Am I old?

Am I old?

I don’t feel old, not really. But have I grown old?

As I write this, I’m in my late 50’s. That fact alone may answer the question, for some. I have more health issues than I used to, that’s true. I find I look at some things in terms of the value of what I receive versus the energy I have to expend to receive it. Some may tell me that this answers my question as well.

But here’s the thing: I don’t feel ‘old’. I feel as though I’ve experienced a fair bit of life, and that’s a different feeling. I feel like I’ve learned a few things, about living life, about what’s important and what’s not, about how to let go of things that earlier in my life I refused to. And that’s what makes me ask the question. Am I old, or have I just begun to understand the long view of life?

If I’m honest -and I am, or try to be, always- I have to admit that there are times when my energy for a given day becomes exhausted, and that didn’t used to happen. Maybe once a month, I’ll find myself dozing off for thirty minutes or an hour in the evening, and that didn’t used to happen, either. So it seems clear that the boundless energy reserves of my youth are ebbing, and that’s probably a sign of the lengthening stream of years which have passed beneath the bridge. I can’t deny that truth. Does that make me old?

I understand now that hate and envy are blinders, which keep me focused on the wrong parts of life. I understand that rage burns me, not the other person. I understand that for all my filth and sin, Almighty God still wants me in His heaven. That makes me feel young, and valued, and loved. I understand that things are going to get worse, because God says in His Word that they will. So I don’t worry as much about the way my American society seems to be crumbling around me. I carried that burden throughout much of my life; I don’t feel it nearly as much anymore. My understanding of the things around me, of the way in which life unfolds, has grown, and continues to grow.

So perhaps the answer depends on how I choose to define “old”. By many standards of my little world, by the larger society around me…I am, in fact, old. Shall I choose to let that define me? To some extent, that’s not up to me. I am at the mercy of those with power, with authority over me. But to the extent I have the ability to define myself, I think I will continue to choose to see most of my life as not old. I say ‘most of my life’, because I don’t mind not helping friends move to a new home anymore, or not changing my own oil, or not being expected to run anywhere. I’m not opposed to taking occasional advantage of some of the benefits of having seen as much of life as I have. I miss hiking, which I did a little of during the misspent days of my youth, and just wandering in the woods. (A friend of mine is a stringer, a person who takes photographs, typically of local high school sporting events, or car accidents, or fires, and sells them to newspapers or websites. He laughingly commented, “Years ago I’d steal a glance or take a quick photo of the cheerleaders. Then nobody thought anything of it, but now I’m ‘Creepy Old Guy’!”) It’s interesting, and sometimes depressing, how merely the passage of years has affected how I’m perceived. I’m still the same guy, more or less. But the way others view me is different than in the days when I was twenty-five.

I choose to view myself as experienced. Older in years, yes, but perhaps a better consumer of the years that are to come. Hopefully a little wiser, as a result of the days I’ve already lived. A little slower on the video game trigger, but smarter about how to battle the bosses. A better person because of what my Lord has taught me, and maybe less concerned about the things that happen along the way, because I know He is control. I know where my final destination is, and I know I’ll be welcomed with loving arms when I get there. And that’s something to look forward to.

Ending Points and Starting Points

My teenaged son left home this morning.

I got up early, before the sun came up, to see him off. I watched his mother organizing his departure, the two of them trying to think of everything he should bring with him. After too short a time, we hugged, and then the two of them drove off into the night to deliver him into the care of others. It wasn’t an overly emotional parting.

Until after he was gone.

He didn’t join the military, or head off to college. He rode out to take an unpaid accountant-cum-manager position with five other young men; a rock band, embarking on a national tour of mostly local dives, in a stretch van, pulling a trailer filled with musical instruments. On their own for a minimum of a month. Possibly for four months, if things go “well”.

. . .

When I was a young man, a year or two older than he is now, I took off on a somewhat similarly hare-brained adventure. The woman who would later consent to be my wife and I drove across the country one cold January. We took nearly four weeks to do it, out and around and back. We were young and crazy and in love. It was an adventure, and I do love adventures. I expect our parents were quietly horrified then in much the same way I was this morning, although they weren’t my first concern back then, any more than I suppose my fears were in my son’s mind this morning.

I understand the allure of the open road. I have heard that call many times myself. I still hear it. Though my ability to send up an answering cry has been muted by age and the weight of responsibilities, I understand his young desire to see what’s out there. But the times in which we’re living these days are not as open and welcoming as they were thirty years ago. There wasn’t the fear then, or the desperation with which we all live and even take for granted now. People weren’t constantly afraid of losing their jobs, didn’t wonder where next month’s rent or mortgage payment or grocery money was going to come from, hadn’t yet begun to feel the constant queasy stress that grows out of continuing to fight the good fight because you don’t know any other way, even while a part of you knows you’re not winning anymore, and you haven’t been for some time. We didn’t see each other as potential competition, or even as enemies, back then. Times are different now.

My son’s version of this journey differs from my wife’s and mine in at least one other important way: We were the masters of our own fate, as much as two people can be. We were in charge. We shared the driving, we shared the decisions, we shared our souls, and we answered to no-one. We were all we had. But we were also all we needed.  We didn’t have a large amount of money, but we had planned and budgeted so we had enough for gas, food and lodging each day.  My son and his mates have ten dollars per person, per day, to pay for all of these things, an amount obviously insufficient for the task.  My son is intelligent, but he is still young enough to place no value on experience.  His fate is largely in the hands of the band members, people he hadn’t even met until four days ago. They are all involved in a business relationship; while friendships may grow out of their shared hardships, none exist now at the beginning of their odyssey.  Once upon a time, I was a member of a band. I understand the lifestyle. The thought of my son’s fate intertwined with the choices and preferences of these footloose musicians, still young and bulletproof, none of whom knows him and any of whom could potentially harbor ill will towards him…..frightens me.

In addition to the possibilities for adventure, my son took advantage of the opportunity offered to him as a potential career step.  He knows he will learn an incredible amount, both about himself and about the business of touring and managing a band.  There is no better teacher than experience, and he will gain an enormous amount of that.  At times, I fear he will gain more of it than he wishes, but that, too, is part of the adventure.  It has been said, and I also believe, that we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes.  I have prayed many times in the past week, asking Almighty God to protect him.  If it be His will, bless him with success also, but first and foremost, grant him protection, as he has now both grown out of and physically passed out of my ability to protect him from the hardships life can inflict on him.

And this is the other emotion wrapped up in this parting, for me.  I recognize that this trip will most likely signal the end of my son’s childhood, certainly in the way he views me as his parent.  No longer will I be Dad, the protector, the buffer between him and the Real World, the arbiter of what he can and cannot, should and should not, do.  Once he returns…..if he returns………….I will be a fellow adult.  My role will have become that of adviser, and no longer that of middle-of-the-night comforter, tosser of balls, chauffeur to league games, vocal supporter from the sidelines, provider of video games, slayer of orcs and leader of the hunting party, prodder to take his schoolwork more seriously, questioner of whether he’s been drinking tonight………….

I will be none of those things, anymore.  I will no longer be his hero.  I will be something less.  Less capable, less wanted, less consulted, less needed.  I will no longer be his teacher; I may be the one who taught.  Or I may be the one who failed to teach.  But my role, in those ways and so many more, will be for most intents and purposes…..

Ended.

It is a truth that tears apart the heart.

It is a truth, though.  It is the way things are supposed to progress.  You raise your children, and then you don’t.  You set them free, and then they have their own life to live, their own course to chart, their own mistakes to make and triumphs to achieve.  I understand this, and I accept it.  But it greatly saddens me to live through this transition.  I know that my overall relationship with my son isn’t over (God willing).  We will continue to be part of each others lives for many years to come.  But my role will have changed.  I will see him less and less, and I will be diminished by that emptiness, that growing distance.

And so, I strive to grow past my aching sadness. I sense that change is in the wind.  My role with my son, in many ways, is moving through an ending point.  But also a starting point, as I embark on the journey to find my new place in his life, and as he works out the questions of, as George Carlin once put it, what he’ll do for fifty bucks, and what he’ll do with fifty bucks.  I also begin a new and different post-child-raising era in my own life.  As I find new activities, new pursuits, to fill the spaces that raising a child used to occupy.  My relationship with my wife will change, and that is also a starting point.  My son is of course passing though ending points and beginning points as well.  The educational portion of his life has ended, and now begins the experience portion.  His career is beginning, possibly the first of many different careers.  He’s learning how to live and get along with other people in an (extremely) intimate environment, something he’s never had to do before.  He may have many things he has to give up in the weeks to come, many new choices, habits, skills he picks up along the way.  Decisions he must start paying the price for.

Change is in the nature of all things, save for God.  We usually have little choice but to go through the changes that are presented to us.  We learn, we grow, we may mourn what we leave, or are forced to leave, behind.  But we change.  And so my son and I are changing.  I wish him the very best the world has to offer, and hope I can help him through the times when he has to face unhappiness.  Because dealing with both is a part of being an adult, and that is now his lot in life.  In the fullness of years, I have learned that as both a father and as a person, there are times in life where I must step back, and let fellow adults about whom I care make their own choices, for better or ill.  My son is now a member of that group.

I was blessed with a first-born son, I have had the privilege of helping to raise him, and I am now proud to know the young man he is becoming.  The very best of luck to you, son.  I love you.

I’ve Become That Guy

I find that I’ve become that guy.

We all know one, or perhaps more than one.  The *ahem* older gentleman who always wants to dispense “wisdom”, remind his always-younger victims of ‘the way things used to be’, and generally makes it fairly obvious to those around him that he’s….old.

I certainly didn’t intend to become that guy.  In my youth, my father was that guy.  On this Fathers’ Day weekend, it occurs to me that perhaps all fathers are destined for that fate; to become fixtures who always want to remind anyone foolish enough to linger nearby that things were so much better when they were young.

Well, part of the problem is that things are better when one is young, simply by virtue of one’s…..youth.  I now begin to have a grasp of the visceral truth of the old chestnut that says youth is wasted on the young.  Youth gave me many things that only in the beginnings of their departure do I truly begin to value.  Life is better when you have the freedom of movement, of association, of societal and financial and geographic freedom that seems only available to the young.  Of course, money makes many things available, including many of these youthful freedoms.  But while the Good Lord has blessed me richly, He has not seen fit to bless me with any great wealth.  At least, not yet.  And so when I had access to those youthful freedoms, life was better, was easier to enjoy, and I was better at drinking my fill of it and bouncing back the next day, ready to search for more.  There was, is, an unstated (and possibly unappreciated) bliss to such times.

Perhaps it is also that youth is a time of relaxed responsibilities.  No car?  No problem, there are friends and buses and many ways of arriving at one’s destination.  No money?  Sad enough, but many of one’s fellows would be in similar straights, and together we always seemed to be able to find things to do, which either cost nothing, or cost only a pittance.  Sometimes one of us would pony up for all.  No date?  The fun was often in the hunt for one, and sometimes the flaming wreckage of a failed encounter was more memorable and more enjoyable than success would have been.  (Although almost always in retrospect, and rarely on the night in question.)  But it always seems as though when entertainment and diversion was desired, it materialized in one manner or another.

The previous century may have actually been better, as well, in some important ways.  I looked over at my wife recently, and we both agreed that things were slower decades ago, at least in the sense that no-one was expected to be on-the-ball all the time.  One could waste a little time now and again, perhaps even on a regular basis, and not feel bad about it.  There was time to sit for several hours and read a book, or to engage in conversation, an art that seems lost not only to time but to the ugly polarization of these current times.  Viewed through the rose-colored lens of memory, there was simply more time in every twenty-four hours.  Parents, for better or worse, stayed together once they were married.  One parent could usually earn enough to support a family, which meant that one parent was available to teach children their own version of right & wrong.  There was time to build communities, to volunteer for community service, to serve the common good, to play with one’s children, and so on.  Of course, it goes without saying that there were serious social ills during those years as well.  But there was time.  And of all the things we are short of these days, time is among the very few that no-one can purchase or earn or steal more of.

I’m not complaining.  I was given a full share of youth, and I spent it just as well or poorly as anyone else.  And my wealth or lack of it is at least as much my own fault as anyone else’s.  And so here I am…..that guy.  That old guy.  Looking around me now, and looking ahead towards days yet to come, and reminiscing that ‘back in the day’, things really do seem to have been better.

So, with a wistful sigh, I gather myself, and I set my eye on the here-and-now, and say with a certain amount of fondness…get off my lawn, kid.