Monday, March 28, 2011

Pushin' Fifty

For the second time this semester I have shown up to a class that doesn't exist. The first time the prof canceled it late and I never got the email; today the schedule  had been switched, so this class still showed  on my syllabus dates, but I am apparently here on the wrong week. If I were the professor,  I would have put out a reminder or at least a new syllabus/schedule with the new dates; if only I ran the world.

I should have known there was no class, because we had class last week and this one only meets on alternate weeks. But I've slept, and not slept, since then. This semester my schedule calls for three twelve hour shifts weekly  at my clinical site, plus three classes a week. Last semester took the prize for the most academic work required and entailed shuttling between two separate clinical sites...why did I think this semester would be easier? Each one is hard in a new way.

So I make the best of it here in the library as a study day until my 4pm class, which will actually happen, surrounded  by young people  who could easily be my own children, as I have one son already graduated  from college  and another a sophomore.  I rarely question this, but today I wondered- what am I doing here and who am I kidding...as I paid an overdue library fine.

It was really windy today and I'd worn a hat, so my hair looks frowsy and my eyes are red from dust blowing in them and reading too much late at night and perhaps allergies, something I've not had before. The library accounts woman taking my check looked wonderingly at me as if I was stoned.  Middle age is so incredibly humbling.  Time was when a feeling of incompetence could at least be partially salvaged by a glance in the mirror... there was still satisfaction to be had from looking good outside, a kind of self-reinforcing feedback loop. That's all shot now. In photos I discover  developing jowls, replete with a new fold of skin at the sides of my chin. And this after I gave up sugar, and then artificial sweeteners, three weeks ago. To add insult, I somehow seem to have managed to gain weight from this gambit, though I am eating less. Signs of decrepitude seeming to mount, and I'm not even fifty yet.  Humbling, I tell you.

I wonder at that younger me, in my thirties - did  I really think my looks would last forever?  I didn't consider it at all - nature's gift was assumed. I guess I anticipated a much more gradual decline. Since everything's falling down, now, too late, I ready for the next onslaught.   Pensively  I observe the older women during choir rehearsals, noting impending signs of aging- the doubling chins, receding gumlines, skin like a leather handbag - all this and more will be mine. A classmate  from prep school dies, and I mull over the obituary photograph...hmmm, she looks pretty good, and she'll never look older than now. Death as a blessed release from signs of aging- can it be that fearsome?

In a few months, I'll don the cap and gown for a third time and then some hapless establishment will hire me as a new nursing grad. Those first few years of experience will be the hardest to acquire; after that people will assume I've been in nursing  forever, since I'll look well seasoned  and have some idea of what I am doing. Only  my resume will know the truth, a document I hope won't get too much updating in the coming years.

Is this why folks take up gardening, bridge, and watercolors, because  they need to learn to derive satisfaction  from other sources? I'm a novice at all three, so what was I spending my time doing before? Whatever I was doing, there's an increasing sense  that it's too late for any more reinventions, death itself for a chameleon like me. This could be my last career.

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