A funny thing happens on this side of 40, as I’ve discovered. I am inspired by teen and twenty-somethings for their energy and their idealism, but I’m also ready to jump in front of traffic for them. I’m in this middle place between working alongside and protecting the [slightly] younger generation.
In “I am Becoming the Woman I’ve Wanted,” Jayne Relaford Brown writes what has become the anthem to approaching middle age: “I find her becoming this woman I’ve wanted, …who knows where she’s going and travels with passion.” For me, Brown’s words don’t quite ring true. I don’t see myself in them.
It’s been time for me to leave the identity of the cool teacher/mentor/older friend behind and to become something else. It’s hard for me to accept getting older when in my head, I’m still about twenty-two. There is a filiment of a line between staying proverbially young at heart and becoming ridiculous and also between welcoming the natural qualities of age and turning curmudgeonly.
Who this person will be I’m not exactly sure, but in the meantime, Margaret Atwood’s cautionary poem, “The Moment,” seems a better fit:
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
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January 27, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Tyler
Interesting thoughts. I’m not sure I’ve thought any of these things. I do step back from time to time and think, I own this. But I’m not sure I accept Atwood’s thoughts. Yes, I’ve been found by plenty of circumstances, but I’ve also reached out to seize the day on any number of occasions.
So, I think it’s more of a push and pull. There is a certain mystery in life, but I feel more like an active partner than a pawn. Perhaps you’re telling me that’s all hubris?
January 31, 2009 at 1:48 pm
lucy
Oh, no, Tyler, not hubris. I don’t necessarily think trying to “own” our circumstances derives from prideful pursuits. I think there are many more noble reasons why we want to figure it all out. I don’t know that Atwood is saying that we’re “pawns.” I think what she’s saying is that there is a certain arrogance in thinking that we’ve figured it all out, and with that, I agree.
January 29, 2009 at 2:37 am
Wren
Lucy, I’m 52, but just like you, in my head I’m 22. Sometimes I’m even younger than that. At 40 I was just really beginning to notice this strange disparity, but now I notice it every single day. Yet even as it becomes more stark and undeniable, I find myself finally beginning to accept it. I am not a young woman any longer. I am not beautiful and not brimming with life and fecundity, and there are moments when that reality is jarring. But there are other, more subtle gifts that come with age. There’s a certain calm, and the truth that, as that poem so rightly says, we really don’t own anything becomes more clear all the time. Strangely, that feels just right. And the concept I’ve held my entire life, that my life is really a journey filled with new adventures if only I’ll open my eyes and heart, is more true now than it’s ever been. What a lovely gift to receive, just as despair over what’s been lost sets in.
January 31, 2009 at 1:46 pm
lucy
Wren, There is something about 40, isn’t there? I am growing to appreciate the more subtle gifts, and actually, in many ways, I think I’m better prepared to deal with younger people now because I can view things more objectively. It’s the need to protect them from mean people with which I really struggle. You’re right. It is about letting things in and about having perspective and seeing each new evolution as part of the journey.
January 29, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Chris Barzak
I love the Atwood poem. It reminds me of something a character in the movie “Out of Africa” says to the main character, a woman who owns a coffee plantation and wants to marry a man who doesn’t believe in marriage, because he sees it as a false form of ownership. “We aren’t owners here,” he tells her. “We’re just passing through.”
Tyler, I think what the last stanza is talking about is the ordinary perception most humans have that they created the world, rather than viewing themselves, our species, as products of the world. We tend to see ourselves as masters over the world as a dominion, instead of as simply yet another piece of flora or fauna in the ecosphere, without hierarchical values placing us at the top of a pyramid. That without the ecosphere and everything else that makes it up, of which we are just another sort of creature, we don’t exist. We need it more than it needs us.
January 31, 2009 at 1:43 pm
lucy
Chris, I knew you would appreciate the Atwood. She’s such a magnificent observer of the nature of people, and she’s always there with a little caution about what happens when we try to control too much. This theme appears and reappears in so much of her fiction and poety (the poem “In Praise of Stupid Women” is another favorite). Even her most well-known novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, has that quality. There is only so much we can “own;” the rest is going to happen according to nature.
January 31, 2009 at 8:40 am
crseum
I’m sorry Im late on commenting on this post sunshine. The blackjack has limitations from my bed! Anyway, this post actually moved me to tears, mostly because of how I love you and how this last year has been in terms of change (for you, for us and for the whole world really!). It’s such a gift that you have shared and continue to share your journey with me (and the rest of the blogosphere!). I’m certain that whatever person you evolve into during this next stage will reflect all of the goodness and beauty that is you. I love this new format. I love the risks that you take with yourself and your personhood and I really really love you.
January 31, 2009 at 1:40 pm
lucy
Crse, Oh honey, no worries, I know you’ve been sick. I love you too, and if there’s anything I’ve learned from this past year it’s that I need to sit back and let things happen sometimes…stop trying to “own” anything/anyone and allow a more natural growth to occur. I’m glad you like the new format. I think I’m posting less, but I mean it more. It feels better this way.
January 31, 2009 at 1:51 pm
lucy
Friends, Don’t read anything into the reverse order of my responses. I was using the “reply” function for the first time, and I didn’t quite get how it worked.