When I was young, if I was young, I believed the lies about how age creeps up on you, setting in like a fog, oozing into your pores a bit at a time. I also believed Sandburg when he said that the fog comes in quietly “on little cat’s feet.” Well, neither the fog not the fog of age comes on quietly, not creeping, not oozing.
No, age leaps from hiding in the innocent branch of the willow and rips out the throat of your youth, fierce tiger, not gentle kitten. While I waited for the tiny lines, each signaling some new wisdom, the tiger raked its claws across my forehead in the night leaving deep gullies and yet no new wisdom. One morning, your skin is soft; the next hard and dull. As you dance one night away in heels and silk, you have no prescience that by morning your feet will only tolerate flats and that the bulky cotton sweater you saved from your last husband will now become your daily uniform.
I was going to be a star. I would write a vibrant dissertation that would astound my profs. Or find my voice at last and sing blues in smoky taverns. Maybe Christie-like disappear into Egypt to dig dinosaur bones. Age had other ideas. While I painted myself as the Renaissance Man, moving from dabbling first at academia, then at business, then on again like a bored but broke Gatsby, I missed that really I just wasn’t meant to be the star. While refusing to settle down, I settled sideways, never up.
There would always be time.
The tiger had other ideas.
No wiser, just older.
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
T. S. Eliot “Prufrock” |
5 responses to “Age and Ache”
It’s good to be old enough to appreciate this. 😉 I also like the poem very much.
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We all need something to be able to appreciate as codgers!
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Is it really age that attacks like this, though? Age itself is much kinder than are our grand expectations of who we will make ourselves to be. Limitless potential quickly becomes rapidly constricting possibilities.
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Ah, this may be true but whether it’s age or our own unrealistic view of ourselves, to me it will always be easier to attack the “other guy.”
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I’m all for externalization of blame!
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