mid-summertime pause, reflect, recommit

I've asked these questions, or some variation of them, before -- many times! And it occurs to me on this hot mid-summer's night that now is a good time to ask them once again.

So, here I go--

Why commit one’s self to intentional aging? (Why commit one’s self to the discipline of intentionality?) Why “intentionality” and not something else?

How does practicing intentionality allow us to think and feel? What do we think and feel and do from the basis of intentionality?  Does intentionality function most optimally in balance with other capacities, other modes of consciousness? How does intentionality connect to critical reflection and mindfulness? How does intentionality connect to praxis?

(What other strong ideas might be nested with “intentional”: Critical? Contemplative? Reflective? Playful? Radical? Improvisational?)

How do we know we are “intentionally aging”? How would others know (and does it even matter if others know?)? Another way to ask this question: How do we know intentional aging when we see it?

To put the question yet another way: How does intentionality – and intentional aging -- feel from an embodied standpoint?

Is intentionality a characteristic? Is it a capacity? Is it a sensibility or a commitment that can be learned? Is intentionality an individual-level phenomenon – that is, does it reside mostly or exclusively within an individual’s consciousness?

And/or, perhaps is intentionality also a communal characteristic, capacity, sensibility, commitment?  How might we harness the power that comes from being a part of a web of inter-dependence in order to support each other in our intentionality, specifically in our intentional aging (which is, in actual fact, intentional living)?

And what are the potential limitations of intentionality? Of intentional aging? (And why is it important to inquire about limitations, as well as opportunities and openings?)

Spirit of '45

This evening I attended a summer party hosted by Mary’s Woods, the continuing care retirement community next door to the university.  The event, the theme of which was 1945, took place on campus, and when I arrived five minutes before the time the event was to begin, I found ancient folks in period attire milling around enjoying cocktails while a big band played historically appropriate music.  I was wearing my ubiquitous summer hat but I received many sweet compliments as if I’d worn it as part of a costume so as to be festive for the party. I accepted a whiskey sour from a waiter and then made the rounds, greeting guests and looking out for my Mary’s Woods friends. 

I first spotted a woman whom I’ve interacted with many times over the past several years and with whom just a few weeks ago I had ambled slowly hand-and-hand all over the Marylhurst and Mary’s Woods campuses, chatting about our lives, past and present. Tonight when I walked up to her and greeted her she looked at me without even a flicker of recognition. At first I thought it was because I was wearing my hat and thus I appeared unfamiliar, but then I remembered that I had been wearing my hat when we last spent time together. I sat down next to her and began asking her questions about how she was and what she was up to this summer, but she couldn’t converse with me. She smiled almost apologetically in response to my questions and after a time I wished her a lovely evening and continued my rounds, feeling mildly shocked by the changes in her that had taken place in just a few short weeks. 

The next familiar elder friend I spotted happened to spot me at the same time and he jumped up out of his chair and came toward me with a huge smile on his face, calling my name.  We hadn’t seen each other since last year, a fact which he lamented as we shook hands and then hugged, acknowledging that we are both extremely busy with our various commitments.  He then mentioned that he’d just been talking about me, that my name had come up in a conversation about Buddhism, and that he had enjoyed setting straight one of his Mary’s Woods friends who thought all Buddhists were Asian.  We had a charming exchange and promised to be in better contact.  I left him and continued meandering between beautifully set tables around which sat mostly old women enjoying their cocktails and trying to hear each other speak over the quite loud swing tunes.  I pecked a few gals on the cheek, wished bon appetit to others, and worried that some of my closest Mary’s Woods friends didn’t seem to be at the party. I made my way to the table reserved for Marylhurst staff and sat by myself for awhile, wondering where my colleagues were.

After a time, one of my colleagues whose mother lives at Mary’s Woods came over and invited me to sit with them at their table.  I was introduced to his mother – he forgot we met two years ago at the winter holiday party. His mother and I remembered that we had already met and sat down next to each other and began chatting. We made small talk and she complimented me on my hat.  She reminisced about dancing with her husband. And then she asked me what on earth qualified me, someone so young, to be a gerontologist. Actually, she didn’t ask me as much as demand an answer.  And I gave her one – I said that gerontology isn’t only about what it is like to be an older person, which I  couldn’t know about until I was an older person, but also about the experience of being a human being aging throughout the life course and becoming an older person.  She responded by saying, “Oh, you are justifying your position.” I was stunned by her brazen response, and I said so. I said, “Wow, well, that’s one way of thinking about what I said, and I thank you for being honest, but actually, I don’t need to justify my position. What I am saying is true. And what you asked me is really important to ask gerontologists, especially younger gerontologists – why do we do this work? What do we think we can know, and what can’t we know until we are ourselves old?”  She laughed and said she was mostly teasing me (and I thanked her and said that it is important to be teased as it prevents one from taking one’s self too seriously). And then this amazing thing happened – she admitted that now that she’s old she says whatever she wants to say and doesn’t hold anything back.  Being that I am a Gero-punk I couldn’t help but ask her when she began un-censoring herself, when in her later adulthood she began speaking her mind. I didn’t say so to her, but I wanted to know if it was an intentional decision or if it was an emergent phenomenon, I wanted to know if  she had a strong image in her memory of herself the first time she let go of notions of  propriety and just said what was on her mind. Alas, she didn’t remember when it began; she said that she just realized at some point that she was no longer holding back her thoughts and opinions.

Two more of my colleagues arrived and then an unfamiliar woman was brought to our table to join us as she didn’t have anywhere else to sit.  She wasn’t someone I had met before – I wondered if she was a new resident at Mary’s Woods.  My table mates and I began chatting her up. Her responses to our questions were mash-ups of what would commonly be referred to as “appropriate” answers, on the one hand, and completely bizarre answers, on the other. She laughed as if everything she said was a joke, and we laughed with her. At the next table I watched as my friend who didn’t recognize me earlier ate her dessert first but left untouched her salad. And across the way an old couple danced to the music of their youth.

Dear Aliza

Dear Aliza Mizrachi Keddem,

I suspect the first time you met me – was it 13 years ago? – you wondered what on earth qualified me, just a little girl to you, to be your “boss,” the Chairperson of the department at Marylhurst University in which you were teaching sociology as an adjunct instructor. So, that was the first of several things we had in common, as I wondered the same thing! I didn’t know at the time that you were more than twice my age--I only came to know that recently. But what I did soon discover upon meeting you was that you had already lived at least three or four lives. As someone said today, you lived the history most of us only read about.  Born in Israel in 1930, immigrating to the US in your youth, you’d been a Zionist (I heard someone today mutter that you’d even been a “gun-runner” on behalf of the effort to establish Israel's independence.); you’d been a fierce freedom-fighter, an activist, a sassy spiritual warrior; you’d been a mother and a wife, and then a single mother struggling to make ends meet; you’d been a leftist-feminist-sociologist; a mentor, a friend, a colleague, a  Safta (grandmother). You were opinionated, sometimes even dogmatic; you were principled, deeply moral, critical, lucid, argumentative, exacting, frugal and generous. Though we were world’s apart culturally and chronologically (but not, in actual fact, philosophically and politically), we turned out to be almost contemporaries in terms of when we did our graduate work, you in sociology, and I in gerontology (as I discovered today, I was at UO close to the same time you were, and we even took courses from some of the same sociologists!).  

Unlike many of the people who offered tributes to you today, I knew you only as a colleague and member of my faculty, as a treasured professor to our shared students, as an enthusiastic and committed educator. Now I wish I’d also known you as a friend.  I enjoyed the few times we went out to lunch together; I discovered today that going out to eat was one of your most favorite things ever (mine, too), and, as I experienced (and found terribly charming), no matter whom you invited out to eat you almost always picked up the entire bill and left a large tip.

I think I may have made a grave mistake, the kind of mistake one makes when one is overwhelmed with responsibilities (professional and personal) and isn’t thinking spaciously enough, because I think you extended the opportunity of friendship to me several times. I didn’t realize until today the gift you were offering me, and now it is too late to accept it. Had I accepted it, I may have learned much sooner how to mash-up in cool ways the categories of  "colleague," "student," "teacher," "friend," etc.  I might have learned much sooner how to be a gracious and generous host, opening up my home to others for conviviality and "theory talk," even when I was feeling under-resourced and stretched thin. I might have learned much sooner how to not feel ashamed when I speak my mind and expose the "elephant" in the room, I might have learned much sooner the power and beauty of living my convictions and beliefs no matter what.

Toward the end of your memorial service today, one of your friends, the wife of a graduate school comrade, spoke about the raspberry shoots you gave her years ago when you were preparing to move from Eugene to Portland.  She planted the shoots in her garden in Portland, where they grew “wildly crazy” and produced wonderful plentiful fruit. And then she dug them up and transported them to and transplanted them at their current home in Gig Harbor, Washington, where they evidently are doing even better than they (the raspberries) did when they lived first in Eugene and then in Portland. Continuing on the theme of raspberries, one of your daughters-in-law spoke about how you knew raspberries are her favorite fruit and harvested berries from your own Portland bushes in the heat of the noon-time summer sun in order to bring them to her for her pleasure. And then someone else said something that rang so true to me about how your legacy can be found in the noble life you’ve lead, the ideas you have taught and promoted, but also in the raspberries you have shared.

You will be missed, you will continue to be an inspiration, and we will continue to fight the good fight.

Love, and thank you,

Jenny

Dave

I hadn’t seen Dave in well over a year though I had wondered about him periodically, kept my eyes open for him whenever we were at the park.  Then this past Tuesday while on a run with Happy, there he was, I saw him again, walking from the opposite direction toward us, unmistakably Dave. 

The first time Dave and I met each other was April 10, 2011. I didn’t want to forget the special details of having met him and so I wrote an entry about it in my journal.  On that particular morning Happy and I were about to run across  the northern-most foot bridge at the park when I spotted a creature that looked kind of like a duck but was larger in size and seemed to be walking on hind legs, torso almost vertical.  My attention was arrested by this strange water fowl and I was trying to figure out who it might be – Loon? Some duck/goose hybrid? I was disconcerted as I’d not come across a water fowl quite like this one; it was strange and I kept thinking that it was missing its arms.  As I got closer to the mystery creature, it took notice of me,  or, rather, it took notice of me and Happy-the-dog, and it took off running in its armless verticality, so un-duck-like.  I couldn’t help but giggle at the site and I must admit that I tried to do with my body what the mystery water fowl was doing with its body, and trying to do so made me giggle even more and broke the spell just in time for my attention to become arrested anew by another creature coming into my view. 

And what stole my attention away from the strange duck was a human, specifically a human man. He had a red cap on his head and a blue track suit (with white stripes on the sides of the legs) on his body.  He had white hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was walking quite briskly but there was something particular and interesting about how he moved his body—his torso was bent forward at an angle from the hips such that his face was looking down at the ground rather that straight ahead. In order to alter the angle of his vision he swiveled his head from his neck so that his face was pointing to the side.  There’s also the matter of how he used his arms.  He swung them but they were very straight, stiff even, not bent from the elbows.

I watched him as he traveled toward me. At a certain moment he saw me and Happy, and we arrested his attention.  “Hello, how are you?” I called.  He responded, swiveling his head to the side, “Fantastic!” I replied, “I am as well.”  Then he commented on the dog and how exuberant he was. I told him that my dog’s name is Happy, and he laughed and walked right up next to me and said, “I’m Dave.”  I reached out my hand into his field of vision and said, “Nice to meet you. I’m Jenny.” Dave replied, “Nice to meet you, Jenny!” and then talked a bit more about Happy, congratulated me for being out in the park running, said it was great to meet us.  I said, “I’m sure we’ll see you around the park again soon.” At that, off we went in opposite directions around the pond.  A few minutes later, when I’d reached the south end of the pond and Dave was still mid-way down  the east side, I saw him turn his head to the side enough that he could catch sight of me. I waved.

Once Dave and I (and Happy) were no longer in range of each other, I attempted to replicate his way of moving in his body – I rotated forward at my hips, approximating the angle of his bend, stiffened and straightened my arms and swung them a bit more widely than usual, and I tried out swiveling my head on my neck so as to see to the side.  (This is a practice I’ve been engaging for some time; I’ve been experimenting with trying out other creatures’ (human, dog, water fowl…) gestures and movements as a way into understanding something about them that is non-verbal, empathetic, embodied.)

So this past Tuesday I finally see him again, walking from the opposite direction toward us, unmistakably Dave, and yet not quite the same as he was when I first saw him a year ago.  This time we notice each other simultaneously and this time he doesn’t have to swivel his head to the side in order to see me, because his torso is more upright (though not completely). Recognition flashes across his face when he sees me, though he doesn’t seem to recall my name.  He smiles and says, “Looking good!” And I say, “Thanks, Dave!” Happy and I are running and Dave is walking; we lap him. When we pass by each other again, he laughs with joy and yells, “How wonderful!”

It is uncanny and beautiful to have met a creature only one time, to have had a fleeting and short interaction with him, but to remember him so vividly and wish to see him again, to know him.  I suspect that one of the reasons why Dave is so memorable to me is because I not only observed him intensely from afar (after having observed intensely the strange water fowl, who is also memorable to me), as well as had the good fortune to meet him and exchange good words with him, but because of our sweet mutual curiosity.  That’s why I just had to try out his style of embodiment, because to do so offered me a sense of closeness to him, an imaginal access into his particular way of being in the world – special, singular Dave.