Paths.

There are so many ways to age. I had no idea of course, when waking hours were filled with occupation and everything else was crammed into living and getting through.  “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”*

And then, when I knew I was tiring, the gears got switched and I was into something else, this territory of Eldering. By this time I had noticed the creaky limbs and sometimes nodding off at the oddest of times and that my energy level from the gogogo years had somehow gonegonegone.  I started to worry about the occasional blank word or name that couldn’t be found in my memory bank and in the morning mirror I saw a face that only vaguely resembled the one I expected to be looking back at me.

There was the painful first use of a “senior discount”.  More painful still was (is) being talked down to as my grey head acts as a beacon yelling “Old person here!” despite my internal views to the contrary. Physicians, grocery checkout clerks, waitpersons have all had previously negative experiences with the likes of me, even if it wasn’t actually ME.

I have begun to understand old age “cranky”: the joints that zing unexpectedly, the-way-too-inconvenient searches for a bathroom away from the house, and impatience with the lack of being heard or seen, but those are trifles next to the loss of friends and companions.

What I didn’t suspect was the treasure that lay in the midst of these challenges. A great opening, an expansive freeing spirit from so many things I  believed were “me”. Kindness, compassion, patience suddenly began to appear at the oddest times, filling the moments. Conscious awareness found room to show up occasionally and the picture began getting bigger, a panoramic effect allowing a deeper, longer breath. While I cannot move as fast as I once did, slow movement allows opportunities for taking in what lies around me. 

We won’t all age the same way and a number of us won’t get to age at all but tucked under a slew of stereotypes are ways of seeing and knowing I hadn’t imagined. Just wait, you’ll see.

 

*John Lennon. “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”.

Just Life:  Variations on a Theme.

For a long time I have been troubled by what I perceived as a divide between my neighbors or friends who live lives that I relate to and respect. It was when we “talked politics” that what seemed like insurmountable divides arose and we ceased talking with one another or ceased seriously talking about matters dear to us because it was simply too painful. I always knew however that if an emergency arose, if there were reasons that we needed to pull together in a time of trouble, those friends and neighbors would be there pitching in.

There are divisions, they just aren’t distributed along the lines we are told they are. Red/Blue. Conservative/Liberal: the divisions reported so often in the media fall into those categories because the media covers those who have much to gain identifying with those labels. Media seems primarily interested in those with power and money or those striving for them.  Many of the rest of us are not particularly interested in living that kind of life.

“Family Values” used to be a slogan for conservative political beliefs but even way back then I found myself annoyed that a political group had seemed to usurp a term that I related to even though I would never describe my political beliefs as leaning to the right. Right. Left. Yet another set of divisional boundaries. To me “values” meant caring, meant having a set of internal beliefs and purpose, an internal compass guiding action. “Values” was often in slogans used by religious individuals or groups, but to me religion did not have much to do with it. I felt my life had been lived by my sense of internal values not connected to “religion” which I did not have. Now it seems as if the groups have changed, the slogans have changed, and the term “Family Values” has been flipped on its ear.

Recently I viewed this video which popped up online. It is not political or religious but it gets to the heart of what I am trying to express.

Jay Shetty Video

“It’s about who they are and how they treat you.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi080mSDX6Q

 

 

 

Quilting.

I cannot sew. Even when I learned to be adept with needles they were the large ones used for knitting. 

Now, when arthritis has made all needles impossible, I find I am needing to make a quilt. This is psychological work not handcraft. The pieces of my life have felt fractured; disjointed; not part of a whole but disparate pieces scattered, my history, my adaptations over time, myself as constructed in moves made necessary by circumstances. These scattered pieces involve geographies and personal relationships. Quilt blocks: urban, small town, rural—each had a part. Marriage, motherhood, single woman—each had a part. Weaver, gardener, cook, photographer, writer—each had a part. These blocks occupy my memory floating as distinct pieces but what I am now recognizing is eldering is a time to patchwork these pieces into a life quilt which requires connector work, a way of restructuring the pieces of my past and present by gathering them in patterns, making beauty, pain, and purpose into a whole.