We stood outside in the parking lot of The Warehouse on a steamy late July evening. The four of us were laughing about scenes from our improv class that night, especially Alice’s* wonderful reference to Blues Traveler and a line she said that I can’t remember as I write this.
“I’m now the oldest person in my office,” Alice inserted with a tone of shock. “None of my colleagues would get that Blues Travelers reference.”
“Welcome to The Eldering,” I said to Alice’s confession in the parking lot. At the risk of being very mistaken, I would say Alice cannot be over 35 years old, if that. Her quick wit, lithe body, and spritely energy always animate the improv classroom.
I joked that The Eldering is the title of my horror film. It is the moment when you realize your cultural anchors don’t land with the people around you and you have no idea how there can be so many Kardashians and what the fuck do they actually do? It’s a quiet, palpable, alone-in-the-woods, social isolation moment, like any good horror movie has.
During the opening warm-up each week, we introduce ourselves with a name and movement. That particular July night, Alice had done a Slavik dance move, a quick squat to a leap and star pose before shouting her name. Her knees had made a loud pop noise as she squatted that we all chuckled to. And then we repeated her movement and name. All 12 pairs of knees called back to Alice’s knees in unison. A communal expression of The Eldering, a bittersweet moment in both its shared humor and its honest presence among us.
The Eldering is when my conversations with longtime friends start with field notes about our aching backs, can I borrow your readers a second, which optometrist is best in town for progressive lenses, how has your sleep has been lately, and the last time it was this hot was before the college freshmen were born (those whippersnappers). It’s when I feel strangulated by stifling still air and too much sensory stimulation, and cognitive information is coming at me. The Eldering is the subtle shift that goes unnoticed until I see it clearly in contrast. I notice it happening to me in improv class when ideas and bodies are moving faster than I can keep up. It’s when I notice my aging in-laws farther down the same road and my now-driving teenage son is how I used to be–quick-witted, lithe, and spritely.
I’ve come to The Eldering earlier than many people as an early 50-something. I have jettisoned the jetpack of the productivity compliance culture. I’ve left the success express lane of the capitalism highway. Slowing down, especially forced slowing down, to notice that decades have passed and my biological age and psychological age don’t match up is a shocking, scary form of The Eldering. This culture really hates elders, and I have internalized that subconsciously. Not being able to remember as much, pay attention very long, and keep up in a complex conversation brings up so much fear and grief. It’s what I was good at for so long and what my academic professional identity depended on.
In improv class, we practice finding the unusual thing, patterning, heightening, big amazing gifts, panning out, and finding game. As we stood in the parking lot after improv, other troupe members offered alternatives to my horror movie bid. What would The Eldering look like as a rom-com, an action movie, a John Hughes film, or a rescue-Matt-Damon movie? I felt so glad for the moment that my improv skills practiced and studied in class were now in service of a playful, spontaneous, connective conversation.
I already have my radar screen pinging on the horror version of The Eldering, surrounded by scary, amorphous, XENOMORPHOUS forms encroaching. Bill Paxton’s character in Aliens is panic-yelling, “it’s inside the room!” What if the creature in Aliens, the one I have projected The Eldering onto, had the form and temperament of a golden retriever? Relatedly, how do sheepdogs keep themselves busy when the whippersnapper pups become the herders? Another sign of The Eldering – tangents and winding thoughts.
What does successful–no, fuck that!–satisfying eldering mean to me? I still have the potential for an active lifestyle ahead of me, as one of my elder-mentors, Robin, recently said to me before two major surgeries restored my ability to walk without pain. This seems like the appropriate time to set new, sturdy foundations that are not the “Camp Fun Crooked Retirement Home” kind of foundations. What would my version of The Eldering look like as an adventure movie? I want to explore forms of eldering that are fun, enlivening, eccentric, colorful, connecting, liberating, expanding, playful, and appreciative. As I write this, it sounds more like real-life experiences of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and Bill Nye the Science Guy.
*name changed
Katie Kearns 