31.
As people age, they get better and worse. They improve as they decline. They sink to new depths while they ascend to new heights. They become more beautiful and more grotesque. Smarter and dumber. Bolder and more withdrawn from the world.
The weeks and months become years, the same way boys and girls become men and women.
We walk the same route every day, discovering one afternoon that without realizing it we’ve memorized the number of sidewalk cracks between bus stop and house. Our friends no longer telephone us, they’re so busy. We only had two of them, anyway. The neighborhood children become automobile drivers, zip off to college, get married, die in scuba diving accidents—still nameless.
Favorite television shows get cancelled, replaced by inferior ones. But we watch anyway, to “give them a chance.” Magazines guilt us into resubscribing every year. We get turned down for major credit cards. We keep secrets. We attend work-sponsored Christmas parties. We revisit a few choice photographs that remind us how each passing day makes us less and less like ourselves. Dreams of success, of fulfillment—intellectual, spiritual, physical, emotional—fade into bathroom graffiti while the bank teller job that pays the bills becomes our newspaper, our connection to the world. Hair abandons ship. Boobs droop.
We turn cynical: “Sister Janice only wants to come over because I have the satellite and can get the World Cup games.” We turn lazy: “I’m not going to see that new Ang Lee movie. So what if Shalit called it ‘As important as Schindler’s List !’ I don’t care! Leave me alone while I empty my mower bag!” Being demanding is no longer a negative trait: “The menu says coleslaw. This is shredded lettuce and mayo!”
And how nice to finally be smart! How wonderful to have the time, at last, to think! To write, to mull, to live through reliving.
Sure, children possess admirable illness-recovery skills, excellent athleticism, endurance, and energy. And Lord knows they’ve got hope—buckets of it, full to the brim, sloshing everywhere as they walk. If you’re not careful, you might slip in it and break your neck. Hope is a potent fuel. It’ll keep you moving. But doggone if kids aren’t stupid as burlap. They can’t survive on their own. They can’t control their urges. They think like animals, if what animals think can be called thought.
Eat. Run. Kiss. Punch. Cry. Sleep. Betray.
Kids don’t even get that they’re going to die. How dense is that? And this stupidity doesn’t only afflict babies and toddlers—it infects grade school, high school, college. Basic skills like taking out the trash, paying rent, getting price quotes for a funeral? Don’t count on a kid!
But don’t count on adults, either. Just because they “know” things doesn’t mean they know what to do with that knowledge. A teaspoon of self-understanding doesn’t equal the recipe for happiness. Grown-ups can master the basics, but will they ever live in the bliss of childhood again? Never. Will they ever again know the thrill of possibility? Not likely.
Will they dream of sinning and wake up with smiles on their lips? Will they suck popsicles with abandon? Will they believe in themselves without worrying what the neighbors think? Will they just stop ? Stop looking at me that way. Stop taking pictures of the house. Stop calling. Stop sending threatening mail. Stop telling me I need to be forgiven. Stop writing about me. Stop peering into my windows. Just stop for a minute.
Will we have the opportunity to start over? A second chance where we might not hold onto every experience?
To live in the moment. To break all the mirrors in the house. To push a bully into a puddle. To ride a bicycle no-handed down a hill in winter. To descend into the basement and see what all that noise is about. To be wonderful. To be wondrous. To be worthy.
To erase that bewildering girl.
To steal a lungful. To taste her ripe mouth with no fear of damnation.