Struggling with Time

 This morning, I'm listening to Parliament-Funkadelic and drinking my coffee to wake me up. If this doesn't work, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. The mornings are pretty dark now and getting colder. 

I don't feel like I'm 57 years old until I remember and then count the years from that point: twenty-nine years from the time I got hit by a car; forty years from my first boyfriend; fifteen years from when I got tenure. Fifty-two years from when I got my tonsils out.

I remember fixtures from my life that changed in the technological revolution. I remember my speech teacher recording me with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. I remember my first transistor radio. I remember the portable tape recorder roughly the size of a package of Chips Ahoy. The computer with the grey screen and the green letters, typing in commands at the prompt. 

Still, I don't feel 57. The number seems too high; its proximity to senior-citizenhood too close. I'm not resigned to go quietly into my twilight years. Expect me to make waves. Expect me to write. 

Feeling young today

Sometimes, I feel really, really old.

Today, I feel younger than my 56 years of age.

I don't know why -- it's not that I feel young. I just don't feel like someone inching toward "senior citizen". 

I wonder if there's something more energetic to listen to than classical music (Mahler) on this Sunday morning. Have I been missing something by not listening to Lana Del Rey? Lady Gaga? (I don't feel like I've been missing anything with Ed Sheeran.) 

I wonder if there's a new hobby I could take up, as if writing isn't enough. Or someplace to go (during COVID, this is a tall order.) 

I suppose if I want to feel every minute of my age, I could just take a walk in this 100+ degree heat index. That would make me feel about 120, I suspect.

So maybe I'm not that young. But I refuse to think I'm old.

Musing on Mortality

In the pandemic, I'm thinking of my own mortality.

I'm 57 years old with a spate of minor health problems. I'm of the age where I start to fit into higher risk categories. Given my age, I'm closer to the thing that's going to kill me than I used to be. If it's not coronavirus, it will be something else.

I'm trying to come to terms with this. It doesn't help that 70s music reaches deep into my soul and connects with my childhood, and it's almost 50 years old, or that I actually find myself saying "I don't like today's music." (That's not totally true; I love ambient and electronica, Beirut, and modern singer-songwriter types.)

I'm going to die someday. I've honestly never looked at it that way before. I'm going to die sooner or later. Coronavirus, cancer, heart disease, old age. I'm hoping for the latter, because I have books to edit and write. I'm hoping my death isn't painful, that it's merciful, and that I've done what I've wanted to do before then. I hope I'm ready for it, or that it catches me so much by surprise I don't have time for regret.

I don't know if there's a heaven, honestly; most conceptions of heaven seem very -- well, exclusive, like Heaven is a country club where only certain Christians can enter. (This goes with the attitude of "love everyone, even if you're certain they're going to Hell). I have fantasies about the afterlife, that it's the extended family I never knew how to have when I was younger, and we're having a big banquet in harmony. I know this is a fantasy and that the only way I will live on is in people's memories of me, unless (as I sometimes hope) my consciousness mingles with the stardust.

I try not to dwell upon this too much -- after all, I have things to accomplish and depression won't get me anywhere. Still, musing on mortality is a sign of the times.

Happy 56th birthday to me

Today I'm 56 years old.

This is not me. This is Belvedere the kitten, who's 4 days old

For you younger people out there -- time just chugs along and you hardly notice it until you get to one of those milestone years -- 40, 50, 55. You're too fixated on things like careers and children to wake up and think, "wow, I'm getting older." 

The grey hairs, the wrinkles, the thickening of the body come gradually, until you look in the mirror and see someone who looks older than you remember being. 

You don't even notice that the cultural touchstones -- the music stars, the memes and jokes -- flow and change around you, and you wake up one morning to find that the younger people around you don't get your jokes anymore. 

But you've survived so much!  Everyday events that would panic you before -- a flat tire, sleeping through the alarm -- you now handle with aplomb. Your fears that you can't handle crises have been proven wrong time after time. 

And you have stories to tell. Middle age (late middle-age?) is a great time to start writing. Or find friends who like to tell stories and swap them. 

When you're older, you have the perspective of years, and that is your gift to the world.

In-Between

I gaze out the window at the Toledo train station, watching the rain bead off the windows. The train has been in the station for a while -- a half hour, a day, forever -- I'm too tired to figure it out.

This train ride will carry me from the joy of  discovering home to the duty of another year teaching college. It will be my 21st year at Northwest.    One of my first students is sending her kid to college. I still feel like I’m in my thirties despite my arthritis, and all my memories jumble into a timeless mist.

I will return to an abrupt transition to beginning of the school year meetings. But for now, I’m on the train, in-between everything.

... and in my spare time I write protest poems ...

Women do not forgive

the furrows cut by age,

the softened curves prone to sag.

We fall back on cliché,

diminishing ourselves

by hiding in more pleasing light.

I will forgive my face

for daringly claiming its space.

Delusion

I look in the mirror and I don't recognize that person. In my mind, I am a plump witch sitting in the corner of a room that glows with a crackling fireplace, peering over my glasses at you. I am a waif with huge eyes and fairy wings. I stand on the edge of a cliff, my hair streaming behind me in a storm. In my mind, I am never, ever ordinary.

And then I look in the mirror again, and damn it, I see a round woman with hair that curls into a grandma perm without any effort. I see bookish glasses, a tight mouth that turns into too, too much when I smile. A face to be forgotten, like those of a vanguard of women my age.

Do you blame me for preferring fantasy? Do you ridicule me for wanting to be the protagonist of my own life? Do you scorn me for standing here smelling roses and taking up the space a younger, more beautiful woman could be standing in?

Don't tell me about it. I prefer my delusion.

Age as a symbolic construct: An iconoclast speaks

Today, I've chosen to talk about age as a symbolic construct in writing for two reasons:

1) I just watched the 35th anniversary directors' cut of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan yesterday. One of the running themes of this movie is aging, as experienced by the protagonist, Admiral James Kirk.

2) Today's my birthday.

Aging symbolizes many themes and issues in writing. I won't speak of absolutes here, but trends in what aging means in writing -- and in society. I will illustrate with movies, because movies are fresh in my mind and they owe much of their genius (or lack thereof) to screenwriters:

 -- Mortality. In Wrath of Khan, James T. Kirk has been promoted to a desk job as Admiral. He can't see as well as he used to and needs reading glasses. He collects antiques -- in fact, he feels he himself as an antique until he becomes involved in a battle to the death with a brutal, yet also aging, nemesis.

-- Agency. Armande Voisin, the curmudgeonly old woman in the movie Chocolat, has diabetes at a time when control of the disease was not as possible as it is now. Her daughter fusses over her, scolding Armande about what she eats. chiding her not to exert herself, and other well-meant but controlling acts. No spoilers here, but Armande finally wrests agency from her daughter in a delightful but shocking way.

-- Attractiveness. According to the movies, we consider men more handsome when they're older -- Sean Connery as James Bond comes to mind. This may have something to do with the instrumental expectations of accomplishment expected from men, because older men outside of the spy industry (see Raging Bull) aren't lauded for their attractiveness.

We consider women less attractive as they're older -- we find women in their thirties and forties who want to express their desirability to be suspect, and we term them "cougars" -- the classic example of a cougar is Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate, who is portrayed as predatory and desperate. Women are expected to be sexless after a certain age, which is why Harold and Maude horrified so many people -- an 80-year-old woman in a possibly sexual relationship with a much younger man -- a boy, even?

I like to play with age in my stories, just as I like to send up other conventions of culture. In one of my stories, a seventy-five-year-old man becomes a shaman as a result of his totem chasing him halfway across the state. It's never too late to make a change in your life, right? People will receive this as a heartwarming twist.

On the other hand, in my first book (currently under re-re-editing), a fifty-year-old woman falls in love with a 20-year-old man and vice versa. This is not idle wish fulfillment on my part for those of you who notice I fit in the woman's age demographic; I wrote it because I wanted to play with the concept -- what if the woman holds back because she's afraid of being considered a cougar, and what if the man was the pursuer? In other words, not The Graduate? Even as I write this, I feel like I have to apologize about this, because I'm afraid you're thinking  "I can handle a semi-sentient vine and a woman with a plant superpower, but a twenty-year-old dating a woman three times his age?! That's not believeable."  Magic is magic, and if it takes magic to elevate the status of older women, I'm willing to do the job -- even if that novel never gets published.

So, I'm another year older, and I forgot the one other bit of symbolism that comes with age, and that is wisdom. Think Spock in the progression of Star Trek movies (old universe, not new universe).  Spock goes from being a young, peculiarly unemotional crew member to an elder statesman and almost shamanic figure.  Even older women possess this quality in literature as is evidenced by a long literary history of wise grandmother figures and fairy grandmothers.

I will leave you to consider what aspects of aging I consider as I celebrate my 54th birthday.



PS: A couple weeks before Leonard Nimoy (who played Spock in the original universe) died, he hopped onto Twitter to adopt nieces and nephews. No kidding -- what a way to show agency on one's deathbed. I was one of the nieces he adopted. I'm honored to be an honorary niece of Leonard Nimoy, who showed me how to age well.