Tag: aging

More than many potatoes

My garden, if I may say so, is doing great this year. I added many native perennials to my flower beds, but my pride and joy is the food I am growing. My peaches, apples and grapes are bounteous, my pumpkins are unstoppable, carrots are coming in strong, my sweet corn is putting out tassels ahead of schedule, and my various basils, eggplants, garlic, cucumbers and dill are doing yeoman’s work. Even my rhubarb, strawberries and asparagus are still producing a bit, well past their allotted season. 

But for a real thrill, I go and gaze at my potato plants, which are dying. This is good. This is what you want to see at this time of year. A few weeks ago, the stems were sturdy, and the leaves were thick and lush, and when I watered them, they danced and bounced under the shower. But after briefly flowering, the blossoms are now gone, and the leaves are taking on a dusty look, drooping and tired. Soon the leaves will start to fray and dry up, and then they will go brown. That’s how I will know it is time to harvest.

And getting to the point where it is time to harvest is the whole point of growing potatoes. The trick is not to get overly attached to the intermediary stages.

The other trick is understanding that all stages are intermediary stages. 

Wonderful and ridiculous

Can you stand to hear a story that’s probably a little too personal for these august pages? Because I have one! And I do have a reason for telling it.

I’m 50 years old. I have 10 children, and the youngest one just turned 10. I have grey hair and wrinkles and a little arthritis, and I spend more time hunting for my reading glasses than I spend on almost any other activity. The other day, I couldn’t remember the word “fork.”

I also have a body that stubbornly continues to keep popping out ova every month, right on schedule. As far as I can tell, I could probably get pregnant again if I wanted to, which I most adamantly do not. I know the chances of carrying a healthy baby to term at my age are (unlike myself) much slimmer than they used to be, but they certainly aren’t zero. I look at my family history and I think, nah, I’m not taking any chances.

I really like walking past the diaper aisle without buying anything! I like being able to take medicine without freaking out about possible birth defects. I prefer to spend my days in agonizing worry over the 10 children I already have, thank you very much. I really don’t want another baby.

Well, maybe a little bit. I do like babies. I actually love babies. If we had another baby, I would adore him from the very first second I knew he existed, and it would be incredible. It would be amazing. It would be preposterous. It would be insane. It would be so nice.

These are the thoughts that run through my head every month.

So the other morning, I groaned as I dragged my sorry self out of bed to do what I not-very-funnily call “my chemistry experiment,” to see if I was fertile that day or not. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in my schlumpy old pajamas and thought how absurd it was that I still have to DO this. I’m so old! It’s so ridiculous! I am HALF A CENTURY OLD.

Then I thought, and how ridiculous would it be to show up at the OB/GYN with my grey hair and wrinkles and arthritis and a big ol’ pregnant belly? So I sighed, and did my dang fertility test.

I was chatting about this with some Catholic women my age, about how ridiculous it would be; and one of them said that, if I were pregnant, it wouldn’t be ridiculous. It would be beautiful!

Ladies and gentlemen, it would be both.

Two things can be true at the same time. In fact, most true things are at least two things at the same time. When we get ourselves into trouble is when we expect some human experience to be pure, unmixed, and clearly labelled as one thing or another.

Let me give you some more examples…. Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image by Matthew McPherrin via Flickr (Creative Commons)