Screw this whole idea about growing older = gaining a valuable wisdom that, in the end, makes it worth it. I'm starting to see that growing older = hearing news that gets progressively worse.
My dear aunt got some bad medical news. My friend's father is struggling more and more with his Alzheimer's. A neighbor is facing bankruptcy because of the costs of her husband's mental hospitalization. Another friend just buried her mother, who was laid waste by Huntington's. Yet another friend's cousin, a youngish mother of four, has seen the return of her Stage IV breast cancer.
Now, someone who sees each day as a gift would point out that, number one, I am blessed with friends and family in the first place. The same person might say that with each breath there is hope and in death there is peace. He/she might add that the joy is in this journey. To all this I reply, "Well fuck that."
I would very much like someone to change my mind about this. Personally, I don't think it can be done.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Girl on the Plane
Flying back home from our summer vacation, we squeezed ourselves into one of those planes so small even I almost hit my head on the ceiling. I sat next to my older daughter, with my husband and younger daughter in front of us; next to me sat a girl I used to be. In many ways she was foreign to me: her purse was heavily logo-ed, her skin tanned, her hair blonde. Most notably different was that, despite being a good size or two larger than optimal, she had no qualms about scarfing down a Wendy's burger and fries right before take-off. (For us problem eaters, such public feeding is reflexively avoided.) But, as I listened to her talking at her friends seated behind me, I recognized her as myself when I was, like she, in my early twenties.
Apparently, she and her friends were returning from a friend's wedding. Among other things I learned during the trip, she loves her job, she's miffed that her mother posted a family portrait that was rather unflattering, and she golfs. She was me because she was certain her glittering young life both charmingly fascinated and inspired twinges of envy. She spoke as though to the room (or the cabin), neither lowering her voice nor allowing interruption of her performance. I so remember being her and my certainty that any sane person would want to be me - young, pretty, smart, my life ahead of me - and even more certain that a captive audience would be appreciatively amused by my ruminations.
Now, as the captive audience, I know different, since I wasn't charmed as much as mildly irritated. Even my eleven year-old, who had at first been watching the show with undisguised fascination, became bored with the self-absorption. Since I often recall the girl that I was with a great deal of wincing, I didn't mind being reminded that the behavior of many, many girls that age is worth wincing over. On the other hand, knowing that she viewed me either a) with pity for my bland existence as a middle-aged mom or b) not at all because to her I'm invisible just made my cranky (it had been a long travel day).
When I was a freshman in college, I wrote an essay for English about how awful aging would be. I got an A on a treatise discussing the loss of passion and vitality that each decade of life would bring. I preached that I was enjoying the best time of my life (when I was in fact not all that happy) because the highs would never be as high (despite the lows not being so low), and all the true adults I knew seemed so lacking in intensity. My roommate, who didn't even like me particularly, asked to make a copy of it, because my realizations were so tragic and so true.
Sheesh.
We just watched a relatively new movie called "According to Greta" with Hilary Duff and Ellen Burstyn. Hillary Duff is Greta, a teenager with the melancholy self-absorption that first arouses empathy but then just exasperates. Ellen Burstyn is her grandmother. Greta assumes that life is downhill after seventeen, because nothing will be as exciting as it was then. Her grandmother explains that when she herself was seventeen, she didn't even know who she was, that it's the learning you do each day of your life that makes the next day even more valuable. I've learned enough to know I could never tell that to the girl on the plane because a) no one asked me (and you wouldn't believe how long it's taken me to learn that my wisdom is not appreciated when unsolicited) and b) you can only really believe it by living it.
Apparently, she and her friends were returning from a friend's wedding. Among other things I learned during the trip, she loves her job, she's miffed that her mother posted a family portrait that was rather unflattering, and she golfs. She was me because she was certain her glittering young life both charmingly fascinated and inspired twinges of envy. She spoke as though to the room (or the cabin), neither lowering her voice nor allowing interruption of her performance. I so remember being her and my certainty that any sane person would want to be me - young, pretty, smart, my life ahead of me - and even more certain that a captive audience would be appreciatively amused by my ruminations.
Now, as the captive audience, I know different, since I wasn't charmed as much as mildly irritated. Even my eleven year-old, who had at first been watching the show with undisguised fascination, became bored with the self-absorption. Since I often recall the girl that I was with a great deal of wincing, I didn't mind being reminded that the behavior of many, many girls that age is worth wincing over. On the other hand, knowing that she viewed me either a) with pity for my bland existence as a middle-aged mom or b) not at all because to her I'm invisible just made my cranky (it had been a long travel day).
When I was a freshman in college, I wrote an essay for English about how awful aging would be. I got an A on a treatise discussing the loss of passion and vitality that each decade of life would bring. I preached that I was enjoying the best time of my life (when I was in fact not all that happy) because the highs would never be as high (despite the lows not being so low), and all the true adults I knew seemed so lacking in intensity. My roommate, who didn't even like me particularly, asked to make a copy of it, because my realizations were so tragic and so true.
Sheesh.
We just watched a relatively new movie called "According to Greta" with Hilary Duff and Ellen Burstyn. Hillary Duff is Greta, a teenager with the melancholy self-absorption that first arouses empathy but then just exasperates. Ellen Burstyn is her grandmother. Greta assumes that life is downhill after seventeen, because nothing will be as exciting as it was then. Her grandmother explains that when she herself was seventeen, she didn't even know who she was, that it's the learning you do each day of your life that makes the next day even more valuable. I've learned enough to know I could never tell that to the girl on the plane because a) no one asked me (and you wouldn't believe how long it's taken me to learn that my wisdom is not appreciated when unsolicited) and b) you can only really believe it by living it.
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