HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Today I turn fifty-five. Fyller år as it’s known here in Sweden, which translates to ‘filling a year.’ So today, I fill fifty-five years.
I’m older than I ever intended to be, said the great Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago.
I will never grow so old again and I will walk and talk in gardens all wet with rain, sang the equally great Van Morrison.
I think it’s a fair interpretation of both these quotes, to suggest that the old age they speak of is more in the mind than the body. Time after all is un-equivocal. We could never really not intend to be older than we are. Days pass, years turn, we are all, as William Wordsworth noted, ‘rolled around in earth’s diurnal course.’
And a chronological age isn’t something that can be reversed either, no matter how many gardens, and how wet with rain they are.
So, yes, it’s fair enough to say that we’re talking about a state of mind here, which brings me to the photograph I chose for this blog.
That’s me, in a towel, fresh out of the Baltic sea, the sun rising.
I chose this photograph because aging is so often accompanied by a sense of reduction, of things decreasing. And in its most essential state, this is true. Muscles atrophy. We wake in the mornings, stiffer and more cramped than a year before. Our memory can’t seem to hold as much, or work as quickly. Shoulders round, droop. And things that were entirely possible in our youth, now seem entirely impossible.
HOW WE GROW OLD
On Twitter, just the other day, I was talking about a shark dive I did in my thirties. The memory is vivid, great bloody tuna heads, steel-gauntlets on the Dive Master’s arms, the rush of water parting as sharks swooped in from behind, and the sound of my breath through the respirator. Nowadays I think I could fly to the moon, just as soon as dive with sharks.
- Leaving the house after dark to attend a Jazz class is an effort I don’t always make, this is shrinkage.
- Every year it takes me longer to lower myself to the floor and attempt, for an excruciating minute, to sit crossed-legged, this too is shrinkage.
- Choosing the same ingredients, to make the same dinners, is shrinkage.
So back to that photo. Look closely at the sea behind. It’s frozen, and even when I was shark diving I was never doing anything as wild as breaking ice to swim. I’d never have dreamt of stripping to a swimming costume, in the middle of winter, in the middle of Stockholm!
And that, my friends, is the opposite of shrinking. It’s enlargement!
It’s the reversal that Van Morrison vows to retain, and it’s real. I truly believe that cold water swimming, wild swimming … however you want to name it, has become so popular amongst a certain age group for this reason alone. We are pushing out the boundaries of our middle age lives, we are holding back the walls, we are – if only for a few minutes- reversing the process. It’s a fact that we leave the water enlarged and as – temporarily – invincible as any unlined or untested Adonis, or Athena. This is why on my 55th birthday I chose this photograph.
NEVER SAY NEVER
Birthdays are a time of reflection. We ask ourselves what we might have done differently, and what we might still do. Maybe most importantly, what we’ve learned. Here’s my offering.
- I’ve learned that the only unnegogiable constant in life, is the sun and the moon. Everything else, is a choice.
- I’ve learned to listen.
- I’ve learned to lower and soften my voice, so others are more inclined to listen to me.
- I’ve learned how vulnerable love renders you.
- But most of all, I’ve learned never to say never.
There we are – we get there eventually! Never, say never.
- Because at 26 I never imagined I’d find myself sleeping in the bowels of a massive cruise liner, teaching aerobics to bemused passengers who loved my British accent and found my hangovers hysterical. I didn’t even like aerobics and I certainly never went to the gym. I was 28 and slim as a pin. Who needed a gym?
- At 30 I never imagined I’d be selling steam irons (500 in ten minutes!), on a TV Shopping channel.
- At 33 I never imagined I’d be flying over Angel Falls, in Venezelua in a six-seat Cessna, as creaky and rusty as a 1962 Morris Minor, with a pilot barely out of his teens who read the paper (and piloted) all the way back!
- At 35 I never imagined I’d be given the most precious gift of twins: a boy and a girl.
- At 40 I never imagined I’d go to University.
- At 44 I never imagined I’d move to Sweden and have another baby! (I’m still struggling to work that one out.)
- At 55 I never imagined I’d be slipping into icy water as easily and as rounded as a seal.
HOW TO STOP GROWING OLD
The only way this is possible, the only way to never imagine or construct an image in your head, of an imagined future, is to take Van Morrison’s advice. Decide to never grow so old again. Never mind your bunions, or your wrinkles, you can do this by holding your mind open to every opportunity that crosses your path – because you’ll never know where that might lead. And at this stage of life, where so little is new, isn’t that wonderful?
I’ll end here. I’ll keep trying never to say never. And although I might still make a list or two, I won’t bother too much when those lists get scribbled over with Milk! or Bread! Or Get chicken out of freezer!
I sincerely suggest you do the same
