HIM: I can’t keep up with her eating habits. Maybe it’s an age thing, because Lord only knows, she getting on in years. The other day we were trying to figure out what we were going to have for dinner. I might add, that we go through this "What are we going to eat tonight" jousting contest every day. I suggested that we cook up a boneless pork roast in our Showtime Rotisserie, you know, "just set it and forget it." She announced that she doesn’t like pork anymore. I was stunned!

When did it happen that she just tossed out an entire food group? She quit on veal and lamb years ago and I came to accept…but pork? No more roast pork and pork chops? Things like this just don’t happen. What really baffles me is that while turning down the roast, we opted for a spiral cut honey ham. The last time I looked, that qualified as pork I shouted at her at breakfast while she wolfed down her last piece of bacon.

I told her that Del Monte vegetables were on sale at a dollar a can down at Stop & Shop. Her response: I don’t eat vegetables out of cans anymore, "way too much sodium". Think about it, no more green beans, stewed tomatoes, baby limas, creamed corn or that wonderful Trader Joe’s canned sweet corn; poof, up in smoke! Then we have pasta, a personal favorite of mine; she no longer likes pasta…her reasoning: "All that sauce that goes on it is too acidic, it’s probably why you get those gout attacks every couple of years." The truth is, I rather keep taking my Endocine pills then give up on red sauce. Then there is the issue of dessert. I like those whipped cream cakes at Stop & Shop, so naturally, she just recently decided that we can’t buy them anymore. "Dan, you know how it goes, we eat a few slices and the rest of the cake winds up in the garbage, besides, they’re too expensive and the single layer cakes are boring." How can a whipped cream cake be boring? She’ll think nothing though of me bringing home a dozed assorted little cakes from French Memories in Duxbury, how does she justify her argument?

Do you think that the older we get, the more radical our culinary mood swings go? Or is it a thing that changes with pangs of hunger? She’ll call me at work carping over the fact that there is nothing in the house for her to eat. It is during these frequent occasions that she sweet-talks me into driving over to McDonalds or Burger King for the newest addition to their menuboard. Now I don’t know where these places stand on the whole transfat debate, but if she is sufficiently hungry, she doesn’t care. It is during these times that she dreams about a Wendy’s opening in town or a Quizno’s…talk about hypocrisy!

Even among the foods that she still finds appropriate for me to buy, she won’t eat sub-categories of it. For instance, she’ll eat hamburgers, but not meatloaf; beef burgundy but not beef stew, hot dogs (all beef, natural casing only) but not franks and beans, baked haddock but not fishcakes…you get the picture, she’s gastronomically challenged. She reads the labels religiously and points all the things that I should be aware of; like "partially hydrogenated oil" which she says is just another way of saying "transfats". She instructs me that if the transfats are less then .05 then the company can says "0" percent transfats. "We have to think healthy, that’s why I now drink pomegranate juice, it contains anti-oxidants that flush out your system" she insists while taking a deep draw on her third cigarette.

HER: Yes, I am getting on in years, and I’m still six years younger than he is. He recently turned 65 and that single event has rocked his world. He says he has the mind of a 30 year-old. Well, I think most older people do think younger than their years, and that’s a good thing, but reality barges in when you look in the mirror. Sometimes I get startled and wonder who the hell that old lady in my mirror is. There are benefits to getting older, however, but he doesn’t see them. I tell him, "If you’re not older, you’re dead."

While we joke about our age and the concessions we make to keep on living reasonably healthy lives, we should thank God every day that we’re not seriously ill, and that we’re able to do things even if it’s at a bit slower pace.

In addition to dietary restrictions, there are other considerations. For example, when he takes a long nap, I check to make sure he’s still alive. But when I take a nap on the couch, he passes right by. He figures if my mouth isn’t moving, it’s a good day for him, and he won’t do anything to spoil it.

Your shopping list changes, too. You’ve got remedies to make you go and remedies to make you stop. Antacids rank high on the list, and various other things which are unmentionable. You run like hell for a sale on the highest level reading glasses, and you save your shopping for Tuesdays so you can get the senior discount. In a lot of ways, you become your parents, which is something we all swore we’d never do. Your primary daily concern is what to have for dinner, which is no small thing because you have to tailor dinner to each other’s ailments and medications.

Your children get more involved in your life when you’re older. When one of my kids sees me on a ladder, the round robin of telephone calls begins with, "Somebody’s got to talk to Ma. She’s up on a ladder and she’s going to kill herself." If I didn’t kill myself having four teenagers in the house, no little ladder will do me in.

Meanwhile, he’s having to deal with lots of mail that comes from Social Security, Medicare, and AARP. We always get free copies of Prevention or some other type magazine that claims to have the secret of eternal life. The important part is life itself and how we can best live it until God calls us home.

I think I’m going to make him his pork roast. If he can stomach three or four political meetings a week, the food won’t hurt him.