I'm planning my long-term future. How long shall I live? After seeing that documentary on the man who invented the Theremin, who's now 95, I figure I can aim to be 100 or so. But I must be sure to do two things: take aspirin and follow Science News on the biochemistry of brain aging--there's a theory that much of senile dementia is really from microstrokes, hence rather preventable. I think my present tendency to substitute similar-sounding words started rather abruptly and is probably due to a microstroke. Must protect my brain--it's how I engage life.

And I must start to publicize my work in every medium. I'll need money, and also fame, even students and admirers, for my old age. I have my grandparents' obsession for independence and won't feel right accepting help in when old unless I've earned it by giving the world something. Foolish but true.

It occurs to me that if I achieve my plans and live to 100, and my son shares my long-lived heredity (I don't know much about my ex's family, except her parents didn't die young) he could well live nearly to 2100! So weird. I was raised to expect threescore years and ten--despite the steady increases in longevity. The only change in my generation was that we EXPECTED 70 years--plague, accidents, violence were less likely and we knew it. But really long lives? No. There was a sort of glass ceiling in our thinking.

And it's finally cracking.

NOTE IN THE MORNING

In the film Theremin, the inventor's halting speech (not to mention Brian Wilson's drug-damaged brain) were warnings! And yet in early films and photos Theremin seems physically rather like me, and despite the terrible stress in his life, he lived to 95. I really may have a long life ahead of me. We all may. And I don't think we're planning for it.

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