by M.C.K. Carter
I ran yesterday — four miles. Late in the day, my route took me almost straight west. I ran past fields, fall-plowed too wet. Mounds of heaved dirt chewed up with corn stalks. Flat acres of soybean ground, level as a floor. Low in the sky, the sun had pulled cloud trails together like scarves of orange and rose. My smooth black leggings and the red-violet swash of my shoes contrasted against the sagging, settled asphalt.
The last thing the world needs is another essay on growing old. Seriously, again? What do I think I can add?
Two years ago, I read Mark Jacobson’s essay, “65,” which began by recounting the ages he considered “old” at different years of his youth: 37, 42, 52, and finally, 65.
At every stage of my life, I have stretched time out like a rubber band for an extra 10 years. I married at 30 and had my first child (our son) at 33. Started my doctorate at 40, then taught elementary art for three years, had our daughter when I was 44, and finished my dissertation at 47 — barely in time. It’s an odd chronology — like slides out of order in the carousel. But there they are: two children, a doctorate, a marriage. A whole life out of time, and out of sequence.
But it never bothered me. In the movie, Orlando, Tilda Swinton remains ageless and proceeds serenely through time, adroitly switching genders and partners with every century. I’d look at my face in the mirror. The idea of this self — a constant — looking out through eyes that work because a heart beats enough, seems plausible. Yep, still there.
Last year I turned 60.
And then, people started dying. Prince, David Bowie, and Alan Rickman — 59, 69, and 70, respectively. For the first time, the thought came: how much time do I have left? David Bowie is gone now forever — not a piece of performance art or a concept album to be revealed next week. Prince looked eternally 19.
If I die at 70, like Bowie and Rickman, I have 10 years.
Lucia Berlin, short story writer. Published 77 short stories. Died at 68.
Make the most of it, whispers the fairy godmother.
***
But more than my age led up to this running on the county roads.
First: my daughter is now 17. I did the math. When she’s my age, I’ll be 104, if I’m still alive. I’ve watched my in-laws and my own parents age. The slowing down starts about now, in the mid-sixties. The consequences of ignoring the body’s yellow warning lights (not red yet) begin to show. And it’s just easier to do less. For example, our family doctor told my dad when he was 63, his blood sugar was a bit high and he wanted to put him on a diet to bring it down. Dad’s-oh-so-Chicago reply: Bullshit.
My dad can hardly walk now. He despises his walker, a folding aluminum cliché. If he falls, my mother calls “the big house” (their name for it) and two burly men are sent to their duplex. They hoist him up and check for damages. If he’s lucky and he didn’t hit anything on the way down requiring stitches, my parents will thank them cheerfully, gratefully, all the while Dad muttering, Jesus Christ, getting old is a bitch, this is a helluva thing, goddamnmit, thanks guys, Jesus Christ am I bleeding somewhere? Shit. Barb get me band-aid, hell no I’m fine. Vertical posture re-attained, the reason he fell is forgotten and fades away. The convenient amnesia of an alpha-male. So, while he hates he can’t stand up on his own, hates the walker, hates this whole goddamn business of getting old — he hates exercising even more. The one thing that would help.
It is easy to see this from a distance, the tiny complexities and entanglements not quite visible. But I consider him a cautionary tale.
Second. My depression. In the parlance of our time I’m supposed to say: I live with depression. Which gives it a companion-like aura. Someone described it like wearing a lead vest. For myself, it’s like the lead covered my head and shoulders, pulling me into a stupor, like moving through slowly hardening concrete.
I ran in high school to lose weight — which never worked. And in college, it was an easy way to pass the required gym classes. I was a graphic designer in my twenties. I lived downtown in a renovated Victorian mansion and felt very smart and urban. But, learning on the job, I made some mistakes costing our department money. I began to fantasize driving my car off the interstate embankments.
My high school on the west side of town had a cross-country track that ran around and about through the neighboring fields like a Celtic knot overlaid on the acres of grass. Two or three times a week, I’d drive out there and run and run and run. It worked like drug and the effect lasted for about the next two days. It wasn’t like running away — it was running away. My super-power.
I remembered how that felt.
It took me six months to work up to these four miles. I started very slowly, setting my iPhone to time the laps. Run for two minutes, walk for a minute. Repeat eight times.
Whatever the chart said, it took me longer to get there. Our family doctor had cautioned me: after the age of 45, it takes twice as long (or more) to build muscle mass. So, I didn’t push it. I accepted whatever I could do, and just kept on. I noticed that after the walking bits, running again was much easier. As much as it felt like I was running with cinderblocks for feet, if I walked for a bit, and then started up again, those first glorious minutes were ease and grace. And afterwards, my skin radiated, capillaries pulsing.
My shoes were three years old and an ache under the ball of my foot began appearing at the end of every run. By October, I decided I needed a new pair of shoes.
I took a list of the top four women’s running shoes to our sports store. Narrowed my eyes at the Nike swashes all over the windows, on the shoes posed in the small windows facing the mall, and on the t-shirts draped from the walls above the racks.
I read my list to the smiling young woman at the counter. Yes, they had three of the four and a newer model of the number one shoe.
Self-consciously, I ran around the store wearing each pair. The first shoe was the best. It was soft, and yet my whole foot felt supported. The second, its new updated version, had a firmer ride. The other two were good, but no comparison to the first pair.
I felt elated. I was not going gently into this good night. This new commitment needed to be affirmed. I asked for and was shown two pairs of leggings and a new running bra.
Thursday morning, I rolled out of bed. Grabbed the new leggings and unfurled them. The black spandex nylon sheathed my legs as I pulled them on, the curving silhouette of my calf against the rug. The widest part of the waistband spread firmly across the small of my back and the front curved slightly downward. In real life, my stomach rolls gently out. I had this stomach before I had my children and I have long accepted it as feature of my personal topography. But this amazing garment made it… not invisible, but somehow a more congruent curve to my body. The rounded belly on the Nike of Samothrace. In black lycra.
I’d only been out of bed 10 minutes.
The running bra came next. It had a swash. It was grey, snug, and hugged my breasts firmly to my ribcage.
Another look in the mirror. Me, but a faster-looking, hint-of-power me. A more-like-Scarlet-Johannsson me.
I had left the new shoes in their box. Now I set it on the bed, and lifted the lid. The tan tissue paper, translucent and crisp, crackled as I pulled it aside. The shoes lay nestled together. Deep red-violet glowed through the black mesh fabric of the uppers.
Radioactive. Glowing embers. Veiled power.
I pulled one out. The white sole layered with red-violet. It was light. Airborne.
The cushioning inside enveloped my feet as I put them on. The thick, soft laces were black, trimmed with white and knotted with a cushiony grip.
The last thing before leaving the house: I turned my cell phone to the U2 station. In a wave, music flooded my ears. The pulsing beat filled me, carried me. The air was cool, icing across my thighs, winding up the sleeves of my sweatshirt.
My stride found its rhythm and I turned onto the road. These are my legs. This is my heart pounding. My lungs breathing. The music plays on. I am utterly myself under this dome of sky.
Ten years is long enough I think. It’s plenty of time.
M.C.K. Carter lives near Alexandria, Indiana. She has an M.A. in creative writing from Ball State University, where she teaches Art Education and Art History. This is her second essay to be published in Sport Literate. Other essays have appeared The Atticus Review, and Juxtaprose Literary Magazine. She lives on a family farm with two Welsh Cobs.