IN PLANTS it’s not called aging, it’s called senescence, which sounds so much more elegant, serene even, than what happens to humans as time wrinkles us, like it’s drying us out, how it deepens our sockets, bends our spines as it brings us down, shortens and grays and blinds and deafens us, makes some of us forget almost everything, makes others of us obsess over the good old days if only because our days left are numbered.
Old age is not senescence, and we don’t last even close to as long as the oldest trees alive today, which have even
