Figuring Out Life While Aging
My noisy mind
grafts
my longed for
or my feared
events into
stories I’m revisiting.
The frontispiece
says 1992,
from my dead parents
with wishes
for my purple
old age.
Now I read
stories I fear
and remember
setting the book aside,
pleased I kept it;
knowing it’s prophetic.
Cross-posted – https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/thoughts-from-aging
I look in the mirror and see evidence of aging, and wonder: what does it mean, being old? I ate in a sort of trendy restaurant yesterday, and saw people in a range of ages, more younger ones than I’m used to encountering. I think I live in, exist in, a kind of seniors’ ghetto. The building I’m in is largely seniors. The church I attend is a delight because, although the majority by far are seniors, there are some younger and even some children. I don’t know them, but I get to see them, sometimes overhear them. My daughter lives far from me, and there are no grandchildren. So I have little familial contact with the generations following mine. I wonder who am I now, old, single, Middle Class comfortable and, as I never understood when my old father talked about it, looking for a purpose?
I feel the pull to be positive. And I have been, am, very lucky, “blessed” as my father would insist. I have been having a life full of gifts, finding paths through my days that fit me, that have brought me pleasures and joy as well as comforts. I have had trials, but with enough support so that I could endure and learn from them. I have had a life companion, and the wonder of not being alone for most of my time alive. There are people I love who return my love, and help me grow, and by “grow” I mean learn to be able to let go of most bitterness and find or create some meaning from upset, pain, and confusions. And perhaps writing this, naming my current feelings and reminding myself of my path getting here, implicitly promises that I will find or make some return gifts to the world, implicitly promises a future purpose while teaching me (AGAIN!) patience.
When words hide
in your mouth-mind,
charades speak.
2016
In youth we come through our bodies as explorers
seeking and measuring,
astounded and disappointed
as we grow into ourselves.
In our long midlife, we travel our path,
forgetting and wandering,
sometimes grateful, mostly blindly seeking
the more we yearn for.
Now, our bodies re-astound us:
aching and refusing,
complaining and attacking,
reminding us of time.
Cloudy this morning,
with a hint of demolition
in the air.
This old house,
wrinkled and sagging,
still offers warmth
and bits of beauty.
An old post re-posted:
To sample a poem from my 2013 published collection – available from http://www.blurb.com/b/4591664-mapping-the-wilderness – listen to me reading –
Approaching Sixty, I See That … https://on.soundcloud.com/MaBmfFGFs7JgGggn8https://on.soundcloud.com/MaBmfFGFs7JgGggn8 – Hope you find it meaningful, and perhaps buy a copy of my collection.
Courage at eighty is different from at twenty
But both ages carry their future constantly –
A fearsome thrust into an unmapped wilderness.
To carry your future at twenty is to seek
The wilderness because it must be mapped
And shaped. There are roads to clear and homes
To build, and no one has given you a plan
For your wilderness, (just the one they didn’t use in theirs).
So you thrust forward, knowing too little and enough,
Building blindly wherever you find a clearing, lifting
The log of your childhood so it bridges your fears,
Confident that it might not collapse on you.
A fearsome thrust carrying life forward blindly
At eighty requires enough love to endure
Despite loss, and endure because of loss to come,
And endure because of the sweetness still here, if
Courage persists. And, despite (because?) the compass pointing
Through the wilderness to the edge of the map,
Tells a tale seen over and over about endings, despite this,
To work through today knowing
too much, and not enough, about tomorrow.
Courage at eighty is different from at twenty
But both ages carry their future constantly –
A fearsome thrust into an unmapped wilderness.
Curtains open, a band of rosy yellow bleeds upwards behind dark firs into a pale sky: another day of grace. My mottled, age-altering skin and sinews carry my history, ride under my costumes and in my gestures - displaying old stories. My feet carry me along the earth, my home, while my hands and heart still seek.
In youth we come through our bodies as explorers
Seeking and measuring
Astounded and disappointed
As we grow into ourselves.
In our long midlife, we travel our path
Forgetting and wandering
Sometimes grateful, mostly blindly seeking
The more we yearn for.
Now, our bodies re-astound us
Aching and refusing
Complaining and attacking
Reminding us of time.
Learning Living 