HOW OLD ARE YOU? DOES IT MATTER?

 

Picasso, "The Mother," 1901

There's some conventional wisdom about age, about the difference between being young, middle-aged or old. The young do more, the old know more, so they say.  The middle-aged do a little less than the young and know a little less than the old. Still, it's considered by most to be the prime of life. 

Where being young ends depends on our age, doesn't it?  Our parents always seem old, even though my mother was 44 at my wedding and thought she was pregnant!  I didn't smoke because my parents did.  How could anything they did be cool?  Our children always seem young even though they may be middle-aged themselves.  My grandsons can't sign a contract, buy a car, support themselves, really do much besides homework.  But they think their mother is old and their father even older.  Their mother bristles at jokes about her age, but their father takes it in stride.

Within my family I'm old (and loved) because I'm the grandmother.  But as a wife I'm just me, no age at all.  When my husband and I go to bed at night we don't think, well here we are--two grandparents.  

As professionals, as each of us ages we become more experienced and high-priced.  As consumers we have more disposable income.  And of course with our friends we are all ageless.  Same with our interest groups--yoga, biking, book club, kayaking. . . age is not relevant.  

The question is, is it ever relevant?  

Every day we are both young and old--the oldest we have ever been and the youngest we will ever be.  So said Paul Simon (b. 1941) in "The Boxer." 

I am older than I once was

And younger than I'll be 

But that's not unusual.  

No, it isn't strange 

After changes upon changes

We are more or less the same

After changes we are

More or less the same

                         

There are so many quotes on aging--"Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age."  Who said that? You would think a comedian, like Nora Ephron.  Instead it is Victor Hugo (1802-1885), the creator of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. 


Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014), Nobel Prize for Literature 1982, wrote: "Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega.  An end in itself."  

Edouard Vuillard, "A Seamstress," 1892

I had a great grand-mother who used to sit by the window in her bedroom.  The window was upstairs over a front-porch roof, so she couldn't see the people passing on the sidewalk.  But she could smell the trees and hear the leaves rustle and the rain fall.  She could hear the thunder and feel the air.  She was nearly blind.  Thin, frail, skin drawn over sharp bones, white hair pulled back from her face.  This is my memory.  A daughter lived with her, my great-Aunt Lillie.  I wish I knew if Aunt Lillie helped her dress, brushed her soft hair, creamed her hands and face for her. She must have. I picture this done lovingly.  My great grandma had none of the sights or smells that sometimes children associate unkindly with old age.  She was soft and sweet-smelling, her bony hands just slightly chilled, her eyes blue with cataracts, her house-dress clean and crisp.  We loved her. 

When my mother died and I wrote her obituary, my father said, "I never thought of her as 82."  Seeing it in writing surprised him. 

Robert Frost says, "The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected."  In my own mind now that my father has died too, I must be in the afternoon.  Still, younger than I'll be.  That's not unusual. It isn't strange.  After changes upon changes I am more or less the same.   Do you feel like that?  Are you happy with yourself no matter what your age?  I'd like to stay that way.  Our inner lives eternal. That could be a prayer.    With affection, Nina Naomi

"LIFE IS LONG IF YOU KNOW HOW TO USE IT," SENECA

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (4BC-65AD), the Roman Stoic, is a brief work that is so full of ideas that are current.  How can it be that someone from the 1st century can tap into our needs today?  It speaks to the universality of everything human I think.  It's like when I happen to check audience stats and see that someone in Andorra has looked at this blog, or someone in Czechia, the Netherlands, Portugal, or the UK. We must all have universal interests and thoughts.  We're not so different from one another, maybe not at all different from one another.  That may be true across time as well, across centuries, not just across the globe.  

Some things we are all drawn to.  The sea is one. -- Not today exactly, as we in North Carolina watch Hurricane Florence make land fall and flood our rivers, as our causeways are closed and we have evacuated with our re-entry passes in hand.  As we wait to either lose power or for its return and the branches crack and the trees thud.  No not today.  But most days.  Most days we all enjoy the tides, the mystery of the forests, the views from our mountains, the healthy endurance that nature requires.  We know that going out is the same as going in.  

So as we have the day off and I have a momentary return of power, I am reading Seneca.  How apt to read a Stoic philosopher during the silences and surges of a storm.  Let's begin with the quote,  

"Life is Long if You Know How to Use It."  

Seneca is a chider in this essay, a bit of a scold.  But what he says makes sense to me.  Think about these two statements:

"They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn." 

 "But putting things off is the biggest waste of life:  it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future.  The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today."

Or this one, 

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy." 

I am guilty of all these things, I know that.  Losing a day or night to agitation when my worries have gotten the better of me.  Putting off something I want to do.  Allowing screen time to suck away the hours. Neglecting the joy of being outdoors.    

Or this  worst--letting memories of a bad day color what could be a good day. Or a past hurt destroy the present. I like the way Seneca addresses this.  Focusing on the bad he says is like punishing ourselves for our misfortune, increasing our ills instead of lessening them.  Isn't the original loss or hurt punishment enough, he asks.  Lingering in our suffering, coddling it with attention, is like pleading for more lashes.  If that profited us, he writes, if a night spent in sorrow instead of sleep brought relief, that would be one thing.  But it doesn't.  

I'm not suggesting we all read Seneca's Consolations. Or become Stoics. But I do like it that a literary form that dates from the 5th century BC can reach us today. That the need for consolations from life's ills was the same then as now. That part of Seneca's philosophy was that contentment could be reached through simple living, reason and social equality.  Especially the contentment through simple living part.  

So I've signed up for a 14-week MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction)  course at the Center for Integrative Medicine at Duke University Medical Center.  Something I want to do that I'm not putting off!  It's part mindfulness (staying in the present non-judgmentally), part meditation and part Yoga.  Maybe a bit of Roman stoicism, I'll find out.  No pleading for more lashes in this course I bet!  I'm ready to put in the work.  

With thanksgiving for my long life, Nina Naomi 





 

  

THE NOWNESS OF LIFE

I was thinking about this--how much our life is more like a river than the top of the mountain.  How seldom we can say, "OK that's done."  Carly Simon has a beautiful ballad she wrote after her mother died.  The chorus is

I'll wait for you no more like a daughter,

That part of our life together is over

But I will wait for you forever

Like a river...

The first three lines are just a small range of even notes until her voice rises and soars on the word "forever," drawing it up, out and down.  It sounds like falls in a river.  I love the song, maybe now more than ever since my mother is gone.  

When we climb the mountains in our life, we never reach the top.  They're rugged and hard but they're beautiful and we love climbing.  We see wonderful views along the way and find treasures, but we also love coming back down.  Then we can follow the river, float, swim, survive its currents and climb another day if we want.  These are good choices.  They last. 

So what are these things that are never over, the tops we don't reach?  You know them.  Forgiveness is one, ourselves or others.  That takes forever, sung with our own voices rising and lingering on the word.  Understanding our children is another.  Or our partner.  Or even ourselves--maybe especially ourselves.  We never say, "OK that's done!"  

Making a home is another.  That's why we feather our nests over and over.  We add a blanket or a new plant.  We rearrange our collections.  We paint a room, plump the pillows, or even move and start over.  We don't want our homes to be finished.  We aren't, why should they be?

Enjoying nature is another one.  Yesterday I read an article called "In Life's Last Moments, Open a Window," by Dr. Rachel Clarke.  She works in palliative care in Britain. She says that even (or maybe especially) the dying want the experience of nature.  When the doors and windows of their rooms are opened their spirits lift, they're more peaceful, accepting and calm.  They want the sights and sounds of birds, of leaves rustling, and the feel of the breeze.  The idea seems to be that in our last days the trivial and the important merge.  Perhaps we need nature to remind us that we are part of its cycle.  She quotes a writer who said about his ending, "The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous."  I think being on a river or climbing, pausing, climbing, pausing are wondrously in the now. 

Dr. Clarke says that people often imagine a hospice to be only about the dismalness of  death.  But it isn't, she says.  It's about "the best bits of living.  Nowness is everywhere. Nature provides it."  We want this all the time, don't we, the best bits of living, nowness everywhere, nature providing?  I'm going to do my best to put myself in a place where this can be true for me.  A place in my river or on my mountain side. 
                                   

LET YOURSELF GO

Summer just opens the door and lets you out. 

This is a quote by Deb Caletti (b. 1963), young adult author.  I like it.  But actually, it can apply to any season.  Spring certainly, the season of rebirth.  Fall, which is also new beginnings, crisp air, the school year, the end of a hodge-podge summer schedule.  Even Winter with the cleanliness of new fallen snow and the brightness of Christmas decorations.  I figure just about any time is a good time to take off, to soar.  I am thinking partly about the times when we can be who nobody thinks we are.  

When we're alone of course.  We can dance around the house, sing as loud as we want, turn the music up, clean like a dervish or let things go, cry if we need to or practice scream therapy, sleep with the covers over our head or stay up all night. . . .   But also when we're on vacation, whatever time of year.  We won't run into our high school teacher at the super market, or an old friend (or enemy) grabbing coffee.  On vacation, especially if alone, we can wear hats, red lipstick, chat with strangers, do something outrageous, create a persona.  If a friend wants to do this with us, all the better.  

It's fun to be someone different.  I rented my husband and me a place in the mountains, just for a couple of nights.  At home we are straight-laced grandparents.   On a mini-break we added spa treatments, late-night oysters, mountain views, hair-pin curves.  Oh my goodness.  Just 3 hours from home but so good to be someone else. 

You parents and grandparents, family members, care-taking children, teachers, accountants, lawyers, bosses, have you done this?  Gotten away for a night?  Gotten to be whomever you want?  Students can do this when they go away to college.  A chance to change who they were in high school.  We can do it in a new job or new city.  A do-over.  It's downright liberating.  

I don't mean a break from our values.  Or what we believe in or who we trust or who we would lay down our life for.   Just a chance to lighten the load, to let ourselves go.  To be someone else for awhile or forever.  Do you have a weekend alone or away?  Can you plan something? Why not open the door and let yourself out?  I'm looking for a time right now.  

HEALTHY ATTITUDES (DEPRESSION IS A LIAR)

I was reading an article where I came across the statement that sorrow makes life rich and turns us toward an appreciation of all things meaningful.  Oh my goodness NO.  Sorrow does not make life rich.  If it does, it isn't sorrow.  It is something else.  Disappointment maybe.  An unfulfilled wish or dream that, when it dies, leaves room for something else, something just as good or better.  But not Real Sorrow.

In "Give All to Love" Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) says "when half gods go the gods arrive."  When I was young and a boy I loved broke up with me, I repeated these words over and over.  He was a "half-god" I decided; he had to be.  Someone better would  appear, and did--the person I still love.  So as bad as I felt about the break-up, I knew it wasn't the end.  The future was still limitless--only he would not be in it.  

When real sorrow occurs we are more likely to feel that our life as we knew it is gone.  If someone has hurt us to the core, that fact never changes, whether we forgive and reconcile or not.  The devastation may recede but it remains an immutable fact.  The repentance, the forgiveness, the reconciliation may make our life richer, but the hurt itself or the sorrow over it does not.   

If someone we love dies young, real sorrow is the only response. The death will never be right.  If someone we love is mentally ill, real sorrow is the only response.  Their transformation into someone whose personality is borderline, hurtful, fathomless, does not make life rich.  Not theirs, not ours.

At the same time, sorrow is not despair.  Sorrow can abate, as we become better at living with it's cause, like a person who has lost a leg becomes better at being a one-legged person.  Or a parent can becomes better at living with the loss of a child. What caused the sorrow may change.  Sorrow does not kill resilience and it does not kill us. We know we don't actually die of our broken hearts because they can break again.

Sorrow can be the most appropriate response.  It isn't the liar.  Depression is.

This summer two well-known people took their lives:  Kate Spade (d. June 5, 2018) and Anthony Bourdain (d. June 8, 2018)--celebrity designer and master chef.   (Post:  HEALTHY ATTITUDES (ULTIMATE THINGS).  We feel sorrow over that.  Since then the rise in suicide rates has been in the news. Like a rise in poverty or in the numbers of uninsured, behind each statistic is the suffering of a precious man, woman or child. Today I read of a 9 year-old boy found by his mother--this is almost too hard to write--hanging in his room.  It was the 4th day of school and the bullying from last year had begun again.  These three succumbed to more than sorrow; they succumbed to despair, the wall with no door.

The poet Longfellow (1807-1882) said, "Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not." Some people say that everyone gets depressed sometimes, but everyone just doesn't talk about it. 

In response to the recently publicized suicides, many people wrote in to the New York Times about their own encounters with not wanting to live.  None of them said that this kind of sorrow made their lives richer. No.  What they did say is important for everyone to hear.  They said, "Depression is a Liar."  

Depression made them feel trapped, made them think that no one cared, that ending their life was a good solution, even reasonable. This made me think about the post I wrote about loving ourselves (Post:  Fall in Love with Yourself for Valentine's).  There is not a person alive whom no one cares about.  Not one.  Strangers care.  God cares.

The Universe or their own inner being cares. If we feel the lie that no one loves us, we can still love ourselves, love our world, love the trees and stars and sky, love the universe, love God.  Love all of these long enough to realize that yes, "Depression is a Liar."  It never tells the truth. 

Then what?  Therapy, prayer, medication if necessary, seeking the ways to nourish our souls, living for the moments we can't put into words.  Setting our intentions for a peaceful mind, a loving heart, a healthy body.  And being prepared to do it again and again.  

NOURISH YOUR SOUL AFTER A RAIN

Amanita Jacksonii

This is a truly beautiful mushroom with a brilliant red cap.  They are sprouting all over the woods. It is not poisonous, but some look-a likes are deadly.  So we can't eat them! I'm pretty sure I have this labelled correctly, but . . . . this is my first foray into identifying wild mushrooms.  I am way beyond my comfort level.  I could have gotten them all wrong or all right, no telling.  Still, don't you love trying to learn something new? Gills, spots, stalk, cap, bruising, spores--all part of a specialized vocabulary.  Plenty of web sites to help.

 

We've had so much rain in North Carolina that the fungi are exploding.  The amount of rain, in fact, is rather alarming.  So are the fires in California, the melting ice in Glacier National Park, and the grieving mother Orca holding her dead calf for 17 days and 1,000 miles.  It all makes me more than a little nervous.  I'm trying to do my part.  But the rain has definitely brought it's own beauty.  Some friends saw the sprouting mushrooms first when their headlights hit a cluster.  Since then I've been spotting them everywhere, in every shape and size.  I love it! Look at the one below at 7 inches!  And the little thumb-nail sized one.  We must have a hundred of those!

Amanita Jacksonii

The Amanita Jacksonii is usually solitary, but sometimes occurs in scattered groups. Doesn't that description sound more like an animal than a plant?  The Russula, below, is a very complicated genus, with more than 750 species I learned.  Wikipedia says that "Russula is mostly free of deadly poisonous species, and mild-tasting ones are all edible."  Well, that kind of sounds like I'd have to taste one to know, and that makes me nervous too.  I'll have to learn more. 

Russula Mushrooms

The one below is edible, at least it is if I've identified it correctly.  Chicken of the Woods.  Obviously tastes like chicken to some people.  We have a lot of Chicken of the Woods on fallen trunks and heavy branches.  

Chicken of the Woods

But the Northern Tooth fungus is not edible.  It's a combination shelf and tooth fungus.  Since it is a parasite, it causes the central core of a living tree to rot.  Then a strong wind will blow the tree over.  Not surprisingly I found this fungus on a trunk on the ground.  

Northern Tooth Fungus

The next one I've nicknamed Pancake.  It looks like a stack of these with maple syrup and butter would taste just right.  But I'm not going to experiment!  It's enough fun just to hunt these out and photograph them.  Because we have white-tailed deer, who apparently can eat at least some amount of even a toxic mushroom, the ones around our house keep disappearing after a few days.  This too is a subject I'd like to find out more about.  

The ugliest mushroom I found is apparently nicknamed Old Man of the Woods.  Not sure why old men are the butt here.  The ones in my life are as handsome as ever.  But here it is.  It grows alone on the ground with a layer of woolly scales on the top.  

The other treasures in the yard that the rain has helped are the heaps of wild mint and the spreading carpets of moss.  Both now come right up to our patios. Wild mint after a rain smells so wonderful.  

Chasing down these mushrooms and finding more and more squishy new moss is a silent adventure. So much of nature is noisy--the chattering of the birds, the deafening cicadas, the deer snorting, the boisterous foxes that were under our deck (Post:  "Make Your Life a Little Easier, Especially In Your Head"). Finding mushrooms is calming.  They're as beautiful as flowers.  They grow silently out of matter we often think of as dead--thick layers of fallen  leaves. But the natural compost is rich and good.  Pico Iyer (b. 1957), British born travel writer, essayist and novelist of Indian descent, says, 

It's the open spaces in any life, I suspect--

the moments when you lost yourself--

that make for happiness, peace, and clarity.

Each day, by the time I have taken all the pictures of mushrooms that I want, my body is relaxed and my mind quiet.  I've been totally absorbed.  My mind isn't trying to be still; it just happens. 

HEALTHY ATTITUDES (MARRIAGE)

 

Linda Hock, "Set for Two," Mattie King Davis Gallery, Beaufort, NC

What makes a healthy marriage?  How much independence should spouses give up in order not to hurt one another?  These questions are not meant for abusive or unequal relationships.  They are meant for relationships where both partners want nothing more than comfort, peace, companionship  and love and want it to last a lifetime.  

It doesn't have to be in a marriage.  But it is a marriage where people take vows, make promises, become a new entity.  It is a marriage that creates duties.  Some are absolute duties--the duty of fidelity (emotional, spiritual and physical) for example.  If it is a Christian marriage the partners are "made one in Christ."  A marriage or other committed relationship brings the obligation of no secrets.  This does not mean every moment of the past has to be deconstructed.  But it does mean no present secrets.  No e-mails that the other cannot read.  No conversations that flourish in private.  No intimacy in word or thought with someone else.  In other words, no one about whom one partner has to claim, "We're just friends."  These are by nature betrayals.  And, no self-deceit that allows such a relationship outside the marriage to exist. 

The best way to avoid these situations is to be honest with ourselves and open with our spouses.  If we want to have coffee with someone and we know (or should know--that's the hallmark of 'no self-deceit') that our spouse will be made uneasy by this, we don't do it.  To ignore our spouse's preference out of a need for independence is devaluing our spouse.  It jeopardizes something of paramount importance (a lifetime relationship) for something less, whatever that lesser thing may be. 

Whenever we choose something that has even the potential of causing discomfort to the person to whom we are committed, we are making a statement.  "I  want something (or someone) other than you, even for just a few hours. I'm happy to maintain our status quo but only if I can do what I want. I have moved beyond the friends who strengthen our marriage. I want [admiration, a feeling of youthfulness, the buoyancy of a 'special friendship,' whatever . . .] even if that bothers you (or would if you knew)."  Otherwise why not ask,  "I was thinking about catching up with so and so.  Are you free to do that with me? "  Now that makes a healthy marriage!  

There may still be questions as to why you want to catch up with so and so.  But at least nothing will occur in private.  Boundaries will be set.  After all, private is the same as secret.  And if our spouse says, "No, I don't want to come and I don't want you to meet with him/her either," that is something we should respect.  Friends should be friends of the marriage.  Friends of the marriage are healthy.  Of course, friends of only one of us can easily become friends of the marriage.  That happens all the time.  But if one person doesn't want their friend who is the same sex as their spouse to be the friend of both, if he or she raises some obstacle, that it itself is tell-tale. 

I've been reading the memoir of a friend of our marriage.  A friend who lives in South Africa, was important in the struggle against apartheid, and who is now a widower (watch for the publication of I Beg to Differ by Peter Storey).  He has written about his marriage, 

     "No marriage is without struggles; the law of self-disclosure makes it  impossible to hide our self-truths no matter how adept we think we are at disguising them.  But much depends on whether the frailties thus exposed are grasped as opportunities to find 'a more perfect union' or as reasons to cut and run.  I won't traverse the sore places which I, more than [my wife] created, except to stand in awe of how much more ready she was to learn and grow from them."

Ah, do not we all want to have and to be such a spouse?  Would not our lives be easier, more God-pleasing, more honest and sincere if we used every opportunity for a more perfect union? I am drawn to the statement, "The law of self-disclosure makes it impossible to hide our self-truths no matter how adept we think we are at disguising them." My husband and I have been working on that.  Not surprisingly, it makes for some amazingly wonderful times.  I want to thank God for those.  Thank you, God.  Nina Naomi