This weekend I visited my mother and her husband -- they married after my father died in his 70s -- at the "assisted living" facility in suburban Portland, Ore.  They moved there a couple years ago from a home she owned in an over-55 development nearby, after she became too frail to keep up housework.  

The assisted living facility is rather nice, for what it is. It doesn't smell, it's in good condition, the staff seems genuinely polite and helpful, there are lots of activities for the residents, and so on. Compared to prices in my home area of San Francisco, it seems quite reasonable. All in all, I can't think of a better place for my mother, who will be 90 years old this year and is, as they say, growing increasingly frail.

Even the food is pretty decent. Whenever I come there for the weekend, I try to get there in time for Friday dinner, when they always serve salmon filets. Last Friday, while I was sitting with her and her husband in the facility's dining room, surrounded by fifty or sixty elderly folks, my mother noticed me looking around at the room. I was actually thinking that it was a pretty decent joint, all things considered, when my mother leaned over to me and said, "I'll bet you're thinking you hope you don't end up in a place like this!"

Surprised, I said, "Well actually -- I hope I can afford to live in a place this nice, when the time comes."

Then I thought, maybe she's trying to tell me something. "What, is something wrong?" I asked. "Aren't you comfortable here?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she said. "I just meant -- all these old people!"

True, I had been suffering somewhat as a middle-aged man played tunes on an accordian -- songs from the turn of the century, like "My Wild Irish Rose" and "Peg o' My Heart," that were popular not with this generation of oldsters but their parents. (Those two tunes were written in 1899 and 1913, respectively. I think this playlist, which also includes "Sidewalks of New York," "My Blue Heaven," and "Daisy," has been standard at old folks' homes since about the 1950s. I wonder: thirty years from now,  when I'm in the equivalent of that facility, will they still be playing the same moldy songs for entertainment, or will things finally have moved on to, say, the songs of my parents' youth? I'm not sure whether it would be any better to hear "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" week after week.) And the simpering smile of the activities director, who tried to lead residents in singing "The Band Played On" (1895), was annoying. 

But the old people don't bother me. By the time I'm as old as them, I'm sure they'll bother me even less, because that will be me. 

Or maybe she was trying to tell me that she wishes she hadn't lived quite so long. Thanks to modern medicine, she has already survived a few things that would have killed someone a decade or two earlier. Now her mind and body are simply wearing out. She's not in good enough shape to take advantage of many of the activities they offer there. Though she's wealthy now, mostly she and her husband sit in the darkened living room of their apartment watching television. 

And yes, while it's easy to imagine myself living in such a place in 25 or 30 years (while simultaneously hoping I will be able to even afford it, yet at avoid it in favor of some unidentified and probably non-existent better alternative), it's hard to imagine being so old, so infirm -- even though I see signs every day that I'm getting older too. 

Driving back from Portland, I heard on the radio "Bob Dylan's Dream," a song about looking back at good old days of hanging around with chums and dreaming of all the things they'd do in the future, and how he wishes his life could still be full of that comradeship. 

He wrote that at 22.

And that made me think of last year's kerfuffle between Dylan and Joni Mitchell, when out of the blue she attacked Dylan as a fake and a phony.  I was present the night in 1976 in Austin, Texas when, at the conclusion of a packed, ecstatic Joni Mitchell concert, Dylan ambled out on stage, leered at the audience, and sat down to play a quiet, heartfelt duet with Mitchell on "Girl from the North Country." That's what I have in mind when I think of Dylan and Mitchell, so her outburst came as quite a surprise.

Think of the history between those two, and then think about where they've ended up, and then try listening to "Bob Dylan's Dream." 

I don't wish to recapture my college days, though they were fun while they lasted, or my days performing music, though the experience of playing and singing my own songs in front of a roaring audience was extraordinary. My life's been full of unexpected experiences, and I'm sure I'll have more of them. I hope when I'm my mother's age I can simply remember them.   I doubt the other old folks will believe me, though.