Welcome to Amsterdam

In the early years of raising my son who has cerebral palsy, I subscribed to a magazine for parents of children with disabilities. The magazine was full of information about dealing with schools and physicians, and the tone was resolutely upbeat. One particular article stands out in my memory, four decades later. Can’t find it but here is the gist:

Imagine you’re on your way to a vacation in Paris. You’re excited. You pack your bags and your passport, and your flight goes smoothly. But when you land you realize you’re not in Paris. You’ve arrived in Amsterdam, and that is where you’ll spend your vacation. It’s not a bad place; there is plenty to see and learn. It’s just different than what you expected. And if you spend your time wishing you were in Paris, you’ll miss out on everything Amsterdam has to offer.

 That framing meant a lot to me back in the 1980s, as I strove to maintain a positive attitude about the challenges our family faced. And recently that framing became relevant again, but with a twist.

You see, I just had my Paris vacation. My sixties were better than I could have imagined. I literally went to Paris, for the first time in my life. I dated men and women, was polyamorous for a while, and wrote Elderotica with my friends. I blogged, I wrote essays for publications. I waved goodbye to corporate life and became a novelist. I also became a grandmother. I took up weight lifting, swam, danced, and had more energy than I did in my forties. I actually learned to cook. I kissed a lot of frogs and met my Prince. We bought a five bedroom house on two acres and I had no trouble keeping up with the gardening.

That was Paris: My sixties. What a trip!

Amsterdam or …

Now I’m seventy. Welcome to Amsterdam. Things are different here. It’s not bad; there is plenty to see and learn. But it’s not Paris. I go on long walks, but for now my cardiologist has banned me from the gym. I can keep up with gardening only

part of the big yard. I can take care of my toddler grandson for a week, but it tires me more than it would have ten years ago.

But on the flip side, not going to the gym means more time for writing and editing. I can tackle that pile of To-Be-Written books more quickly. And I get to kiss my handsome prince anytime, with both of us retired. You know that line from Leonard Cohen: “Ring the bells that still can ring.” To focus on what I can do now is the essential blessing.

When I was sick for a couple weeks in March, I stayed in bed and wrote all day. No errands, no laundry, no gardening. It was surprisingly pleasant. It made me think ahead: that when I get there, being in my eighties might not be so bad. I said this to another crone writer and she took issue with my characterization of the next decade.

“My partner is in his eighties,” she said, “and he hikes every day.”

Fair enough. When you’ve met one eighty-year-old, you’ve met one eighty-year-old. You never know where you will end up. Perhaps I’ll spend the decade of my eighties in Brussels.

Life Review

And what will Brussels look like? I’m getting hints. Last Friday I met with my weekly meditation group (all women, in our seventies on up). I mentioned that I’ve been having flashbacks to various memories and am not sure what that’s about. Ah yes! the older women in the group said. You’ve started your Life Review.

I had never heard of Life Review, but it turns out to be this sort of quasi-mystical process where you revisit your life. Some people claim it happens in the last few minutes before death (which is not where I am just yet). A Life Review is supposed to provide enlightenment. But in my case, the memories are not the kind that would enlighten anybody.

Example: I was about to leave the store the other day, had just rolled my empty grocery cart into the rack, when I flashed back on a time twenty years ago when I accidentally left a sixpack of beer on the bottom level of the cart. When I went back for it, the beer was gone. Why that particular memory? What kind of enlightenment is that?

Some of the memories that pop up so vividly aren’t even mine. Today I had lunch standing at the kitchen counter. My partner walked by and asked, “Why are you eating standing up?”

“I like eating standing up. It’s easier to swallow.” And suddenly it was 1944 and I was listening to a doctor tell my mom’s nursing school class, “The best way for someone with a hiatal hernia to eat is standing up with their plate on the mantel.” Again, how’s that for deeply meaningful? What keen philosophical lesson about the purpose of life resides in that fragment from before I was born?

Maybe the lesson is that every moment lived, no matter how banal, has held meaning. Or maybe the point is that for a writer, all these random memories are gifts–tiny down-payments on future books. Maybe, if I begin capturing all these glittering fragments, I’ll have plenty of material to keep writing in my eighties. Maybe it’s time get a notebook and write on the front in big letters, “Memos for Brussels.”

None of us is living the life we expected, in whatever decade of life we visit. But the life we are actually living is material for the books we write while we are here.