In the spirit of “quit yer bitchin’” the second time I called Chubby’s my wallet was there, safe in their safe.
So I borrowed Grandpa’s car to pick it up and somehow the security system activated and it took me about fifteen minutes to figure outhow to deactivate it and get the key in, so I could drive proudly away.
I, the picture of grace.
The most random but critical stuff seems to be suddenly blowing a fuse.
My car’s not working–the battery, apparently, has expired. Or if it’s not that, it’s something worse, like the alternator. At any rate, I flat REFUSE to spend any money on it until I get my October paycheck. September is just too tight to be biting my nails over a repair bill. Fine; I can ride the train, take the bus, or ride my bike.
I lost my wallet–or can’t find it. Strangely, I had just been musing the other day about how nice it was that I’ve owned that wallet for 6 years and pretty much never even misplaced it. Then Monday night Grandpa picks me up at the train, we grab burritos from Chubby’s (where I had the wallet), eat ‘em at her house, and she drops me off afterwards. Sometime in that simple outing I lose my wallet and my cherished coffee cup. No, Chubby’s didn’t have it. Nor has anyone apparently tried to use any of my cards, and if they did they’d be in for a big disappointment anyway. So I’m not jumping to the cancellation/replacement process yet, in the hopes that somehow the lost items will turn up right in front of my face. On the other hand, we know that the only thing that will make the wallet appear is cancelling the cards.
The insane feeling this creates makes me check absurd places like the microwave, the refrigerator, and under the bath tub.
To top it all off, it’s freezing in my office at work. I’m not just talking “keep a little cardigan at the office like Mr. Rogers.” No: my office is a REFRIGERATOR. Suddenly the “facilities” people decided to make life for some of us a lot less “fácil” and crank up the air conditioning, so that these offices are now three times colder than they ever were this summer when it was 100 degrees outside. I get so cold my fingers can barely type and it gets hard to concentrate–nevermind the wool socks and extra sweater I’ve pulled on. I feel like I’m surviving a plane crash in Alaska. I start thinking about cannibalism, how I guess if I had to eat a coworker I’d probably take Lisa because she’d be the juiciest–and she’s a vegetarian so she’d die first. Today I had to move my office hours en plein air. But then the breeze came up and I couldn’t take it any longer, so I angrily got on my bike and rode my pissed ass home.
To my house where I can’t find my damn wallet despite spinning in obsessed circles. And since I can’t find my wallet, it’s pretty hard to go to a coffee shop and chill out about it all, get some grading done, and sip a chai. Instead I have to sit here listening to Rico torturing the mentally unstable cat next door while she howls bloody murder. Then I run outside and squirt Rico with water–the one thing he hates–and come back in, only to face the fact that I’ve now wasted more time looking for my wallet, trying to get warm, and writing about my misery because I can’t concentrate on grading.
Whatever.
I haven’t been writing about it, partly because of not having time, and because I realize it’s tedious, but I’ve continued to find myself on this existential rollercoaster about turning 40 in February. I’m up and down, flying around curves, losing my breath, excited and freaked out. I feel like my identity is morphing, like I’m becoming this other thing, this other…age.
It’s not so much the actual number, although that’s humbling. It probably boils down to two things: 1) not having brought a child of my own into my life yet (and the attendant wondering how/if that’s going to work), and 2) noticing physical signs of aging.
I think we go through phases, periods of months at a time, where the aging process appears to accelerate. When I was 33, I noticed one such phase: all of a sudden I had something resembling hips, where I hadn’t before. The area below my waist just kind of rounded out noticeably (to me, though I’m sure those of you who have real hips are laughing) and a softness appeared where I had historically maintained an adolescent sineweyness. In my late twenties (why me, Lord?) my grey hair, and my facial hair, started coming in like crazy, though I thought at the time it had something to do with the stress of grad school and problematic girlfriends. And at 39, as if on cue, all manner of parts seem to be drooping, dropping, swelling and wrinkling. I look at my face in the morning and barely recognize the grey-haired troll doll with the bags under her eyes. It’s strange to think there’s no reversing this. Other times I feel pretty damn good–wiser, more mature, and hot in that 40-ish hot babe way.
I know it’s all a matter of perspective, and I realize how young 39 actually is in the scope of things. I also feel lucky to have lived a healthy life thusfar. It’s not that I’m not grateful. But aging is not just something in the mind; it is physical change, and if we’re awake at all I think we can notice it. Roses bloom and fade; we can watch it happen. And let’s just say I am beginning to understand how people who have been thin all their lives start to kind of widen out as they get older. I look at my family line and I look in the mirror. The connection is obvious.
I also have probably made this whole thing a bit harder and weirder by letting my gray hair out at this particular time. It doesn’t help when strangers ask you if you are your 79 year-old father’s wife, which did in fact happen on that train ride with my dad.
Anyway, that prologue gets me to last night when I met my new heroine.
I was at my friend Julia’s father’s 77th birthday party in Boulder. Bob Cohen is a crazy beatnik radical filmmaker who has traveled places and done things in his documentarian/artist/intellectual life that you wouldn’t believe if he hadn’t recorded most of it in photos. As a result, his parties are peppered with interesting people of all ages.
So I’m sitting on the couch between Bob and Julia with a pile of other folks, when I notice this striking woman across the coffee table. Who wouldn’t notice her? She’s tiny, not more than 5 feet in heels, wearing a stretchy black string tank top and a fabulous cream colored skirt with a black design on it, sparkling here and there with silver sequins. Her hair is natural white, almost platinum, done in a flapper-era short wave, parted on the side. She is full of life; charming, talkative, funny, stylish. And she is, at least according to our acculturated signals for such things, “old.” There is not a bit of make up on her expressive face, and when she smiles the wrinkles pull back gracefully like curtains on a beautiful stage.
I’m taken by the joi de vivre in this woman, so I switch seats and introduce myself to Nona Pandil, who is even better up close. She has all her faculties, speaks clear as a bell. There is nothing about her energy that seems old in the slightest. She talks about how she loves to dance, how she’s having a huge dance party in November for her 79th birthday at this place in Denver called The Mercury Cafe, where folks come from all over to enjoy the big ballroom upstairs. There’s going to be swing, salsa, and merengue, and maybe some waltzing. She’s hired the famous Hot Tomatoes swing band for the gig. She’ll invite me! She gives me her email.
There’s something else about Nona, something harder to name as I try to describe it now. It has to do with the fact that she hasn’t marked herself as old in any way. Her language is totally contemporary, and when she talks about her birthday party, she’s not capitalizing on the age bit; she’s just psyched for her big dance birthday gig. She seems very comfortable in her skin, like a dancer. There’s nothing shrinking or apologetic about her, and yet she’s not a blow-hard, like how some old folks get, blathering on about their glorious past. She’s not in the past at all, in fact. Nor does she exude anything manufactured, nothing that says, “I’m an older woman trying to seem young.” She’s completely present.
And she’s sexy. The timeless, real kind of sexy that comes from confidence plus sensuality plus sparkle. The kind of sexy Ruth Gordon had in those scenes in Harold and Maude when she’s showing Harold her sensual sculptures and making him play with the musical instruments in her trailer. Nona’s sexuality is nowhere near gone; it’s timeless, organic. She is a complexly colored rose, weathered maybe, but still very much in bloom.
There are two other older ladies sitting nearby, and I notice that they have none of this, though they’re probably a good ten years younger than Nona. In fact, the word “ladies” is key here: they dress “their age,” they have tight hairdos, they can’t hear (or don’t listen?), and not to be mean but they seem and act like scenery. They have that shrunken, tightened in vibe that so many elders have, like silk flowers. At least, in comparison to Nona, who is a woman.
So I talk to Nona quite a bit during the evening. She still works, selling real estate in Denver. She has four grown kids, five grandkids, and–much to her astonishment, because she can’t be this old–two great grandkids. She tells me she’s been happier in her older years than when she was younger and living under the not very caring hand of an alcoholic husband. She doesn’t feel old, she says; she doesn’t feel different at all, really, whatever her years say. “Do you ‘feel’ 40?” she asks me. “You just feel like you, right? Well, it’s no different at 78, although I do realize that, you know, I do look old…Oh well.” She says that while she’s enjoyed being single for the last 30 years (30 years!), she thinks she’d like to partner with someone again before she dies, and I don’t blame her. Any man would be lucky to have her. But I can’t imagine the man her age who would equal her.
Then we sit and nod our heads to this four piece acoustic rock band Bob has hired out, and I realize the universe has sent me another role model, another angel. I am definitely hitting her dance party in November.
I want to age like Nona, fully in my skin, not stopping to apologize or try to fix or turn my energy backwards to something that is behind me, be it my past or my back fat. I want to be dancing toward my 79th birthday with bells on, fashionable and contemporary, bright, alive, and still sexy. Screw all this worrying about it.
Check this out. It’s rare that a trailer makes me cry.
When am I going to have time to sit and muse about trivial things and post happily away for an hour at a time again? I don’t know, I don’t know. But I’m giving myself 15 minutes now, cuz I just can’t hold off any longer. (Not like anyone cares, but this thing was on a roll and I don’t want to surrender it.)
The landing gear on my quarter has pulled up and we are now officially in ascension. No going back now. I’ve committed myself to a nearly military schedule with the aim of being more efficiently productive than I have in terms past. It sounds stressful, but it’s actually about simply building clear time slots for the things I need and want to do so that rather than running away from the constant feeling of not getting to something, I can be calm, clear, and focused. So far it’s worked really well, actually. I’ve been prepped for class well ahead of time, I’ve worked on my own projects, email hasn’t gotten out of control, and I haven’t had to bring any work home. I’ve even gotten to bed before 10 every night this week, and woken up early. We’ll see if all that remains true once I add grading papers to the mix.
I’ve been building a meandering list of things I want to post about, but I’m going to start with the little bugger that was circulating in my brain last night before I fell asleep.
I was thinking about this forwarded email I deleted yesterday, despite the warning in the subject line that I’d “spoil the fun” if I didn’t respond. It cracks me up when people forward emails with guilt in the title, about how I’m going to keep them from collecting $40 million from Bill Gates if I don’t send this on to 10 of my closest friends. This was one of those surveys you fill out about who you are and what you’re doing right now, and for some reason I either get named in such surveys as “most likely” or “least likely” to respond. I find that in itself an interesting paradox–do people think I have nothing to do but answer these things or that I wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole? What impressions am I giving off?
In case anyone’s wondering, here’s why I don’t usually respond to those surveys: THEY’RE SO MIND-NUMBINGLY DULL. I don’t CARE whether you wear short socks or long socks, whether you drink soy milk or milk hot out of the cow’s udder, whether you prefer bacon or sausage. I don’t particulary want to know the name of the person who gave you your first kiss, although that’s a little more interesting. If I’m going to get an emailed survey that I’m willing to circulate among my friends and colleagues, let me tell you, I want something JUICY. I want something REAL. I want you to TELL ME SOMETHING.
So here is the first round of questions on the kind of email survey I want in my In Box. (Feel free to post answers in the comments section, or send me an email.)
I think I took 27 minutes.
What recurring life experience makes you feel the most content, like everything is more than fine?
For me it’s knowing that there’s a lot of TIME stretched out ahead of me. Like the first morning of a two-week vacation. The first day of summer after I’ve turned in all my grades and finished all the last details. When I pick E. up from the airport knowing we have five whole nights together.
I suppose it’s that sense of space at the beginning of something rich. I loved the first day of college because I just knew I was going to love every minute of it, and I’d have four whole years of it. What an incredible experience of bounty, of Yellow Brick Road. And looking back, four years of pretty much having all my financial, intellectual, spiritual, physical needs taken care of was absolute bliss, regardless of the 18-21 year old drama I manifested as I figured out who I was. (Thanks, Mom and Dad.) I love the feeling of something good not being capped for awhile. Remember the first night we were down in Akumal, Mexico, for Wendy & Linda’s party, knowing we had nothing but sand, sea, sun, food, and adult beverages ahead of us for the next 8 days? Pure heaven.
So, school starts up again today, and this first week is First-Year Orientation, when the 18 year-olds are having their bliss (or freak out) at the beginning of four years, and faculty schedules are stretched as thin as saltwater taffy. It’s a crazy four days, topped by an 8-hour field trip we each put together at the end of it. I’ve teamed up with a colleague’s class and we decided to keep it simple: a nature walk in Boulder, followed by lunch for 30 and an afternoon strolling the Pearl St. mall. But I’ll be exhausted after that bus ride home, let me tell you. Then Jules drops in for two days. Then school starts bigtime on Monday, and I’m teaching that extra class so I can be free of teaching during Winter quarter and try to get two books out.
The point is, even though I do mostly love my job and appreciate how lucky I am, the first day of Fall quarter is shadowed by the opposite of my happy feeling: the sense that time is running, or has run, out. It’s the end of the three months I had with the smaller teaching load (only those 3 intensive weeks I had in July). The end of being somewhat distanced from the madness of running between classes, chasing constant deadlines, trying to stay a half-step ahead of email, reading papers, grading, going to meetings, and always feeling behind or like I’ve forgotten something. The end of all the play I squeezed into August (even while chasing a couple deadlines). Back to juggling all the balls. Time’s up.
Time’s up time is the night before E. has to get back on the plane, the last night of vacation, the night before graduation. Time’s up is Sunday. Time’s up makes me sad.
The bright side is that summer’s almost over and Autumn is by far my favorite season. There is resistance before things start, but by midday today I’ll be back in it. And plenty to look forward to: months of cooler nights, just around the corner. Months of trees turning color and light fading into cozy evenings with a blanket tucked around me. The beginning of the year for me, the start of new things.
Sigh.
