Aging Disgracefully

Many of you know that I've just marked another year's passing. I bid it farewell from a Bulgarian bar and watched it ooze down into the horizon like a melting sun, all gooey and shiny and eventually gone, leaving only a slight blaze behind. It's a good thing I was nice and lubed up on Astika beer and apple vodka sangria because I didn't feel any sting. But that was a couple of days prior to my actual natal day when I was still in the early part of my particular decade, lightheartedly referencing When Harry Met Sally dialogue:

Sally: ...And I'm gonna be forty.
Harry: When?
Sally: Someday.
Harry: In eight years.
Sally: But it's there. It's just sitting there, like this big dead end. And it's not the same for men. Charlie Chaplin had babies when he was 73.
Harry: Yeah, but he was too old to pick them up.

I never thought I'd be such a disgraceful ager. I had a good model. My mother is so well adjusted about her age. She's let her hair go entirely gray, colored it, then let it seep back in, strand by strand, with great sophistication. And my grandmother faced her eighties like a Viking warrior wearing a steel breatstplate and studded armbands. She was a beast, grabbing age by the proverbial turkey neck and sending any "visible signs" of it whimpering to the sidelines to lick their wounds.

But here I am, a year older now. And why does it feel so catastrophic? I've always celebrated surviving another harried twelve months, feeling grateful to have more years in which to make an effort at thriving, "finding my bliss", knowing what I want to be when I grow up. But this birthday felt different somehow. I couldn't get out of bed. It hit me like a windstorm, blowing in hard and swallowing me up. Suddenly I couldn't breathe thinking about another year dissolved into the distance. I suppose it's a glass empty thing. I see aging as loss of years instead of gaining perspective, years in the can instead of years ahead.

Now, naturally I know that this is an issue loaded with conflict and symbolism. And I feel of two minds about it. On the one hand, why the hell should I accept the war of time on my face, body and spirit? Why wouldn't I do anything I could to defend myself against its attacks? On the other hand, why shouldn't I ease into my earned wisdom and battle scars and stop defining myself by yet another specific aspect of who I am? I'm certainly not the number I see on a scale or the number of zeros (or lack thereof) in my bank account or even the number of years I've worked at my job. Why then would I be simply...gasp...I can't hear myself say it...thirty....t...oh, fuck it.

There are some things I'm just not gonna accept. Or rather, some things I'm not gonna accept without railing about the injustice. Adult acne, aching knees, cynicism (okay, I already had that), and thinning eyelid skin (it's a concern, okay?). I do not accept these things. I know, I know, it doesn't make them go away. The eighties being twenty, almost thirty years ago? I do not accept that. But marriage, death, birth, loss, change? I can work with those. I'll take those marks of the passing of time as the acceptable part of aging. Not gonna stop me from considering Botox. Not gonna stop me from coloring my hair. Not gonna stop me from donning my own version of the Viking breastplate so I can snatch up more minutes and carry them off in my chariot.

In the end (no pun intended) I hope I can be a gladiator. I hope I can juggle the demands of age with a little bit of the pizzaz my grandmother had. She always told me aging is not for pussies. God, please don't let me be a pussy.

Please Mr. Postman

On Thursday, news of my future career as a student arrived in the telltale plain, white envelope.

I held its contents in my heart as I walked down the hallway toward our building's mail table. The rigid corner was sticking out from under a pile of coupon circulars and I could just make out "The New" in partial view on the return address label. Before I even pulled it out from under the stack of junk mail I felt the burn of tears in my throat. I brought it into the apartment and slid it gently onto the butcher block in my kitchen where it sat next to my vitamins and spatulas for close to an hour before I opened it. The ceremony felt so necessary. It was as though every word inside that mailer had the power to baptize me in a bottomless sea and thrust me forward, scrubbed clean.

I used a butter knife to slice through the fold in the envelope and, slowly, the stack of papers clipped tightly between my thumb and forefinger, I pulled them into the light. My eyes scanned for the one word I'd promised myself would be there if it were an answer in the affirmative: "pleased." They'd be pleased, I'd be pleased, we'd all be pleased. But it wasn't there. Black type on a white page, saying nothing. Then further in, deep into line five, simply, the word "pleasure." I'd so planned to see "pleased" that it almost didn't register at first. But of course! Of course it's their pleasure. Modern language, naturally. "It is our pleasure to welcome you." And there it was. A simple "yes" to so many feared "no"s.

I wanted to share this news with you first. Walking down the spiral staircase of uncertanties on this blog is how I have come to some very concrete truths about what it really means to change. So thank you for plumbing the depths with me. I promise plenty more risk and rationalization ahead.

We can start with financial aid.

SWAK,

OneKate