On Age

I long for the energy that comes with youth – even the sturdy utility of middle age. My nights are clouded by the dreams of vitality, productivity, by the joys of a life active. Daylight falls and with it the pointed realization that last nights dreams will not be today’s accomplishments or even this week, this month or anytime soon. Such wonderful ideas for sustainability, for personal enjoyment, for boyish wonder. Things that up until but a few years prior were the objects of planning. The suns rise marks the acceptance of todays challenges and a scaled project list. Where days were planned around completions, of moving items off lists, todays ledger will record the quiet march toward accomplishment and the dogged determination to stay relevant, to somehow capture that spark of youth – the idea that while down, I’m not out; I still have a voice, a dream, a knowledge of the things that need to be done.

The nights are long and seem particularly cruel, as in one breath I acknowledge the difficulty but in the next the sweet taste of completion. Of crops grown from seed to table, of structures their cladding of pine and oak, reminiscent of settler times; the purpose to house livestock.

Even as these words appear on the screen I loathe their weakness. I curl my fingers into a ball and shake my fist at the timidity of spirit –

the blood of ancestors condemning the surrender to the march of time. “Yes” the memories whisper. “You are older, your body recovers more slowly, your strength will leave more quickly – but your mind is sharp, and your drive is proven. You have learned new ways to find the finish line. Keep on.”