Amongst the White-Haired

In yesterday’s Posada gathering, there was one of those moments where time halts for a few breaths and I looked around me at the people in the room. There were six of the people I taught with in our 20’s, people I’ve known now for over 50 years. We who were once so young and bright-eyed and filled with energy and hope and vision, making the world as we dreamed it could be day after day in that remarkable place, The San Francisco School, now still gathering, white-haired, wrinkled, a bit more stooped, our dazzling vision dimmed a bit by the cataracts of living long in a world gone mad. And yet still true to our hopes and having passed it all on to our children, trusting them to carry it forward, longing for them to succeed where we have failed.

 

And looking around at those “children,” now in their 40’s and 50’s, I could feel how indeed they are doing just that. The way my own daughter Talia has taken my passion for joyful, fun and community-connecting ritual realized at The San Francisco School further down the field (and at the same school!). To name just one example, our once-a-year five-mile family walk to school on Earth Day inspired her to do the same with her entire 5^th grade class—but now once a month! And my daughter Kerala taking the same passion for community and justice and connection into her work as a writer and expressing it all yet more eloquently than I can (while also organizing neighborhood block parties). I looked at the other “kids” at the party, four of them lawyers (the good kind!), a couple of teachers, one working on solar power, one in theater, and felt the collective energy of their good work. 

 

And then the delightful grandkids, from 5-years-old to eighth grade, speaking so well in the little ritual of appreciating the joys of their birthday month, taking roles in the solstice play and with me at the piano, singing so joyfully and tunefully the 10 songs or so I spontaneously led. How it goes on.

 

So while the given expectation is that we all should rage against the indignities of old age, there is so much potential depth and ripening in this last chapter of the story. Yes, there is the grief of ever-growing loss (just last week, a former school colleague died at 82 and a former school student at 61). My list honoring those I’ve known who have passed on is now over 200 and I miss them all. Yes, there is some fear and anxiety wondering who is next on the list, but also a reminder to savor who is still here, including ourselves. 

 

Most importantly, if we have had the grace to remain loyal to the vision of our youth and feel it age like good wine, there is great satisfaction there as well. As usual, a good poet can say it better than I can manage, so here it all is this poem by Wendell Berry.

 

RIPENING

The longer we are together
the larger death grows around us.
How many we know by now
who are dead! We, who were young,
now count the cost of having been.
And yet as we know the dead
we grow familiar with the world.
We, who were young and loved each other
ignorantly, now come to know
each other in love, married
by what we have done, as much
as by what we intend. Our hair
turns white with our ripening
as though to fly away in some
coming wind, bearing the seed
of what we know. It was bitter to learn
that we come to death as we come
to love, bitter to face
the just and solving welcome
that death prepares. But that is bitter
only to the ignorant, who pray
it will not happen. Having come
the bitter way to better prayer, we have
the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
to know you by the signs of this world!