Burying My Youth

I recently came upon this quote from George Elliot while reading Alix Shulman's book Drinking the Rain: "When I buried my youth, I immediately felt 20 years younger." Having turned 50 this year, the quote resonated for me and I found myself asking, "What does it mean to bury your youth?"

Now, I'm not one to get overly dramatic about celebrity deaths. We all die eventually. However, as I was contemplating what it meant to bury my youth, and what it meant to turn 50, Prince died. And I had a reaction. And I tried to suss out what my reaction meant. It wasn't a tearful reaction, but it was palpable. This musical icon of sexual awakening from my teen and young adult years had died. Then I thought back to a moment earlier this year when I saw the new Star Wars movie and they killed off Han Solo. There, too, I had a reaction, one that seemed a bit larger than the moment might warrant. In the case of Han Solo I sobbed. I felt as if a part of my teenage self had been skewered by a light sabre, too. The death scene felt right, as it should be, but it was devastating in a strange way that I couldn't quite explain and that seemed silly when I tried to put it into words.

So when Prince died, while I didn't sob or really get particularly tearful, I did feel a compelling desire to mark the moment, dramatically. I blasted his music and felt it had to be blasted, not just listened to, and the windows of my car had to be rolled down to send the notes spiraling up into the world. I felt I had to wear purple and paisley. I wanted to post lyrics from his songs on my Facebook. Some part of me watched all this and said, "WTF, McGean?"

Is this part of burying my youth? This step by step process of watching idols die and thereby being reminded that none of us are immortal? When those icons of my youth die, it seems some piece of that youthful self goes, too. "What?" she says, suddenly looking up from her high school dances or her spins around the roller rink or her anguished diary entries or endless phone calls with friends or late night college conversations, "What do you mean, dead? Those people don't die, because I don't die. I am now. I am here. Forever."

In fairness, that self had her wake-up call many times over - first when a friend drowned while I was in high school, then in wave after wave of shock and grief during the AIDS epidemic. You'd think she'd have learned this lesson. And yet, she still seems surprised. Back then, she was outraged. Now, she seems to blink, startled, and look about like a small animal that finds itself in the midst of a shopping mall under construction when mere days earlier, it was a nesting ground. "Umm, why is everybody leaving?" she asks, as if she's at some dorm party. "Where are they going? Should I go, too?"She is puzzled, intrigued, confused, and fading. She's fuzzy around the edges. She's lost her relevance but she doesn't realize it. And yet, she still wants to give me things. She wants me to hold on to the parts that matter. She suddenly realizes she has to leave me legacies, she has to make a case for the things she wants me to keep because she's going away and can't be their custodian anymore.

This past summer, I decided to fully embrace the burial of my youth, to take a proactive stance. I remade my home office, where I do most of my writing, by replacing the futon couch, one of the first pieces of "furniture" I had ever owned as an independent young adult, with a magnificent purple love-seat. I rearranged the furniture. I massively decluttered, taking a great many things to Good Will, including many of those talismans of youth that no longer belonged in my life or world. I had several old sculptures I had made but never fired, pieces I had preserved in the safe, dry world of my home over twenty years and multiple moves, including one nude of a former boyfriend and lover. I chose a couple to keep, pieces that still truly spoke to me. The rest I placed in carefully chosen empty pots in my garden, knowing that Portland's rainy season would slowly and organically wear down the unfired clay, which it did, gradually transforming the pieces into shapeless lumps, and that process felt right.

I went through piles and piles and piles of papers and files - well more than twenty-years worth. It was an emotionally wrenching and exhausting task that is not yet finished but allowed me to free up space, physically and psychologically. I went through my bookshelves and gave away piles of books and carefully curated those I held onto. I took things off the walls and hung new things, putting the old art into storage or giving it away. I took photos of a few things I wanted to remember, while letting go of the physical objects themselves. This herculean effort had the complete support of my beloved husband, who helped me find new things and held my hand and gave me hugs as I trudged through the most draining parts of the effort.

When all was said and done (at least, done for now), I had created a soul space that felt so inviting, so warm, so energizing, so healthy, so right for me now that I want to hang out there all the time. It has become a place of creative renewal, a place for healthy reflection and centering, a place of safety and of comfort against new storms. Without ever having made a resolution to do this, I managed to create something externally that met a deep and urgent internal need.  I buried my youth and gave it a proper send-off, and in the process, as Elliot implied, I found myself lightened and reinvigorated.

The Paradox of Age

I've been thinking about youth - the energy, confusion, struggles, and amazing vision that can come with being young, specifically that strange period from roughly 18 to 30.  I seem to have a number of people in my life right now who are in this age range, and I am constantly amazed, in awe and sometimes frustrated by them.

Full disclosure, I am 47, closing in on 48 (this week!).  I sometimes feel like a dinosaur, though my older friends would, of course, dispute that fact.  I have entered the stage of life when you fall effortlessly into lengthy conversations that begin with the words "Remember when."  The impulse to reminisce seems very powerful at this point in my life.  I engage in a lot of involuntary grunting and other vocalizations when I get up off the couch or out of the car. I'm in good shape, and yet I seem to have a variety of random injuries and odd health quirks that were never there before. Most of the time, in my head, I don't feel so very different from who I was when I was younger. Then something will happen that pulls me up short and reminds me how very different the view looks from here, and how very different the pilot of this ship called my body is now. The agitated struggle feels calmer, the reality of mortality more inevitable, the truth of physical limitations undeniable, the need for approval less insatiable, the warm glow of small joys burnished brighter by time.

Recently, there have been a spate of articles about various generations - Generation X, the Boomers, the Millenials, and other labels I haven't fully retained because I've come to the conclusion that they are just that - arbitrary labels. The sad thing about attempting to draw these careful generational distinctions is that it seems to be giving in to the worst of our human tendency to define, and segregate, ourselves by our differences. These generational articles all seem to amount to mud slinging from one generation to another.

I see it in myself, the way I sometimes get unreasonably annoyed by a new fashion trend (cutesy animal hats on adults, for example), or inestimably frustrated by a particular  attitude of someone younger than me, or a younger person's failure to grasp or understand some part of who I am. It is the nature of youth to push, to question, to demand, to assume, to point out what it sees as the failings of the older generation, and to have knowledge gaps that prevent a full understanding of that generation. On the other hand, it is the nature of age to see youth from the outside and find fault in what is essentially a work in progress. The hard won knowledge and experience that comes from sticking around life long enough to reach middle age or old age is something we demand acknowledgment for, and burn to share. Meanwhile, the younger generation demands the chance to prove its strengths and talents, and craves the ability to strike out on its own and define itself separate from the influence of the elders, at the very moment when those elders most crave recognition and acknowledgment of their acquired experience.

How can these two sides ever come together? Really, truth be told, it's more than two sides. What we're talking about is a prism, a diamond, its many faces made up of the many different perspectives that come not only from different time periods but different  circumstances and personalities. When we are able to let go of the us vs. them attitude and reach out across the gaps of years to connect with people from a wide range of ages, our lives can be so much richer. I envy and celebrate the incredible energy and optimism and can-do attitude of youth. I honor and rejoice in the depth of knowledge and the courage and wisdom only evident in seniors. I cannot help laughing and marveling at the special perspectives of children. My world is made better by the connections I have with people from every age.