The Gero-Punk Project

The events of this week have left me disoriented, disconcerted, rough around the edges. Three nights in a row I slept soundly – which surprises me given how I have been spinning  like a top — yet three mornings in a row I have awoken feeling as though I haven’t slept a wink. My gut is off. I keep thinking I see things out of the corner of my eye – movements on the periphery of my vision. I have been hyper-sensitive, even almost taking things personally that have nothing to do with me. I keep wondering when the other shoe will drop and what the other shoe will be and where it will drop.

The subject matter of texts between my daughter and me over the past few days represents the wild range of reality this week: The bombing at the Boston Marathon. Her first real date – she’s been invited to prom (her date gave her flowers and chocolate as part of his invitation to her.). Her preparations for the three-day State speech and debate tournament. The shooting at MIT and its aftermath.   For Isobel and her friends, the world is terribly exciting and terrifically scary right now.

I’ve tried to write about the various events of this week but either I have too many words spilling out of me that don’t even make much sense and  probably shouldn’t see the light of  day yet, or, I feel like I am beyond or before words.

So, in recognition of the events of this week I thought I might post here an essay I wrote in 2011 in the aftermath of the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan as the stuff I was trying to work out in the essay, called 3.13.11/No-sense, is the stuff I’m still trying to work out (and probably will still be trying to work out for the rest of my travels through my life course.).

  3.13.11

 -I-

Lately, I’ve been haunted by a particular line from Stanley Kunitz’s poem “The Layers,” and by my comrade Sara, who died in November of 2006. I’ll save my story of Sara for another time. The line from Kunitz captures the question that seems to be at the center of everything that’s happened this past week: “How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?”[1] Change and loss; every minute, somewhere on the Earth, someone is hurting, suffering, letting go, or holding on for dear life, running for the hills looking for safety. 

The events of a particular week in March of 2011 – events large and small, local and global – hit me particularly hard because I went through the week sober. By which I don’t mean to imply that I usually go through the week drunk. It’s just that right now there is work I need to do, work I want to do – must do – that requires that I have my wits about me, that my edges are sharp and unsoftened by a nice glass of wine (or two) at the end of the day, that my capacities for awareness and lucidity are as expansive as possible. Do you know what I mean?

So, the events of the particular week in March I’m writing about. 

One of my students asked for help so she could plan her schedule of courses around her chemotherapy schedule.  Another student wanted to let me know that they may miss a couple of sessions in some of their courses because they will be flying home to take care of their partner, who has just been diagnosed with stage-four terminal lung cancer. Another couple of students have missed a lot of school work because they have older adult parents who have dementia or other serious, life-altering circumstances to manage. I just met a new student who is a single parent of two special needs children. And just last weekend, there was a memorial service – the second one this term – for a student who died an unexpected, sad death. My colleagues at my university and I talk all the time about the delicate balance of our adult students’ lives (and our own lives, as well!) – work, family, education, service, self-care – but how do we help them, help each other, create and maintain their delicate life-balance when we are facing  the immediate, cataclysmic matter of our or our loved one’s very existence?

You asked the right question, Stanley Kunitz: “How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses”?

During the week I’m writing about, I was reminded at all levels of reality – from the cellular to the geophysical – what I already know but so often forget unless I make it a devotion to remember it: I am a little creature living in an emerging universe on an ever-shifting and changing planet; sometimes the ground I stand on seems solid and stable, and sometimes it shakes and threatens to swallow me whole. I can tell stories of the past, I can cast my mind into and plan for a future I may not actually experience, but I can only ever triumph in the present by embracing courageously whatever happens as best I can (which sometimes means being sober and lucid, sometimes means having an extra glass of wine, sometimes means skipping in the park, sometimes means writing until my eyeballs fall out of my head, and sometimes it means taking to my bed for the day.).

Do you know what I mean?

-II-

The newspaper told me that because of the strong earthquake in Japan, the Earth’s axis may have shifted by about 3.937 inches: “…earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation.”[2]

My first question, after experiencing complete amazement about this fact, was: How does the shift in the Earth’s axis affect the creatures living on the Earth’s surfaces, in its waters? And: What reverberations does such a geophysical shift have for human consciousness?

In addition to the axis-shifting, it seems that time shifts as well, as a result of the Earth’s rotation speed increasing in the aftermath of the quake. The newspaper tells me I won’t really notice it, because it is only a difference of 1.6 micro seconds. But if you think about all of the major, massive earthquakes that have transpired in the past 111 years, wouldn’t those microseconds add up?

What does all of this mean? We may not notice these changes, whatever “notice” means here, in our conscious minds as we may not have developed (or remembered) the sensitivities required to do so, but how can these changes not affect us and all other living creatures on this planet?

Disasters, whether “natural” or “human caused,” have the potential to arrest our attention away from the local and personal and onto the global and transpersonal. [3] Catastrophes on a grand scale, crises on a personal and interpersonal scale, have in common that they can close us down or open us up (sometimes both!). They jar us, shake us up, and remind us of the deeper reality in which we live – which is temporal, provisional, vulnerable, impermanent, changeable– and invite us to live our lives as fully, richly, and audaciously as we can, committed to all that is most important to us, rejoicing in our great good fortune that at least for the time being the ground beneath our feet is solid, stable. Do you know what I mean?

Disasters, catastrophes that happen to others, which we witness from some distance as onlookers or by-standers, can be opportunities for enlarging our sensitivities, our capacities for empathy and compassion.  I think of Salman Rushdie’s essay, “Step Across this Line,” in which he entreats the reader to examine how the lines that we draw, the boundaries and borders we create and erect to keep some people in and some people out, are constructions: made by humans during particular times, in particular places, in responses to particular forces. And, thus – good news!—these lines can be unmade and remade, as well. “Step across this line,” he invites me, he challenges me – disrupt closing down, resist separation and isolation, reconnect across differences, embrace complexity, behold reality face-on, even when reality sucks.[4]

Catastrophes, tragedies that happen to others can also give us moments of temporary amnesia – the good kind – in which we forget what the fight was about that caused us to not see or talk to each other for awhile, and in forgetting, we remember that we are actually all kin, all of us traveling through the life course together on this magnificent planet with its shifting axis and inconsistent speed.

In addition to wondering how it is that we can withstand so much loss, I also wonder what happens next.  What happens when we have these feelings of kinship, when we forget to separate ourselves from others and in forgetting start remembering really important stuff?  What happens? Do we witness? Do we stand-by? Or do we step across the line and reach out?

-III-

After waking up to the news of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the reverberations across the Pacific Ocean, Happy and I took a walk around our park.  As we approached the north-east bend of the pond I saw sitting upon the shore a pair of grebes.  Grebes aren’t ducks, so don’t make the mistake I made for years of mixing them up.[5]

Ducks, geese, and swans belong to the same family. But grebes are their own family entirely, and there are seven species and four genera of grebes. Nonetheless, it is important to note that ducks, geese, swans AND grebes all belong to the same class: Aves, e.g. Birds.[6]  But back to Grebes, which are amongst the smallest waterfowl at my park and thus are sometimes hard to spot, but when you do spot them amongst the other members of the Aves class, even if you don’t know they are properly called a grebe, you will know you are seeing something not quite ordinary (not that ducks, etc. are ordinary.).  I’ve always found the grebes to be more formal and fancy, all dressed up for their time at the pond—splendid forehead plumes, solid patches of saturated colors marking their heads, lovely curved necks, and short, delicately pointed bills. I always look for them (and I wonder sometimes if they ever look for me?), because spotting them causes butterflies in my chest, which I enjoy feeling. 

So, I stood on the path, Happy at the end of the leash, and watched the grebe-couple for a bit.  As we watched the two handsome grebes, male and female, my attention was suddenly pulled away toward a commotion, great splashing and squawking and carrying-on in another part of the pond.  It took me a few beats before I realized what was actually happening—five or six male mallard ducks were holding one female mallard duck under the water.  She kept trying to fight her way up for air, but each time she did so, a couple of the male ducks would grab her by the neck with their bills and  push her head back under the water’s surface.  She was fighting so hard, she was ferocious, but she was outnumbered.  

Let me admit that I am no innocent bystander. I don’t — actually can’t – stand by, never have been able to, not since the time I was a little girl. This uncontrollable impulse to intervene has gotten me into a lot of trouble, but it has also gotten a few others out of a lot of trouble. Any way, quite possibly the mallards were engaged in some sort of mating ritual, or perhaps a disciplinary procedure of some sort. Maybe what the males were doing to the female was part of some intra-species agreement that evolved over time which my non-Aves consciousness (and untrained ornithologist mind) has no capacity to understand. All I could do was to observe. And wonder what the hell to do. I wanted to exercise cross-creature cultural competence, I didn’t want to throw my human weight around, but standing there, watching this thrashing, screeching tornado of ducks, I couldn’t innocently stand-by – I had to step across the line.

First, I tried reasoning with the mallards.  I stood on the shore and yelled, “Hey, you ducks stop that!” They ignored me.

Then, I tried poking the ducks with a long stick when they spun closer to the shore. This was an ill-conceived strategy, as they never got close enough to the stick and I didn’t feel quite right about poking them, so instead I used the stick to make a big splash in the water. The ducks ignored me.

Then I turned to Happy and asked him for help. I yelled, “Happy, you gotta do something!”  Fortunately, he was already a bit worked up, since I was so worked up, stumbling along the shore of the pond, waving a stick, trying to reason with the ducks. So, I let him have as much leash as I could without letting him go, and he ran a bit into the water, barking, which spooked the gang of mallards enough that they disbanded temporarily and the she-duck was able to escape.  But, alas, she didn’t get far, she experienced but a momentary respite, as the guys followed her and this confusing drama began anew.

I realized only then that I couldn’t actually do anything.  I also wondered if I even should have been trying to do something, if it even made any sense to intervene in the affairs of other creatures, if I even had a right to do so.  I was acting from a place beyond thinking, I was in the throes of feeling a deep kinship with the mallards: for the female, because from my viewpoint she was being victimized; and the males, as well, because – and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this – I wanted those guys to behave better![7] My actions were probably very misguided, prideful in the way only we humans can be, but there you go. This is exactly how I felt, exactly what I did.

In the aftermath, as Happy and I left the scene and headed home, I reflected upon the few times in my life when a non-human creature had intervened on my behalf, when I was in danger, real danger or the appearance of danger.  I remembered various family dogs having helped me, Marlowe most of all, and remembering this made me feel better about my decision to try to come to the aid of the she-mallard. Now, as I write this, I also recall the first essay in Barbara Kingsolver’s collection, Small wonder, in which she recounts the verified story of a mama bear who took care of a little human toddler when he became separated from his family.[8] I also think of a passage from Skolimowski, and am somewhat comforted. He wrote, “Men can be arrogant creatures, but so can lions.  However, among all creatures it is we, human beings, that can understand fully and completely the meaning of compassion and can act on it; can take the responsibility for all, can defend the rights of species different from our own.”[9] I’m not sure if we humans are the only creatures who can do so, but I do know that we humans are creatures who, indeed, do do so.

-IV-

Reflecting further on my experience with the ducks, which happened to happen on the morning after the earthquake in Japan, and which took place before my encounter with one of my students who had such monumental and tragic news to share with me about her partner who is dying – and the poignancy of their geographic distance and emotional closeness – I realize that all of these stories I’m telling are pointing to the same few strong ideas: interconnection and creaturely-kinship; deep participation in each others’ lives and in the weird world that we live in; the instability, alterability, and flux-ness of everything, and by “everything,” I mean from the micro-cosmic chaotic duck pond, to the macro-cosmic axis-shifting Earth, and everything in between.

-V-

In an instant, the ground beneath our feet shakes and shifts, waves swell and crash, buildings sway and topple. Some lives end and some are spared but forever altered.

Citizens of the world watch what happens: earthquake, tsunami, revolution, famine, hurricane, genocide, war, corruption, violence, environmental devastation. Many cry and yearn to help, desire to not only bear witness and stand-by, but to step across the lines that separate us from each other, to support their Earth-kin to re-establish a sense of safety and stability on an ever-changing planet, in an ever-emerging universe.  The words of Kunitz echo again: “In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: ‘Live in the layers, not on the litter.’

I have a small wonderment: Can we keep these rekindled feelings of kinship with other humans, other creatures, and willingness to boundary-cross as needed at the center of our hearts and the front of our minds once whatever the current catastrophe is has passed?

Do you know what I mean?

No-sense

What is your tolerance for no-sense?

What is your habitual response to being faced with situations or experiences that seem to make no sense and about which you want to – are desperate to—make sense?

I ask these questions as much of myself as I do of you, because I’ve found myself staring into the face of no-sense over and over during these past several weeks of earthquakes, tsunamis and people’s revolutions. These past few weeks of students, friends, family members falling seriously – terminally—ill, facing staggering life-changes, lying awake all night scared out of their wits. 

Also, I ask these questions because I’m almost at the end of grading my students’ work for the winter term 2011 courses we engaged in together.  I find myself rejoicing at the profundity of what each of them, to a student, has written about their learning this term in the face of so much personal and global tumult.  I find myself marveling over how writing sometimes helps us make a certain kind of temporary sense of complicated things; sometimes it is the medium through which we declare our near-certitude about some previous state of no-sense that now seemingly makes sense; and sometimes it gives us a way to document our confusion, our anguish in the face of no-sense. I also think about how sometimes writing is about all of this, and other things, too. What an honor to bear witness through reading what my students have to write about the learning they are experiencing, and to get to write back to them (even if mostly in the formal form of my “assessment feedback”).

Much of what learners – students and teachers, alike – – engage in when in formal academic settings is the process of trying to make sense of things. That is, in fact, what all formal, institutionalized, and codified ways of knowing are about, whether scientific, artistic, philosophic, or meta-physic (or, or, or…). Students get taught and learn about knowledge traditions, and hopefully how knowledge(s) are produced and used and their implications, and perhaps even go on to shape (dismantle, re-create, create anew) these knowledge traditions. And educators determine, model, and facilitate what should be known, and how.  When we assess how we are all doing in this ongoing, grand learning project, we peer into the ongoing spiraling process to see how well our students are learning about different ways of making sense of complex reality, and how well we as teachers are doing in support of their learning. 

Together, we are all trying to make sense.

From a broader perspective, the human journey across the life course is fundamentally about learning how to make sense of no-sense. Which, it has occurred to me, might at its core be about trying to make meaning of experiences that are given to us, that we stumble into, that may or may not have “inherent meaning” in and of themselves, despite what we are taught to think about who we are and our place in the ever-emerging universe and all of the things that happens to us in this human journey. 

We are all trying to make sense. Which is really about trying to make meaning of things that we may not understand, not now, perhaps, and maybe not ever. There are some things that are unknowable, or only partially, provisionally knowable. In the middle — in the aftermath—of all that’s been happening in individual lives and within the larger human community as the winter of 2011 transitions into the spring, we are all trying to make sense. Some of us call upon our spiritual or meta-philosophical practices to bolster us in the face of events and experiences that challenge our capacity to make sense of that which seems to make no-sense. And yet, and yet. 

Oh, wow—you know what I just realized as writing this? No-sense can actually be a kind of sense – Think about your own experiences: Have you ever had to conclude, after many brutal “learning experiences” and much consultation with others and critical reflection and perseveration and spiritual practice…that, alas, something just didn’t make sense, and that this no-sense might, in fact, actually be its sense, its deeper meaning?

Circling back to what I was saying about what happens in the process of formal education, there’s always at least one moment in the course of facilitating a learning experience where I or one of my students meets the morass of confusion. And back to my question about our habitual responses to no-sense, I’d observe that I and many of my students almost always panic when we reach this place of confusion and lack of clarity; we resist it, fight it, beg for it to be over immediately or to magically evaporate. (And in the case of my students, they may even become temporarily mutinous and claim that they shouldn’t have to be in such a muddle, that: 1) the books I’ve asked them to read are  unclear; 2) the course is poorly designed; and/or 3) I’m not doing a good enough job explaining things!).

But when we honestly reflect upon how we learn and develop as humans we know that these periods of confusion, or no-sense, are absolutely necessary, and without them, well, the process of learning – and, in fact, the process of traveling through the human life course — wouldn’t be as deep, meaningful, and interesting.

Of course, it is helpful – perhaps crucial– to have someone in our life who has developed wisdom about how all this seems to work and holds the faith on our behalf that no matter how long it takes, how much it sucks, something new will come out of the confusion, some sense will be made of the no-sense. I try to serve this role as a teacher (and parent!), but I’m still learning, and what’s really beautiful is that my students (and daughter) often serve this role for me; we are all in it together, you know?  Some of my elder friends at Mary’s Woods continuing care retirement community who participate in our twice-monthly collaborative inquiry group also serve this role in my life, and it occurs to me that this matter of living and growing in the face of no-sense would make for a great discussion topic. And, also, that I might thank them for serving this important role in my life.

So, what do we tell ourselves and each other about how to respond to and live with no-sense, how to make meaning of experiences and events that seem to defy coherence and rationality?  One of my students wrote early this morning, asking what I thought about the fact that she’d experienced so many losses – big ones, deaths – in the past month. She felt completely uncertain, worried, a bit superstitious, even – She wanted so much for there to be meaning for all that she and her close-in people and companion-creatures (two dear pets were amongst the deceased) were experiencing, a bright side to all of the darkness. And in pondering my potential responses to her questions,  I realized that often –always?–our desire to make sense of no-sense, to find meaning in what seems to defy meaning-making, is also about our yearning for permanence, for certitude, for the fundamental soundness of our own and others’ existence. I mean, this stuff that hurts so much, that scares us so deeply, it has to count for something, right? As I’ve written elsewhere, we make plans for a future we may not experience; we have one foot on the earth, and one foot in the stars.

I’m never sure what to say. Sometimes it seems the best I can do is to murmur sweet assurances that while right now it feels that absolutely nothing makes sense, that this crappy no-sense is a totalizing force, that I promise at some time in the future, maybe soon, maybe not, things will feel more sensible, some things will start to make some sense again.  And this is actually true, right?  And sometimes it seems that the best I can do is to cop to one of the other true things that can be said: All of this loss and the no-sense and the enormous pain that is experienced in the face of it—it totally and completely sucks.  Wouldn’t it be nice sometimes to not have a creaturely-consciousness such that you are aware of what’s happening and how you feel about it?

But we do have such a creaturely-consciousness. And we are aware, more than we seem to have the capacity to wrap our minds around most of the time. And, truth be told, there is so much that makes no-sense. And that no-sense is a certain kind of sense, a fecund kind, the kind where you think all is lost, only to emerge, with the support of your comrades (who sometimes help, sometimes just witness), into a new kind of self-sense, with a new kind of understanding about and purpose – albeit impermanent, tentative, temporal and glorious—on the ever-changing Earth, in the ever-emerging universe.

A couple of months ago my daughter Isobel asked me if I would see whether or not we could borrow our friend’s cabin in the foothills of Mt. Hood so that she and some of her closest friends from the speech and debate team could have a weekend in the mountains (with me coming along as driver, chaperone and cook.). So I went about the process of finding a weekend that would work for all involved (including coordinating the schedule with Isobel’s dad as the chosen weekend fell on one of the weekends the two of them were supposed to be together), renting the cabin, and figuring out how to pay for it and the food. The weekend Izzy and her friends chose—this weekend – was seemingly perfect as this past Friday was a school holiday at the end of a week of final exams and  presentations,  so that meant they’d have three days to have fun hanging out in the woods.

The closer we got to this weekend, the less solid the plans became. It turns out that this weekend was also the national qualifying tournament for an event some of her teammates (and Isobel) were pondering whether or not to participate in, and another of her friends didn’t want to come on the trip because her boyfriend couldn’t come, and….well, you get the idea. The best laid plans, plans which seem so well conceptualized and solid, are often the very plans that get disrupted and fall apart and thus offer up opportunities for one (by “one” I mean me) to practice flexibility and equanimity. I can’t say I was terribly flexible nor a picture of equanimity when Izzy informed me that the weekend with her friends was off, though she would try to come for part of it with me if she could (it turns out she couldn’t).  I’ll be honest with you–I was actually quite disappointed and frustrated, though also understanding of the fact that my daughter has entered (so quickly that I feel like I have the bends!) a new, more independent and complex (by which I mean emergent and peer-oriented) phase of her life.

Any way, after all that planning (it wasn’t easy to find a weekend when the cabin was available that coincided with the schedule Izzy and her friends gave me) I wasn’t willing to give up the opportunity to go to the mountains for three days and stay in a cabin with a big fireplace, sauna, and close proximity to hiking trails along the Salmon River.

So I invited my mommy – her name is Susie — (and her dog Toby) to come with me to stay in the cabin in the woods.  We’ve both been working hard and neither of us has had much time off, let alone a vacation, for quite awhile.  The last time we got out of town was for her sixty-seventh birthday, the surprise day-trip to the coast Izzy and I gave her as a present.  Though I will say that we’ve actually been spending quite a lot of time together recently, especially as my mommy is sitting in on the Women’s Issues in Aging course I am teaching this term.  As I mentioned in my last post, I am holding this 11-week seminar at Mary’s Woods, the continuing care retirement center contiguous to the campus where I work. I have an open door policy for the course–any one can attend at any time. There are 9 matriculating undergraduate and graduate Marylhurst University students enrolled, plus another MU graduate student who has had the course already and is sitting in so as to work further on her thesis project, plus my mommy, plus two Mary’s Woods residents who just decided to show up and hang out with us at the first session. One of them came back last week for our second session but left after about forty minutes (I was informed later that she took offense to my use of the word “crone” to  provoke a discussion about one of the potent symbols for powerful, wise women in later life.). She writes a column for a local newspaper and apparently her next piece, which will be published this coming week, was inspired by her short time participating in our class. (Let me admit to feeling both curious and nervous about what she has written!)  Stay tuned—I’m sure I’ll let you know what happens next!

We have but two weeks of the course under our belt so far, so there’s a lot that can yet happen, but I must say that despite the emergent, unpredictable nature of the course — and the mild anxiety I’m experiencing – there is something really lovely about opening up the learning community to anyone who wants to participate, including my mommy.  And as I’ve been  discovering during this weekend in the mountains together  — reading, cooking, hiking, taking saunas, sharing and filling in the gaps in our memories – she has been experiencing her own kind of unanticipated opening-up, in part because of her  participation in my course.  She’s been sharing with me so many surprising insights that I was moved to ask her if she wanted to engage in a dialogue with me that we might share here as part of the Gero-Punk Project.

Here’s just a wee taste of what we’ve been discussing:

Mommy/Susie: I was resting here on the couch thinking about the first day of your class.  Normally I would have….well, I was taking care of Gussie all day (Note: She is a caregiver for older adults) and I was worried I wouldn’t finish up work fast enough and I’d be late for class. I remember coming in the font door (of Mary’s Woods), flying down the hall, and then seeing you. I remember flying down the hall in search of the classroom, and I went around the corner and there you were greeting students and two women came out and greeted me.  When I came into the classroom I took the seat by door. Another woman introduced herself to me and I told her I was there because I had forgotten how to think, and I wanted to come to your class so I could learn how to think again. When you invited me to the class – it was a class I always wanted to sit in on – I decided to join the class, and I felt like a “rock star.”

Jenny: Why did you feel like a rock star?

Mommy: Because my daughter was teaching the class! And when you introduced me  you said, “This is my mommy Susie!” and I felt like I was just a tiny bit more special.  And my normal fear that I have of speaking out…I did speak out and I was nervous, but also as I spoke I realized I was sharing specific memories of things that we had been through, and I worried that maybe I didn’t have any boundaries. And I didn’t even have a sheet of paper! I had to borrow a piece of paper from you! The Gero-Punk’s mom goes to school and doesn’t even bring a pad of paper!

After the introductions from each of the other the women who were there, you started introducing the coursework and some of the expectations for the course, but mostly you started to talk, or “lecture.”  For me, all of the sudden it was, “Oh, my gosh! I didn’t know she knew all of this!”  I was surprised that you could say all of the things you were saying.  I was riveted and I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. I heard every word that you said!  I was totally blown away—I had no idea that you had of that information in your head! I had never heard you talk like that! Any way—I was almost stunned. And then I started really looking at you and I started noticing you in a different way. I saw you as a different person. You weren’t just my daughter, but you were also a professor! I became very aware of your face — your blushed cheeks and the softness of your face. Then it was time for a break and it was just like you that you brought tea-bags to share with everyone.  And then I went to the bathroom and we passed each other in the hallway. I didn’t feel like I had to stop and say anything to you — we just smiled at each other.  Usually I would have clung on to you as my special friend!

It is hard for me to explain to you how what we are reading for the class (Note: See the list of readings at the end of this essay.) has opened a part of me, has kind of freed me up and made me think about my place in the world as an older woman, though I didn’t feel like an “older woman” in the class, we are all women despite our different ages and we relate in a different way than if there were also men in the class. I now see more possibilities for myself as an aging person.

The second class session last week, I was so profoundly exhausted from working long shifts, I still found it to be a great experience but I wasn’t as sharp. And I had a lot to say but I had a hard time jumping into the conversation.  I wanted to say something about the symbol of the Crone.

At some point in that class session, you said, “We are all going to die, we are. We don’t know when, but we are all going to.”  You saying this — it really opened up all the possibilities that are there for me for however long I still live. I probably need more money coming in but I’m not particularly concerned about it. I want to do things like take more classes and practice guitar.  I realize I don’t understand a word that is said in the books you assigned, but I can learn for my own sake and you won’t be grading me! But I do know that I need to do the readings if I’m going to be able to participate.

I think it is just that I saw you for the first time as an adult, as a professor.  I don’t know, Jennifer, it is a really, really weird thing. The thing is that you are very friendly but you are also an authority, you know what you are talking about. You know things from experience and from your learning. I’ve tried to tell a couple of my friends about the fact that the biggest shock to me was to see how you are in a new place, not as a daughter or mama, but as a little professor. You looked so different to me! Really, Jennifer, when I think about it, my reaction was so strong. As a mother, I can read your writing, but to experience you communicate on the spot is unbelievable.  I want to hear everything you know.

Jenny: I want to hear everything you know, too!

Mommy: People have said to me, “Your daughter has been teaching for twenty years and you’ve never heard her before?” But I never had the opportunity before, even though you invited me.  Now I have the opportunity.  I also have thought how wonderful it would be if your grandmother could hear you, but it is probably too late.

Jenny: My Gramma got to participate in my learning in her own way, it is okay.

Mommy: It is a fascinating experience to have this kind of opportunity as a parent.  It is really hard to even express it.  I was blown away, I really was.

Jenny: Well, there’s a similar thing for me having my mommy in my class.

Mommy: My feeling was that you are very proud to have me there.  And that you introduced me as “This is my mommy, Susie,” rather than, “This is my Mother, Susan Hotz.” The way you introduced me was warm. Do you feel discomfort or embarrassment having me in your class? This would be one of my questions for you.

Jenny: (I giggle…) No, I don’t feel discomfort or embarrassment at all!

Mommy: Even though I don’t know all the big words?

Jenny: Do you want to hear what I feel? I feel my own kind of excitement getting to see you in a different context.  I love watching you interact with the other students and how they respond to you.  It is cool to hear what you have to say about your experiences, the readings, what other students have to say.  I’m really proud of you and it is wonderful having you participate in the class.

Mommy: I felt this last time like I was one of the group and not just the mommy of the professor. I felt like the other women were looking at me and saying what they felt and listening to what I had to say.  But you have an ability to act natural, like I am on the same level as the rest of the students, in terms of the attention you give me.

Jenny: Well, except I did bring you a little notebook so you’d have paper!

Mommy: I know, I showed the notebook to everybody—it has sparkly flowers on the front!  I thought it was sweet when you came over to me on the break and asked for a snack. It was really cute—I was like a mommy bird flying by and I dropped some walnuts in your hand.

Jenny: So you feel like you are part of the group and not just my mommy?

Mommy: Yes, I feel like I am part of the group but also your mommy. The only thing I wish is that I understood all of the words that all of you are using. I’m going to have to write down the different words I want to know more about.

Jenny: Do you want to share anything more about your experience of this stage of your life course? What you shared while we were hiking today was really interesting.

Mommy: You mean the opening up of my life?  Now that I am not working as much as I was before, I’m not having to get  up so early, I don’t have to rush from thing to thing, and I am no longer coming home totally exhausted.  The only thing I was continuing to do when I was working so hard was exercising. Sometimes I was so worn out by the end of the day of care-giving that I would just sit in my red chair and do nothing for a couple of hours.

Now I feel like I’ve walked into a big room full of possibilities.  I have much less money but for some reason all the things I said I couldn’t do before because I had to work so hard are now before me as possibilities—joining a walking club, for example. Now I have time to take my neighbor’s daughter Amelia on a walk—we go pick up pine cones or play. I give her mommy an hour to herself; I know how important that is. Or I go to my church and help fold bulletins or visit with people. I’m thinking of growing a cutting garden so we have fresh flowers for the church alter.  I have several younger friends but I’d really like to get to know some other persons my age and older who want to be active and do things. I can’t play my flute any more because it bothers my ears when I wear my hearing aids, but I could continue to learn to play guitar. I had even stopped listening to music before because I was so tired, but now I am beginning to return to my love of music.

Jenny: It seems like there has been a major shift is in how you think about yourself and your life.

Mommy: When the (elder care) agency I worked for closed suddenly it was a really big experience and then when I had to leave my client Bob because the situation of caring for him was becoming impossible for me, well, I was really courageous in those situations.  I am tired of being bullied by the care-giving agencies that employ me. I’d rather somehow be on my own. Do I know what is going to happen next? No, I have no ideas.  But I have had enough and I have decided that my life is going to look differently. You know, being able to help Isobel or you when you need me, especially when Isobel has only a year left at home, is really great now that I don’t have to worry about getting time off from work to do so.  Also being able to decide to go to a yoga class out of the blue is so delightful.

You know what also happened? Whenever I can be totally honest with you I feel better – you know, for some reason I hadn’t told you I was planning a big trip with my friends. I worried that you would say I couldn’t go and would judge me because I don’t have any money, though you wouldn’t probably. When I finally told you, you were happy for me and you encouraged me to go. I realized that I can tell you the truth and you’ll be joyful about the good things that come into my life. When you responded that way it opened something for me.  I realized I didn’t have to hide.

Jenny:  So, something changed in you and something changed between us as well?

Mommy: What really helped me was the day we sat at your kitchen table and we had an honest conversation about the future, when we really talked about how we could help each other now and into the future. We don’t know what is going to happen, but there’s a huge likelihood I might need to live with you, though who knows, who knows.  But the fact that you said you would be willing to live with me or help me when I am even older really helps me feel better and more open.

Jenny: I am so glad to hear that you feel that way!

Mommy: Oh, can I read you this quote from another book I am reading?

“The greatest oddity of one’s sixties is that, if one dances for joy, one always supposes it is for the last time.  Yet this supposition provides the rarest and most exquisite flavor to one’s later years.  The piercing sense of “last time” adds intensity, while the possibility of “again” is never quite effaced” (p. 55).

From:  Heilbrun, C.G.  (1997). The last gift of time: Life beyond sixty. New York: Ballantine Books.

  Reading list for the Women’s Issues in Aging seminar

Calasanti, T., Slevin, K.F., & King, N.  (2006).  Ageism and feminism: From “et cetera” to center.  NWSA Journal, 18(1), 13-30.

Gullette, M.M.  (2004).  Aged by culture. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press.

Ray, R.E.  (1999). Researching to transgress: The need for critical feminism in gerontology. Journal of Women & Aging, 11(2/3), 171-184.

Ray, R.E.  (2004). Toward the croning of feminist gerontology.  Journal of Aging Studies, 18,  109-121.

Walker, M.U. (Ed.) (1999).  Mother time: Women,  aging, and ethics. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

What you would say to a sixty year old who is always complaining about growing old and life going by too fast?

This is the question my friend Tod Sloan (or as I call him, “tsloan”) put to the graduate students in the Life Span Development seminar he is teaching this term.  The course is required for future counselors and family therapists. When I asked him to tell me a bit more about what they are up to in the course he wrote, “We have tried to look at how development always happens in contexts that challenge us to understand and act in different ways, rather than seeing growth as simply natural.”

Tsloan is Professor of Counseling Psychology at Lewis and Clark College, in Portland, Oregon. His scholarship focuses on the psychological impact of life in capitalist consumerist societies, as in his book Damaged life (1996), and on the role of dialogue in helping us to explore alternatives. He’s also done some really fantastic writing and teaching around Critical Psychology (I use a couple of chapters from a C.P. text he edited in one of the courses I co-teach this term).

Tsloan and I share a commitment to critical social theory and praxis in our respective fields (you’ll get more of a sense of what this means if you read on) and have been engaging in an unfolding, on-going conversation since we met in 2006.  The idea to have a more focused dialog about Critical Gerontology spontaneously emerged a few days ago when we were chatting on Facebook about his students’ responses to his question about the hypothetical sixty year old.  Would you be surprised to hear that I was quite intrigued and offered to pop by his class sometime to talk about Critical Gerontology, development in later life, the Gero-punk Project, etc.?  As time is of the essence (The last session of his course is tomorrow night. Not enough time to put together a grand performance.) we decided to start with a written dialog between the two of us – mostly me responding to his questions—and then see what happens next (Longer co-written piece in which I turn the tables on him? Music video? YouTube presentation that goes viral? Stay tuned!).

Here’s our dialog (well, it is mostly me chattering away!):

Tsloan: You are an advocate for critical gerontology.  What does that mean and how would society be arranged differently if the principles of critical gerontology were widely applied?

Jenny: For the past fifteen years at least my intellectual commitments have been informed by the Critical Gerontology framework, an alternative approach for Gerontological education, theory, research, and practice that Stephen Katz refers to as “…a pragmatic and nomadic thought-space across which ideas flow and become exchanged…a magnetic field where thought collects, converges, and transverses disciplines and traditions” (2003, p. 16). The Critical Gerontology “thought-space,” as I’ve dwelled in it, has evoked several strong principles to guide my ongoing inquiry and practice, most particularly: 1) the importance of integrating the biographical and the historical, the personal and the political; 2) the centrality of collaborative theorizing, not only with other scholars but with my students, and especially with elders, the very subjects of – and potential partners in – my inquiry as a Gerontologist; 3) the commitment to intentionally grappling with – rather than attempting to simplify or reduce – the complexities of what it means to be a human being;  and 4) the imperative that the ultimate outcome of all of my striving must be deeper understanding of human development and aging in the service of personal, social and cultural transformation.  What I consider to be especially powerful about enacting Critical Gerontology is that it provides me with a meta-framework, a comprehensive sensibility, for asking and pursuing answers to questions about the most complex features of our travels through the life course as human beings because it foregrounds the recognition that who I am and the work I do in the world are inexorably intertwined. And, most crucially, it provides a lucid counter-argument to the narrow and over-determining normative discourses and practices that still dominate a great deal of the research and theory regarding adult development and aging.

As such, Critical Gerontology is transgressive and disruptive of the dominant Gerontological paradigm, which is wedded to the positivist and biomedical paradigms.

As a natural extension of being moved deeply by unique scholarly contributions from Ray (2003), Gilleard and Higgs (2000; 2005), Biggs (1999; 2005), Hendricks (2003), and Katz (1996; 2000), all of which have become central to much of the curriculum design and teaching I do, I have found myself turning the lens of Critical Gerontology back upon myself especially as I’ve faced  major life crises and have reached what may be the mid-point of my travels through my life course (I’ll only know if this time of my life is the mid-point retrospectively, of course, and maybe I won’t even know, depending on the time and circumstances of my exit from the earth and return to the stars.).  I have been supported in my movement toward deeper reflection and purposeful action especially by Simon Biggs, who asserts quite boldly in his discussion of research training for a critical sensibility toward aging experiences that, “We need, then, techniques by which to know ourselves and the contexts in which we work” (2005, p. S125). He continues by advocating that “…identifying multiple sources of empathic understanding such as similar life events and attending to biography, oral history, and testimonia may be used to enhance a will to understand.  The problems of…amnesia of depth, indicative of seduction by simple states of mind, plus their undertow, the avoidance of personal anxieties associated with age, point to a need for enhanced self-reflection of this type (2005, S126).

I yearn for depth of understanding even about experiences which fall over the edges of my capacity to make sense of them. I try to bravely behold and embrace the messiness of being human. I think better with others, especially about the complex project of deep human development across the life course, and so I commit myself to collaborative inquiry and action. One of my current mottos is: Life is short– Act now!

Tsloan: Aren’t there any sorts of specific re-arrangements of institutions or practices that would make it possible for the lives of older people to be more meaningfully connected to others, perhaps beyond their immediate families?  For example, ways that different generations could interact more and perhaps solve collective problems, including how to deal with growing numbers of elders, and their impact on the economy and politics?

Jenny: In my experience thus far in trying to do cross/inter-generational inquiry and activism what matters most is two things: establishing and sustaining genuine relationships across differences (and by “differences,” I mean cohort/age differences but all the other ways we humans are different as well) and finding yearnings, issues or projects that transcend cohort/age differences around which we can connect and militate.

So, it is complicated and tricky, yes? Because different cohort/age positionalities and experiences are important and need to be acknowledged and brought to bear and (punch line) we need to remember our fundamental humanness and create solidarity around a shared commitment to flourishing for all creatures regardless of time/space/place. And (punch line) the dirty secret that no one really wants to touch, sometimes not even Gerontologists want to touch this, is ageism: externally imposed and internally assimilated discourses and beliefs around age, aging, and life-course stages. Until we are willing to address institutionalized and intrapsychic ageism (and how it intertwines with sexism, heterosexism, racism, classism, etc.) our best intentions and bravest actions will only take us so far.

But every day in small ways I resist and I see how others resist ageism and reach across the distances that exist between us. A current example is the Women’s Issues in Aging course I teach this term.  I am holding this 11-week seminar at Mary’s Woods, the continuing care retirement center contiguous to the campus where I work. I have an open door policy for the course–any one can attend at any time. There are 9 matriculating undergraduate and graduate Marylhurst University students enrolled, plus another MU graduate student who has had the course already and is sitting in so as to work further on her thesis project, plus my mommy, plus two Mary’s Woods residents who just decided to show up and hang out with us. I don’t know if they will come back for the next session, and I don’t know if new folks will show up, but whatever happens is an adventure and I’ll embrace it and find a way to incorporate it into our cross-generational learning community.

Starting with the daily practices – my relationships, my teaching and writing — over which I have some purview and agency, rather than trying to blow up and topple ideological structures and social institutions, is my antidote to feeling hopeless and helpless.

Tsloan: Could you illustrate these principles more concretely by telling me what you would say to a 60 yr old who is always complaining about growing old and life going by too fast?

Jenny: Well, I would ask this hypothetical sixty year old person a bunch of questions rather than telling him or her a bunch of stuff that came out of my own professional and personal experience. Fundamentally, I’d want to understand better how he or she thinks about age and aging and later life – in general and specifically regarding their own travels through the life course. I’d want to develop a more focused understanding of what is underneath their complaints about growing old and life going by too fast. Is he or she feeling regrets about things that have already happened, about lost chances,  unfulfilled dreams, or things they perceive to be mistakes? Is he or she living in a perpetual state of longing and loneliness?  I’d want to know more about the contours of his or her emotional and spiritual life—commitments, beliefs, resources, aspirations. I’d want to know who their close-in creatures are —humans and other-than-humans – and how he or she spends his or her time and energy: self-care, other-care, political activism, creative work?  I would aspire to listen closely to what he or she had to say so that I could understand to the fullest extent I could – to the fullest extent to which we can ever get inside another creature’s experience – how he or she constructs their reality and experiences as a human being. I’d pay attention to his or her energy when they spoke about their life – When they seem most bright and shining, what are they talking  about?

Then I’d figure out what to say or not to say next.

Tsloan: So, let’s say the person tells you that s/he is fairly disconnected from others, is not feeling motivated to be helpful or of service, lives with deep regrets about ‘mistakes’, can’t find much joy in previous interests, and in general seems to be in unconscious protest against the fact of mortality?  Isn’t there some radical way to reframe this (typical) narrative of decline, disengagement, and meaninglessness?

Jenny: When I contemplate this question my heart gets really warm and I also feel butterflies in my stomach. I get a little shy and nervous.  I have the seemingly contradictory impulse to shake her/him silly (Life is so god damn short! And you won’t escape mortality! So snap out of it and embrace your singular precious human existence!) and also to put my arms around her/him and whisper soothing secrets into her/his left ear.

What secrets? That this journey we are on, for however long we are on it, is gorgeous and frightening as hell.  Human development across the life course is emergent, we are always unfolding in real-time, and most especially when we are in full-on adulthood and then old age. But, alas, in the last third or fourth of our travels through the life course we have few models and frameworks upon which to call for guidance. It is exciting and scary because we are learning as we go along and by the time we’ve gone along on this journey for a few decades we’ve gathered a great deal of experience, life has worked away on us and we’ve most likely collected both gifts and wounds.  And the models or frameworks that do exist for adult ageing and development may not reflect one’s very own experiences, anxieties, hopes and dreams, fears. Regrets about the past are only helpful insofar as we reflect upon our thoughts, words and actions and make changes in the direction of greater flourishing and ask others for amends if we’ve hurt them. Otherwise, to hell with regrets!

As my mommy might tell me, you have to “dig down deeply” to discover meaning on your own behalf. Not once, but over and over. And find your “kin,” your comrades far and near with whom you can engage in delicate conversations about what it feels like to be at the beginning of your seventh decade on the plant.

Sentience is such a gift! And it sucks, too. I mean—Who wants to be dogged by their certain mortality? I don’t want to leave this life, either. I really don’t. Even when I am at my most wretched I still would rather be here, be me here, than to not be here and to not be me.  If this ever changes, then I will know perhaps it is time to make a different choice.

Tsloan: You call yourself a “Gero-punk.” What do critical gero-punks do?

Jenny: I don’t know what other Gero-punks do—that’s for them to decide! I can only tell you what I aspire to do as a Gero-punk. I am committed to Gerontological anarchy. Which is actually my response to a more generalized feeling of being fed up with the status quo globally and locally, especially in U.S. society, in academe, and even in my inter-personal relationships.

Age and aging are under-interrogated, under-theorized concepts and experiences. The life-course impacts of social and economic inequality and health disparities receive too little attention. Age and aging are everywhere and no-where at the same time.  And Gerontology as a diverse field of practice and academic focus is mostly missing the boat in terms of really addressing these issues in a powerful, vibrant and timely fashion and in  such a way that folks outside of academe can access and make sense of them.

This is the time for public gerontology, for taking gerontology to the streets.  We need to keep developing cross-generational communities of interest, we need to keep creating lasting and genuine relationships that simultaneously harness and transcend cohort and age differences, we need to face human aging as a life-long, life-wide complex creaturely experience of gains and losses, muddles and revelations, stucknesses and stunning changes.

And we need to face issues of deep old age: loss, decline, frailty, and, ultimately, death. Issues which are, in fact, all about what it means to be a human being from fragile beginning to fragile ending.

One foot on the earth, one foot in the stars.

References

 Biggs, S.  (1999).  The mature imagination.  Buckingham, U.K.: Open University

Press.

——.  (2005). Beyond appearances: Perspectives on identity in later life and

some implications for method.  Journal of Gerontology, 60B (3), S118-S128.

Gilleard, C., &  Higgs, P.  (2000).  Cultures of ageing (sic): Self, citizen, and

            the body.  New York: Prentice Hall.

——. (2005).  Contexts of ageing (sic): Class, cohort and community.  Cambridge, U.K.:

Polity Press.

Gullette, M. M. (1997).  Declining to decline: Cultural combat and the

            midlife.  Charlottesville, VA.: University Press of Virginia.

——.  (2003). From life storytelling to age autobiography.  Journal of Aging Studies,

            17, 101-111.

Katz, S.  (1996).  Disciplining old age.  Charlottesville: University Press of Virgina.

Ray, R.E.  (1999).  Researching to transgress: The need for critical feminism in

gerontology.  Journal of Women and Aging, 11(2/3), 171-184.

——.  (2000).  Beyond nostalgia: Aging and life-story writing.  Charlottesville:

University Press of Virginia.