On Getting Older

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I’ve been feeling kind of used up lately, like I am past my expiration date. Wilted, not fresh. I look at all the new young mommies whose children go to school with mine and I feel… I hate to say it: old.

I’m not old. I hesitate to even use “middle aged” because 1. I hate that term and 2. That just seems to make me officially an unfashionable age.

I’m 42. My body doesn’t do some of the things it once did like lose weight or have a coordinated pattern to hormones or stay awake past 10pm.  But, like I said, I’m still not old. There are a lot of people older than me who I still think are young and thin and vital.

Still, when I go to a playgroup or a library story time with other mothers of small children I am not a part of their social circle anymore. I am the older, wiser momma. Which I guess is okay, but I still long for the days of being the young, thin, hip momma.

It hasn’t been something I have given a lot of thought to, these feelings have just been an undercurrent in my mind lately. It took me surprise when I found the words to flesh out some of these feelings in an unlikely place.

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I have recently been rereading “The Once and Future King” by T.H. White. I had read it years and years ago, and was feeling nostalgic for a King Arthur story so I picked it up again. Within it’s rambling tale are woven a few threads of wisdom about getting older as a woman.

In this first passage, Guenever (as spelled in the book) is 22 and it discusses for the moment how she is a bit older and wiser than she was as a young bride. Then there is this paragraph, which seems to discuss how she will mature in the future:

There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until the are middle aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops. You can’t teach a baby to walk by explaining it to her logically – she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience. In some ways like that, you cannot teach a young woman to have knowledge of the world. She has to be left to the experience of the years. And then, when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds hat she can do it. She can go on living – not by principle, not by deduction, not by knowledge of good and evil, but simply by a peculiar shifting of balance which defies each of those things often. She no longer hopes to live by seeking the truth – if women ever hope to do this – but continues henceforth under the guidance of a seventh sense. Balance was the sixth sense, which she won when she first learned to walk, and now she has the seventh one – knowledge of the world.  – T.H. White, The Once and Future King: The Ill Made Knight, Chapter 13

It does get a little depressing after that, but after reading this paragraph, I realized that I choose where I am. I do not want to be something I am no longer fit to be. My life has changed me, in some ways good and in some ways not so good, but if I had a choice between then and now, I choose now. That is am important distinction to me, to realize that the grass is indeed greener right where I am standing. It takes the sting out of things like a used up body.

The Once and Future King is a funny book. Funny, strange, I mean. It has lengthy passages about history, chivalry, and even fashion or other things that could easily be left out and tend to weigh down the amazing story of King Arthur, Guenever, and Lancelot. But there are also passages like the above when he just talks about how people are in their deepest hearts. He has a beautiful insight into people and it has been a part of the book that I missed entirely when I read it as a teen.

The next passage I wanted to share about getting older is much more personal and poignant. Guenever is older, 42, and is clearly struggling with the contradiction between what she looks like and how she feels. The scene is Lancelot’s return after a long quest.

Guenever had overdressed for the occasion. She had put on a make-up which she did not need, and put it on badly. She was forty-two.
When Lancelot saw her waiting for him at the table, with Arthur beside her, the heart-sack broke in his wame, and the love inside it ran about his veins. It was his old love for a girl of twenty, standing proudly by her throne with the present of captive about her – but now the same girl was standing in other surroundings, the surroundings of bad make-up and loud silks, by which she was trying to defy the invincible doom of human destiny. He saw her as the passionate spirit of innocent youth, now beleaguered by the trick which is played on youth – the trick of treachery in the body, which turns flesh into green bones. Her stupid finery was not vulgar to him, but touching. The girl was still there, still appealing from behind the breaking barricade of rouge. She had made the brave protest: I will not be vanquished. Under the clumsy coquetry, the undignified clothes, there was a human cry for help. The young eyes were puzzled, saying: It is I, inside here – what have they done to me? I will not submit. Some part of her spirit knew that powder was making a guy of her, and hated it, and tried to hold her lover with her eyes alone. They said: Don’t look at all this. Look at me. I am still here, in the eyes. Look at me, here in this prison, and help me out. Another part said: I am not old, it is an illusion. I am beautifully made-up. See, I will perform the movements of youth. I will defy the enormous army of age.  – T.H. White, The Once and Future King: The Ill Made Knight, Chapter 32

I have felt that; what Guenever felt there, what T.H. White so heartbreakingly described, that desire to be seen and loved for what I am, but of not knowing exactly what I am anymore because I don’t recognize myself. I miss the simplicity and beauty of being very young, but I cherish the dignity that years have brought to me. I want it all – to be the same as I was and to be different too. I am still me, still a frightened little girl much of the time, but my appearance and vocation belie that. There is a balance between trying too hard to care how I look and not trying hard enough and fully surrendering (prematurely, I might add) to being – not old, but older. To lean too far either way is to become older than I am and to make myself a bit of a joke.

How all of these feelings and inner conflicts found their way into a King Arthur story is a mystery, but I am thankful for these little glimpses from Mr. White, because they show me that I am not alone. No one really talks about how it feels to watch your body, brain, relationships, and outlook change. Or I suspect that maybe they do, but you can’t hear the conversation until you can properly understand it, like whispers in a different language.

As I age and change it is not just my own perception of myself that must adjust, but I have to put my faith in others to know me on a deeper level than just the number of my age or how I look on a particular day. There is a disdain in our culture for women who have passed their 30’s. People say things like “woman of a certain age” which I may or may not qualify for, but it is dismissive of the person it is being said about. It seems to define that person into a stereotype, a joke. I read one book of stories from an emergency room and it talked about defining people as “3F” which meant female, fat, and forty. I thought, that could just as easily be me. But I don’t want to be taken lightly just because I am older or might have an attitude or sickness that is “typical” for one my age.

Dustin Hoffman discusses this eloquently when he talks about his role in the movie “Tootsie.” He explains that he expected to be beautiful when they dressed him up as a woman, but that wasn’t how things worked out. He realized that even as a woman that wasn’t traditionally attractive, he would still have been a valuable and interesting person. He was sad to think about the people he had missed out on having a relationship with because he had judged them on their looks.

I see my young daughters, who are in their simple and beautiful stage of life, and I miss that time. I hope that I can look beyond age and my own expectation of people and see them – truly see them, as I hope to be seen. In spite of my fears and insecurities, I will go out boldly, trusting that I am unique and not reduced to a stereotype or example of others; I am only myself, and I choose to be who I am.

 

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