Pat Taub
GUEST POST by EDWARD MOONEY
Age is a time for looking back— on a life, on a family; on a vocation, a profession. It’s a time for pleasant memories from the past and also for present day by day enjoyments— enjoying a community orchestra, a choir, an invitation to lunch or dinner. It’s a time to phone family, to walk for a cappuccino, to take in magical vistas of the Bay.
Mary Pipher, author of “Women Rowing North” enjoying pleasant memories
Offsetting enjoyments are foretastes of decline. I used to negotiate sidewalks at a good clip. Today folks with baby carriages pass me by. Tying shoes is a bother.
Free of the obligations of the production-driven phase of my maturity, I find many new and rich meanings. Age clears space for many things, each of infinite worth.
I’m not a professional doing his job. Career success is no longer an issue. I enjoy fluid identity, indistinct and open to change. I enjoy others. I enjoy writing of things close to the heart, as they arrive, one by one. I write purely as recreation, not for reputation.
There’s the purely personal, idle recreation of posting screen shots on Face Book — oddities, landscapes, turtles or fox. I discover a new friend in her eighties and another in her nineties. These friendships flower in wondrous directions. These are pleasures of age.
Being in the company of treasured friends is a pleasure of aging
I listen for hours to an extraordinary young pianist, not for a moment wondering if I should be getting down to a chore or obligation.
The story of age isn’t just lamenting loss of sidewalk speed or indulging memories of a deep past. I’m swept up in the wonder of many little things and in the wonder of special personal encounters.
With age I enjoy new and old friends, morning cappuccino and chats with the servers, affectionate verbal sparring with the Italian guy who runs the laundromat and is angling to become a priest. I chat with my house cleaner about her kids and her boyfriend and enjoy the company of orchestra friends who play out of pleasure, not to strut.
The author relishes walks to his neighborhood coffeehouse for his morning cappuccino
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This was my sense of things before Corona, and I hope it will return as my sense of things after Corona. At the moment these enjoyments are threatened by pestilence and sequester. The shrinking of sociability darkens age.
The new normal of COVID means isolation and a mask
I can listen to a favorite violinist on You Tube, but when will I enter a concert hall again? When can I play in church or sing in my choir? I visit with brave friends in twos or threes for a meal –but that’s not a dinner party. Even the pleasure of a walk for cappuccino is cancelled — the shop is closed.
I can’t welcome friends from abroad or travel to the West Coast for family visits. I’ve been spared the pain of losing a friend or relative but there’s nothing enjoyable about reading Corona numbers.
I don’t find Zoom visits a replacement for real ones.
Handshakes and hugs will be suspect for the foreseeable future. There will be no more French “double pecks” on the cheeks.
Even if one escapes the disease, and escapes having friends or neighbors afflicted, Corona eviscerates the simple enjoyments of age. Yet, I remain hopeful, looking forward to the day when I can visit friends and family in real time and exchange hugs.
Ed Mooney has a PhD in Philosophy. He’s taught in the Bay area, at Syracuse, and in Israel. He now resides in Portland, Maine. He is the author of a book of poetry and of books on Kierkegaard and Thoreau.
