Thursday, March 15, 2012

The Spring Rains

The spring rains continue, the real Oregon spring rains: cold, obstinate, and unhurried. No need for theatrical downpours or thunderstorms. These aren't piddly little continental rains that throw a tantrum and cry themselves out: these are rains that have settled in for the long haul. They have the whole Pacific Ocean to draw on, and months before the less-rainy season arrives: there is really no particular reason that they have to stop before July. They usually do, from time to time, but it's a matter of grace, not of necessity.

Deep breath. So accept the rain as a given, and go on. I don't usually bridle at it this way. Usually the rain makes me happy. But I'm off-balance, wanting to ride to work, but not wanting this head-cold to flower, wanting to change my life so that I live in the bright sunlight, convinced that if only the sun was out my will would work properly. I'm one of the least superstitious people I know, but my life is riddled with superstition.

Suppose that I lived somewhere the rain never stopped. I wouldn't pound my head against the wall this way: I'd simply accommodate it.

Tomorrow is my birthday: I'll be 54, which is a pleasing if rather large number. It means I've lived 9 six-year lives, or 6 nine-year lives: it means I'm twice as old as when I had my first child.

All my life before I had children is vague, hazy, unreal to me. I confess that sometimes childless people strike me as irresponsible and clueless, not really grown-up. What they do has consequences only for themselves, or for other people who – supposedly at least – can look after themselves. It's not an attitude I foster, but it's one I can't always avoid. Childless people aren't really any more in control of their lives than we are. it's just a little easier for them to pretend: to pretend that they make their own schedules and choose their own pastimes. But every adult has at least one wayward helpless person for whom they're held accountable.

The rain goes on. I keep an ear cocked for my cell phone. The cold is getting into my bones: I can feel the chill in the radial and ulnar bones of my forearms, and in my shoulder joints. It's as if my body was framed up with scavenged wire from freezer shelves: stale, icy and slow to move. The cold seems to come from the inside out. I huddle my coat over my shoulders and scowl. The warmth is grateful, but I'm moodily aware that I'm cold, not because it happens to be raining, but because I'm deconditioned. Sure, I have yet another plan for getting myself back in shape – this one predicated on eternal rain – but I more than usually acutely aware that this game of aging is one of losing one's conditioning and getting it back again, phase after phase, over and over, until finally the phase comes when you can't get your conditioning back, for one reason or another. And then you're truly old. And a bit after that you die.

Well. That's a gloomy point of view, and I can comfort myself with the fact that my father is not yet, by that reckoning, old. And if I'm counting properly, he's 27 years older than I am. And even my mother, miraculously, is still alive and well, though she is truly old, and has been for decades. So apparently I'm built of sound genetic timber. Still, I yearn to be back in shape. I hate this. I hate having to stock up on oxygen with a couple deep breaths before I can tie my shoes: I hate the faint lurch I detected last night when I was rising from my knees during a massage. I should be able to breath even when I'm bent over, and I should be able to rise from my knees as easily as a ferret lifts its head.

19 comments:

rbarenblat said...

(o)

marly youmans said...

A mole should watch out for a ferret lifting its head...

Murr Brewster said...

So many wonderful images, right down to the ferret. And don't second-guess yourself about us childless ones: you're absolutely right.

Sabine said...

Ah, the wet stuff. Don't let it get you down. The trick is to take rain for what it is, water, and not bad weather. It helps sometimes - and I've spent a lot of years in a country famous for its rain.

I am cheating, this is from the I Ching:
"Rain after all is only rain and not bad weather. So pain after all is only pain, unless you resist it when it becomes torment."

Someone wrote this down for me some weeks before I gave birth to my girl who now at age 29 does not want any children (yet?) for all sorts of selfless reasons.

Zhoen said...

Such gloom.

I have no children because I did not want to pass on my damage to them. And I don't really have a feel for children. Would you call that irresponsible? Not everyone can or should raise children, it's just different. Too many parents I've seen refuse to see it from a child's pov, become tyrannical, rigid. Such generalization and condemnation is not like your usual writing.

Dale said...

Nothing could be more irresponsible, ecologically, than having children! It's probably the most damaging thing any ordinary person ever does. I'm sorry it sounded condemnatory to you: I didn't mean it to. But, as Bernard Malamud put it, if you're a parent, the world has hostages. You're vulnerable and powerless in ways that I think the childless seldom imagine. If being grown up is recognizing powerlessness, recognizing vulnerability, then -- having kids helps that a lot.

Dale said...

Sabine, I should be immune to rain by now! We get a lot of it, and I've lived up in the genuine rain forest a bit north of here, too. This I think is a momentary aberration :-)

Dale said...

Zhoen, did you maybe misread the "every adult" sentence? I meant that every adult has himself to look after, which means that we all *do* have someone wayward and helpless to look after -- not that only caretakers are adults, which I see now is another very reasonable reading of the sentence.

Seon Joon said...

Happy Birthday (again ;))!

If the sun came out, if only the sun came... I've had a season of these kinds of days, convinced that if only some aspect of the environment would shift, I could shift my life with it... Ah, well.

Sabine said...

Happy birthday!

marly youmans said...

Of course, Malamud was tweaking Bacon: "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief."

You knew that, though.

Anne said...

Oh, Dale, happy birthday! The sun is shining brightly here -- just for a moment. I'm going to rush out and plant something quickly before the rain resumes. I agree about childless people. They think they have it all their own way. But then, when they get really old, they'll be really alone. Thanks for your kind words on my blog.

Dale said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dale said...

Anne, hugs, & I hope all's well! But I have to take issue a bit, childless people can tie themselves into community too, and none of us can really count on company at the end. This is a risky venture for all of us :-)

Dale said...

Marly, no, I didn't! I'm so delighted, I had a feeling that conceit had a longer pedigree than I knew about. And what a wonderful balance of the sentiment. I forget sometimes that Bacon, as well as being sometime my (and Blake's) bĂȘte noire, was a very intelligent man well worth listening to.

Lucy said...

Happy birthday Dale.

Might take up the clueless, irresponsible, not really grown up (with a sad and lonely old age for which I've no one but myself to blame thrown in) theme at some point.

Or I might not.

Dale said...

It's always the ones who need not take it to heart, who do :-)

xoxo

Zhoen said...

"sometimes childless people strike me as irresponsible and clueless, not really grown-up."


That was what got up my nose. Especially since my own father was a childish bully.

Dale said...

Yes, I get that. Sorry. I wasn't saying they *were*, you know, only that they sometimes seem that way to me. Envy, mostly, I expect.