Age with grace.  That’s what they – not that I know who they actually are – say you should do.  Age with grace.  Now I’m a pretty smart woman but I am going to confess I haven’t got a clue what that could possibly mean.  Age with acceptance; okay I can do that.  I get that I’m getting older… but then I’ve been getting older my whole life.  One day at a time … one year at a time. Now if you don’t mind I’m going to digress for a moment and talk about time and then I’ll get back to this aging thing.

The malleability of time, that way that time stretches and shrinks.  An hour sometimes feels more like 5 minutes and sometimes feels like five  months.  I am noting all the time that one of the strange things that seems to be happening for me – with time – is that the hours feel as if they’re passing gently and slowly but the months and years seem to be going by faster and faster.  Unless they’re in the past.  For instance, was it only a year ago that I was walking in Antarctica?  It seems like many years ago.  Not in the sense that  I’ve stored it away in distant memory but just the opposite; because it feels like that experience has been a part of me for my whole life.  Was it only a little more than a year ago that I closed my office door for the last time?  It seems like several lifetimes ago.  But when I think about something in the future – something I’m really looking forward to, like dancing at my niece’s wedding – I know that the months between now and then are going to fly by far too quickly.  I decided to make something for the bride and groom (sh – don’t tell them) and I know accordian-time is going to work against me.  So what’s this all about; this increasing plasticity of time?

Which leads me to thinking that if I’m experiencing time this way there are others who are aware of it too and – even more – there have always been others who experienced this.  Does everyone?  I don’t know.  I do know that it makes me think about everything I ever learned called ‘history’ a different way, because if our perceptions are so easily toyed with how do we have any idea whether or not the stories we’ve been told about the past – from  folks calling themselves historians – really occurred the way they’ve told us?  Hey – this may explain Sarah Palin and the related syndrome ‘acute palinysteria”.  It’s time distortion – she’s able to inspire people to follow her proudly into the past.  And who better to be a major sponsor and supporter of  how to foster broad panic and fear than Fox News (to use the term ‘news’ loosely).  Just like the toystore chain, Fears R Fox.

Okay – enough.  Back to this graceful aging metaphor.

I’ve been going to an exercise class almost every morning for an hour of physically and mentally gruelling activity … all in the name of good health.  Pretty much I’m likely the oldest person in the room except for Ashlee who drives us into victory.  I’m delighted to be there,  And then the class begins and within what seems like split seconds (see – there’s that time thing again) I am struggling to keep up and wipe away the beads of sweat which are dripping into my eyes.  The sweat teases me when I’m doing yoga, into my calm comes the sound of drip, drip, drip.  I’m going through about 2 litres of water every class which means I’m taking little breaks from the high level activity – always marching along in place while I try to slowly drink.  But that doesn’t bother me so much; maybe it’s not my age but – more likely – it’s that I have let myself get quite ‘out of shape’ this year although I’ve had more time than ever before to be active.  Hmm … something to think about later perhaps.  See – there’s that time thing again.  The time it takes to gain 10 pounds always seems so short that you’ve hardly even noticed it passing but the time it takes to lose those same 10 pounds seems neverending.

I could be graceful about having a little less stamina.  I’m there, I’m doing my best to keep up and get stronger again.  Winning the race has never been as important to me as pushing myself beyond my own expectations so why would I worry about whether I win the stamina race now or not … indeed I concede to whoever wants to claim it.   But what about the fact that I realize that when I’m learning something new it feels as though I have to learn a whole new language.  I realized a few years ago when I took a Spanish course in preparation for travelling to Cuernevaca to a cooking school that it was much harder to learn a new language now than it used to be; I could retrieve a vocabulary of several hundred words but couldn’t spontaneously put them together into sentences for the life of me.  It was little better than point and grunt if you know what I mean.

And that’s just the half of it.  The other is that the number of times I have to see something - and try it – and see it – and try it – before my body has actually learned it seems to be increasing rapidly.  I spent last weekend at a Sacred Circle Dance gathering and although I was mostly able to keep up (4 hours Friday evening, 9 hours Saturday, 4 hours Sunday before going  home; the picture’s a candle set in sculpted ice that we placed in the middle of the room to help us keep our ‘circle’ and you can even see some feet dancing by)) but learning the dances – which were quickly taught before we danced – was harder and took a lot  more focused concentration.  If I lost concentration for a moment my feet would lose their way.  What was really hard was the late night dances which weren’t taught at all – they were just danced.  I found that I could dance along outside of the circle following somebody who was a good dancer and within a few repetitions that used to be enough for me.  Now I’m standing there trying to remember a string of words that describes their steps because I don’t seem to be able to just take it in.  This I’m not taking gracefully.  This is directly, for me, about grace and dancing means too much to me to sit it out.  No sirree, not me.

So I think I’ll just rage a little bit about how it’s getting harder to learn new things and it’s getting easier to forget that I haven’t learned it … along with forgetting appointments, or what it was that I needed so badly I’d bundled up, cleared the snow off my car,  and drove to Loblaws for … . going up and down aisles hoping it would pop back into my mind and somehow managing to half fill the cart and still not remember what I came for.  Meanwhile, I’ll keep on going to those exercise classes – and enjoying them – and I’ll definitely keep right on dancing.

This is my first official rant about this aging thing … and I’m not going gracefully!