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by Martha Kate Miller
First performed: March 9, 1986
Trinity Church
Southport, Connecticut
It doesn't seem to matter how well you think you've prepared for any of the major rites of passage.
Thank you for inviting me to come. I've been looking for someone I could talk to about a few things that have been on my mind a lot lately. Oh, people always say they'd be glad to listen...you know how they do. But when I say that what I want to talk about is this thing of getting old - weellll. People's faces just sort of shut down! You can feel their psyches jump back about ten feet. Or sometimes it's just the opposite...they get sort of hyperactive and start shouting about how totally great it is to be old! I'm afraid either one of those reactions leaves me not quite knowing what to say next.
We Americans are such a faddish lot, given to great swings of the attitudinal pendulum. One day we elevate youth to the godhead, and the next we're "into" death and dying. In one phase we speak of the sick, the frail, and the elderly as one great undifferentiated mass on whose behalf we need only legislate increased aid. In another mode, the 6-o'clock-news broadcasts routinely feature stories on senior citizens, all of whom seem to spend their days participating in marathon races, square-dancing exhibitions, and an enviable sex life.
In the midst of all this, a person can begin to feel sort of cosmically alone. Did you know that over 90 percent of all the species that ever lived on this planet are extinct now? True. (Shudder.)
I've been trying to remember just when it was I began to think of Aging as something that really would happen to me...is happening! Was it the day I hit the Big 6-0 and couldn't say it out loud? Mmm. That was one of the times, all right. Psychologists have noted a pattern they call "number numbness." That's an inability to comprehend large numbers... like a two trillion dollar deficit...or 6-0. For weeks I walked around in a deep fog, wondering how it was possible that something that takes so long to happen could have appeared so suddenly!
It's like a wonderful line I found in a book called My Sister Looks Like a Pear. That's a collection of things done by children in a creative writing class. One child philosopher observed: "The worm not only turns, he often does it without giving the proper signal." Ah yes, that's how it feels. Other people age gradually, of course, but for goodness sakes it was only yesterday that I....
It reminds me, too, of when I was pregnant with my first child. I was nine months and two weeks pregnant, actually. Swollen all over, miserable, wondering if I was going to be like this for the rest of my life. But can you guess what my first thought was when the pains finally began? "I'm not ready for this!"
It doesn't seem to matter how well you think you've prepared for any of the major rites of passage: When the Occasion comes, looks you in the eye, reaches out to touch you....Part of that difficulty may come from the fact that our Western culture provides so few rituals with which to celebrate, or mourn, or somehow mark the time of a significant transition as most other peoples of the world do. Oh, we have driver's licenses at 16, social security, and medicare...but that doesn't quite do it. And while we applaud useful statistical reports on Aging, it really is considered a rather tacky subject for conversation, generally speaking. And how many people who are dying can talk about it with their families? We've developed the practice of Avoidism to a fine art, I'm afraid.
So most of us are simply not prepared to handle the matter of our own diminishment. Grandparents, who might have served as role models, now live half-way across the country, in all likelihood. And so our first conscious confrontation, at a personal level, may come the day a friend says: "I just read the most interesting thing! Did you know that after the age of 35 you lose 150,000 brain cells every 24 hours?"
Dear God! Suddenly you're obsessively compulsed over the whole horrible subject. You go to the research department of the local library and discover that from the age of 30 on your whole body is absolutely careening toward destruction! The skin dries and wrinkles start creeping...crepeing. The hair thins; sight, hearing and teeth lose just a tad of their youthful verve. Muscles lose tone, bones begin to grow brittle and reflexes dull. Circulation turns sluggish, and arteries gather sludge. The respiratory system, the immune system, the digestive system, and the nervous system all slow down. The onset of chronic disease is just around the corner. And this is at 30!!
Oh, there are ever so many anticipatory Soundings along the way that we just sweep under the carpet before they can reach the level of consciousness and cause us pain. There are some things we're dimly aware of but don't quite identify. Like an unexpected sort of restlessness, a dissatisfaction with the way things are, even when they're really not too bad. Man or woman, we all know what the black poet Lucille Clifton is talking about when she says:
the thirty-eighth year
of my life,
plain as bread
round as a cake
an ordinary woman
an ordinary woman.
I had expected to be
smaller than this,
more beautiful,
wiser in African ways,
more confident.
I had expected
more than this.
I will be forty soon.
My mother once was forty.
My mother died at forty-four,
a woman of sad countenance
leaving behind a girl
awkward as a stork.
My mother was thick,
her hair was a jungle and
she was very wise
and beautiful
and sad.
I have dreamed dreams
for you Mama,
more than once.
I have wrapped me
in your skin
and made you live again
more than once.
I have taken the bones you hardened
and built daughters
and they blossom and promise fruit
like African trees.
I am a woman now,
an ordinary woman.
In the thirty-eighth
year of my life,
surrounded by life,
a perfect picture of
blackness blessed,
I had not expected this
loneliness.
If it is western,
if it is the final
Europe of my mind,
if in the middle of my life
I am turning the final turn
into the shining dark --
let me come to it whole
and holy --
not afraid
not lonely,
out of my mother's life
into my own
into my own.
I had expected more than this.
I had not expected to be
an ordinary woman.
It's when these thoughts come – not locked away in the unconscious, but clearly perceived, articulate and pounding in the gut – that we begin to know the feel of this extraordinary process.
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