The outward signs are all there: a half-step slower on the fast break, grey hair at the temples, less thatch on the peak of the roof. My appetite is faster than my metabolism, I wake up in the morning with aches I didn't go to bed with, and I find myself worrying about gingivitis. Not to mention vague hankerings to invest in long-term CDs and suddenly getting solicitation letters from the American Association of Retired People.
Mid-life has arrived. "Do not go gentle into the next larger pants size" Dylan Thomas might write if he were still alive, and scores of men would nod their heads in agreement and suck in their guts. Charles Reich wouldn't write the Greening of America but The Broadening of America as he watched hundreds of thirtysomething-aged executives scuttle along New York streets at lunchtime. Pablo Picasso wouldn't paint Cubism but Roundism, and Gertrude Stein would change her poetry to say "36 is 36 is 36 is 36."
It's not something I'm accepting gracefully, I'm afraid. I have lived so much for my body for the last 36 years as a dancer and an athlete that I find it hard to accept its branching out without my permission. I don't care for being ambushed by minor revolutions in republics that had been quiet for a long time, and I don't appreciate how the morning after has started to shade into the afternoon after and the evening after. In short, I hate how the servant has suddenly become the master, how I suddenly feel like I'm carrying around cargo that hadn't been listed on the original bill of lading.
I am not done being young yet. I am not willing to give up some of the perks that go with youth: not just elastic skin and that seemingly bottomless faith that the bad things in life happen to others, but also the breezy confidence that there are endless possibilities, that it's a serious business in life to break out of expectation and buy that pair of Bugle Boy neon orange shorts -- and wear them in public!!
Midlife seems to be about that struggle to keep feeling young in a body and a mind that's moving into unknown and finite territory. Not all of that struggle is like trying to shovel mercury with a hay fork; there are good moments as well. If anything, the notices of my mortality being posted around has made me more decided to do those things I have always labeled as "I'll get to them later." It's now "later" from now on, and if the first half has been rehearsal, this is performance.
Not to get morbid about it. Sweetness comes in many flavors, even the ones laced with my eventual absence; the most important thing is to taste as many as possible. Time to get those shorts on and walk down a crowded street!
Ethics In The Schools: Part II
Nest-Making