Act (or At) Your Age?

     What was that quote by Andy Rooney: It's a paradox that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.  Oh to be young, or perhaps the real wish is oh, to not be old.  Along with the physical (and possibly mental) decline, you  seem to lose that innocence and sense of adventure as you age.  You seem to ask far fewer questions, even something as simple as how does that work, or why should I take those pills?  Or, you no longer have people tell you that have a booger hanging out, or spinach in your teeth (yuck and embarrassing), as if that's just something old people normally have.  Older people don't seem to want to go far out of their comfort zone, nor as often since it'll probably be dark when they need to drive home; and more importantly, it'll be out past their bedtime!  These are all stereotypes, of course, but as a older person, I can attest to many of them as being somewhat truthful.  So I enjoyed what high school teacher Devin Kelly wrote in Longreads: It is a somewhat-scientific, often-disputed fact that learning gets harder as you age.  The brain becomes less plastic at a certain point, yes, but really what I’d argue is that adulthood sets in, and with it comes the monotonous mundanity of accepting the person you have taken into adulthood: yourself.  No longer does this world afford you, an adult who is supposed to have their shit together, the strangely wide and luminous space allotted to children, that whimsical and imaginative place where scrapes can be kissed away and where the letter A resembles aardvarks and where what is broken can be fixed, even forgotten.  As a child, you fly down the hill that once sent you crashing.  The number for poison control is on the fridge.  You don’t grow up until you had to.  And then there you are: grown up, your nature rooted, wide trunk in a storm.  Try to move.  You can’t.  You grow from the thing you are.  And always, you remain yourself.  Aw f**k.

     All of that said (a bit cynically), I occasionally go on a binge of reading children's book, not only for the imaginative stories but also for the wide range of illustrations, realizing that trying to write and illustrate a children's book, as simple as they may appear, and is in truth, likely quite difficult.  What story, what words, what graphics will capture a child's eyes, especially since an author is now looking through jaded, perhaps one could say, adulterated eyes?  How to keep that interest in little readers without talking down or up to the young readers?  Long ago I gave it a shot, my mind visualizing exactly how I wanted the words and artist's drawings to look.  And then my friend ran it though one of those programs that scan your text and reveal the grade level of the words used (most such programs are free) and lo and behold, my targeted first & second grade audience would miss most of what I wrote (darn algorithms).  My writing was apparently written at the 4th grade level, although my story certainly wasn't (the good news is that Trump would be able to read it since he speaks at the same 4th grade level, wrote Newsweek).  So it remains a pleasant surprise to find so many innovative children's books out there, addressing everything from being different in class (in many aspects) to staying curious without feeling too out of place.  

Nomura jellyfish.  Photo: Lucia Teru

      Here were a few misconceptions I carried that several children's books corrected: thinking that Mars was nearly as large as Earth (it's about half its size); thinking that winter happened when we were furthest from the sun [called the aphelion] and summer when we were closest (it's actually the opposite...go figure); thinking that Gilroy, CA. was the garlic capital of the US (it is, but 90% of our granulated, powdered, and bottled garlic comes from China); and thinking that plants and trees produced most of our oxygen (what they produce is almost immediately recaptured, the true oxygen contributor of our planet being an enzyme playfully called "rubisco"of which 11 pounds exists for every person alive).  Many of these questions came from books such as the This or That series from National Geographic.  By giving children a choice, each answer is described in more depth, then summed up at the end of each section by a child "psychologist" (who also happens to be a comedian, which alone is interesting).  Here's one example the book asked: Would you rather have living snakes for your hair like Medusa, or have multiple heads like Hydra?  And the answer: ...if you're like Hydra, you're extremely difficult to kill.  In Greek mythology, Hydra was a serpent-like monster with many heads.  If you cut off one head, two more would grow in its place, making it nearly impossible to defeat.  That's the situation with the pesky Nomura's jellyfish, found mostly in the waters near China and Japan.  Due to possible overfishing and rising water temperatures, this tentacled villain swarms in alarmingly huge numbers, disrupting water-treatment plants and destroying oceanic wildlife.  These jellyfish are nearly impossible to defeat, because when they are threatened they release billions of sperm or eggs that attach to rocks and later grow into more jellyfish. 

      Okay, some of you may be going "wow," while others of you may be shrugging and thinking, "big deal."  But wait, have you heard of T-rays?  Not as powerful as X-rays but terahertz rays still allow you to see through skin & muscle to your bone; and new chips are now about the size of a penny so you may soon be carrying that T-ray option on your smartphone.  Sprained your finger or did you break it?  Before long, a quick scan from the T-ray option on your phone may tell you.  Or who knew that the world's oldest windmills are located not in Holland but in both Iran and Afghanistan (they were used to grind grain).  Or that of the nearly 1500 species of scorpions, less than 30 have poison strong enough to possibly kill you (not sure I'd know the difference).  Or the books asking if you'd rather go 2 months without food, or 5 days without water?...those are the sort of tidbits that get kids thinking (and if you're wondering, humans can go as long as 8 weeks without food, but only 3-5 days without water).  One of the simpler questions came from another book titled How, which asked you: how come those store-bought balloons float and those we blow-up on our own sink?  Well, you knew about helium and it being lighter than air (and the squeaky voice you get if you inhale it); but what we exhale is carbon dioxide which is heavier than air (duh, Homer!...now it makes sense).

The Worry Stone.  Watercolor: Sibyl Graber Gerig

      All of this is to say that it seems that things being explained to you like that --whether by your mechanic or insurance dude or AI assistant-- is something seemingly being done less and less, whether because of our own lack of questioning, or simply because there's just a lack-of-time, thus those quick answers in doctors' offices when they go over your lab work.  You politely nod your head up and down as your blood work levels are zipped through as fast as a car salesman telling you that all those pages of text are just legalese and to just sign here.  What the heck do monocytes do anyway, and why are mine going up (no worries, I'm told by the doc.  All is fine.  Just sign here).  Long ago I remember a movie with Natalie Wood as a child being asked by a fella in jail, "and how are you little lady," to which she began a rather long explanation about her day going a little haywire and that she wasn't feeling the best and that she needed to...on and on, which is when the jailed fellow stopped her and told her that when someone asks you how you are, you simply answer fine and move on.  The little girl was puzzled and asked back, well why ask my how I am if you're not really interested in the answer?  Today's world can feel like that.  No time to talk or answer your questions.  Just sign here and be gone...we'll take care of the rest.  Next!

    Another Matt Haig book had his character caught in the "in-between."  She considered herself a failure, as she put it: Every move had been a mistake, every decision a disaster, every day a retreat from who she'd imagined she'd be.  Swimmer.  Musician.  Philosopher.  Spouse.  Traveler.  Glaciologist.  Happy.  Loved.  Nothing.  She couldn't even manage 'cat owner.'  Or 'one-hour-a-week piano tutor.'  Or 'human capable of conversation.'   And so, at the ripe "old age" of 35, she decided to swallow a bottle of pills and exit life entirely...only to end up "in-between."  Not alive but not dead either.  An in-between which offered her endless chances to see lives she could have had if she had made different decisions (if you haven't read it yet, the best-selling book rambles a bit and in my opinion, is far from his best).  But it got me thinking about that "in-between."  Suppose we were all born at the age of 35 --in-between life-- and had to then decide which way we wanted to go: to start back at birth and take our chances, or to continue on from 35 and, well, take our chances?

Imagine A Place.  Illustrator: Rob Gonsalves

    I bring that up because we all tend to lose that childlike innocence as we age, that wonder and mystery and excitement.  So putting myself in the role of a parent with a young child out on a walk, I pictured this sort of conversation: (child) Why is ocean water blue but my bottle of water is clear?  (me) It has to do with the refraction of light and... (child) What's refraction?  (me) Well, light waves come in many... (child) Like ocean waves?  (me) Sort of, but... (child) Why can't I see these waves?  I can see the ocean waves?  (me) I'll tell you at home.  (child) So how come my breath can warm up my hands, and also cool down my hot chocolate?  (me) Well, it has to do with ambient... (child) What's ambient?  Is that like the pill you take?  How come clouds aren't all the same?  How come the sky is blue but outer space is black?  How do we hear?  How do trees know when to stop making leaves?  And on and on...and that's all before the monsters come in.

The Widow's Broom: Chris van Allsburg

     Rebecca Solnit loosely quoted the jailed Marxist philosopher, Antonio Gramsci in saying: The old world is dying.  The new one is slow in appearing.  In this light and shadow, monsters arise.*  She goes on to add: ...in a phrase sometimes attributed to Pablo Neruda, "You can cut down the flowers, but you can't stop the spring."  A new world is being born.  In 1978, Thomas Berry wrote, in words echoing Gramsci's, "We are in trouble because we do not have a good story.  We are in between stories.  The Old Story --the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it-- is not functioning properly and we have not learned the New Story." ...That old story was shouted to drown out the other stories, and it insisted there was only one story, the Eurocentric story, the colonial story, the Christian story, the patriarchal story, the top-down story, the story of conquest and domination as progress.  That old story had at one time, centuries before, been an upstart story seeking to eclipse the previous version.  Much of the revolution of our era has come about when, through struggle and organizing, through memory and imagination, once-suppressed stories and voices are heard, their truth and validity recognized...Often, some of the genuinely new stories reinforce ancient cosmologies -- notably the biological science offering a view of nature that accords well with many of the premodern stories describing a more symbiotic, interconnected, sentient world that was and is often a more egalitarian one.  The increasing impact of contemporary Indigenous and non-Western, especially Buddhist, worldviews on the dominant culture is also significant.  If the very new stories and the very old stories have so much in common, then the overreaching story might be that somehow colonial industrial civilization was an epic mistake, or many kinds of mistake, a veering off course -- and at least some of us are embarked on an epic course correction, or at least a heroic attempt to make one, through stories and ideas that are seeds that become laws, practices, norms, and other parts of everyday life, and have succeeded, to a greater extent than is often realized.

     As with so many of you, most of my friends are now grandparents and seem to have dived into that role with glee.  Watching their 5-year old grandchild play soccer, or take swim lessons, seems to fulfill their day, all when they may have once felt that there was little free time at all.  Now, babysitting and picking them up from practice week after week seems to be no effort at all, as does changing Huggies or watching the same Pixar movie again for the younger ones.  And part of that is probably simply watching their imagination reignite our own questioning.  Their wonder of all that is around them, but especially their noticing all of the things right in front of them, the everyday, the things which we now feel are so ordinary that we somehow feel that we need not bother.  For me (with no children), something similar happens when I visit friends in memory care, one pointing out a man walking around the area at lunch and her telling me that she had accidentally hit him while driving home the other night (the facility is in lockdown so the possibility of her driving at all is nonexistent)..."but he looks okay now," she added, more than a bit relieved.  Where does that come from, that creative bit of reality that our mind uses to fill in the cracks in our world, to make sense of where we are as we grow and perhaps enter that world of in-between?

White cliffs of Dover.  Image: The Telegraph

    Which brings us back to being a child.  One of the bands I remember from Hawaii was a group called Seawind, in particular a song they titled Window of A Child: For you're a child, with a loving smile and eyes that shine far brighter than the stars up above.  You're a child, with a heart so pure and open arms embracing the whole world with love.  If man could only break his pride, and see the things a child can see, perhaps in time man will become the spirit he was meant to be.  Is that where we are in our world today, of having to make a decision on which way to go, whether back to a time of innocence mixed with colonialism, or to a time forward to a future headed somewhere?  As with children's books, the possibilities ahead may be endless.  So one final note from yet another children's book, this being on phytoplankton .  While in the ocean, those tiny creatures (so small that millions can fit in a single teaspoon of water) are not only food for so much ocean life, but also photosynthesize sunlight and make our oxygen, absorbing carbon in the process which helps to make their protective shells.  When they perish, they sink deep to the ocean's bottom but occasionally are washed back up to shore.  This has happened for eons.  When you stare at those white cliffs of Dover, what you're staring at isn't some mineral churned up from the Earth, but an unimaginable number of once-living microscopic entities, their shells now relegated to what we would label chalk or limestone.  Such is life.  But whether a grandparent or a person visiting (or being in) memory care, we should consider ourselves fortunate to just be on this journey we call life, to be old enough to both enjoy and perhaps even return to being a child.  The circle of life, something so well captured by Harry Nilsson: Remember, life is just a memory.  Remember, close your eyes and you can see.  Remember, think of all that life can be.  Remember.  All right children, enough?  Seatbelts on?  Whether smooth skies or turbulence, life is one heck of a ride for everyone...

                       

*The Guardian goes into depth about whether Gramsci actually said this at all, despite being so often repeated: “The time of monsters” powerfully sums up the repulsion and disbelief many people feel about the news in 2026 – whether it’s emanating from the White House, the Epstein files or the battlefields of Ukraine.  It evokes Goya’s famous etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters as much as contemporary pop culture.  “It has an apocalyptical feel, like when the Demogorgon appears at the end of Stranger Things,” said Peter Thomas, a historian of political thought and a Gramsci expert at Brunel University of London.  But in the notebooks that Gramsci filled with his thoughts on political theory, philosophy and linguistics after being imprisoned by the Italian fascist government in November 1926, there is no mention of monsters.  In the original Italian, he wrote: “In questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi più svariati.”  The most widely used translation of the Prison Notebooks, by the British academics Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith in 1971, renders this as: “In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”  Not quite so pithy.

Final note: My reading of children's books is nowhere close to that of the 125 children's books list put together by the NY Public Library.  Take a peek and see how many of your "classics" have made the list, and how many may seem brand new to you.  The books I featured in this post offered links so you could explore their titles, but they represented just a small sample of what's making the grade these days.  Stay young, in heart and mind!  We need that more than ever in today' world...