Ode to My Younger Self

Hard to write about aging, about being old now.

I remember my next door neighbor saying, so many  years ago, no more white clothing

after fifty.  When I asked why she just said because fifty is old.  She didn’t realize how

much OLDER old would actually become.

Since the pandemic, I’ve been teaching many writing classes on zoom to many

different groups. Some of them , my favorite writers, are in the Alte category.  This

week, I used a poem I like by Barbara Hamby as a prompt. 

Ode to My Younger Self.

You were beautiful and stupid though you thought
………. you were so smart, and in a way you were,
because you loved poetry and Beethoven and apples
………. but why did it take you so long to learn to drink coffee
and eat breakfast? And those boyfriends? Oh, well, you were young
………. and experimenting with everything–drugs, love,
dancing at lesbian bars, meditating for a month at a Buddhist retreat,
………. taking the train from Kansas City to New York,
and staying with a friend whose Buddhist master told her
………. you had bad vibes and not to stay in the same apartment
with you, the same guy who gave her a special stone
………. to put in her vagina to cure the bad vibes there,
and she wasn’t the weirdest friend you had, because that
………. would have to be Elizabeth, who when I see her
around town now and she’s skinny, I know she’s not taking
………. her meds and that tiger stalk of hers will end up badly for me
in the jungle of her mind, so I try not to make eye contact,
………. because more than anything I don’t want to put on
my combat boots and wade into her psychodrama,
………. and when I see young women walking down the street
with that lost look in their eyes, I want to say to them,
………. Don’t despair, beautiful young woman. You’ll find yourself,
and one day you will wake up and realize you were always
………. that person. But maybe I’m wrong, because some women
marry a guy who looks like a prince and end up in the morgue
………. or Refuge House or hanging themselves from the chandelier
in their rented rooms, because Time can be dangerous, so read
………. Middlemarch, young women, because George Eliot
can do your thinking for you until you get your own mind organized,
………. or Dostoevsky and Charlotte Bronte, who helped me navigate
the utter stupidity of my early twenties, and Keats and Garcia Lorca,
………. so in a sense, my younger self, you chose your friends well
though they were all in books, but Thomas Hardy
………. was one of your best boyfriends ever, wasn’t he,
because you spotted your Gabriel Oak from across the room
………. and was not pulled in by a Sgt. Frank Troy,
and Jane Austen, she taught you to hold out for what you
………. really wanted, and Virginia Woolf–she showed you how
to be a woman and a man in the same body through time,
………. and the Song of Solomon told you that love could be poetry,
so thank you for staying up all night reading and not going
………. out to bars, and I really appreciate that dance class
you took three days a week all through your thirties,
………. and after that the yoga. I’m feeling fit right now,
and I know I have you to thank, and those eleven years
………. as a vegetarian. You really took care of my heart.

I love the poem, and although it wasn’t as rich a prompt as Steve or Stephen,

still so many people wrote beautiful moving pieces.  In general, the advice fell

into two categories:  Don’t Worry, and Love More.

I have tried the exercise too and am still not sure, after a week of trying, what I

would say to my younger self.  When I was young, I wanted more than anything

else To Experience Life – to meet as many people as possible, to love often and

unexpectedly, to travel the world – especially to countries that were unfamiliar,

to listen to music all the time, and to hear live music whenever possible, to do work

that I believed in, to read books continuously, and to be open to all I didn’t know.

My parents, attentive and kind, were suitably worried when I issued a series of

absolutes that are only possible when you don’t know any better:  I would

never marry, never live in a small town, never stay in one place for too long, never

vote for someone who wasn’t radical, ad infinitum. 

I’ve been happily married since 1981.  We’ve lived in my small apartment for 50 years. 

And in a small upstate New York town for 37.  This year I will vote for Biden.

Maybe what I’d say to my younger self is what everyone else has said before. 

Forget worrying.  Love as much as possible.  You can’t predict what will happen.

And I’ve often thought about what my wise college friend Sue said so many years

ago.  Sue was the opposite of a health nut.  A dancer, even so she loved cookies,

chocolate, and ice cream.  Sue’s philosophy: No one ever says on their death bed I

shouldn’t have eaten all that ice cream so you might as well just eat it.

What would you say to your younger self now?