“Grandma, what does it feel like to be 74?”
Hmm. “I would say it feels about like being 54,” I tell my granddaughter. I realize this is not helpful, as she, of 14 years, doesn’t know what being 54 feels like, either.
She takes a pinch of my skin and admires the length of time it takes to resolve back onto my arm. I used to play this same game with my own patient grandmother.
“But when I look in a mirror,” I tell her, “I feel more like 94.” Maybe I’ll banish mirrors from the little farmhouse we plan to build.

Yesterday afternoon, we met with the road guys at the farm. These are Warren — not Farmlandia, although he does look the part — and Brick, son-in-law of friends. We were surprised, and pleased, when Brick showed up (makes sense that his profession is in the building trades, right?). We’d just begun to talk with them about the route our driveway will have to take when the well guys arrived. Not Joe, we’ll get back to him later.

Larry and I split responsibilities, and I got Road-guys. (Lucky, as they are super smart and funny and fun.) We set out in Warren’s truck, Brick in the back seat, up to the house site. Meanwhile, Larry climbed into Well-guys’ blue van, and the two vehicles lumbered up the hill. From my vantage the blue van looked exactly like a giant beetle with spare pvc piping strapped on top like antennae.

After thorough discussion, after Well-guys left and Larry joined my crew, further appointments made, provisional recommendations noted, I observed that I wanted to walk back down to check on the apple tree we had newly found. Yes! The seminal apple tree! “I’m so proud of you,” Brick said, on his departure. Sub text? Proud of us? Because we’re doing this “at our age?” Or am I too sensitive?

Okay, down the hill, through the gate, and we found another possible building site. “NO!” Larry making it clear that no, we are not reconsidering the hard-won primary site. But it’s very pretty, and I imagine a picnic table under the canopy of the little grove of oaks.

The apples are small, hard, green, abundant, and actually, quite good. No idea what variety, but for now, let’s move on. There are “streams” dissecting the property, which the Road-guys tell us must be addressed with culverts, practically the size of those governing water LA receives from Owens Lake. Huh.

The streams are dry, just now, or mostly so. But deep. And we need to cross one of them in order to return to car, or retrace our many, many steps back up the hill. So Larry finds a likely spot, carefully jumps across, then turns to assist me. This is where I am reminded of that little conversation about being 74. This is crazy. If one of us misses, we crash about four feet into the crevasse. Really not good.

And then we have to cross again, and yet again. I begin to see pretty little foot bridges crossing these treacherous “seasonal water courses.” I reel myself back in, and we head for the Hilton motel in Corvallis where we’ll spend the night.

So what does being 74 feel like? Like just life. Being more careful. Not skiing anymore. Getting more tired after the 18 holes of golf we played the next morning at Trysting Tree on the OSU campus. Having lunch at a brew pub and noting a table of old women next to us, who have the same haircut as mine. (Must grow that braid I always imagined pinning atop my head.)

My dad famously subtracted 10 years from his actual age, down to government documents, down to lying to his doctors. At the time, it was a story I loved to tell. Funny. Like he could fool anyone. Now I know. Being 74 doesn’t feel different, but people treat you as if you are different. Disabled, in a strange way. So now I get it. Way to go, Dad.