perpetual renewal
I turned 45 last month. January 20. For most of us runners, a birthday ending in 0 or 5 is cause for celebration (a new age group!) and, yes, I did burst onto the 45-49 scene with an indoor mile world record: 5:04, wahoo! But for me, 45 means more than realigned margins of victory. (Anyone can call themselves “world class” if they manipulate the classifications. i.e. I am ranked #1 in downhill ski racing … the classification being female racers between the age of 45-47 living in the odd-numbered houses on Winningham Road in Chapel Hill – see how it works?). Anyway, 45 means groovy things like clarity and peace and wisdom (at least some of the time – finally). 45 means no longer fretting over which path to choose in life. This is this. I am on my chosen path. I have crested my mountain (or my mole-hill?) and I intend to rest at the top for a while. I rather enjoy the view.
This morning I pondered what is 45 (halfway to 90, God willing) in my preparation for our seejanerun spring season. As I mentioned earlier, I assigned a six-word memoir poem for the first day of practice. A memoir is a written form of self-revelation, just as blogging is a way to reveal oneself. Who am I now, at 45? How am I different from 25 or 35?
When I remember 25, I start to get all sweaty in the armpits. I’d die if I had to go back to that time in my life. I am the only 80’s feminist I know who wanted children MORE than a career. Problem was, if you didn’t marry your college boyfriend you had to wait another 7-year cycle before any eligible men wanted to settle down. So, I waited – unwillingly and inelegantly (careening through several bad relationships with midnight drunken scenes and multiple heart fractures) until my first husband agreed to take on the project of me. I was a difficult case. He hung in there gamely, but my dysfunction outlasted his patience. What we did get right in our marriage was Sarah Jane and Rosie.
At 35, I was up to my nostrils in poopy diapers and what Wm. Blake calls “the same dull round.” For stay-at-home moms, the years go by so fast but the days take forever. I spied a young mother at the coffee shop this morning with a toddler in one arm and a fat library book in the other. That novel she’s reading will have to be on perpetual renewal because she won’t be able to finish it for at least 3 or 4 years. I stopped going to the library in my 30’s because it made me resent my kids.
But I go there all the time now. At 45, I can linger over books of poetry. I can ponder Keats’ knight-at-arms:
O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
In trying to describe what it feels like to be officially middle-aged, I told my [current] husband, “I know I am happy and that my life has finally slowed down enough to enjoy because I hear the birds singing every morning.” I don’t remember caring about any damn birds at 25 … and at 35, their incessant tweet-tweeting outside my bedroom window was probably an annoyance in my sleep-deprived state… but at 45, I love those birds!
This may well be tomorrow’s 6-word memoir:
Alive
at forty-five
listen!
… morning birds.
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Congrats on the world record, Joan!
I love this post because it speaks to me as a woman in her 40s and a mother of school age kids. Life is good. I have no reason to complain about my age. I would never want to go back in time to my “younger” days.
Comment by Annie — 2/13/2007 @ 4:42 pm
Interestingly, as I was searching for a convenient Deer Hunter link to explain “this is this” I came across a blog named “This is This” that had a three-word story challenge. Check it out:
http://www.thisisthis.org/threewordstory/
Comment by Joan — 2/13/2007 @ 6:54 pm
Congrats, Joan. Nicely done… keep running and keep listening to the birds, and of course, keep writing and sharing.
Comment by Steve Sherlock — 2/14/2007 @ 7:16 am
This is beautiful, Joan. When I turn 45 in a few weeks, I’m linking to it. And congratulations on the indoor mile.
Comment by Anne — 2/14/2007 @ 10:28 am
Hey, I hit 45 next month, glad you are there to tell me it ain’t so bad!!
I once heard, we spend the first half of our life searching for success, the second have looking for significance!
Comment by George D. — 2/14/2007 @ 2:37 pm
Congrats. on the record and enjoying the birds. I suspect that what you experienced is in some way very natural, we are programmed to move forward fast during the younger years and then to start to slow down and smell the roses (or hear the birds) as we get older. At 51, I find it weird, as I dont think of myself as at that age, I often wonder if there was a mistake in the count, like there was in my first ever 10K track race, but the birth certificate does not lie.
Comment by George (Canada) — 2/14/2007 @ 6:18 pm
Oh my. I had to read that a few times. Am I over-reading this, or is something eating at you? It seems you’re being a little harsh with our favorite tarheel speedster. You seem to be in a hurry to downplay a world record (a WORLD record — heck, I don’t even have a junior high record). And it sounds like there is a good novel in there somewhere (” . . . midnight drunken scenes and multiple heart fractures . . .”). I’ve gotten my relatives through enough divorces (including dad’s three wives) to know enough not to jump in (see Tolstoy, AK, you know the sentence), but gosh: “the project of me” and “my dysfunction” — ouch. Out here where I live, if you don’t have a prison record and aren’t behind in your methadone-clinic coupons, we consider you a shining pinacle of success. To recount: Olympic athlete, world records, three beautiful kids. We should all have such dysfunction.
On the other hand, I learned something: I had not been aware we men worked on a seven year post-college rotation. But thinking about it, I think you’re right.
Comment by Eric — 2/15/2007 @ 2:49 pm
Comment by mis_nomer — 2/15/2007 @ 8:56 pm
Ah, yes, I know about the birds. I hear them in the morning and hope that they will go away, or at least fly away from right outside the back of the house, because I want to enjoy just a few more minutes of silence before Anna wakes up. So I lie in bed thinking, “Birds, please go away,” before it is too late. The little voice, awakened by all the tweeting and squawking from the feathered scoundrels in the backyard, comes from the other room, “Daddy, I’m awake now. Come pick me up, please.” And then I’m okay with the birds.
Comment by Steve — 3/12/2007 @ 1:46 pm
Ski!: A shout to alert people ahead that a loose ski is coming down the hill. Another warning skiers should be familiar with is ‘Avalanche!’ (which tells everyone that a hill is coming down the hill).
Comment by Boyd Beaupied — 2/17/2008 @ 2:22 pm