Implausible

February 22, 2023 / Hermionejh / 3 Comments

I forgot about the passage of time. I knew it was happening, but I didn’t believe it was real. My body sure knows it’s real.

I didn’t believe I would one day look in the mirror and see my mother as she was at my age – when I thought she was old – but now I know she really wasn’t, at least not in the way I thought of age thirty years ago. It’s all perspective.

It’s also the package deal I accepted by being born. You live, you grow, you age, and then you die.

When I was 12 I saw some illustrations in a book about the human life cycle. One showed a male and the other showed a female going from babyhood to old age. I was so angry and disgusted when I saw aging illustrated, and I vowed it would not happen to me – as though it only happened because some idiot made a drawing of it.

I did not want to become old and wrinkled. I did not want my life to be taken from me. I thought I had beat aging because I remained relatively young-looking for a long time.

I’m certainly not what I assumed about that drawing – that life was over because you’ve aged – but I internalized that. I think I thought that people age because of their attitude. Some people at the commune/cult I lived in actually said that, and I internalized that as well. “You only age because you think you’re going to,” said that 20-something-year-old to the general agreement of the throng of people sitting around.

And I thought we were special. I thought we were “chosen” as I so often heard. I really believed it though. Part of me still believes it despite knowing better.

I failed, I think to myself. I let the world get to me – or I wouldn’t have aged.

I see people give up all the time – otherwise known as acceptance.

I want to fight it. I see people fighting it to the very end. Isn’t that what all the plastic surgery and body modification is about? Isn’t it a wish for immortality?

I have deeper lines and sagging neck skin now. It pisses me off every time I see it. My failure staring back at me.

My mother stopped looking in the mirror and now I know why.

Without the mirror I can feel like I am still young, and believe I look to others as I wish to appear. But then I see that I am somehow cordoned-off from those not-so-young-themselves-anymore, but younger than me, and I am shunted into the next category. It’s just an observation, but sure, it’s sad. It’s probably self-pitying.

The saying: “We’re here for a good time, not a long time,” should pacify me. I repeat many of those type of sayings to myself. “Life is what you make it – always has been – always will be,” – and the woman who said that was about 80 at the time. Grandma Moses – Anna Mary Robertson Moses. It’s just whistling in the dark though. A platitude. A pacifier.

Life happens with or without consent, approval or control. I do my best to be steadfast and positive, but you can only eat so many shit sandwiches before starting to call them what they are.

I am trying to accept my aging in a culture that tells me in a million subtle (and not so subtle) ways that to age is to fail.

I’m a little late to the show but I’m trying to embrace my aging and not just pretend to accept it. How do I do that?

Defiance.

I defy the 12 year-old girl looking at that book making a lifetime judgement through an illustration. She has no right to determine how my life has unfolded, or what my aging means. Fuck her. She’s fucking 12 for god’s sake! I defy the 20-something-year-old know-nothings, no wiser than that 12 year-old, and whose lives unfolded as all life on earth unfolds. They aged, and they died, or they will die. They have health struggles, and memory problems, right along with any wisdom accrued. I defy all the plastic surgery (which I would get in a damn heartbeat if I could afford it), but it’s still an inability to accept aging. It’s also a form of defiance too, though, but it often just looks circus-freakish (no offense to non-conforming circus persons).

So what is wisdom and perspective for? Is it just to talk to myself because the young have no interest in what the old have to say? I don’t know. My son has no use for any wisdom I possess, but maybe my wisdom is just anxiety? I want his life to defy life itself!

Maybe all of our lives do just that in the implausibility of us being here at all.

Moments Like This

November 23, 2021 / Hermionejh / 3 Comments

I’ve gotten scared a couple of times while driving in the last month or so. My hands are on the wheel, eyes on the road, but twice now I have caught myself having to remember to be in the world?, Something like that. I haven’t figured that out yet, which is what’s terrifying.

Have the leaded gas fumes from my father’s Lincoln Continental that I breathed in deeply several times after he had parked in the driveway finally melted my brain? He must have caught me doing that because I only remember getting to stand there breathing in the lead fumes a few times. It must have been better than the smell of bread or cake or cookies baking, because none of those aromas made me want to stick my nose as close to the oven as I could to breathe it in as fully as I could.

But worse than that, could I be getting some form of dementia?

It’s hard to write about this because it’s embarrassing and scary, but it’s real, and maybe someone has an answer, or has experienced something similar.

In both incidents the eerie displacement of time, or space, or space/time, or whatever was happening to me, left me hyper-vigilant, and desperate to seem normal, to feel normal.

I got to my destinations fine, and I’m now realizing that the drives home were unremarkable.

Maybe my senses aren’t as acute as they were a decade ago (or even last year)?

Maybe this is what getting old is.

Bite your tongue, I hear my rebel yell. Fuck off, and then come back and fuck off again. Old. Pssshh!

That’s like saying I’m defective, used up, yesterday’s news – and that’s stupid.

But I can’t stop what happens to my definitely time-based body, even if my, what? – id, ego, and super-ego? – are up in arms at the seeming injustice of it all.

I just have to accept what is, not approve of it.

I also have to figure out if there is something wonky going on in my brain.

Maybe it’s something simple, something fixable.

The fear underneath everything else is whether or not I matter – whether I have relevance.

Well, that is completely self-determined, isn’t it?

No one else defines me unless I let them, and I don’t have to let my worst thoughts about myself decide who I am either.

Full human – still here, still crushing it … 8 times out of 10 – so far.

Avoidance

October 3, 2021October 4, 2021 / Hermionejh / 4 Comments

Stuck.

I’m noticing that the night-blooming jasmine flowers, that rarely bud out anymore, are budding in a cluster of five or six.

(is that my mother making them bloom now – maybe? or is it my Aunt Lee, checking in on me. Or is it nothing because there is nothing, and they are gone now. All the aunts except my aunt Cathy are gone.)

I pulled out my Halloween decorations yesterday, and I really enjoyed that last year, but I’m having a hard time enjoying anything this year. It’s getting chilly here in Western Massachusetts, so I pulled out my fall and winter clothes too.

(mom kept all her clothes until they were practically rags, and I have the same wardrobe I’ve had for the last ten years, except underwear, of course, and a few shirts and a pair of pants I got from Costco.)

I’m having a coffee, trying to savor it. Be present to now, I think. Be present.

(mom loved coffee. why don’t I feel her? If spirit is real, and true, then why the fuck don’t I feel anyone who has gone on that I loved?)

I like how the steam rises up, and the rich smell of the beans is so delicious. I go out onto the back deck steps on sunny mornings to sit for a few minutes before starting my day in earnest. The willow trees, the small garden, the bright sky – I appreciate all of it. I am grateful for all that I have, for the time I’ve been given on this good Earth.

(and there’s the garden shed where some of mom’s things are that I have yet to go through and try to salvage anything or chuck it all out)

It’s different now. The raw grief has subsided, but sometimes it overwhelms me again. Mostly, it’s just part of me now.

(i think I’m angry with you, Mom. why are you silent? why don’t you visit me in my dreams? why won’t you make your presence known if you still exist? what kind of a shit universe is this?)

All unanswered questions. The Universe doesn’t bend to my will, or care how angry I am. I have to choose what I believe – if anything. I can be as wrong believing as not believing, or as right believing as not believing that there is a point and purpose to all of this.

I’m older now. I didn’t want to get older. I didn’t try to get older. Life just moved on – often without me keeping up – and definitely without my consent. My pain is often because I refuse acceptance too. I try to remember that I only have to accept, not approve. I can yell all I want that this is against my will, but life just doesn’t work like that. Life is neither for nor against me – or any of us – no matter how it seems otherwise.

Mom’s passing was just that. Whether it was ‘her time’, or whatever justification I might throw at it – it’s just a fact. I am on a temporal plane. Do I not enjoy what beauty and camaraderie and joy and struggle there is just because it’s going to end? Do I sit in a corner with my arms crossed until my own death comes? Joy and play are important to me! My people make life tolerable. The right music and free-spirited dancing lifts my spirits. So, I will grow older, and have more difficulty until the end. So will everyone on earth who doesn’t die young.

There is goodness, and there is terribleness. I can be as upset as I want, and rail against life’s ridiculousness – and I can make the best of this nonsensical experience. It’s not either/or for me. It’s all of the above.

Late November

November 28, 2020November 28, 2020 / Hermionejh

The sun shines brightly over the brown, leafless trees outside the kitchen window. A breeze ruffles the tan stalks of grass and hay poking up in patches of the neighbors back property like several days of stubble growth on earth’s face. The blue sky rimmed with white and grey clouds gathered near the horizon makes me think of the soft summer days recently erased – an artist ever changing its mind.

The chug of the tractor’s engine is heard well before the machine trundles into view. The stack of wood will warm us as the evening chill descends.

Ever turning.

Each day a chance for a different thought, a different choice – until the chugging of my own heart ceases – and all the fuel has left my body.

Until then, my machine needs the same care any aging machine does – I can no longer skimp on maintenance.

Seeing myself with the same respectful reverence I have for that eighty year old tractor is a hard sell for me, but I keep trying.

I’ll keep trying.

The Bullshit of Aging

March 18, 2018October 6, 2019 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Thinner skin, and that’s not a metaphor. Droopy, collagen-lacking, dull skin. Eyes receding into my skull as the muscles grow lax. The free ride was over a decade or more ago, but I didn’t do all the work necessary to keep up appearances (I also didn’t & don’t have the money for restoration).

Even if I did have the money for body reconstruction, who knows how I’d end up looking. Is a circus-freak look better than looking old? For some, that’s a resounding yes, for others, there’s no going back once you head down that rabbit hole no matter the regret.

What am I chasing? Eternal youth? No, just the appearance. Relevance, inclusion, and respect are my aims – and self needs to go in front of those words. Why do I feel less worthy of notice? Advertising and youth culture are certainly a part of that, but loss is the main theme, along with fear.

My nemesis.

I can’t hear you, or see you as well as I used to, and my joints make exercise slower going, but I’m still doing it. Use it or lose it isn’t some far away mantra anymore.

We are pure biology – and maybe there’s a spirit or soul that animates us and gives us individuality – but there’s no stopping the facts of life. Once the baby-making years are over, and menopause is in full swing, libido nose-dives, vaginal skin thins and makes sex painful. The good news is that the E-String & Estrace work wonders for that. The bad news is increased cancer risk. Aye yi yi.

I finally have a good man with a great bod who loves me & sex won’t lead to kids, and my desire is more for reading a good book by a warm fire no matter how much I psyche myself up. Sex is rumored to be 99% mental – the fuck you say! Nope, it’s biological. Of course mood & circumstances come in to play, but when you are right there, doing all you can to feel sexy & have a willing partner who’s totally sexified, and your bod says, ‘meh’ – that’s just bullshit.

I guess there’s Viagra for women now, but the fact we need these pills and potions to fight nature’s course just sucks. We face death by a thousand cuts long before we succumb to whatever it is that’s going to get us.

I will NOT go gentle into that good night, and I will rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

You & I, Dylan Thomas, you & I.

Six and Four

August 27, 2011September 12, 2011 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

That’s how old the boys are that I provide child care for occasionally, and spent my day with at a lake yesterday. I used to watch them regularly but changed jobs last year. The older boy was just two months old when I started the job.

My son was in full-blown adolescence then so it was perfect work for me to watch a child who needed and wanted me as my child was pulling away. The difference between my son as a baby and the baby I was caring for was so stark. I didn’t know a child could be so easy to care for. My son’s pediatrician told me that my son was a ‘high need’ baby as I sat in his office back then, crying from lack of sleep and feeling so inadequate as a parent, and indeed, I was nursing him every two hours, which continued for seven months before he stopped nursing so voraciously, and he was colicky as well. My mother came to help me during that time, while my son’s father was two states away at his job, coming back on weekends. My son’s father and I weren’t happy as it was, and having a child only put more stress on our relationship. We broke up and I moved out when our son turned a year old.

When my friend’s second boy was born, I began watching him at two weeks old, and he was an easy baby as well. I loved caring for those boys. It was so good for me because I wasn’t watching a whole group of children as I did when I worked at a daycare center, and I didn’t have twenty-four hour responsibility for them.

I still had parenting duties with my son, even though it wasn’t very joyful anymore, but I had enough positive experiences that dealing with my son’s adolescent angst and unpredictability was more manageable than it might have been.

I would give my son hugs and tell him that I loved him every day, as he stood there, arms by his side, at least allowing me to hug him briefly. I would say that although he was rapidly changing, I was not, so it was going to take me far longer to adjust. It was so painful for me to go from living with a boy who wanted to be with me, who called out to me several times a day that he loved me, who enjoyed spending time with me, to the stranger who I now occupied the same physical space with, but could hardly be further from emotionally. Oh, and did I mention I was living with treatment-resistant depression, and I was a single parent?

I might have screwed up far more than I did with my son if it hadn’t been for my childcare job. As the boys got older, they were somewhat in awe of my son, especially the older boy I watched. When my son was there the older boy wanted to follow him around and it was sometimes a challenge to help my son have private space when the boys were with me. I would usually see if my son could spend time with one of his friends during school vacations or days when I had the boys and my son was around.

I took those boys on many adventures during our days together, but our favorite pastime was finding cows. I’d drive them to farms and we’d visit with cows and read books about cows, and while other animals were included, cows ruled.

I don’t think I could love those kids anymore if they were my own, and I’m so grateful when I get to watch them now. The last few times I spent with them, the older boy has been questioning me about why they don’t see me that much. I explained that I had another job, and they have school now, and days that I could see them their schedule and mine didn’t work that often. He looked at me and said, “Well, we just don’t see you enough.”

So, I can’t get adult relationships right in my life, but I have a six year-old who knows how to work a room! Yesterday before I left he hugged me and said “I just don’t want to let go.” I said, “I know, me either!” The younger boy and I have a happy, loving, and super fun connection too, but the older boy knows how to articulate what he’s feeling, and isn’t shy about telling me.

I have to figure out how to spend more time with them because they’re going to be seven and five in a few months, and the opportunities to spend significant time with them grows slimmer with each year. While I so enjoy working with children, it can also be heart-wrenching.

I’ll be bringing my son back to college in a week, and he’ll be back home for Thanksgiving and his winter vacation, but he won’t be back next summer. We know we love one another, and our bond is solid, but he’s a man now – no matter how much I wished to keep him a boy – and I feel the grief about losing him rising up all over again. I don’t need to be consoled through platitudes or pity – not that anyone is trying to – but I do need a new purpose and I don’t know where to go or what to do yet.

Long Ago Summer Night

June 24, 2011July 20, 2011 / Hermionejh

Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad, by, Meatloaf, is playing on a humid July night. I’m reading Pardon Me, You’re Stepping On My Eyeball, by Paul Zindel, on the hood of a friend’s Chevy Cavalier, waiting for a few of my other friends to show up and decide what we’re going to do with the rest of the night.

It’s quiet on the Avenue, but I hear the strains of Meatloaf out of the jukebox coming from the bar next door, and I look up from my reading to watch the moths and other night bugs swirl around, looking like aberrant snowflakes in the street light above the car I’m perched on.

My shorts and top cling to me in the sticky humidity, and I hope we decide to go swimming in the Green River, or at the Leyden Glen. We had been removed from there by police officers the week before, but they couldn’t be there all the time, so we took our chances going back on hot, humid nights.

I had worked at, Zapmia Pizza (baby), earlier that evening, and was glad to be done with my shift on such a hot day. I was anxious to meet up with my friends, and hoped they would show up soon. Debbie was the first to arrive. I was so absorbed in my book that I didn’t notice her until she hopped up onto the car hood, causing it to buckle a little as she plunked down, but the hood popped back up as she shifted her weight toward the center next to me.

We exchanged greetings and then chatted about the book for a few minutes, and finally other friends started arriving so we made our evening plans.

I remembered this so strongly tonight that I could feel the night air around me as I did back then, and hear how the music sounded muffled until a patron went in or out of the bar and the music would blast out from the entrance for a few moments until the door was shut once again.

While I don’t miss that time of my life, and especially what was happening to me, I dearly miss my friends and the closeness we shared. A part of my soul is back there with them – maybe it’s even trapped in some odd space/time continuum – or perhaps less trapped than enshrined. I get to visit the museum exhibit in my mind, but it’s an empty picture of the vibrant life that was actually there.

They were the people who knew and understood me on a level that no one else will ever come close to, but they live on in my heart and soul, and I hope I live on in theirs.