The Advent Calendar of Aging

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I took the above picture at a Copenhagen art gallery last week. The fire alarm had gone off, and the Sunday crowd with kids in tow had evacuated in a rush into the light, freezing rain.

I suppose the scene caught my eye because it’s a little chaotic and the Danes are usually so tidy about public spaces. Looking at the photo when I got home, though—during Advent and with my birthday coming up, it landed somewhere else inside me.

The numbers on the doors, the keys in the locks—the sense of tempus fugit and purposeful haste. I thought of the years I’ve lived, and the decades I’ve passed through—whole sections with their doors standing open. Do I remember what I took from them? And what’s behind the doors still left for me to unlock?

The photo shows my corner of the cloakroom, the lockers numbered 62 to 102. I imagine they contain puzzling-shaped packages—the kind that take ages to unwrap. Inside each package is what I will need to work through the following months and whatever they send my way.

The puzzle behind the door marked 60 turned out to be sobriety. A puzzle, to me, is the kind of challenge I have the capacity to solve—it isn’t only a life lesson learned in the attempt.

I love this quote from Noela Evans:

Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.

I started drinking in my early teens, as was common in Scotland at the time, and the streams of alcohol pouring down my gullet ebbed and flowed for the next four decades. I didn’t drink when I was pregnant, and there were circumstances where alcohol wasn’t available, regions where I traveled, or on long ocean passages when I worked on sailboats.

It wasn’t a problem for me not to drink, I didn’t have physical withdrawal symptoms to deal with. But, when the opportunity was present again, I immediately started drinking. My tolerance built over the years until I could more easily sink a bottle of wine than stop after one glass. Every evening began with a glass of red wine and ended in uneasy numbness. I was losing sight of myself.

I quit drinking for a few months as my marriage was falling apart, and despite the circumstances, felt lighter than I had in years. Then, as I settled into the rented apartment and plastered over the fractures of co-parenting, I took the bottle back out of the cupboard for some ‘well-earned relaxation’. I stayed relaxed for seven more years until I could no longer bear the self-doubt that came with it.

It took me a year to solve the puzzle of sobriety. The gift I received was time and my self, yet, as so often happens, the solution came with another puzzle. Behind door number 61, was the puzzle of who I am sober in social situations when I would usually have been hiding in drink. I’m an introvert, so relearning how to party is a work in progress and includes a practice of saying, ‘No thanks, I’m staying home in my cave’.

The puzzle-challenge-gift of this past year was an empty locker. My kids had flown the coop, and I shuttered my tiny start-up meaning that I had no income or even the prospect of one. It turned out that I needed to take the locker key and go find new boxes to open with it.

I wrote about what it took to get myself on the road in the post, The Genius of Bold Beginnings, and now I’m four months into the adventure. It’s intended to be a one-year experiment come fact-finding tour. I’m anticipating the Advent of my later years and considering where I might want to end my days. Not that I’m picking out burial plots, just thinking what my big-picture options are.

I have a tiny income from renting out my American home, and I’m pet-sitting around Scotland to reacquaint myself with living there. I have met some interesting, gracious people I otherwise wouldn’t have, and walking their dogs gets me outside on the worst of days, where I am often startled by the astonishing beauty made possible by rain and mist and failing light.

Dear Reader, there are ballet dancers in understory clearings, saplings of birch and beech with crepe-leaf tutus—you can only see them when the light is just right.

In Scotland, being over 60 comes with a bus pass, and I am tickled pink that I can travel anywhere in the country for free. The other week, I crossed the Cairngorm mountains, sitting high above the road with my thermos instead of driving a car in convoy, cursing the coaches and waiting for enough open road to overtake. I’ve made the same journey countless times, yet this was the first time I noticed that the river opens into a loch behind the foothills.

The joy of a fresh perspective—such a gift, though I have a vague sense that what I’m doing isn’t quite respectable. I hardly care, but perhaps I shouldn’t be living in this free-wheeling way at my age, and my comeuppance is waiting somewhere around the corner.

The door on 63 has only just swung open, and it’s too soon to know what’s in store. I’ll keep writing—I love writing Whole Stories Shortly for you, and I’m falling in love with the characters in my new novel-in-progress. I used to cook, but it doesn’t interest me these days, so I signed up for an art course as a way to use my hands creatively. I think eleven weeks of beginner drawing, painting, and printing might add new dimensions to aspects of my thinking life, too.

I guess there will be a surprise puzzle for the year, unless I’m already in such uncharted territory that the Puzzle Masters plan to leave only flowers and random acts of kindness in my locker. Physically, I’m doing pretty good but I’m aware that as I move towards 70 and 80, I am approaching the end of the line. The cartilage in my knees and knuckles is growing old, and who knows what other health challenges may show up. And there are the potential puzzle packages I receive on behalf of loved ones.

I hope there is still a big surprise or two to come. I know I’m tempting fate, but I’m not ready for my years to be predictable and my days to be repetitive. And, from experience, the most challenging dragons come with the greatest gifts between their teeth.

✨ With the holiday season in full swing, I’m taking next Sunday off. Have yourself a Merry Christmas if that’s your thing, and Whole Stories Shortly will be back on December 29. ✨

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