“You’ll understand some day.”
A recent This American Life program pointed out that we think we know all there is to know of something, until we realize we’ve never grasped its greater reality.
We have to reach that a particular level of age and experience to see matters from a different angle. I think I’ve reached that greater age, grasped that greater reality, when looking at my husband.
As children, as young adults, it’s easy to look at someone and think dismissively: He’s old, or She’s old. We have a limited set of eyes when young. Through living, we grow a second set of eyes. Yes, my husband’s body is aging, but the one inhabiting his body remains the dear, caring, careful man he’s always been.
“We are always the same age inside.”
A clue in a crossword puzzle offered the above quote by Gertrude Stein. That quote shunted my train of thought onto a related track. I don’t think we can fasten a number on Stein’s “same age.”
I’m still that Kindergartner afraid of getting lost inside the church where our class met. I’ve always felt younger than my contemporaries, (blaming it on starting first grade before I was six). But now I think it’s more a matter of who I am—undecided, off-balance, needing quietude to stay centered.
Maybe what Stein calls “the same age” is an agelessness; an age we are constantly growing into, adding experiences to, but not aging into old age. Not if we pay attention.
Paying Attention
The morning after the 4th of July, I sat out on our porch watching the cloudy day brighten. The newspaper’s holiday shootings piled onto the many other matters weighing down the scales of injustice.
My heart and soul ached for relief. I realized I was outside of my protective bubble. I don’t feel that ache nearly often enough.
Instead I move into my bubble to shut out pain. I read an old, familiar—safe—novel. I immerse myself in writing fictions of my own. I quilt to justify watching DVDs. I turn off NPR news when I can bear no more.
But bubbles burst so easily, so suddenly, so devastatingly. Bubbles burst for the parents of Uvalde, for the random shootings across the country, for those trapped by insurmountable hospital bills, unexpected pregnancies, storms, floods, fires or any of the infinite emergencies that affect any of us.
What can we do? We don’t need a leader so much as we need a solution to fight for, a solution large enough to satisfy everyone. A solution that looks beyond hype, even beyond hope.
I need to sit on the porch more often.
Kate Harrington 