Age is Not a Number

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Today is my birthday. I’m sixty-seven years old. And I’m here to tell you that age is not a number.

Age – aging – happens and by believing that age is simply a number bypasses the truth that as the years roll on we change. For example, the hair on my legs is now growing out of my chin and the hair on my head is thinning. My first step in the morning is more like a first limp (yoga hip). My skin is wrinkling, my eyes have gone dry, and over the past year I’ve developed the same hammer toe my mother was blessed with.

So age is not ‘just a number’. I know people mean well. I know the phrase is meant to comfort. But the words also imply that I should ignore reality. The words imply that if I repeat them like a mantra my body at sixty-seven will perform like it did when I was twenty-seven.

I’d rather embrace all the circles I’ve made around the sun. I’d rather embrace all the changes. The not so great changes but the good changes, too. I’m sixty-seven years old today. I have greying hair and I’ve put on weight but I’ve also let go of the envy that consumed me forty years ago. I’ve become more appreciative of the small moments in life. I laugh more. I go to bed early so that I’m awake to see dawn. I want to remember to accept it all.

Acceptance isn’t curling up in a ball waiting for the end. Acceptance puts me on a path of exploration. What can I do now that I couldn’t do forty years ago? What attitudes have shifted? Moving forward, what steps will I put in place to ensure good mental and physical health? What will I do to commit to living a creative life of purpose – a life that has heart and meaning? 

This week I will reflect on these questions – I understand the answers will change over the years as I continue to grow and change. But where am I right now, in this moment? And how can I use the insights I gain by reflecting on these questions? How will these insights impact my art practice? My yoga practice?

Margaret’s Brain on Ice

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One year ago today it was standing room only in Emancipation Hall on the lower floor of our nation’s capital. I was there, with most of Margaret’s family, to see her receive her Congressional Gold Medal for service as a civilian WASP pilot during World War II. Twelve months later, Margaret and I still meet every other Thursday at 10:00 in the morning for a yoga lesson.   Her body doesn’t move as easily as it did last spring. Her joints ache, especially her shoulders.  Her mind, however, is as sharp and sassy as ever.

Today I suggested icing her shoulder after our workouts.

“But I can’t be fiddling with that stuff – it leaves no time for poetry.”

Her voice was a layered mix of smoke from the ten cigarettes she treats herself to each day and 87-year-old ornery mischief.

“What?”

“If I’m messing around with those damn ice bags, Mimm, I can’t think of the lines of poetry.”

“You mean having a bag of ice on your shoulder…”

“It muddles my brain, Mimm.”  She laughed and cleared her throat.  “If I’m doing all that ice and heat stuff to keep things moving, well, it’ll move those lines right out of my brain.”

I shook my head in disbelief and began to pack up my equipment.  That’s when she began:

She is as in a field a silken tent

At midday when the sunny summer breeze

Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,

So that in guise it gently sways at ease,

And its supporting central cedar pole,

That is its pinnacle to heavenward

And signifies the sureness of the soul,

Seems to owe naught to any single cord,

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound

By countless silken ties of love and thought

To every thing on earth the compass round,

And only by one’s going slightly taut

In the capriciousness of summer air

Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

“That’s Robert Frost.”

“That’s beautiful, Margaret.”

“How am I supposed to remember that with a bag of ice on my shoulder?”

“I don’t know, Margaret.”

I was all packed but I didn’t want to leave.  I love Margaret.  Sometimes when I arrive and she opens the door she’ll stand for a moment.  Her nearly sightless eyes will look me up and down and she’ll ask,

“What fresh hell is this?”

How could I not love her?

We laugh together.  We solve the world’s problems.  We work on solving mine, too. She does not give me a single inch of leeway.

Today we talked about death.

Margaret taking a look at her Congressional Gold Medal with her magnifier.

“I’m not ready to go yet,” she said.  “I like what’s here, and I don’t know what’s there.”  And then she began to recite Emily Dickinson.

In 1944 this tiny, pixie haired woman flew military aircraft so large she needed two pillows and a packed parachute to reach the rudder.

If Margaret doesn’t want to ice her shoulder because it muddles her brain, she doesn’t have to.