On track

the path goes where we go

arithmoi.

It wasn’t until a few nights ago, a little less than a month before my next birthday, that I realized that 48, my current age, is a perfect square. I’ve already started thinking of myself as 49, and naturally, because I’m already 49, I’m practically 50 and must start considering what that means. But still, this whole year, I’ve been a perfect square, and I’ve probably felt less even than ever before.

All those many hundreds of days are happening in minutes, sometimes in seconds. The time travel has been real, folks.

My grandmother turned 105 last week. I got to hold her hands, that silk-like thin skin, translucent, blue and purple veins intersecting like highways and rivers, in mine. She looked on at my daughters, almost 10 and solidly 12 (if you know, you know), who somehow understand age better than I do, and they shared in the mysterious, familiar and familial tether we share across time.

As we all spilled out of her tiny apartment, each hoping for a turn on the couch next to her, Rafi asks, “Bubbe, what is the life advice you most want us to know?” My Grandmother brought her right pointer finger to her mouth, as she has done for years when deep in thought, and said, “All roads lead to Rome.” My mom and her sisters laughed among themselves because there is a small collection of Rome-related quotes that aren’t particularly obvious or relevant that she’s doled out pretty regularly over the years.

But after she asked, I felt the presence of Rafi occupy my whole heart. I knew what she was after, and even though the question was so big and my Grandmother’s answer so coded, I trust that Rafi took her words and wove them into something just for her to wear, something that will stretch and grow with her.

I hadn’t really thought of the ways in which being alive has to do with numbers all the time, mostly because I usually think in other terms. I think in feelings and memories and moments and language and senses and time - but I don’t think in numbers.

But now that I am writing this and fact-checking my own words, maybe that’s not true. Maybe I also think in numbers, maybe it’s all numbers. Maybe it’s all calculations of cells and stardust.

These days, it’s getting to the point where I can’t tell the difference between a crisis and a splinter. Well, not every day, but some days this does feel like a math equation, something measurable - like the weight of one thing must outweigh another, they can’t all smother me. They can’t all be the same size.

Or maybe it’s about my nervous system. Certainly about the out there and certainly also about the in here. The within and without of it all. The plaque that grows, then fills the spaces between things, making disparate shapes feel unending and overlapping.

I’ve been waiting for something, and I keep thinking it’s here. Like a small child waiting at the window for garbage day to see the big truck pull up and take the whole mess away. I’ve been waiting to be on the other side of the summit. I’ve been waiting to wake up and let out an exhale, and with it the mess of the last few years. The last few lives. But that’s not what’s happening.

A dear friend asked how I am feeling these days, and what came out first wasn’t so much surprising as it was like pulling a fish from a cenote. A deep, hidden, perhaps even surprising feeling that I never think to say aloud. I tell her how I wake up feeling behind on everything. How there’s a voice that is always waiting in the wings to tell me that I’m not enough for my own life. That I should be better, more whole, more fun, more buoyant, more successful, prolific, smart, that I should be more even by now.

“Well, that’s a shitty voice to wake up to!” She responded with the sparkliest eyes and playful lilt in her voice. She went on to twist my whole story into a new shape. To each item I shared on my list of shitty life items I am currently juggling, she would say something like, “Ooooo, that’s a good one. You’re going to learn something really important with that,” or “Wow, getting through that is going to make you a badass!”

Another wise and wonderful friend shared that her tonic for these dreadful times (yes, of course, the dreadfulness of the world at large is also part of this) is to lower the bar. That’s it. Just take the huge fucking list of the pressing and not-so-pressing items of the undone and shrink it like they are a pair of pants in the wrong wash cycle. And then get rid of the pants because they don’t fit anymore.

So, take the whole thing and just make it less? Minimize the surface area, change the shape, trim the fat, subtract what I don’t want, look at it sideways, or simply receive the gifts of hardship as though they are here to not just put fine lines around my eyes and fill them with tears, but to guide me deeper into purpose?

Yes, because all roads lead to Rome, right?

Okay, so I haven’t ruined my life yet. I haven’t let the world down or squandered my place in it. While time is finite, it’s also stretchy and multiplicitous. Which means, I still have some time to write the poems synthesizing in my cells, to open the door for a stranger, to send the card, to love a little longer, or to take out the trash, as though that were so simple.

So by these calculations, the new plan is: do less, be more.

Yeah, that’s right.

It’s just numbers.

*Beginning in May, I will be hosting one free Four Chambers Writing class per month and one paid class (not part of a class series). Both will be online, and you are invited to join as many or as few as you’d like. There are some new class series listed if you’re looking for some steady writing together time, too. Sign up for my little, infrequent newsletter here to stay up to date on all kinds of classes and stuff like that. I can’t wait to write with you 🫀