Here are two poems and a mini-essay on the subject of getting older.  I wrote the essay in July.  It’s now sufficiently aged, like the finest wines, cheeses, meats and me.

 

Nursery Rhyme: Numbers

                                    by Lola Haskins

Seven old ladies crochet for the boys,
Six old ladies hear thunder.

Five old ladies afraid of the noise,
Four old ladies go under.

One old lady to pick up the lace,
One old lady is crying.

How cruel to be born with only one face
And to see in the mirror its dying.

 

in Desire Lines, New and Selected Poems. copyright 2004 Lola Haskins. used by permission

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I’m turning 64 tomorrow and I’m depressed.  Oh, not really depressed.  Maybe it’s wrong to use the word for my condition, when people I know and love are stalked by clinical depression.  But you know how certain birthdays just feel really old?   For me it was 8 and 13, 43 and 51.  The first two thrilled me.  The second two not so much.  This one doesn’t thrill me at all.  I feel as though I’m running out of time.  I feel as though there are a thousand things I once wanted to do, and now I don’t want to, or can’t.

My life is a boring succession of minor aches and pains – ankle, groin, foot, hand.  This month my shoulder is unhappy about the way I was sitting at the computer.  I’ve  been using my husband’s laptop and the chair is too low.  Now I’m in for six weeks or so of minor disability, ice, and possibly physical therapy.  When did my body get so damn sensitive?  It used to do whatever I want; now it complains when I ask it to get up in the morning and make me some  coffee. 

A friend sent an email of three photos, called Time Passes. Five little girls, six young women, five old women all lined up looking out at the ocean, all shot from behind.  The little girls hold hands, wear baggy shorts to their knees, stand so sturdy in the sand.  The young women lean over a boardwalk railing, frayed shorts above their buttocks, muscles smooth and luscious.  The old women are in bathing suits, bending over, showing six variations of ancient thighs. I never see my legs from behind – it’s quite enough to see them from above, with the six inch scars where my wonderful knee replacements reside.

 

I’d like to give credit but I can’t find the source
 

 

I like the way I look, if I don’t look too close.  I like having fluffy white hair.   I like the way people in South Africa call me Mama and hurry to help me.  At the Origins Museum in Johannesberg I told the young man behind the desk that I had no cell phone to call a taxi.  He called his supervisor.  After buttering her up with a discussion of some problem he had solved, he asked if she could help him.  “I have an elderly lady here with no cell phone and she needs to call a taxi.”

Elderly – that was me.  Why does it sound so much older than old?  I see a little, trembling, bird-like woman, leaning on a cane.  No one could mistake me for a bird, nor do I usually tremble, though I’ve certainly had months with a cane, which I came to love for the stability it gave me after knee surgery, and the candy cane stripes that made children smile.

I was lying in bed, sad and stewing, and finally got up to write this.  Of course I felt better after I did. Now it’s morning.  I suppose I’m 64 by now, though it’s six hours earlier in Florida, and I was born at 2PM in Argentina – I have no idea what time it is there.  I believe in China I would be 65, because they count the time in the womb – or that’s what my father always told us. I will choose to believe it’s already happened, so I can stop dreading it and start getting over it.  I’m 64, and Joe is taking me out for a fancy lunch.  I can’t possibly count my blessings because I have too many, and I’d probably lose track.  Anyway, there’s no time to waste.

I Ran Out Naked in the Sun

                                by Jane Hirshfield

I ran out naked
in the sun
and who could blame me
who could blame

the day was warm

I ran out naked
in the rain
and who could blame me
who could blame

the storm

I leaned toward sixty
that day almost done
it thundered
then

I wanted more I
shouted More
and who could blame me
who could blame

had been before

could blame me
that I wanted more

 

in Come,Thief   copyright 2011 Jane Hirshfield. used by permission

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