“Let the Mystery Be” sang Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs, including David Byrne. (Only after coming to love this performance did I discover that Iris Dement wrote and performed it, a performance that many prefer to the one I learned to love.)
Digression: I remember Arthur Wightman‘s speech at his 80th birthday party. He boasted that he had expanded beyond Ohio origins so that now he could say, in 25 languages, “Where is the toilet?” After demonstrating that phrase from Arabic to Zulu, he told us his least favorite thing about being 80: “My behind looks like something that somebody sat on, for 80 years.”
My behind is nowhere near Arthur’s, I’m happy to say. But the end of my 7th decade introduces strange new effects, almost as disturbing.
For example, I don’t remember, in earlier decades, feeling such strong connection (for example, while cooking dinner) to generations of women who did the same thing. I do remember, painfully, hearing in my mind the harsh criticisms of women to other women, echoing as an antiphony to my own decisions. But I don’t remember, ever before, this sense of hard-working women extending a silent endorsement of my own not-so-hard-working choices.
Many religions share a promise of eternal life after your death. My new experience seems like the opposite, an infinite track of family, all behind me, nodding in some taciturn satisfaction that I extend their other-loving choices. Or perhaps, that the best of me extends the best of them, and that the less-than-best of me is not their concern.
Research shows that people get happier as they get older. Isn’t that a good thing? But I wish I understood more about what is happening, right now, in my lengthening life, to my own happiness.