Sometimes my kids just hold up fingers to signal how many times I’ve told them that. They are grown men and sensitive souls, so they don’t intend offense. Most of our conversations are sporadic, minimal, our vocabulary as distinct as the difference between, say, English and Korean—except that, having grown up in the modern world, they understand English perfectly, whereas I’m lost in the sea of acronyms and references that separates us.
They talk to each other—repetitively, I might add—and tell me, convincingly, that they love me. When they’re really hurting, they spell it all out to me eventually, and to no one else, so I know there is a bridge across the chasm of age that separates us. But it’s a bit like the conversational equivalent of a one-way mirror.
There are so many things I want to say to them, but it would just be shouting against the wind across the void of time. They don’t want to hear it, don’t need to hear it, probably can’t and even shouldn’t hear it—so I’m stuck with banalities, and nagging warnings about ridiculously outdated concerns.
Maybe that’s why I keep having to repeat myself–not because my memory is failing, but because I keep feeling the impulse to reach back across time to give them something I know, something I’ve seen, some consolation they may not even need yet–but will need, oh yes.
Maybe old people gradually go silent because we finally accept that insight must be hard and singly won, that the key can only fit when the lock is discovered, when necessity drives—that the young will find their way, even as we must move forward, feeling our own way into the snowstorm of the unknown.
I’ve got a document going that I call Cake Crumbs, as in bread crumbs dropped in the forest to mark the path, only cake is more fun. The doc is
a compendium of things large and small that I’ve learned or discovered but that I know they won’t listen to. Now. But when they find it someday, maybe they’ll think, Wow the Old Girl knew a few things.
I love that title–cake is richer, sweeter, and more rare than bread. I have attempted something similar, but all I have are scraps of paper here or there with instructions to myself to make a more comprehensive list, including everything from sublime to ridiculous, mostly ridiculous because I think: crap–if I haven’t even told them to take their hats off at the table, how am I ever going to get around to the meaning of life?
Must get more organized!
Tears welling… You’ve very succinctly written what I have often thought, but never articulated, since I, too, am sure my two boys “don’t want to hear it, don’t need to hear it, probably can’t and even shouldn’t hear it…” Thanks!
Awww…I had a pretty good idea I wasn’t alone in this! Thanks for stopping by and taking time to comment: it’s easier to stay on the road in the snowstorm when you can see tail lights up ahead, no?
That tugs at the old heartstrings. You and your boys, however, have the greatest of bonds–you love each other deeply. Yes, they respect you, but the love you give them is greater than any lesson, whether heard in English or any other language. They are blessed to have a mom like you.
I will be sure to forward this comment to them!
Seriously, though, it’s a really good point, about love being the only gift that really matters and one that doesn’t require any language at all. Thank you for reminding me of that.
Do you know, I was thinking this only just the other day. Sometimes we can only hear properly with a particular perspective. The young will be older one day, and the they’ll understand: yet try as they might, they won’t be able to shout through the impermeable glass of experience, back at those young people they love.
Yeah–and I think it gets lonely at the front of the line, when most or all of your contemporaries have died and the only one ahead of you is God (substitute there your language of choice). On the other hand, that has its compensations: what better tail lights to look for in the snowstorm?
I think I’ll take myself to a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayan mountains when I’m old. I think being around really wise people who seek enlightenment would be favourite for the closing years
Now there’s an idea! I will start saving plane fare straightaway, and looking for one in the Himalayan foothills so I’ll have some hope of being able to make the climb.
Extremely poignant! Really gave me pause for thought. I agree with Kate…the Buddhist monastery sounds like a brilliant plan. Lovely essay on the process we must all go through!
Thanks for reading, Susan. Here’s something related that I wrote with my students yesterday in class; the prompt was “I want to…”:
I want to get my filing done before I die. I want to weed out irrelevancies, meanness, shit other people might have to deal with when I’m gone, old beliefs, former selves with whom I no longer wish to associate. I want to stop wasting time. I want to ruthlessly opt out of the superficial, which does not mean I want to stop having a good time.
I sense contradiction here–yet maybe reconciliation is still possible: past and present, shame and respect, youth and age, chaos and purpose. Self-indulgence and resposibility.
I think so. Maybe reconciliation is the work of old age, as some people say giving blessings is the role of elders. God knows we could use more of both. God knows–maybe–that age is the ripening fruit body of humanity. It’s a risk, for sure–losing mobility, and even one’s mind, in favor of spirit.
I want to be free to fully take that risk, because that’s what lies open to me: reconciliation and blessings.
I remember drawing water from the well when I was a farm child; drawing water from this well in front of me now is as rare, and as sweet. I want to let my bucket down, unwind the rope giddily until I hear the splash, and then hand-over-hand draw it up, pour life into an enamel dipper, and offer it to strangers.
It’s not your usual bucket list.
I love that bucket list. Just love it!
It’s funny that I thought about that well bucket for the first time in decades–gotta love the subconscious and the images it offers up! It’s always on the metaphorical job, isn’t it? I think half of a writer’s job, at least, is learning to trust that.
Sometimes I find it easier to write when I don’t triple think..overthinking just ruins everything!
For sure–the best writing seems to go straight from the heart down and out the fingers, without detouring north to the brain.
And then there’s the different sense of time the young have–even when those “young” are now middle-aged themselves. They seem to think there will always be time to catch up with mom or dad. I know I did the same thing when I was young.
Yeah, parents are simply, and rightly, not on the agenda when you’re young. I learn about my mother only as I pass through her stage of life myself. Of course she was never a talker, and even if it were somehow possible to run into her today, it might still be impossible to have a conversation even though we now would have plenty to talk about. I think I could hug her a little tighter, though, and she might suffer it.