Dichroic Reflections

age is relative

The following is verbatim from the ergfreaks community at LiveJournal:

"You were born in 1990? Good LORD! I feel so old! I was born in '84 and my little brother was born in '90. Of course now he's almost as tall as I am, but the point still stands."

I graduated high school in 1984. I realize someone out there is probably reading this and thinking, "She think's she's old??? I graduated high school / had children / was working for a living before she was born!" It may comfort you to when I say that no, I don't think I'm old at 37. If that 20-year-old collegiate rower stays with the sport after graduation, in a few years she too will be a masters rower and will look forward to aging because she'll get better handicaps.

We compete by age category, so if you're say, 45, you are a C and compete against all the other Cs. However, if a regatta doesn't have enough people in a category to run a separate race -- which happens more and more as the age increases -- they'll combine categories and handicap by age. In that singles race I lost on Sunday, the 2nd place finisher was a woman in her fifties who had a 19 second handicap over me. I could do much better in races with a 19 second handicap, and I hope that eventually I will.

There is also the common tendency to feel freer to speak out as one ages. I'm not especially looking looking forward to that, because I've been speaking out all my life. What I am looking forward to is having it be expected of me and more accepted in me.

I don't like feeling I'm becoming conventional and over-civilized; it's something I watch for in myself. It's a balance, though; being weird for the sake of weirdness is silly and being rude because you think you're too special to be bound by conventions is crass. The nicest thing Rudder has ever said to me was when he tried to describe me in one word and came up with "free-spirited". I keep thinking of Richard Thompson's "Beeswing" and its portrait of a free spirit grown old:

And they say her flower is faded now
Hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay
For the chains you refuse

She was a rare thing, fine as a beeswing
And I miss her more than words could ever say
If I could just taste all of her wildness now
If I could hold her in my arms today
Then I wouldn't want her any other way

The woman in the song gave up love for freedom. I don't want to go that far. I've chosen the chains of love, not to mention the boundaries of stable employment. If not for the former, I'd have been out of Phoenix long since; instead I'll be here until I convince him to leave with me. (There are worse places.)

This is one reason I like rowing: I can do it as long as I'm reasonably able -- we've seen rowers as old as 91 not only practice but actually compete -- and it rewards age with the handicap system. I refuse to regret aging (though I may regret some of the physical symptoms). An integral part of that, for me, is making sure I don't bore myself as I age, that I season and maybe even mellow but don't retreat from living. For me that means I need to keep a bit of a feral spark under whatever veneer or actual refinements are required for daily function.

I will take my motto from Shakespeare: "Though she be but little, yet she is fierce." Posted by dichroic at May 27, 2004 03:16 PM