Author: whenicometobeold

Amnesty for Amnesia

We have all been deeply schooled in the value of “letting go.”  My Centering Prayer group talks often about “letting go and letting God.”  “Consider the lilies,” says Jesus in answer to two questions about anxiety: “… which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?”  OK, right. “Letting go” is also a pervasive theme in Buddhist meditative practice; I cannot tell you how many dharma talks I have heard on the necessity of letting be and letting go.  “If you let go a little you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace,” says Ajahn Chah, and I believe him.  The problem is that I still have not been able to let go the of big things, while I am “letting go” of little things constantly.  And I don’t like it.

I let go of small things all the time – mostly names, but sometimes words.  I also let go of objects (reading glasses) or the reason why I walked into the kitchen. The most strange and aggravating thing about these little “forgettings,” these “senior moments,” is that I know the word or answer is buried somewhere in the folds of my grey matter, from whence it eventually surfaces – long after the moment when I need it.  Sometimes it teases me – I can remember that the name starts with an “S” (Sara?  Sally?) but still cannot produce the correct name when we meet up in the grocery store.  It is like when you wake up at the tail end of a dream – you try to grasp it but… it’s gone.  And then, while you are brushing your teeth and not standing in front of a woman trying to remember her name, the answer floats back into your consciousness.  “Stacy,” you say to yourself, “that woman’s name is Stacy.  Where was that name when I needed it?”  Where indeed?

These are small lapses, but it is not an inconsequential matter to me.  My mother spent her last years in a nasty sort of dementia, so every time my brain fumbles, I start to hyperventilate.

It bothered Elizabeth Bishop too, but she turned her lapses into the wonderful poem, “One Art“:

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

Losing things is an art; it’s going to happen, so we might as well get better at it, “accept the fluster.”  Bishop’s poem is bittersweet, pairing the need for acceptance with the letting go of keys, names, places, and the grief over things that are permanently gone.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Philip Larkin seems to take the letting go of memory as a blessing; the past is what gets in the way of future happiness.  Funny and cynical, in “The Winter Palace” he longs for the peace of an empty mind:

And [I] am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

Billy Collins at least has a sense of humor about it:

It is as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones. (from “Forgetfulness”)

Amnesia and amnesty both come from the Greek word amnestia – meaning oblivion, or forgetting.  Amnesia means “complete or partial memory loss” and amnesty means “a general pardon for offenses.”  Now, it is somewhat paradoxical that I have been working hard at “letting go” for years, and yet – when my brain is ready to part with something, albeit something as trivial as where I hid the extra key, I panic.  Silly.  And, I have been assured that these minor memory lapses are rarely a prelude to true dementia (from the Latin dementia, meaning “out of one’s mind”), which is defined as a condition characterized by progressive, persistent, severe impairment of intellectual capacity. Some self-amnesty for amnesia is in order. Clearly, I need to pair Bishop’s advice about learning the art of losing (“it isn’t hard to master”) with Larkin’s assurance that the less cluttered my mind is, the better.  And add a dash of Collins’ humor.  I just wish I could choose what my mind lets go of.  There’s some stuff I would really like to get rid of, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

I have written several other blogs on letting go and memory – if you are interested in the topic you might try “Whispered Words of Wisdom” or “Dementia, Creativity, and Forgetfulness.”

Margaret Atwood – Young Babes and Old Babes

Margaret Atwood – Young Babes and Old Babes

Margaret Atwood, now eighty-three, recently published a story, “Babes in the Wood” (in a book of the same name), about two old women staying at an old family cabin on a lake, far into the woods.  It’s a good story about sisters and memory and the limits of things; I recommend it.

Mostly, though, it reminded me of another excellent Atwood story, “Death by Landscape,” which Atwood wrote in her younger days and about very much younger people.  Although the story is framed by an elderly woman (Lois) looking at artists’ renditions of the Canadian wilderness on her living room wall, it is about two teen-age girls, who go to camp together in the summer.  On their last outing, the two good friends take a walk to an overhanging cliff, and while on a “bathroom break,” one of the girls (Lucy) disappears, never to be seen again.  The woods are combed by men and dogs, theories abound, and the camp director – desperate to find a scapegoat and save the reputation of her camp – even insinuates that the other young girl (the old woman of the frame of the story) might have had something to do with it.  Even into her old age, Lois surrounds herself by pictures of the Canadian wilderness.  All her life she has felt an empty space, an “echo” where her friend Lucy used to be.  Lois imagines her turned into one of the trees in the landscape, for what could have happened to her?  She lives in the empty space in Lois’s mind and in the landscapes on the wall:

Everyone has to be somewhere, and this is where Lucy is.  She is in Lois’s apartment, in the holes that open inward on the wall, not like windows but like doors.  She is here.  She is entirely alive.

In “Old Babes in the Woods,” two sisters at the old family lake cabin are also preoccupied with people long gone. They have come even though they really can’t handle it – water must be pumped, firewood scrounged, and laundry drying (“toasting”) on the dock falls into the water and must be retrieved.  Wading in the water, trying to pick up clothes with her toes, Nell says to herself: “You old ninny, you really shouldn’t be doing this… One of these days you’ll break your neck.”

Unlike the young girls in the wilderness, the old women in “Old Babes” mostly know how the story comes out.  Parents are gone; spouses deceased.  They are left with ageing bodies in a disintegrating cabin – and everywhere there are reminders of the life they lived and the people they lived it with.  And, unlike the earlier story, there are messages that these people have left behind.  There are notes in the cookbook and on the kitchen walls in their mother’s handwriting: When feeling down in the dump – go for a brisk walk!  These many years later, her daughter reminds herself that she is no longer capable of a brisk walk.  Nell finds a note that her husband folded up with the mosquito netting for the instruction of future occupants.  The messages are both about continuity and  about inevitable change.  The husband knew that he might not be the next one to use the netting.  He is gone and Nell treasures the note from the past – “a cryptic message from the dead.”

There is no mystery in the second story – or the only mystery is time and what it brings.  The two old ladies watch the sunset every night because it is the “best way of predicting the next day’s weather…That plus the barometer, though the barometer isn’t much help because it almost always says “Change.”  And change is what always happens, and yet it surprises us. The two sisters find themselves wondering why the cabin is not designed better for old age:

“He [their father] didn’t intend to get old,” Nell says.

“Yeah, that was a fucking surprise,” Lizzie says.

Well, yes, it is a fucking surprise.  But here we are.  We may not be trying to vacation in an old cabin with minimal conveniences, but we are trying to live in a world that has gone on without us.  Mysteries, for the most part, have been resolved.  We know whether there was a happily ever after or not; we (generally) know how we ended up.  Most of us are not still looking for missing friends in landscapes, partly because missing friends have a way of showing up on Facebook.  But while there may be no mysteries, we are still mystified:  How did we get old?

Life on the Margins

If you look up the word margin in the dictionary, you will find an assortment of meanings.  For writers and readers, of course, the margin is the white space around a text – a very good place to enter long edits (if you are a writer) and an excellent spot to pencil comments (if you are a reader).  One of the best reasons to buy used books is to read someone else’s marginalia.

The capitalist definition of margin is the difference between the cost of something and its selling price.  It can also be a way of buying stock for a fraction of its price by using other investments as collateral (risky).

Margin also has an environmental meaning.  A century ago or more, it was commonly used to signify the seashore or the edge of a forest or brook.  Wordsworth penned a memorable poem about daffodils “along the margin of the bay.”  Ostracized characters, like Hester Prynne, often lived on the margins of civilization – literally and figuratively.

Margins in nature– the edge of the sea, a hedgerow, the place where forest meets prairie, are often generative for wildlife, for all life.  Rachel Carson was much taken with the margins of the world.  In The Edge of the Sea, she wrote:

Looking out over the cove I felt a strong sense of the interchangeability of land and sea in this marginal world of the shore, and of the links between the life of the two. There was also an awareness of the past and of the continuing flow of time, obliterating much that had gone before, as the sea had that morning washed away the tracks of the bird.

Today, the word margin (when not being used in the capitalist sense) often has a negative connotation – “life at the margins” is not pleasant and no one wants to be “marginalized.”  Perhaps there are ways that living in the margins might not be entirely negative.  Maybe seniors should reconsider the term, perhaps adopt it, own it.

Surely, old folks also have a sense of life on the margins, our rich past bumping up against the “continuing flow of time.”  As old folks, we are at the margins of life, at the edge of the shore, the forest, the main text.  At the edge between life and death.  And there is a value in that position.  A few decades ago, there was a review of old age in literature entitled The Margin That Remains.

A couple of years before his death, Thomas Merton wrote in his journal: “I am glad to be marginal.  The best thing I can do for that ‘world’ is stay out of it – in so far as one can.”  Glad to be marginal. Me too.  Seniors are fortunate to be able to step out of the mainstream, to review and assess a long life, to enjoy the benefits of a greater perspective and a wide margin to our days.  Do you remember when you had babies in the house and you did not even have the margin of time to go to the bathroom alone?  Or when you were working full-time, parenting, trying to make a home, and even your appointment calendars had no margins?  I surely appreciate the margins of my elder years.

It is also interesting to think about where we gather on the margins – where the biggest gatherings of “white hairs” are.  From my experience white hairs (including those so old that they don’t bother with the Clairol anymore) and bald heads proliferate at traditional churches, at classical music concerts, at Memorial Day observances, at live theater, and perhaps on cruise ships.  With the possible exception of the last, these have become “marginal activities.”  Will they survive us?

Recently I wrote an appreciation of old lady detectives, who operated at the outer margin of life and from the margins of society – and used it to their advantage.  We should all be looking for that advantage.  I also promised you a new story about an elderly female detective.  “Case of the Missing Husband,” however, took a direction I didn’t expect.  Hope you enjoy.

Wise Old Women – Elderly Detectives

I have often thought that the most admirable old women in literature were the spinster detectives, and there are many to choose from.  My two favorites emerged at about the same time – the end of the roaring twenties, the “Golden Age” of detective literature.  Miss Marple made her debut in a short story in 1927 (“Tuesday Night Club”) and her first novel-length appearance in 1928 in Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage.  Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver solved her first case in 1928 in Grey Mask.  I got to thinking about these two recently (just finished a Miss Silver novel) and realized that the two ladies presented interesting models for old age.

Neither Miss Marple nor Miss Silver ever marries.  Miss Marple lives in a house called Danemead, “the last cottage on Old Pasture Lane,” in the little English village of St. Mary Mead.  She has apparently never worked and has “independent means of support.” She has learned all she needs to know about humanity by closely observing those around her.  As she points out frequently, “very painful and disturbing things happen in villages sometimes.” As far as I recall, Miss Marple never takes remuneration for setting the world to rights, but she often helps her nephew (an officer of the law), who supplements her income in later years.  Miss Marple has a soft look about her with clouds of white hair and pink cheeks; she presents as a kindly grandmother or a favorite great aunt.

Miss Silver was not so fortunate; she worked tirelessly as a schoolteacher and a governess for many years before inheriting a little money with which she acquired a London flat.  To supplement her modest legacy, she supports herself by taking on “discreet private inquiries” – all references are by word of mouth, and word travels fast among the genteel class of Brits.

Miss Silver knows children very well indeed from her years in the classroom, and to her, all adults are just tall children, still trying to get away with things.  There is nothing “soft” about Miss Silver; she wears a rigid hair net, very thick stockings, and prickly tweeds – every inch the governess.  Both ladies are proficient and constant knitters, but I will come back to that.

Christie was 38 when she wrote the first Miss Marple; Wentworth was 49 when Miss Silver was birthed.  Both authors wrote books well into their eighties, and it would be interesting to study how their descriptions of old age evolved as they themselves aged.

There are at least four reasons the two old ladies are such successful detectives.  For one, they are brilliant readers of human nature.  They have closely monitored the world (a relatively small world in both cases) and learned all the lessons there are to learn.  They are able to winnow out the facts, even in emotionally charged situations. “I have cultivated the habit of close observation,” says Miss Silver.  “These things are not really difficult to perceive.”  At least for old ladies who pay attention.

Secondly, they are great knitters.  There is no cheating in knitting.   If one drops a stitch, one needs to chase it down.  Patterns are important; all the parts must fit together.  Miss Marple and Miss Silver will patiently untangle a skein of yarn, just as they untangle a situation.  They will quietly knit until a shape emerges (usually a bootie or other piece of infant attire – the ladies have countless great-nieces and -nephews).  The incessant click-clack of their needles mesmerizes those whom they are subtly examining; people relax into truthfulness.

Third, they are detached.  They are able to stand back from the emotional turmoil of the moment and ask the pertinent questions.  Who stands to gain?  Who loved the victims and who hated them (sometimes the same person)?  What makes sense given the facts?    Being detached also means they bring no false pride to their work; they are not afraid to follow the facts or their instincts.  They could not care less what anyone else thinks, although they are empathetic to the sufferers in any situation.  And they don’t care who gets the credit, endearing them to the law enforcement officers (always men) with whom they work and who are happy to get the case solved and take the bows.  This, of course, also means their favorite bobbies are happy to take suggestions and share information.

The fourth reason that these ladies are able to discover the murderer when even Scotland Yard is stymied is that they are always underestimated and often not even noticed.  They can find a reason to insinuate themselves into almost any situation, and then they listen and watch – and knit.  Both do more cogitating than they do actively pursuing clues, but they do sometimes take the initiative.  The old ladies faint away in households where they wish to spend the night, and they gladly offer to sit with sick patients or recently bereaved widows – if they hope they can learn something.  And they are kind.  “Now suppose you sit down here, dear, and just tell me all about it,” says Miss Marple over and over again.  Being old is often about being invisible, but these ladies use it to their advantage.  People sit down, watch the knitting needles click, and tell these old ladies everything.

There are many other old lady detectives – Mrs. Bradley (Gladys Mitchell), Mrs. Pollifax (Dorothy Gilman), and countless others.  Please feel free to suggest your own favorites.  My point is that they exemplify ways we can make the most of old age.  I don’t like being marginalized in any way, but it is nice to remember that we can use our status (or lack of it) to it our own advantage – and that of others.

I’m trying to write my own old lady mystery these days, but I once wrote a story (“Essentials”) about a younger woman whose imagination is sparked by the thought that she might be involved in a murder investigation.  Of course, I am not suggesting in any way that we need murders to liven up our lives – but to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, there is nothing like a death to “concentrate the mind wonderfully.”

What Do Old Women Lust For?

The first story in Jane Campbell’s Cat Brushing opens in the mind of an elderly woman taking herself to task for her sexual fantasies: “The lust of an old man is disgusting, but the lust of an old woman is worse.”  Campbell then goes on to give us thirteen captivating stories of love and lust and loneliness and old age.  Her book quickly disproves her opening statement; there are many kinds of lust (including that for the sensual satisfactions of simply brushing your cat) which make life richer and are far from disgusting.  We don’t often talk about our physical needs or lusts (which may not be the same thing), but Campbell’s old ladies pull no punches.

Jane Campbell was born in 1942 and published her first book eighty years later – but this is not the tentative voice of a literary newcomer.  This is an author who knows exactly what she wants to say (perhaps having had many years to think about it).  Her language sometimes brings blushes, but it always has the ring of honesty.  The stories range from infatuations of old women with their caregivers to complex relationships with Artificial Intelligence (AI) “creations” (one good, one bad – and I’ll come back to that) to simple stories of attachment to friends, place, animals.  Death hovers throughout, but few of these ladies die in the stories, at least physically.  Most of the characters make good (if hard) choices, but even when bad choices occur (one old lady runs away from a tyrannical handicapped sister, only to end up with a murderous husband), we are not so sure that the women have any regrets.   Let me start with the AI stories.

In “Lockdown Fantasms,” short Covid lockdowns have eventually merged into a continual isolation for the old; old people who live alone must do with limited assistance, but they are allowed weekly visits from fantasms, which seem to be AI-generated beings who give the old people companionship of whatever kind they wish – the fantasms will even have sex with you, watch a movie with you, cook for you.  At each weekly visit (they are not allowed more often) their form is different; one cannot get attached.  But for the narrator in the story, the fantasm is something to look forward to and prevents her from using the morphine/tranquillizer combo that the government provides in case a hologram once a week is not enough.  Fantasms are tweaked to respond to the needs of the recipient, but are only provided to those elders who live alone in pandemic-approved isolation.  It is an incentive to remain isolated.

In another story, “Schopenhauer and I,” the form of AI is a personal care robot supplied to a resident of an assisted living home after her beloved dog, Hobbes, disappeared.  The old lady is sure that the institution she is living in did away with her dog because he was too much trouble.  In turn, they have forced on her a mandatory robot – which she names Schopenhauer, but casually calls Arthur, and hates with the same passion with which she loved Hobbes.  Arthur monitors her 24/7, making life easier on staff.  I won’t give away the ending, but it is a tale of retaliation, and vengeance by an old lady is not pretty.  These two stories about AI do point out, however, that humanity can approach and utilize robots/holograms in many ways, but the choices relating to old people seem to be aimed at comfort and control – or, perhaps, to control through comfort.

In Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, the lusty old bawd from 14th century Bath tells us that what women most want is sovereyntee, sovereignty or control over their own lives.  In days when women’s lives were chattel, this was a way of looking for equality of some measure.  But companionship, sexual partners, are also of great interest to the old Alyson; she “kode of that art the olde dance” (she knew the art of the old dance).  Thus, the sexual life of old women might not be a frequent literary topic, but it is not new.  It has deep roots.  And, incidentally, Chaucer’s last poem, which he wrote when he was fifty-nine, was “The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse,” which has sly sexual allusions to his sex in old age.

Many of the stories in Cat Brushing dwell on the fantasies (and not just sexual ones) which keep us alive (and not just breathing).  The final loss of such fantasies is never easy and sometimes kills us.  Most of Campbell’s women come to terms with reality and adapt – but not all.  Most of their fantasies involve relationships of various kinds and seem to evolve out of loneliness. What do we do for contact when we are old and alone?  Even when the women in Campbell’s book find companionship, they know it may be temporary.  Their partner, friend, pet, may die before they do.  But for today they have a cat to brush, and the memories of touch and ecstasy.

I find that I don’t write many (any) dirty old lady stories; I am a New Englander born and bred and we don’t talk about such things.  We try not to even think about them – more’s the pity.  This is the value of Campbell’s book.  However, my short story, “Snickerdoodles,” was inspired by The Wife of Bath’s Tale.

“Hopelessly Devoted’ – Dedication in Old Age

Devotion is much to be admired.  I am not necessarily talking about religious devotion, but single-minded dedication in any form tends to sanctify both the object of worship and the devotee.  We often trivialize the devotion of other people when it differs from our own, but true devotion – be it to a person, a god, an art, an animal – is often admirable and surely gives many lives their meaning.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna (a god in disguise) tells Arjuna, “Those who worship other gods with faith and devotion will also come to Me, Arjuna, but by other paths.”  The paths are many, and in older people we sometimes see devotion take forms we may find silly – devotion to a grandchild, a cat, a favorite cause, a collection of coins or favorite recording artist.  But there is nothing silly here.  In a few cases, devotion to bad causes can have evil results, but true love is almost always life-enhancing.

My favorite story of this kind of devotion is Flaubert’s “A Simple Heart” (Une Cœur Simple).  Félicité was a servant who spent her early life devoted to people – a lover, the children in the house where she was employed for half a century, a nephew – who did not return her love.  She became practiced at such love, and when she was given a parrot, she had a captive object for her boundless affection.  In her old age, when the parrot dies, she has him stuffed.  He is her most prized possession, her object of adoration, the center of her life.  Again, from the outside, this looks silly, inane – but as Félicité grows old, it is the parrot that grounds and centers her life.  When she dies peacefully, “she thought she could see, in the opening heavens, a gigantic parrot hovering above her head.”

There are other tales of old folks and their devotions.  We have the cliché of the old woman carrying around pictures of her grandchildren, of the old man telling and retelling tales of his favorite baseball team.  There is Silas Marner, the old miser, who finds happiness in his attachment to the child Eppie; there is Hemingway’s old fisherman Santiago and his devotion to bringing the big fish out of the sea.  Such devotion is sometimes tragic in the end (as it is for Santiago), but it vitalizes life.  For the elderly, it is often what gives long life meaning.

We had a neighbor who was in his nineties when we moved into the neighborhood.  During the time he lived next to us, his wife’s health failed and she died.  He took wonderful care of her.  He also took wonderful care of a mangy old dog, whom he walked daily and found endless pleasure in.  When he decided he had to move out of his house, the only criteria for a new home was whether old Lucky could come.  I don’t know which of them will live longer, but I do know they have enriched each other’s lives. At a particularly desperate point in my life, a therapist suggest that I get a pet.  I thought that, in my current state, a pet to take care of was the last thing I needed.  But I adopted a cat, and I felt better.

Simone de Beauvoir, in her book on old age, said that all old people need “projects” that we are devoted to:

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning – devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work.  In spite of the moralists’ opinion to the contrary, in old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in upon ourselves.

In her philosophical and scholarly manner, Beauvoir imagined these “projects” to be special people, creative endeavors, worthy causes, or political activities.  I think she is right that we need something to be dedicated to, but I would take a broader view.

Of course, devotion can go wrong.  If zealous attachment is motivated by fear or power lust, it can be deeply destructive, and we can all think of many examples – from the Nazi hierarchy to the witch burners.  The January 6 insurrection was a prime example in recent times, but we all know cases of misplaced devotion.  All the best of human emotions possess a shadow side, and once in the grip of a cult, a tribe, a powerful personality, it is hard to see our way out of the fog.  How to know?  I think that true devotion does not expect a return on investment, the return is the investment.

I wrote a story (“Shrines”) about three old women who are devoted in their own ways, ways that might seem to have little meaning from the outside.  One could ponder whether their various dedications enriched their lives.  I tried not to reach any conclusion in my story.  I still have not reached a conclusion.

Retirement as Utopia/ Life as a Game

Residing in a household where there are diverse reading preferences, I sometimes find myself catching enthusiasm for a book I would have never come across on my own.  Thus it was that I picked up The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia by Bernard Suits.  It is a book of philosophy – a very strange book of philosophy – wherein the speaker is, surprisingly, Aesop’s grasshopper (from “The Ant and the Grasshopper”).  Now, Aesop’s moral was that we should work hard like the ant to prepare for winter and not play around all summer like the grasshopper.  Suits’s Grasshopper, however, thinks that play is the thing – or, specifically, games are the thing.  And Suits spends much of the book on proofs and definitions concerning games, all of which are more interesting than you might think, though not the parts that fascinate me the most.

What I am most interested in is Suits’s chapter on utopia (as he defines it).  What would we do in a world where all our needs are met?  Basic physical requirements met, no need to earn a living, no need to prove ourselves?  Here is what Suits says:

For I suspect that playing (genuine) games is precisely what economically and psychologically autonomous individuals [read adequately housed, fed, and medicated without working] would find themselves doing, and perhaps the only things they would find themselves doing.  (165)

Now, the Grasshopper admits that people might do things like chop down trees or till gardens for the “fun of it,” but claims that our relationship to those things would change.  They would become games or play, and we would be happier for it.

Bear with me.  If a sufficiently funded retirement (and I mean sufficient to cover the basic costs of life sustenance, and not necessarily six cruises a year) can be thought of as a kind of utopia, what would it mean to think of our lives in terms of games, in terms of play?  Believe it or not, I think this is a serious question.  Would you be happier if you didn’t take life so seriously?  I’m talking about the day-to-day stuff here; this is not an argument for trivializing climate change or anarchy.

When we “play” games, we win and lose and still look forward to the next game.  It is not the end of the world if my husband beats me at gin rummy or a grandchild beats me at the very first level of a video game (as grandchildren always do).  I accept the terms of the game, including the fact that I might not win, and still enjoy playing it.

Camus said that the fundamental question in the face of life’s (seeming) absurdity was whether to commit suicide.  And once we decide to live (and he assures us that is what we should decide), we must somehow create meaning in a (seemingly) meaningless or absurd life.  Isn’t this what we do with games, with play – create some kind of pleasure and meaning from defining the terms under which we will play and then viewing the game in a positive manner?  Mightn’t life be easier if we could think of it as some kind of game?

When I was working, I always regretted that I could not take my work life less seriously – I could have worked longer and enjoyed it more.  But in work, one is less able to define one’s own rules, decide which games to play.  I have more latitude now, but am not sure that I am really taking advantage of it.

Now I am aware that while all work and no play can make Jack a dull boy, the reverse is also true.  That is why it is not just play, I am talking about, but games, where there is the pleasure of striving, but perhaps in a more joyful sense.  Think about playing a board game with friends.  You know it is not serious, but you lose yourself in the play of the game within the limits of the rules.  You don’t consider cheating to win; you don’t stay up at night over misplayed cards (unless you are a championship bridge player) or think you are a better person because you won.  You take the game as it comes and do your best and enjoy the experience.

The theologian John Dominic Crossan says that games are like life in that they have limits.  In life we have all kinds of limits – death being the major one:

I would suggest… that game is a very serious practice session for life and death, or, more precisely, for life towards death….  It is the joy of finitude and the laughter of limitation…. Game teaches us to enjoy the limitation posed by the game itself.  To destroy the limitation is to destroy the game.  Imagine baseball with as many balls as the pitcher wanted and as many strikes as the batter chose. (5)  The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story

The laughter of limitation.  I am reminded of Spinoza, my favorite philosopher, who says that “cheerfulness is always good and can never be excessive.”  Cheerfulness comes from joy and brings joy.  And looking at life as play would seem to be a joyful exercise.

The other interesting exercise that The Grasshopper stimulates is that of thinking about what exactly utopia would look like for us?  In his book, Suits somehow assumes that the government would be straightened out in utopia (which should be enough to worry us about his hold on reality, but he is – one must acknowledge – Canadian and that might make a difference).  What would utopia in what’s left of our lives look like?  What would constitute the best life we could live?  Old folks have lived a long time; we should have some idea of what makes life… joyful.  Suits says utopia  would be people playing games.  I do not entirely agree (after all the grasshopper dies because he has not prepared for the winter), but I think if I could see life as more game-like, I might be happier.

Rituals are one of the games I play in my old age; I create “rules” within which to live my life in such a way to meet at least some of my goals.  You might look at my short story, “Ritual,” to see one example of ways in which structure can add to life and what happens when it is interrupted.

New Year’s Resolutions in Old Age

The title of my blog site (When I Come to be Old) comes from a list of Jonathan Swift’s resolutions, made when he was a young adult, about how he was determined to act (or more specifically not to act) when he was old.  His list is worth reviewing by us seniors, just to see how the younger set may perceive us (no comfort there).  This new year, however, I am more interested in thinking about what kind of resolutions old folks should make about themselves?

What kinds of resolutions should old people make?  If you do a search on the web, most of what you will find are suggestions to improve your mental or physical health: take up crosswords, walk at least a mile a day, eat more vegetables.  Yes, of course.  These are common sense maintenance items, and we all are fully aware that learning a foreign language will work our brain harder than watching Brit Box.  I surely make such resolutions, but they usually (in my case) take the form of the negative.  No more than an hour of TV per day, no dessert unless I have walked three miles that day, no more than one restaurant meal a week – and so on.  Games we play with ourselves which (hopefully) make us a little healthier without undue deprivation.

On my doctor’s suggestion upon my query about any possibility of avoiding my mother’s dementia, I have gone back to French. (I once knew enough to pass a translation exam for a graduate degree, but those brain cells seem to have disappeared.) I am using Duolingo and pledged myself to a modest fifteen minutes a day.  I don’t have to worry about reminders; Duo is a pest.  I also continually contrive and amend reading lists and rules (e.g., at least one literary work of fiction or nonfiction for every mystery novel).

But how about other hopes and goals other than those aimed at life extension?  There are at least a couple of other categories.  How about creative endeavors?  Not to be published or hung on our grandchildren’s walls, but for our own satisfaction in doing something which draws on our experience, something, perhaps, that we have always wanted to do.  Most of us know what that means for us – which could be anything from adventuresome cooking to bonsai gardening to a full-length novel.  Here, too, I have found it necessary to set concrete goals for an enterprise which is not concrete at all in its reason or its results.  When I first started to keep a journal over twenty years ago, my resolution was ten single-spaced pages per month – and if I put it off, I had to write all ten on the last day.  It never came to that – but since that time I have produced the minimum (usually far more).  Similarly, when I started a blog, it was with the determination to post a blog at least twice a month and a new story every six weeks.  I have succeeded, at least on the average.

But there are more personal ambitions to do with our states of mind – our souls, if you will.  One of my resolutions this year is to start going back and reviewing my journal from the beginning to see what I can learn about myself.  (See my blog, “Rules of One’s Own,” for the wonderful Marion Milner’s advice in this regard.)

And how about resolutions that have to do with the very fact that we are aging, facing changes we cannot (wholly at least) control, coming closer to the end, however we might define it?  “Do not go gentle into that good night” was a resolve, made not by an old man, but by a younger man (Dylan Thomas) on behalf of his dying father.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my children making resolutions for me.  And I don’t want to spend my last years in a “burning and raging” against the “dying of the light.”

Kay Boyle was already old when she formulated her “Advice to the Old (Including Myself).” Boyle, like Swift, warns us about not dwelling on old times or regaling others with our aches or disappointments – but she ends with a challenge to battle despair:

Have no communion with despair; and, at the end,

Take the old fury in your empty arms, sever its veins,

And bear it fiercely, fiercely to the wild beast’s lair.

This is a different kind of battle – not against inevitable death and age, but against self-generated despair, not against the reality of existence but against an antagonistic attitude toward what is.  For me, it is not so much a battle (who wants life to be a battle?) as a matter of – resolution.

Resolution is a word with many meanings; at the new year, we often mean it in the sense of “firmness of purpose.”  But it can also mean the “solution to a problem” (as in “the dentist resolved my toothache”) or the “degree of sharpness with which we can see something” (think of the resolution level of your monitor or TV).  All the senses of resolution are related: firmness of purpose is only of use if we can see sharply enough to define the issue we are trying to resolve, and know what action on our part will “resolve” it.

Old age is, in itself, not a problem.  Grief or despair about the changes that old age brings can be a problem and is worth resolving.   But before we can resolve it, we must examine and define it.  Yes, bad habits can come with age and these need to be guarded against (just ask Jonathan Swift), but that is true of all times of life.  And again, perhaps the real sin is to despair at the facts of existence. I spent my childhood wishing to be older; I spent much of my middle age looking forward to retirement.  I am trying hard not to miss the opportunity to enjoy and make the most of my old age.  My resolutions will be to understand my own nature and changes (read the old journals), learn (French and patience, although not necessarily in that order), and work toward some form of resolution with age, provisional though it may be.

For a fictionalized account of a different kind of resolution, you might try “Nothing New.“

The Old King Brought the Gold

We are in a new year, and about to celebrate the Epiphany (Three Kings Day) on January 6.  The legend of the three kings who were guided by starlight to find yet a fourth king is well-celebrated in Christian literature and ritual, but maybe it has something to tell us about old age – then and now.

The only place the kings/magi are mentioned is in the Gospel of Matthew, and it doesn’t even specify how many there were: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’” Matthew does tell us that they brought three gifts – gold, frankincense and myrrh – so early Christians apparently extrapolated their number from this.  But the short note from the Gospel was far too simple a story for Christians, and soon the kings had names, domains, and camels.  They also had ages, and are often depicted as ranging from young to old as in this stained-glass window from the National Basilica:

Picture1

According to legend, the oldest king or magi was Melchior, King of Persia. The gold he brought was in accordance with the prophecy in Isaiah (Isaiah 60:6).  As I said, we sometimes forget that the nativity gospel – shepherds, kings, manger – only occurs in Matthew and Luke, and the magi only appear in Matthew.  We also (conveniently) forget that the story that Matthew tells makes the magi responsible for the Massacre of the Innocents, because they warn Herod of the existence of a threatening child.  This episode is almost always left out of the retelling of the Christmas story.  Perhaps for the best.

The kings appear in various poems and stories, with one of the most famous being T. S. Eliot’s “Journey of Magi” which begins with these words:

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’

Note that there are single quotes around this first section; in fact, they were lifted from a Nativity sermon that Lancelot Andrewes preached to King James in 1622. Andrewes was best known for translating the Bible into the lovely King James version published, in 1611.  He was specifically responsible for the first four books of the Bible (giving us the eloquent creation story in Elizabethan English), and generally oversaw the rest of that monumental project.  In 1622, when he preached the Nativity sermon quoted above, Andrewes was sixty-seven, an advanced age in those days, and assuredly feeling the “dead of winter.”  He jokes in the sermon that we do not have the faith of these Gentile kings, that we do not like the hard going in the cold weather: “Best get us a new Christmas in September,” he chides.  Living through the bruising temperatures of this past Christmas, I have sympathy.

Art and literature have made much of the three kings – there are many poems besides Eliot’s, including notable ones by Longfellow and Yeats.  Yeats makes all the kings old: “With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones.” Various books and stories have used the story in some way, most famously O. Henry’s “Gifts of the Magi.”

The magi are much celebrated in Christmas pageants and on Epiphany, “Three Kings Day” being the time of gift-giving in many cultures. But I am most interested in the legends that assigned age and gifts to the magi.  If the legends were created now would the old king bring the gold? Would the oldest of us have been paired with the most valuable gift?

Eliot ends his poem thus, in the voice of one of the kings (we don’t know which one):

…were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Sometimes I think all old people, in this youth culture of ours, feel like aliens among people who are “clutching” at gods or values we don’t recognize.

But come the kings did and legend gave them names, countries, and specific gifts. Matthew’s Greek text dubbed them magi, a word that denotes wisdom as well as authority.  The most ancient, Melchior, brought the gold, which was said to symbolize Christ’s kingship.  Was this gift purposefully assigned to the oldest of the three?  Frankincense was said to denote worship, myrrh was used in the preparation of dead bodies and foretold death.  Myrrh might have seemed to be the most appropriate for the oldest man.  But, no.  In an age when true elders were few and appreciated for accumulated knowledge, it was Melchior who endowed the symbol and mantle of kingship.

Lastly, we might remember that January 6 was also the date of the Capitol Insurrection.  Where were the wise men on that day of Epiphany?

I’m Dreaming of a Fifties Christmas

I’ve been thinking about technology (as is evident from my last blog), and I’ve been thinking about Christmas.  We have eight grandchildren, and Christmas wish lists abound with technology-related items.  For the younger children, Santa will bring lots of plastic gadgets which light up and make noise and require frequent battery changes. Santa’s helpers would do well to buy stock in Duracell.  For the older kids and adult children, the requests often involve gift cards so they can replenish their games (or whatever).  It all got me thinking about how Christmas has changed over my lifetime.  I found it a useful exercise to go back through the years (71 in my case) and try to remember what Christmas was like and how technology has affected it over the years.

My early Christmases were simple – in retrospect, we had few presents and little technology.  There were the lights on the tree and the impossible task of determining which bulb was causing the whole string to go out.  There were the amazing bubbling bulbs, and the cardboard villages with lights in each little house. (Why weren’t there more fires?) An old electric train chugged around the base of the Christmas tree. Presents were not complex or technical – dolls, sleds, cowboy outfits.  If the toy moved or played music, it was because you wound it up.  The highlight for me – up to the age of about eight, when we moved far enough away to end the tradition – was an extended family carol sing on Christmas Eve.  All the aunts, uncles and cousins would gather at one of our homes, and people would take turns playing the piano while we sang every verse of all the carols, which were printed in little booklets that the banks gave out in those days.  No presents, lots of food, not much drinking (for the most part that was a tee-totaling crowd).  Pleasant memories though.  Christmas morning was exciting but not extravagant, and not shared with anyone but immediate family.

My first Christmas present that involved any technology at all was a wristwatch in my teen years – not too exciting.  But this was followed the next year by a transistor radio – a radio I could listen to all by myself.  It only got three stations but was a joy to keep under my pillow and listen to surreptitiously when my parents thought I was long asleep.  In a way, the transistor radio was a turning point.  It was personal technology, personal entertainment.  In an era when homes had only one TV (black and white in our case), one phone, one stereo, and one radio (in the kitchen), it enabled my teenage self to sequester in at least one tiny respect. But transistors (and then the far smaller transistors on silicon chips) were not done with us.  

As a young married adult, I longed for a color television.  We bought one for Christmas in 1976, just in time to watch Centennial and Roots.  For reception, we had only an antenna with a rotor – which was high technology in those days.  For those of you who never had a rotor, it was an electrical gadget that enabled you – on a limited basis – to turn the antenna on your roof from inside the house.  Each channel (all three of them) had a preferred setting, and much time was spent watching a snowy screen and trying various locations while listening to the motor on the rotor hum.  No cable for several more years.  With the advent of the new color TV, however, we moved the black and white television to the bedroom, which began the proliferation of screens in the house.

When I had children, toys with batteries were more common – talking dolls, beeping robots.  The sea change, however, came in about 1983 when, since we now had a personal computer in the house (which I did not know how to use), my eldest got a copy of King’s Quest for Christmas.  For the rest of the day we could not tear his seven-year-old body away from the computer – except with force (parents) and tears (child) – for a family Christmas dinner.

The link between Christmas and technology has snowballed over the decades, with capitalism keeping right up with the trend.  In fact, I would say that Christmas has become a well-meaning celebration of capitalism.  What was once a tradition rich in ritual has been stripped to its most efficient return on investment.   It has been compounded, in our and many other families, by our adult children foregoing church.  When visiting at Christmas, we bundle up for the Christmas Eve service and ask if anyone wants to go with us – and for that moment only we have a completely “silent night” as everyone tries to avoid eye contact.  So be it.  Their Christmas ritual now includes a compulsory zoom event where we watch the kids tear open dozens of packages on Christmas morning.  I love the children and grandchildren, but the holiday has started to make me shudder.

I must pause to mention another truth, however.  My own children’s best Christmas memories include and cherish the technology I abhor.  I have lived long enough to see my son try to recapture the Christmas magic of King’s Quest for his own children.  So it goes.

Technology has come to bear on Christmas in other ways, of course.  On the bright side, we can stream Christmas movies and concerts without commercials.  But we are not sitting near our extended community when we watch them.  And maybe that is the main thing that has happened.  We no longer do things as families, as communities, as a people.  Technology can cater to the individual and it does.  From King’s Quest to virtual reality, we think we don’t need others anymore.  Maybe that’s true if we are determined to “do what we want,” but maybe we need others in order to figure out what it is that we really want.

I know I sound like a nostalgic old lady.  I am.  When I tell my children and grandchildren about these old Christmases, they look at me with pity.  In truth, I can remember my own mother telling me that Christmas used to mean just some candy and a piece of fruit in her stocking, and I found her story hard to believe.  How could Santa be so stingy? Maybe it is just a normal disjunction between the generations. However, I am determined to spend my remaining Christmases in the way that means something to me.  So, I’ll attend Christmas concerts in person, go to church on Christmas Eve, and burn real candles.  And I’ll rant a little.  Thanks for listening.

I have written a number of Christmas stories over the years, and if you are looking for something appropriate to the season, you might try “Cookie Crumbs” or “Epiphany.”  Or look at one of my old blogs about Christmas.  And if we can’t do anything about “Peace on Earth” after all these years, let’s at least try to find a little inner peace.