Aging (More Thoughts On)

 I’ve said it before: the displeasure of aging is that I cannot do much of what I used to. The pleasure of aging is that I’m still trying with zero plans to wave the white flag anytime soon. I realize I’m fortunate to have escaped most of the ravages suffered by others, until this year, that is. One subdural hematoma leading to one set of seizures leading to one triple bypass, and currently one broken foot have brought me into the fold. Back surgery is a few weeks away. Still, I’m brisk. I feel great. People guess my age at twenty years younger. I hear and see just fine. My brain is usually not muddled - in other words, I’m aging well. But, tell me this: just what is aging well? Am I aging well because I’m not bent over and still have my teeth and still have my hair? Or am I aging well because I can still quote T.S.Eliot? (“I grow old, I grow old, I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”) Or am I aging well because my  heart is still filled with wonder at the sounds and sights and smells around me or because I have a grandson who is four…AND…because I have a grandson who is four. Take your pick. 

Writing helps me sort it all out. 

When folks ask me, what’s my secret, I tell them, “Immaturity”. And I am serious. Immaturity is my saving grace. My emotions are generally unabated. Fortunately, I am amused more often than I am angry, more bemused than wrathful. I still retain that sense of wonder that seems to see everything for the first time. They say that inside every elderly person is a young person wondering what the hell ever happened? Yes, there’s that wonder, too, but it’s not the wonder that predominates.The wonder that predominates these days is the high sun on orange leaves, a a tiny black bear cub, no bigger than a cocker spaniel,scampering up the hill, an eight pointer ready for the rut,the Fall crop of acorn squash and carola potatoes from RSK Farms…so many things as the air goes crispy…so many things but none so wonderful as four years of new life raring to go.I show him things and he sees them and then I see them again. I tell him things, and the telling is always new. He is so much but he isn’t all.

Here’s what else is exciting about life these days. I am not reliving the past so much as wondering over it, as in sense of wonder, sense of wow, sense of I did that? Really? No shit? I trekked across Alaska? I gave a sperm whale a noogie? I lived in Italy? I married an actress? I’m still married to an actress? The same one even! I am re-discovering the excitement of my life, that so much of it was what I dreamed it would be when I read those adventure chronicles as a child splayed out on the carpet surrounded by books - The Occident and The Orient was a favorite. Stephen of Arabia. Stephen of Khartoum. Stephen of Babylon. Stephen of Borneo. Head hunters. Smugglers. Cattle wranglers. Prophets. Pirates. Whalers. Mercenaries. They were all out there, stories waiting to be told, aching to be told if only I could get to them. I was single digits sitting on the floor in brown corduroy short pants looking at pictures of whirling dervishes and camels and shrunken heads and scimitars, charging horsemen and near naked hunters painted blue with bones in their beards, wild animals and rugged terrain, and I wanted to be there. Where? Down that river. Over that rise. Anywhere exotic, anywhere, and I often didn’t realize the danger ‘til I was in the midst of it. It’s not that I’ve been drawn to danger per se, but to places and activities that entailed a certain amount of risk. However, the risk was not the point; the action was, the place was, the people were.The stories I tell are the stories they told me, both implicitly, around the fire, and explicitly, those stories you get by just tuning in. Be warned. Expect that anything you say around a writer might be fodder.

So, what happens when you get to the age where every step you take hazards a break that takes more time to heal than you might have? The risks can no longer be physical ones. Accept it. That leaves The Brain. How to break new ground at this stage? For example, I wonder what it would be like to stay nice all day, regardless of who or what would normally piss me off, to pass no judgment, to offer no criticism? Can I keep my mouth shut when I normally would not? Can I resist MSNBC for twenty-four hours? Can I possibly skip that really important podcast? Would my blood pressure erupt or simply pleasantly burble? Wait. Maybe there’s another way to look at it. Why feel the pressure to take any more risks at all? There’s the hook. Let yourself off it. Dues have been paid. Next. Perhaps peace and quiet aren't so boring after all.