Sitting in a Chair Watching Young People Do Things

I am at a stage of life where you sit in a chair and watch young people do things, like volleyball, basketball, soccer, presentations, plays, student Q&A panels at prospective universities. As I carry on this sedentary activity, I find myself returning in my mind again and again to a certain genre of thoughts. It’s this one room in my mind that is full of poignance and a sense of the passage of time. I sit there spectating and ruminating. There is a sweetness to it, like listening to the sweet sad songs of ruined troubadours. But I am reaching a point of saturation. I need to shake it off and maybe go do something myself. 

I signed up to run in the beerlay, if that counts, where you chug a beer immediately before running a two-mile leg of an eight-mile relay. A huge group from our parish is participating. I’m on a team of four. Goodness, I hope they are as out of shape as I am. 

I signed all my kids up, too. (The kids chug soda.) We came up with names for their teams: Underage Running, The Soda Creeps (David’s brainchild; he’s nine), and, my personal favorite, Pints With Pheidippides (Thank you, Classical Education.) 

One evening last week, my tweenage daughter Carolina wheedled  a couple of us out the door for a training run, and two others ended up following. I told them repeatedly not to wake the neighbors as the five of us spilled into the neighborhood. It was 10pm. The air was crisp, and I breathed it in with relish. The first part of the run was downhill to the bottom of the cul de sac. Carolina told me she was my coach and to not stop running on the way back up the hill. Then we walked across the front of the neighborhood where it opens onto the main road and did ten jumping jacks. Then we walked to the speed limit sign and sprinted back to our driveway. We did all that twice. Then my coach said we were going to do it twice more to make a mile. 

I said, “Oh Carolina, why? It’s late. You have school tomorrow.” 

She said, “Come on. Then you can brag to all your friends that you ran a mile…but don’t get vain…though I don’t think you can be vain about that.”

I did what she said, a little lamb in the hands of my eleven-year-old, cooperating, without the will, or maybe the energy, to fight it. It was easier just to run along beside her, (though I was informed it might not be considered “running” since she could walk as fast or faster, which she demonstrated.)

My thoughts went to a different place, as well. I felt the melancholy trailing out behind me, and in its place, inside my heart, was a wholesome gladness to be surrounded by such winsome young creatures rising up to take their place in the world. I had a sense as I ran behind them of the goodness of things as they are, the irrepressible goodness of nature growing up wild and abundant. I guess I just needed a different vantage point.

A New Place

I think I see that fertility lasts about the right amount of time. There is wisdom in the design. At a certain point, you are so tired you start to think, “It’s ok. It can go.” You begin to entertain the idea that this set of downy little cheeks puffing out sweet breaths on the pillow beside you is the last set. I suppose eventually you begin to writhe less at what you see looking back at you in the mirror. The softness on which they laid their heads is sweet, but its going starts to be less terrifying and heart-breaking. Because going on like this becomes less and less feasible. 

I can see that someone could feel this way. I myself am still holding onto a name we might call our next baby, if he comes, (or she, in which case we’ll need a different name.) But I’m stubborn. It won’t be too much longer for me, and I’ll let go. It won’t be bad to let myself fall, drifting down into a new and unknown place, like my friend who stopped coloring her hair. “It’s not bad to be old,” she said.

I see the auburn in her hair gradually fading, fading, and I see her children and their vibrancy growing, growing.  It’s odd that, sinking down as she lifts them up, she seems to grow more beautiful. I’m pretty sure she’ll end up so beautiful people will want to live in her heart.