That night, the eve of my seventieth birthday I went to bed early, reading. On page 76 in the Year of the Monkey, I read.
“Across America one light after another seemed to burn out. The oil lamps of another age flickered and died. The sign was silent, but the book on my night table beckoned. Marcus Aurelius. I opened his Meditations: Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live…
This made terrible sense to me, climbing the chronological ladder, approaching my seventieth year. Get a grip, I told myself, just revel in the last seasons of being sixty-nine. Staring at my image on the mercurial surface of the toaster, I noticed I looked young and old simultaneously. Marcus Aurelius asks us to note the passing of time with open eyes. Ten thousand years or ten thousand days, nothing can stop time.
Seventy. Merely a number but one indicating the passing of a significant percentage of the allotted sand in an egg timer, with oneself the darn egg.
I am no longer a fast runner and that my sense of time seems to be accelerating. I do what I can to augment this recurring image in my favor, even replacing the egg timer with a crystal hourglass passing the dust of ground marble, such as the type found in the small wooden study of St. Jerome or the workshop of Albrecht Dürer. Even as there is most likely some finite principle concerning the rate that sand passes through an hourglass, no advantage in having a stately glass or more perfect grains. Since contemplating Marcus, I try to be more aware of the passing hours, that I might see it happen, that cosmic shift from one digit to another.” Patti Smith, Year of the Monkey.
I am aware of the passing hours, I feel them happening, and I feel happy. Content in my body, aging, living. What a great gift. I feel that cosmic shift from one digit to another. One morning I will drink my last cup of coffee after a night of dreaming my last dream. I feel the ocean tides as they answer the moon.
Long walks are my mediation and prayer. Gratitude. Center down. Mindful. Take care of yourself everyone says to me. I am. And I have the words from my good friends to remind me, the women with the grandmother faces walking the seven ways. How they made me laugh, and told me the truth even when it was hard for me to listen. The wise words of the women who over three decades, lifted me from grief, instructed me in living, and showed me how to age from youth into beauty.
Sage down, prayer up. Like a river stone in the raging water, I feel those rough spots I’ve yet to shed, begin to soften.
