Eight-year-old children and eighty-year-old children

 

I subscribe to a Frederick Buechner daily email quotation. The son-in-law of the late author manages the site, posting daily excerpts from Buechner’s many books. Buechner is one of my favorite writers. His insights can be both profound and funny at the same time, always well-written. I look forward to my daily connection with him. Today as I sat down to decide on the topic for my next weekly blog posting, I decided to read the Buechner quote-of-the-day first. The posting is entitled simply, “Old Age.” “How appropriate,” I said to myself. More of a short essay than a single quotation, Buechner writes of the similarities between eight-year-old children and 80-year-old children. It was originally published in the book Whistling in the Dark. I couldn’t have said any of this better than he did, so I decided to share the essay with you. “OLD AGE” by Frederick Buechner

“OLD AGE IS NOT, as the saying goes, for sissies. There are some lucky ones who little by little slow down to be sure, but otherwise go on to the end pretty much as usual. For the majority, however, it's like living in a house that's in increasing need of repairs. The plumbing doesn't work right anymore. There are bats in the attic. Cracked and dusty, the windows are hard to see through, and there's a lot of creaking and groaning in bad weather. The exterior could use a coat of paint. And so on. The odd thing is that the person living in the house may feel, humanly speaking, much as always. The eighty-year-old body can be in precarious shape, yet the spirit within as full of beans as ever. If that leads senior citizens to think of all the things they'd still love to do but can't anymore, it only makes things worse. But it needn't work that way. “Second childhood commonly means something to steer clear of, but it can also mean something else. It can mean that if your spirit is still more or less intact, one of the benefits of being an old crock is that you can enjoy again something of what it's like being a young squirt.  “Eight-year-olds, like eighty-year-olds, have lots of things they'd love to do but can't because they know they aren't up to them, so they learn to play instead. Eighty-year-olds might do well to take notice. They can play at being eighty-year-olds, for instance. Stiff knees and hearing aids, memory loss and poor eyesight are no fun, but there are those who marvelously survive them by somehow managing to see them as, among other things and in spite of all, a little funny.  “Another thing is that, if part of the pleasure of being a child the first time round is that you don't have to prove yourself yet, part of the pleasure of being a child the second time round is that you don't have to prove yourself any longer. You can be who you are and say what you feel, and let the chips fall where they may.  “Very young children and very old children also have in common the advantage of being able to sit on the sideline of things. While everybody else is in there jockeying for position and sweating it out, they can lean back, put their feet up, and like the octogenarian King Lear ‘pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies.’"  “Very young children and very old children also seem to be in touch with something that the rest of the pack has lost track of. There is something bright and still about them at their best, like the sun before breakfast. Both the old and the young get scared sometimes about what lies ahead of them, and with good reason, but you can't help feeling that whatever inner goldenness and peace they're in touch with will see them through in the end.”

Vaccinations and second childhood

Older people are said to experience a “second childhood.” The stereotype is that of a silly old man or woman acting childish, often on the verge of dementia. I resist that image, although sadly it does describe some people. Those people deserve compassion, not sarcasm.

But it is true that many childhood memories and emotional experiences are alive and active in our inner persons, maybe more so the older we get. They influence how we feel and act.

Take getting shots. Maybe this is a trivial example, but in this regard I’m still a child. I hate getting shots. My gut begins twisting and tightening as the time approaches, like when I was a little girl and my parents told me this was better than getting measles. And it was. But, still….

It’s really not as bad as it used to be. I’ve spent much of my adult life living abroad and that meant typhoid, hepatitis, yellow fever, and other gruesome shots. While I never liked them, I learned to tolerate the experience.

But I still feel that jab of fear. I have a coping strategy. I sit in the chair, my arm bared and waiting, and I pretend I’m a grown-up, even as that frightened inner child shakes. My face doesn’t let anything but indifference show. Afterwards I inevitably say to myself, “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Maybe that makes me mature, not childish. I’m committed to getting that annual flu shot, and now the latest Covid vaccine, no matter what. So, stop crying, inner child.

(An aside: When I looked for vaccination images on the Internet, most of the offerings were cheerful--people sitting in the chair, needle in arm, smiling smugly. Even children. Even babies. I remember bringing my babies in for their shots. They may have been smiling beforehand, but that was quickly followed by a look of pure shock, and then the wails.)

Currently I have six red spots on my face. No one has said anything about them to me, so maybe they aren’t conspicuous. But in the mirror, I look like I have some infectious childhood disease.

Last week on a routine checkup, my dermatologist told me I had six pre-cancerous spots on my face. She followed this information by saying, “But it’s nothing to worry about.” Right. She then took out her slender silver gun, aimed it at my face, pulled the trigger, and froze each spot. Each shot stung for a brief moment.

Looking back, I realize that I experienced no fear. And I’ll do it again next year if necessary. I have no qualms although this procedure stings more than a flu shot or the dreaded drawing of blood.

I wonder why. Maybe it’s because I have no frozen-face childhood memories. Maybe it’s because anything that reduces the possibility of cancer is worth the pain involved. I don’t know why I’m so calm about this. I’m just standing back and observing these things about myself.

It’s intriguing how some childhood fears linger, even into old age. We change, of course, and hopefully find ways of facing these fears. Something that helps me do this is humor. I look at myself and chuckle. I write silly blogs. And I show up at the doctor’s office no matter what I’m feeling.

You can laugh at me, too.

Or, better yet, laugh at yourself.

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