I am officially 'a senior'. The first time Dylan - my oldest - pointed this out, he got a punch on the arm, not exactly a senior response. He was showing me a pamphlet he'd picked up at the supermarket check-out.

"Look mum, you can go on tours. By bus! What about this one? Open Gardens Victoria."

"Shut it!" Followed by said punch.

"Child abuse!"

"Dylan!"

"What? You're over fifty. Embrace your inner senior self. That's what it says!"

I shot him that look. The don't mess with me one.

"Do you have Flybuys ma'am?" This from the pimply teen who'd finished robotically passing our items through the scanner.

"See? He called you ma'am!" Dylan leaned in, relishing the joke.

I removed my loyalty card and handed it over in silence. This silence followed us all the way to the underground car park where Dylan loaded the groceries into the car and I sat in the driver's seat staring at the pamphlet he'd thrown in on the passenger side.

It was Seniors Week: seven glorious days of discounted activities, free public transport and... I was facing yet another moment of trying to reconcile how I felt - with how I was supposed to feel?

"Mum?"

"What?"

He'd picked up the pamphlet and was flicking the pages. "It's not that bad. You only have to deal with that? I got bigger issues."

"I'm fucking old! What's a bigger issue than this?"

"Stop swearing!"

"Why? You do it all the bloody time!"

"Yes but I'm-"

"Dylaaaaaaaan..."

"Hmmm. Well you don't look like them."

"Them? Them?" Yes my voice rose.

 "Yeah. They're all dressed the same. And smiling at each other. They look like memes."

"Hand it over."

I flicked through the first few pages. Yep, he was right. Shiny dentures everywhere, short and neat hairstyles, dresses and sensible shoes, slacks and cardigans, mid-length tennis skirts and lawnbowls whites; lined faces touting everything from discounted car insurance, pre-paid funerals, discreet incontinence aids to... percentages off stores I would never set foot in; along with myriad organised group activities.

My jeans had holes at the knees and a couple high in the butt near the top of the frayed pockets ("Mum I can see skin, that's gross?" This because - okay I don't do underwear, I don't see the need or the use for it? The 'repurposed' cowboy boots I'd won in a competition two years earlier had feathers and bits of crocheted doily as decoration. The rest of me was clad in several layers of different lengths with one of the inner layers somehow ending up on the outside.

I flipped down the visor and looked in the small mirror: First, at the now-transitioning-to-blonde orange hair, then the diamond stud on my right nostril, then... the lack of make-up and my overall- Crap. I looked nothing like them. Only thing we had in common - the women and I - were the creases and wrinkles albeit their faces were creamed and made up, healthily 'rouged' and glowing, as opposed to my stark, pale one? Yet I was supposed to look like them, it was meant to be my life between those pages?

I opened the car door and with a flick of the wrist slid the pamphlet underneath the car. Yes, I littered. Probably also ran over it and thus desecrated a very noble movement in my haste to distance myself from the contents. Tyres squealed!

It didn't help that I turned left instead of right, still gripped by the pages though.

"You having a senior moment? Supposed to go by the bank remember?" Dylan can never help himself. I guess I taught him this too.

"No, I am thinking?"

"What's there to think about? You complicate everything."

"No I don't!"

"Whatever."

Of course I came home and pondered; what else would I/could I do? I was left with the notion that as a senior I was to embrace a certain lifestyle. Instead of hanging out with my kids I should be bowling or joining a day tour or visiting the hairdresser... with other likeminded women? Only I didn't feel quite so likeminded. Or at all like minded which then posed the question of not only why, but also what now?

My kids will be gone soon. Off to their lives. Before too long my parents will have departed, in another way. Me? What? I am supposed to then join the senior set and seek identity there? Fucking lawn bowls with those funny hats and daring barefoot bowls nights when you get to let your hair down? Me?

Or else what? Drift alone and aimless, black-clad in a sea of white, heading north against the current while everyone is paddling a more leisurely south? Can't do this wearing incontinence aids and big undies to hold them in - or worse, undie-like nappies like my father.

What about my brain then? That was the puzzling bit. Fair enough looking like a senior, but what the hell did they think about and talk about over tea and scones and home-made shortbread? What did they think about?

Children, grandchildren, gardening, health issues, health issues, health issues... Yeah I repeated the last because these days whenever I am near such a senior group, I hear snatches of conversation:

"John had a bypass. He was lucky they could operate."

"Oh that's too bad. But you look well?"

"The old arthritis flares up now and then and my diabetes has been all over the place."

"I have the same thing with my blood pressure. Started a new medication last week."

"My doctor said I should go on an anti-cholesterol tablet as a preventative?"

"Oh, I'm taking that one too."

Arghhhhh... I have to talk about every little or big thing going on with my body? Share the news of meds and procedures and tests and - compare, see how I stack up in the 'who's taking the most meds' competition?

Fifty is assumed the pinnacle then. From that point on the descent begins. If I'd had my sons earlier in life I'd be knee deep in grandkids now doing my bit by babysitting as is the norm here in these parts. Is it bad to be thanking God I had them late? Would my sons shudder if they realised I might mind babysitting taking up my time?

We have what's called the University of the Third Age here. (The wording right?) All third-agers can study either in special centres or online... such courses as Australian history (White-washed much?) Botany: The study of plants for enjoyment (Ahhh!) Basic English Grammar (Bit late?) Unleashing your Creative Spirit (Is it still alive by then?) Maintaining Independence (That be cooking and socialising?) The Night Sky (Why?) and of course Climate Change (It's real?). I won't lie I've looked and trouble is I know most of these things. Get to Third Age, you pick up some stuff along the way? Nothing within the course structure remotely engaged my attention.

So, if I cannot study and I cannot socialise with likeminded others - see where I am going? There's no prospect of me growing old disgracefully with a significant other (shudder) so unless I become the ubiquitous cat lady or the hidden hoarder or stop dyeing my hair and join the restless Grey Nomads trudging with arthritic joints around this continent in campervans - my options are kinda limited?

Ah, writing you might say. All this time to myself! Endless - okay not so endless - days with no claim on my hours or person; when I can finally sit and write the book, the One! Clack clack clack, produce the next Gone with the Wind, or The Old Man and The Sea, or the more futuristic and visionary 2084 (yes, I have thought about doing this one, so don't steal the idea?) and then... sit back with a satisfied grin.

I don't have it in me. I write what I live and what I think and what I feel, boring as that might be to most. It's working okay now; I have those who stop by and read and engage but I still have some hold on the before-senior world? Once I am fully entrenched in seniorhood ain't gonna be no 13yo girl stopping by to read grandma's hospital jaunts?

Truth be told, part of me doesn't even want to get there. Not to the ailments and assisted living and bag of pills and - fuck the Third Age! Maybe why I struggle so much to fit in or envision it; I don't want senior moments, I don't want senior anything! I'd rather burn and crash my way through five good years of now, this time, than take part in thirty years of systematic physical and mental disintegration.

The eighty-something woman who was a sack of bones barely making an outline beneath the hospital blanket; whose skin was so thin I could see every vein and every bruise; whose denture-free sunken mouth slurped at the creamy peach-flavoured 'dinner' in a plastic container and pronounced it "very nice, dear", who cried tears of gratitude for the privilege of being fed; who longed to return to her (nursing) home and whose son paid a token visit - most of it with eyes on his mobile phone - I watched her yesterday and what was she thinking?

I did in the end pop my head out of my room and use the old bush telegraph system we have going in this house:

"Dylaaaaan!"

My mother of course followed this by:

"Dylaaan, your mum wants you."

He bounded up the stairs.

"What's up?"

"I forgot."

He shot me that look. The you're messing with me again one. He shut the door.

"Dylaaan!"

"What?"

"You ever call me senior again, you'll be homeless. And I'm not doing the minding your kids stint. And- your mother's gonna get crazy."

He shot me that look. The my mother is already crazy one?