Chuckling here too,Nina. There is something to that Hungarian’s theory. We have melded our personalities quite a bit over the years, and some say , we even look a bit alike. Is that because we have been around each other so much, taking on mannerisms, or could it be that we were originally attracted to some version of ourselves years ago ?? I wonder. ☺
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Interesting speculations, Van. Evidently, you two were at least somewhat compatible from the start. However, you say nothing about the hard wiring. That’s alike, too? I very much doubt it!!!
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No, you’re right, Nina, the hard wiring is something altogether different. Those differences may have been what has kept us going. Yin and yang.
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Well, I can honestly say that M and I are NOT alike, except perhaps in musical tastes and the people we like to befriend..however as octogenarians, these differences
(and we are temperamentally different) still cause the
fires to burn brightly……so viva la difference!
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You are a v-e-r-y lucky couple!
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