ODES TO VIGOROUS AGING

A participant in the Senior Olympics put it this way:

Some say that I should act my age. Or that the least I could do is admit that I’m 79. Or that I’m an embarrassment in a Speedo. I answer the same way all the time—I am, I do, and you’ll have to ask my lover about that. See, the Greeks thought there were only nine Muses. Truth is, they were off by one. I dance to the Muse of Reveling. I revel in my aging. We all do. If you don’t, you miss the most liberating and thrilling experience of your life.

We Americans have a schizophrenic approach to aging. “Better than the alternative,” you hear people say. “Better hide the gray,” you hear them thinking as they pick up the Clairol and Grecian Formula. Ask most young people what they think old people are like, and you're likely to trigger images of frailty, individuals sitting in wheelchairs staring aimlessly at nursing home walls, lonely people waiting in anticipation of B-3 or some other magical number needed to win at Bingo. Pole vaulting, 100-m breaststroke, or marathons don’t exactly leap to most people’s minds.

But for every 75-year old who has trouble walking without support, another laces up her running shoes and heads off on her daily 5-mile run. For every wheelchair-bound institutional resident, another swims countless laps. These are images of old people that ought to come to mind, too. These are images of people who hear the Muse of Reveling and take her call to heart. These are the people you need to meet.

Active older adults give voice to this other side of growing older—the side of vigor, of drive, of accomplishment. You would think that people like them would be very visible in society. No rocking chair sitters here. So perhaps that’s the reason why they are virtually invisible. The young people who create the commercial images we see do not view growing old as having any positive aspects. That’s a great mistake—and a great loss to us all. We need to see this side of aging. We need to see what our potential is.

The following poems captures this intrepid spirit of not aging gently. The older athletes in them are wringing every last bit from their lives. May we inherit that spirit.

The Spirit of Olympia

When I was a child,
I watched the newsreels of the great Olympic heroes
and I dreamed
that I was standing on the platform
having won the Gold Medal
and listening as my national anthem was being played.
I felt the Spirit of Olympia
invading my dream.

When I was a young adult,
I watched the news of great business heroes
and I dreamed
of being just like them,
having just gotten the big bonus
and listening to the rat-a-tat of the ticker tape.
I felt the Spirit of Capitalism
becoming my dream.

When I was middle-aged
I watched as my children looked wide-eyed
and dreamed
of standing on the Olympic platform
after winning the Gold Medal
and listening to a proud parent screaming in excitement.
I felt the Spirit of Pride
changing my dream.

When I was old
I decided to stop watching the Olympic heroes
in my and others’ dreams
and stand on the platform for real
after winning the Gold Medal,
listening to the wild cheering of the crowd.
I am the Spirit of Olympia.
I have realized my dream.

Look at Me

Look at me—
What do you see?

Gray hair?
Wrinkles?
Gravity doing its work?
Experience?
Wisdom?
Worldliness?

A daughter?
A mother?
A grandmother?

A wife?
A teacher?
A mentor?

A swimmer?
A winner?
A champion?

Look at me—
What do you see?

What beholder’s eye
is yours?

The Warrior Within

The starter’s pistol fires
My feet shuffle forward
My heart begins to pound
My pulse begins to rise

My mind takes me
to the plains of Attica
to the origins of the race I run
and how I must carry the news
of victory
to those waiting at the finish.

I pace myself
through the streets
as through enemy territory—
the pounding on the pavement
is every bit as dangerous
to my bones as
the spears and arrows
were to my forebear.

My feet clop-clop
a rhythm that becomes my companion,
my friend
and my clock.

I am fighting
my own Battles of Marathon.
Only one is on
the pavement I’m following,
the excuse for my being here now.

But my real Battle
is the race I run against time—
against those who wish to squelch my achievement
and suppress my victory
over the stereotypes of what people think I
should be doing
at my age.

This Battle is to the death—
literally—
for if I do not win it
you will die.

My Soaring Stick

When I meet people
for the first time
I tell them
that for me to get to where I’m going
I need to use a stick.

And oh,
how I laugh to myself
because I know
exactly what they’re thinking—
“Oh,
that poor man
needs to use
a cane.”

Well,
now wouldn’t they just
have a fit
if they
actually saw my stick.

For where I go
is about 15 feet up
and over a bar.
My stick
is the way
I soar.

My soaring stick—
Pretty far from a cane,
wouldn’t you say?

Speed-O-Me-O-My

It came down to this—
if I wanted to compete,
I had to look like a competitor.
None of the cutesy little suits
with the frilly little skirts
that some young thing designer
decided that we seniors
should wear.

I’ll tell you—
heads turned in Macy’s
when the salesclerk realized that the
Speedos I had in my dressing room
were for me.
You should have seen the
look on her face when I said,
“Yeah, my specialty is the medley.”

And I love it—
seeing the men do double takes
at this body they think is fifty-something
but is actually seventy-something.
Makes me feel good knowing
that what they’re thinking
is, “Oh my.”
Makes me feel even better
when I post a faster time
than they do.

Most of all I
I feel good about
who I am—
in the mirror
and in my heart.

Just Another Hurdle

Speed and grace—
poetry in motion—
seven strides, then leap,
seven strides, then leap,
repeated for 110 meters.

There is nothing—
nothing—
more beautiful in track.

Oh that it were so
in my life.

For all of my days
I have faced hurdles:
substandard schools,
closed college doors,
missing career ladders,
absent recognition.

The hurdles I jump now
are but clichés
of those I faced for real.
These I can over come.
The real ones
I could not.

So the cheers I hear now
are bittersweet.
Do they come from a crowd
that believes I have truly
achieved a level of excellence?
Or do they come from a crowd
that believes I am but another example
of an African American athlete?

One would vindicate me.

One would enslave me.

You be the judge.

Carrying the Weight of the World

Visions of Charles Atlas
keep running through my head.
Bulging biceps.
Pulsing pecs.
Gotta pump more iron.

Visions of late night awakenings
lifting a sick young son
from his crib
into my arms.
Now those were great curls.

Visions of evening lifting books
and binders and reports
rubbing tired eyes
doing one more clean-and-jerk.

Visions of early morning ritual
with coffee and The Times
heading first for the obituaries
see who I’ve lost today.

It dawned on me that
I keep lifting weights
so I can carry the pain
of the loss of friends and family
and the realization
that someday
I could well be alone.

The Real Stretch

I shake my head
at those who reach a certain age
then just go and shrivel up
on some couch
thinking that watching talk shows
represents cognitive activity.

They certainly don’t help me any.
How am I supposed to show you
the potential of aging
when these do-nothings
are the ones who most people think of
when they think of us over-70 types.

And to think that these same people
survived the Depression
won the War
built the suburbs
gave birth to the Baby Boom
and created Medicare.

The real stretch is to figure out
what happened
between V-J Day
and now
that made them equate
retirement
with
complacent.

I shake my head
and decide to stretch just a little more
in hopes that
you just might
get the point.

Number Please

They say that the trouble with society today
is that no matter what you do
or where you go
you’re nothing but a number.

I like to think about it this way.
I am numbers.
But every one of my numbers is unique:
social security, PIN, phone,
credit card (several times over),
medical case number,
contestant in my event.

The fact that I have numbers
tells people that I am alive
so that my dinner can be interrupted
by telemarketers.

My numbers also tell my story—
How I have taken
and felt
lumps
in life.

My numbers say that
I know the pain and fear of cancer.
My numbers said how the odds were against me.
I have stared at death.

I don’t kid myself—
someday I know
intellectually at least
that my number will be up.

But until then
I’ll keep right on collecting
whatever unique sets of digits I can
so that every computer database on earth
will know my numbers
and, in a real sense,
know me.