I Know Where I'm Going

A hospice colleague once advised me to imagine that I was burying all the suffering I had encountered deep in the earth. I had no idea what she meant. I was stretched to capacity trying to be present to the depth of the pain of many patients. "Give it over to the earth," the nurse said. She, the one we call Gaia, is the greatest witness to decay, to struggle, to death. She will receive it and transform it into new life.

At the time, I was clueless. I knew nothing about the source of hope in the woodland counterpoint of the birds, the wildflowers welcoming the bees, the joy of the grass drinking the rain. The earth itself was and is increasingly under siege, of course. But since that time, I have discovered that in spite of the earth's own suffering, the briefest embrace of her extravagant generosity and resilience has the power to inform me and straighten me up when I start leaning into despair.

No choice is more defining than the choice between hope and despair. We are, in this time of orange skies over the Golden Gate and masked children learning their multiplication tables, called to make this decision every minute of every day. Should I acquiesce to the awfulness, admit defeat or should I make way for ducklings, write postcards to Michigan, take the time for my fingers to tango with a dragonfly visiting on my MacBook? It has been revelatory for me to observe how easily I cross over to the dark side. I've always thought of myself as a basically optimistic person, even posting on this blog on December 19, 2016 speculating that I inherited this tendency from my father. "I have friends whose fathers survived the Holocaust and friends whose fathers were blacklisted," I wrote. "Mine was neither. I am a child of optimism, raised in a household blissfully ignorant of rage and despair. I have no prior training in catastrophe." This was six weeks after the last election, before the forecast fully clarified the velocity of the advancing storm front.

Now, I am being tested. We are all being tested, no matter how many times we're told that despair is a luxury we can't afford. I find when I'm honest with myself that I am sometimes resistant to hope. Returning to my origins again, I see that despite my well-intentioned, gentle family, I was still a child of the city, imprinted by the hard edges of the sidewalks, the racket of the subway, the fear in the dark streets. And I'm late to the party. While I was walking through the urine-soaked tunnel to transfer from the IND to the Broadway local at 59th street, catching a Godard double feature at the Thalia, the grass was trying to grow under my feet, the crickets were chattering. Understand that coming of age in Manhattan, I had no idea that the natural world existed except as a place upstate I was forced to go to on airless July weekends when it was considered salutary. The countryside was associated in my mind with polio. People went there, then as now, to escape the virus.

I didn't know it, but I was alienated from the earth. Well into my forties, I cherished a romantic image of myself as an exile in this world, complete with pallor and dark circles under my eyes. The city, for all its throbbing diversity, its art, its language, had imprisoned me. It has taken that snake a long time to shed its skin, to let go of the scales of cynicism and separation, to take up the mantle of creatureliness. Now only the insistent green of my soft, caressing late summer walk comforts me in the midst of the nightmare and greets me like my cat used to do waiting in the window for me to come home. I have received a gift late in the day. It tastes like soup and smells like babies. It sounds like the bedtime story I don't remember hearing from my mother. It gives me a glimpse of hope and offers me the grace of belonging in the world, belonging to the world.

Please share your thoughts regarding this post and my 2019 book Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement by writing to me at seventysomething9@gmail.com. I will also reply to comments posted on this blog, so check back if you choose to carry on the conversation here.