Old Man Alert: how'd I get so ancient, so fast?
My theory of what the whoosh of life is about.
Suddenly I am 68. I have told people I am in the September of my life.
Who am I kidding? Given my cancer diagnosis, and prognosis, it’s gotta be my November. Possibly… Thanksgiving time. I don’t know.
(There’s a thought, no matter what my metaphorical calendar says : give thanks. I am thankful. Yes and amen. Still…)
How’d I get so old so fast?
The days of being 26-in-my-mind are long over. That was the feeling when I turned 30, and 40, and even 50. But once I sailed past 60, nope. Things changed — with the body, of course, but also, a bit, in the head. In my mind, I think I am…48.
I had not been bothered by turning 30, 40 or 50, the way some people are. But 60 was different. Just say the word:
“Sixty.”
It has a musty, wretched sound to it, not unlike the word “decrepit.” Or “wan.” (A word woefully on the wane…wan.)
How did it come to this? I was so young. I remember wetting the bed like it was yesterday (of course, I was an over-achiever in that department.) I remember my Tonka trucks and my favorite Crayola — midnight blue — and the sound of my mother calling me “Honey,” her voice inflected with South Carolina and with love.
The summers of my youth were as long as they were hot; Septembers were far off in the distance, almost theoretical. We picked blackberries and slapped mosquitoes and observed girls — interesting and unapproachable girls, girls as far off as… September.
But somehow September would come, again and again and again. And somehow, in a particular September, as I was starting college, I approached a girl in the marching band, and we fell in love, and later still, to everyone’s great surprise, she agreed to marry me. And I can still see the wedding cake about to slip off of a collapsing card table in Tenth Presbyterian’s fellowship hall, and I can see guests lunging and making the catch and everything was OK.
Then 47 years went by.
Actually, now, I am much the same in my mind. Which makes it all so bewildering, right? Do you feel the same? I am the same me, I think. I still play oddball progressive rock music. I still eat Whoppers and fries. (And the malt ball Whoppers, too.) Moreover, the lazy streak remains as potent and appalling as it was when I, at about 14, managed not to mow the grass, even once, when my parents went to Europe for three weeks. Upon coming home, my father was strangely unenthused. (I did hope he was glad, at least, that my problems with grass did not involve the kind that you smoke.)
I do have a theory about this. Make of it what you will. My theory is: this telescoping of time, this acceleration of the accumulation of years, is a little trick of God’s. It’s a divine sleight of hand. To mess with our minds.
The early years stretch out, each one like a decade, each one incandescent with promise and delight but also flecked with tears and disappointment, so that our experience is full-orbed and useful for interpreting the years to come. Then, we wake one day to adolescence, and time is moving at a full gallop — a glorious, bumpy, angst-filled gallop. And then: adulthood. By now the wind is in our hair and we are hanging on. We wish out loud for more hours in the day and more days in the week, and it’s exhausting, and pretty soon we are 49 and wondering if that thing that just whooshed by was our life. Get to 60 and the grandchildren blink, uncomprehending, when you tell them you recall this same ice cream shop like it was yesterday, and they ask, “Did they have cars back then, or did you ride horses?”
(Objects in the mirror are farther than they appear.)
Recall any day in the past, and upon inspection, it has 24 hours like the rest of them. But take a wider view, and the days are rushing by like a blur, like the cars of a passing train. It’s like an optical illusion: it seems nothing is moving at all — you’re in a meeting at work, or in a line at the DMV — but it’s moving like a bullet. The kids just grew up and moved out and the boss is presenting you with a gold watch. Whoosh.
And the whole thing, as I was saying, is a God-trick. It’s acutely theological. I offer it as my theory. “He has made everything beautiful in its time,” the Old Testament says of God, “and he has put eternity into man’s heart.” There it is. Eternity — implanted, a default factory-setting, deep in our operating system, in the internal coding. His point, according to my theory, is for us to see the stampede of years — faster and faster as we near the finish line — and to ask, with one of my Dad’s favorite singers, Peggy Lee, “is that all there is?” And to ponder. The New Testament says your life is a “mist” that’s quickly gone. Ponder that.
May the September that’s just ahead — and all the ones after that — find you in full ponder and wonder. We’re growing old. But life is good. God is good. We are blessed.
Thanks, Rob. You're expressing well what a lot of us feel. Praying that your cancer stays checked, although sadly not checkmated.
Nicely done, Rob. I could pick up your story and add 14 years to it. I've seen two of my three children retire (early), my grandchildren enter their 30s, and my wife of 60 years pass. The time is still accelerating but I have retained my interests and passions, a circle of friends that include younger people, and the desire to see what's around the next bend. Life is still interesting and exciting.