The Gero-Punk Project

“I was the belle of the ball!”

That’s the first thing my 67 year old mommy said to me after saying hello and how are you.

“Five kisses on New Years Eve! Can you believe it?” And this is the woman – The mother, okay, my mother – who resisted for months becoming part of this community of fine folks who dance and drink too much champagne and kiss one other on the mouth.

I love (by which I mean hate) being called by my own bluff. And let me tell you something, this woman, this mother, my mommy called her own bluff in the coolest, most supreme way.

But this is her story to tell. And I hope she tells it soon because it is spell-binding, surprising and juicy!

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I was in the backseat of an old Honda listening to the two late mid-life brothers talk about their older father. One of the mid-life brothers, the younger one, is the man I love. I was trying not to get carsick. I was exhausted and recovering from a virus and holiday-travel-stress. And I was trying not to scream my bloody head off.

No matter what the younger late mid-life brother said about their older father’s condition (eye witness account: he’s not doing so well), the older late mid-life brother countered it with some strong objection.  Some of the objections – all geriatric nursing assistants and home-care workers are unskilled and don’t really care about their clients; and, if their father used a wheelchair in an airport so that he could continue to travel it would be the road to disaster – made me want to bop the older late mid-life brother on his nose.

Instead, I offered my unasked for “expert” opinions on both matters. (Let me know if you want to know what I said.) I started wondering if that’s why the man I love brought me along on this trip, to offer unasked for “expert” opinions. Though my own family has rejected my expert opinions, so why should his family be any different?

Other objections older late mid-life brother made I was able to countenance with more compassion and understanding as I somehow intuited that they weren’t well prepared entrenched arguments or positions but manifestations of his own vulnerability and fear about his father’s (as well as his own?) aging, ill health, and inevitable decline toward finitude.

The only time in the entire conversation that the older mid-life brother yielded to the younger mid-life brother was when he admitted that yes, he should respond to email messages from their father’s partner, otherwise she might not know that he had received them. Oh, and that he should call their father more often and even visit once in the while.

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Sometimes being a girl is really hard.

Please understand, I am not saying that being a boy isn’t hard. I am just speaking from my own experience. I’m a girl, not a boy.

And my experience is that being a girl is really hard. And it hasn’t gotten any easier, speaking from the vantage point of being a 47 year old girl.

Being a girl means that I sit on the couch and cry my heart out as I listen to Cyndi Lauper, a favorite singer/songwriter of my youth, talk in a radio interview about how hard it is to be a girl. The interviewer complements her for being fearlessly honest and genuine.

Being a girl means that I cry until my eyes swell shut because no matter what I do or say, I can’t seem to make myself understandable to the person who matters so much to me no mater how fearlessly honest and genuine I am being.

I know that girls are a sub-category of humans, and being human is what matters most. But right now I am mostly feeling like a girl.

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As I was (finally!) getting my hair cut yesterday, emboldened by temporary blindness as my stylist makes me remove my glasses,  I admitted to her that I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know how to dress or how to wear my hair now that I am “mid-life.” I suspect that I’ve shot myself in the foot by being a smarty pants and letting my hair go “natural” (that is, gray) in 2008.  The woman cutting my hair said, after an enormous yawn and a long pause, that there “aren’t any rules today.” She said that once my hair is more silver I should punk it out and wear it short. She said I should just stick with my mostly black clothing uniform with appropriate modifications as I continue to grow older. Just for the record, aside from two really old women at the salon getting their snow-white heads-of-hair blown out, I was the only client with “natural” hair. The only woman of any age with un-chemically-modified hair. (Which isn’t a judgement. Just an observation. If you’ve followed my posts, you know that between 1985 and 2008 I experimented with many chemicals. Ha!)

Sometimes I get compliments for my silver streaked hair (a much too young man stared at me and smiled in a quite inappropriate way at the market yesterday), and sometimes I get ridicule (When Isobel and I were in NYC this past November, we stayed in a funky hipster hotel with communal bathrooms. I was washing my face before bed when two hot young women entered the bathroom. They took one look at me, pointed at my hair, snickered and laughed.).

Either way, it sucks.

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In her interview, Cyndi Lauper, who is currently 60, said that we should bravely embrace who we are, even if we are out of step with the mainstream, even if we get rejected by others. In principle, I agree, and I’ve tried to live this way my whole life.  But I am really confused, truly and profoundly confused.

I wish she’d talk more about how it feels to be in this weird indeterminate zone between being a young woman and an old woman.  How is feels to still be a girl with a mid-life body.

Alas, I am a mid-life girl who still just wants to have fun. (Oh, and change the world!)

I hear them before I see them. I hear them and I feel excited even though this isn’t the first time I’ve had this experience. I hear them, and then I get up from the couch where I’m reading student papers and I go to the front window and kneel on the trunk and look into the sky. Then I see them. Multiple flocks of geese, flying so low it looks like they will bash their bellies on the roof tops.

Two flocks come straight toward my house. One veers to the south, the other to the north. I watch the south flying flock as it changes direction, arcing broadly away from view.

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For the past several days I have been reading and giving feedback on student essays for the four fall term courses I teach or co-teach. I’m hoping today I’ll get to the end of the pile. I’d like it very much if I could be as fully present as possible to my birthday and Christmas knowing that I have completely completed the work of fall term.  Many different folks have suggested to me many times over the years that at the end of a busy term I just give cursory feedback to student work so I can wrap things up as soon as possible. I tried this technique once and I was left feeling like shit. Like a shit, actually.  If someone is going to take the time to write an essay for me to read — an essay I assigned them, for goodness sake! — then it is my responsibility, my honor, to read and comment thoughtfully upon their work, even if I am thrashed and my birthday is tomorrow.

I’m sure I can find other ways to cut corners if corners need to be cut.

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I haven’t written anything new for several weeks. The series of Thanksgiving essays I curated were so lovely, weren’t they?  I was grateful that my call for contributions was answered so that I could offer to you some thoughtful essays to read and contemplate.  But I haven’t written anything new for several weeks because I’ve been doing a lot of editing and revising of my own and others’ writing  and I find it difficult to do new writing at the same time I’m editing and revising writing I’ve already done. Also, I haven’t had sufficient mind-space into which anything new could emerge.

I was lamenting this state earlier today, feeling creatively depleted, and anticipating that perhaps I wouldn’t even be able to hope to begin to have any mind-space available until after Christmas, once I am done grading for fall term courses and celebrating my birthday and Christmas and sending Isobel and her father off on their trip to France to visit family.

But I heard the geese flying over my house and suddenly I found myself possessed by an essay that demanded to be written. Hey, geese—thank you!

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The thing about coconut macaroons is that you want to bake them long enough so that they get brown and toasty on their tops, but not so long that their insides start to dry out.  I just pulled out of the oven the sixth and last batch of this season. Coconut macaroons are my “go-to” winter holiday treat: gluten free, mostly fat free, not too much sugar. Unless you have an aversion or allergy to coconut, they are the perfect cookie!  They not only taste quite wonderful, they look like little mounds of snow. So charming!

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Ah, goldfinches! Hello!

There is one resplendent male accompanied by three more subtly decorated females. They are enjoying the seed pods on the tree that decided to plant itself in front of my house a few years ago.  My mommy said I should pull the tree out (while it was still just a small sprout) and then later encouraged me multiple times to chop it down (once we discovered it was a fast growing tree!).

I said: It chose to grow here, so it here it stays.

The mail carrier periodically requests that I trim the tree’s low-hanging branches so that he can pass under them without injury or inconvenience. He’s taller than I am, so I’m glad he let’s me know what he needs.

Hanging in the tree are two bird feeders that hold sunflower seeds and also a little cage for suet. Yesterday and the day before there were four different kinds of tiny birds hanging out in the tree all at the same time: chickadees, bushtits, song sparrows and juncos. Juncos mostly hop around on the ground, nibbling whatever is below the tree and feeders, but periodically they take to the air and flit from branch to branch indulging in above-ground treats.  

I’ve only seen squirrel a couple of times recently though earlier in the week he was all but ruling the feeders in the front and back yards, tormenting and being tormented by Happy-the-dog.

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Oh! Look! After it rains, the seed pods absorb so much water that at their tips dangle shiny orbs of moisture.  The tree looks all dressed up for the holidays.

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Tomorrow is my 47^th birthday, the beginning of my 48^th year on the planet this time around.  I have this sense that I am on the other side of half-way through my travels through the life-course.  Unless I live to be 100 years of age or greater, my “mid-point” was probably a couple of years ago.  What does it feel like to be almost 47? At the moment, I’m not sure, because mostly what I’m feeling right now is a mild headache from drinking more mimosas and red wine yesterday than I probably should have to celebrate Simeon’s 57^th birthday, as well as eye fatigue from reading student papers.

I think it is time for me to go down for a short nap.

After my nap I’ll ask myself the question again and share with you what I discover.

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Jenny: How are you?

Simeon: Still plugging away at grading.

J: Me too. It is like a bottomless bowl of oatmeal.

S: Not sure about that metaphor. I like oatmeal. But then I like student papers, it’s just that there are so many of them. Maybe the metaphor does work.

J: It works. You think you are at the bottom of the bowl but you look away for a minute and there’s more to eat!

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My nap was short. Just a half hour, enough time to re-energize a bit, not so much time as to mess me up tonight. I fell right asleep and I had a dream about shopping for a specific kind of salt as well as herbs and spices for a special dish I was going to cook. I woke up a bit groggy and fought my desire to set the alarm for another half hour.  And I put Maldon salt on my shopping list (thanks for the reminder, dream!).

My neck and shoulders are a bit stiff from too much sitting, and my eyes are still sore, but otherwise I feel loose and good inside of my body. I am excited about my birthday in the way I’ve almost always been excited about my birthday with the exception of last year, 2007 and couple of times when I was  little girl.  When I’ve not felt excited about my birthday it had absolutely nothing to do with adding another year to the tally, it had nothing to do with growing older, but with feeling overwhelmed by immediate circumstances and exigencies that were out of my control and seemingly impervious to any positive thinking mind tricks I attempted to engage in.  In other words, the circumstances of my lived experience at the time trumped my capacity to access the usual joy and wonderment I feel at having had the pleasure of living another year of this singular, precious life.

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My birthday is my new year’s day. Tomorrow I commence a new year – my 48^th. Yikes! — of adventures traveling through the life course as embodied consciousness.  In honor of my birthday and the start of a new year I am engaging in a set of practices that I started over twenty years ago. These practices involve review of and reflection upon the past year, giving thanks making amends, and dreaming the future.

I don’t know what 47 feels like beyond what it feels like right now to be me.  I do remember how I felt a year ago, but how I felt a year ago wasn’t about what it felt like to be almost 46 but about all sorts of other messy life stuff. I also know for certain that I feel better overall, and by “better” I mean more at home in this life as me, than I did when I was 16 going on 17, or 26 going on 27, or 36 going on 37. (I wonder what it will be like to be 56 going on 57, or 86 going on 87, etc.?)

Now on the edge of turning 47, my ass might not be as resistant to gravity as it was at those earlier ages and if you look closely at my skin you’ll see the trail time has left across its surface. But that’s just stuff happening on the outside of me.

What you can’t see directly and have to take my word for are the changes happening on the inside of me.

But that’s a story for another time as I have more fantastic papers written by my thoughtful and inspiring student to read.

 Greetings, Gero-Punk Project friends! We’ve been celebrating contemplation and gratitude all week long and this piece from Erica Wells is the final guest essay in our series honoring Thanksgiving.

So…What theme(s) might we write about next?  

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insert memory here <____> .

By guest Gero-Punk

Erica Wells

Have you ever sat down with a box of photos, old letters or childhood possessions? Most of us come across these time capsules every so often, either during an intentional exercise to clean out storage space, or accidentally, such as that time you were trying to find your very important documents that were kept in a very safe place, which happened to be right next to some high school yearbooks… at least that what happens to me. I have a normal-size house, and four people live here, two of us with rather long histories, the other two of us, well, they’re still largely unaware that they have a story. Our storage space is limited, and it requires a regular regimen of upkeep, which means I am frequently confronted with my past, and my husband’s past, and usually, my children’s past. For example, my husband once opened a small jewelry box to find the remains of my daughter’s umbilical cord inside. How can I explain, other than at the time, it seemed wrong to throw it away?  So it is around here that we regularly navigate our present (doing the laundry, finding spare lightbulbs) with the sometimes gentle, sometimes absurd, reminders of our past (the bin of baby clothes, a wedding dress, old golf trophies).

Before Thanksgiving, I try to bring our family together. Not to give thanks, not yet, but to clean out. The kids receive stern orders to sort through clothes, toys, books and games and to keep only those items which they use and love. With assistance from their Dad and me, we make a dent in the piles of possessions clogging up their shelves and closet space. What takes them a few hours to start takes me a week to finish. Today I loaded the car with our donations and my daughter noticed the stuffed animals in the bag next to her, “Is this for Goodwill?” she asked. I said yes. “I hope my bunny makes another little kid happy.” she said. My mind reeled as I thought about her comment. “I hope so too,” was all I could manage to reply.

As much as I am most definitely okay with letting that bunny go on to its next home, I am less okay with the burden I’ve accepted of creating my children’s history. As I sifted through boxes and bins during our clean up, I came across toys and puzzles I played with as child. I carefully examined these items, hoping that by holding them in my hands, an image would spark, reminding me of a birthday or a fun time I had with a friend. When nothing came to me, I wondered, was this saved for a reason, or was it just put in one box after another, until one day it happened to be in my daughter’s desk drawer or on my son’s bookshelf, this little item that has managed to keep pace with me for over 30 (or even 40!) years? Which led me to think: does this puzzle, in its original, colorful box, still with all of its pieces, have value because I loved it as a child? Or does it appear to have value because, for crying out loud, I still have it? And if I can’t remember much about it, or attach any meaning to it besides its longevity in my possession, why can’t I just drop it into the giveaway box, now?

So I sat there at the bottom of the stairway, surrounded by piles of trash, recycling, donations and a few small stacks of things I wanted to keep and I realized that what I saved for my kids was going to become part of their history. Much like the photos we take become the parts of our lives we remember the easiest, so will these objects earn meaning, just by virtue of having been set aside when others were let go. The photos or the objects serve as reinforcements for our memory, little hints that help us to keep certain stories intact while others fade away. If I keep looking at the picture on my desk of my children taken one summer on Sauvie’s Island, on the last day of August during a beautiful, golden sunset, I am going to also keep remembering the details that aren’t in the picture. The long dusty road we took to the swampy area that turned out to be a lovely setting for a photo. The elderly mother and her adult son who showed up with nets and buckets when we were almost done shooting to wade into the swamp to try their luck with the fish swimming about, (were they hoping to catch something to eat, or just having fun?). The little frogs the kids found and tried to grasp in their hands. Had we not taken those photos, I would not recall that day and those moments in such vivid detail.

Now that the clean up is over (for the moment), I know better. I have not been responsible enough with our stories because I haven’t considered the all of the ways our possessions can tell our stories, especially when we are not the ones deciding what to save and what to give away. I spend a lot of time thinking about and talking with students about identity: the great struggle we engage in to define who we are, or to be true to the idea of who we want to be. When I survey my past through the boxes I’ve saved, images float out, memories are captured and a story emerges. Does it fit with the story I tell? How do I not let the objects become more than mere metal and glass, plastic and wood while still allowing them their rightful place in the narrative of my life?

Why do we give meaning to our possessions, and create what we call “evocative objects”, those special items that hold primary importance in our lives? What is it about our modern lives that makes this type of memory so treasured? I hope the next time you come across a dusty box containing pieces of your past, you have time to think about the person who saved them, and if that person, (your younger self) would want you to keep the box, or if they’d rather you let it go (and carry on with your present and soon-to-be future self’s story).

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Erica is a 2003 graduate of the MAIS program and member of the adjunct faculty at Marylhurst University. Since 2005, she has taught courses in human science inquiry and gerontology. Her day to day life revolves around orchestrating and facilitating the schedules of two curious and confident grade-schoolers, all while vainly attempting to establish a semblance of order to her surroundings. When the whirlwind of the school-week subsides, you can find her in the kitchen, experimenting with a cocktail shaker and savoring the company of friends and family as everyone toasts to togetherness and the simple pleasure of a good meal.