By Rhea Bouchard Powers

As I have reached what is euphemistically referred to as the golden years, I've been noticing a few things that seem to form a pattern.

Having spent most of my life reinventing the wheel, so to speak (i.e. learning things the hard way only to discover after the fact that someone else had already simplified the process and an easier way was at hand had I but known) I realize that these are most likely not new findings. But they're new to me, and as such I would like to share them.

First and perhaps most obvious is that although I may have grown older on the outside, I don't feel much different on the inside. The younger me is still alive and kicking and wondering what in the heck has happened to the face in the mirror. Yikes!

The next is closely related to the first in that it extends to people I knew back when. Against all evidence to the contrary, when I look at them I see them not as they are, but as they were. They don't look any different to me. However, that bit of mental slight of hand only works when I know who I'm looking at.

For example, a couple years ago when I was hosting a cookout here, I glanced out the front window and wondered who the old guy at the end of the driveway was. I was shocked to realize it was my brother-in-law Mickey who immediately looked much younger as soon as I recognized him.

I was also surprised when my friend Maddy, who went to school with my sister Joan, told me that she had been referred to as "that old lady over there in the pool" by a young family member who didn't know her very well. Ridiculous, I thought. She doesn't look any different now than she did when I first met her in grade school back in Manville.

I find that going out at night has lost much of its charm. Anything after 7 p.m. seems late. I love going out to eat, but I prefer to "do lunch" with friends, and to catch the early bird specials when I go out to dinner. Going out after dark just doesn't seem worth the bother most of the time.

I've found that without notes life gets chancy. I've double-booked appointments, totally forgotten commitments, and stood just inside the door of the supermarket more than once, trying to remember what in the world I was there for. And so it has come to pass that I keep stacks of little note pads within easy reach. Notes of all shapes and sizes are posted all over my desk, with one section reserved for medical appointment cards arranged in chronological order. I even tape notes to the center of the steering wheel if I need to remember to pick something up while I'm out. It saves me having to go back out again, probably after dark.

My most recent observation is that birds of a feather really do flock together.

I started bowling on two senior leagues last year, meeting dozens of new people in the process. I now find myself running into them all over the place.

On Monday mornings, when I play Scrabble at the Senior Center in Woonsocket, I usually peek into the next room to say hello to my brother-in-law Marcel who plays in the pitch league there. When I do, heads pop up all across the room, and people I know from the bowling alley smile and wave at me. The same thing happens when I stop in at Twin Rivers now and then to throw my money away in the slot machines. And since the warm weather has finally arrived, it appears that many of my fellow bowlers also golf. We spotted two of them playing right behind us just last week.

- Rhea Bouchard Powers is a writer from Cumberland.