V.S. Pritchett begins his second volume of memoirs, Midnight Oil (1971), like this:
“This is the
year of my seventieth birthday, a fact that bewilders me. I find it hard to
believe. I understand now the look of affront I often saw in my father’s face after
this age and that I see in the faces of my contemporaries. We are affronted because,
whatever we may feel, time has turned us into curiosities in some secondhand
shop. We are haunted by the suspicion that the prayers we did not know we were making
have been only too blatantly answered.”
I came of
age during the Great Youth Ascendency. To be young was to be righteous.
Remember the old saw about not trusting anyone over 30? I had my own variation:
I would never live to see 30, so you could trust me. Thank to genes, Quinapril,
friends and blind luck, I’m still around. We took so much for granted, our
rightness and immortality above all. Now my smug generation routinely
embarrasses me. So many have never grown up. We say silly things not out
of decrepitude but a desire to sound hip and – what? Young. Of course we’re
affronted. At seventy I can honestly say with Joseph Epstein:
“That I shall
arrive at seventy without ever having golfed is one of the facts of my
biography to date of which I am most proud.”
Romanticizing
age is no better than doing the same with youth. Let’s skip the self-serving sentimentality
and deal with human beings, not demographics. As a kid I preferred the company
of adults, the smart, funny ones, not the unctuous type who pretended to
tolerate us. So many kids seemed, well, childish. Now most of the adults do. A
favorite American idiom: When someone asks, “How ya doing?” we reply, “Can’t
complain,” and sometimes add, “Nobody listens anyway.” I don’t have a single
interesting complaint. I’m fortunate to have a good wife and three sons who
seldom bore me, remain as healthy and strong as Brahma bulls, and have never asked for bail money. Suddenly, Psalms 90:10 no
longer seems theoretical:
“The days of our years are threescore years
and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their
strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
3 comments:
Happy Birthday, Patrick. You've doubtless noted that V.S. Pritchett exceeded threescore years and ten by 26 years, and Joseph Epstein is 85. All the best for a long life ahead that exceeds all you hope for.
I think reaching 70, which I'll do in early November, is the milestone where you think, "Well, this is it - the last full decade (assuming I'll make it 80). I know I'm not going to make it to 90. That's a fact!
Cold are the hands of time that creep along relentlessly, destroying slowly but without pity that which yesterday was young. Alone our memories resist this disintegration and grow more lovely with the passing years. Heh! That's hard to say with false teeth.
Happy birthday, kiddo.
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