Make These Old Bones Shiver

(1990)

It started about a year and a half ago. First it was the white eyebrow hair, then the sudden appearance of chicken-skin-neck in every photo, and then finally it was the feeling of frailty that accompanied every easily-earned bruise or unpredictable loss of balance.  

This is what aging feels like.  Before even mastering adulthood there was this rapid onslaught of declining everything. For me it began at 41.  

I can let go of the vanity of it, mostly.  There is little time for it these days anyway. I'd already become that person who used the presence of my 4 year-old as a shield from judgments for my general lack of put-togetherness.  (Though challenging are the days when I can't hide behind the stroller, and there is no obvious justification for my frenetic and unpolished veneer).  But there is something about the dramatic realization, the unexpected epiphany brought on by the bathroom mirror, that the body truly is decaying.  Things are failing.   Strength is diminishing.  Healing powers are slowing.  And yes, appearance is altering. 

It is easy, downright tempting, to feel as though all that is magical is slipping away like muscle tone.  Holding on to memory, feeling, perspective, intent becomes key.  I AM magical.  I CAN do things.  I am more than this weak arm. This gray eyebrow.  These are some of the necessary affirmations.  

The tricks of body and mind that come with growing older may be unwelcome here, but they are undeniable.  As people have heard me lament this past year, I am irrepressibly closer to being 50 than I am to 30.  That is quite a thing.  These are the surprises of life that lack originality - the embarrassing realization that the 50-something-year-old-father of the 20-something-year-old-eye-candy sees himself in your league.  And the 20-something also sees you in dad's league.  Only you, in your late-adolescent-brain-stuck-in-a-40-something-year-old-body, didn't realize this monumental shift.  When the fuck did that happen?  

The pacts made in our youth are long gone.  We've all grown up, secretly, quickly, accidentally.  We aren't young, bright, or beginning.  The kid who was cool and interesting and seemed smart as a teenager can now be found less than a mile from where he grew up, collecting disability and living vicariously through one of his several children.  The kid you thought you'd end up with ended up with someone else.  Your prom date is a GRANDPA.  And the kid who taught you lessons of bravery, self-love and suffering didn't make it at all.  He died before he could teach you anything about growing old.  

I am not saying there is no more newness.  I may still climb Kilimanjaro. That marathon I didn't train for in time for my 40th birthday, because it was in conflict with a round of IVF, may in fact become a goal for 50.  New achievements will be had, challenges faced, surprises possible.  I am far from done.  My bones may ache a little (read a lot) more than they did before, my emotions may be intensified, my recovery time lengthened (when did it happen that an hour of dancing = a day of joint pain?) but more newness is ahead.  Every day will still offer up opportunities for a life built by intention, though those opportunities may look different, older, stranger than they used to.

So there it is.  This incongruence of self.  Some days I honestly hope for not much more than to not embarrass myself.  It will take some time to acclimate to this new, older me - years, I suspect.  In the process of recalibrating, there will likely be more growing pains.  Some of them real, some of them imagined.  And every once in awhile, my body and mind will forget its years for a moment and I will be transported back to that girl who danced wildly to this song or that one back in 1990.  When an 18 year old - with only the beginning of prematurely graying hair, a smooth neck and sure-footedness - had just begun to embark on a life that defied local custom and expectation.  Ready, with the unstoppable energy and arrogance of youth to go all in.  I know her.  Balls to the wall.           

    

Explanation to the Future You.

Eiffel Tower

 Much of what makes up our life stories are accumulations of micro decisions and some bigger choices that come together in ways that only retrospect can attempt to make sense of.  But there is something remarkable in trying to shape the narrative consciously, creating opportunities and experiences that build the story - the life - that is intentional.  Intentionally extraordinary. Intentionally balls to the wall.  

I recently (and intentionally) participated in a process that provided the space for contemplating how to invent a future tale of my own design and help with developing the infrastructure for the life that I envision. Creating the scaffolding to bring my daydreams into the real world.  This is what underlies my nearly every decision.  Unapologetically.  

Kyrgyzstan

This focus is amplified as my son gets older and I become keenly aware of the impact and implications each of my decisions can have on him and the stories that will become part of the personal narrative of his childhood.  

  Where to live (Brooklyn).

  What school he will attend (the International School, so he will be in total Spanish immersion).

 What work trips to take him on (summer in Fiji again?).

 How he should be introduced to the concept of death (by gently and safely being part of saying goodbye to our beloved family pet, and having his first lesson on the permanency of death, what grief looks like and what my beliefs are around what happens when something dies).

The list of decisions that will inevitably become part of the landscape of his early experiences is endless.  Consequently, the notion of intentionality has never been more important to me.

   

Croatia

Of course there are innumerable factors to weigh into these micro and more pivotal decisions, including more traditional notions of stability, predictability, family and community.  But the imperfect calculus that I feel compelled to engage in incorporates these and other necessities into the complex cost-benefit analysis, and the one thing that seems to ultimately help with casting the deciding vote is the question:

What will this contribute to your/our life stories? 

Or rather, would this _______ bring something to our lives to make it even more positive, more beautiful, more amazing, more unique and more meaningful?  Will this _____ help further me/you/us on a path to being the people we want to become, living the lives we want to have lived?

   

Fiji

  

The answer, in my mind, should almost always be yes.  

This is an admittedly difficult endeavor, that runs the risk of making every moment heavy with inflated and disproportionate importance.  It can also create opportunities for judgmental reactions, misunderstandings, allegations of selfishness and potential alienation.   

It is rarer than it should be that people live the lives they truly desire.

As I imagine the future version of my son, and the conscious and subconscious narrative of his life that I was a contributor to, this is my explanation to him.  I did it on purpose.  This was all intentional.  For better or worse, these were choices.  Things did not just happen TO us in our lives, but instead decisions were made on how we interacted with that which was within our power to control and that which was out of our control.  Each moment was a choice.  Sometimes more carefully than others.  Sometimes more thoughtfully or well-informed than others.  Sometimes more patiently than others.  Sometimes incorrectly.  But almost always with absolute intention.

Goodbye Kitten 

April 1996 - April 2014

Lest some of you think this is crazy, perhaps aggrandizing, neurotic, or selfish (it may be all those things), it is also part of living a mindful life that is unquestionably balls to the wall.  

Making each moment matter.  

Because it does.  

It really does.