Suspenders

(This is a re-post from a couple of years ago. Still counting up – or is it down – the fabled seven ages, THANK GOODNESS!)

Most days these days I'm hanging on by an elastic. Thread isn't nearly tough enough for the task. Due to a personality which is flourishing as I age (some might call it a "belly," but that sounds so coarse), I have entered my suspenders phase.

This is not one of Shakespeare's seven ages, though it should be - would be, no doubt, if suspenders had been invented then. On the Shakespeare scale, I estimate that I’m somewhere between FIVE (“In fair round belly with good capon lined”) and SIX (“His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide / for his shrunk shank”). The belly (I mean, “personality”) is definitely round – so round that there’s now nothing below extending out far enough to catch the pants as they surrender to gravity – hence the suspenders. But the shank is not yet shrunk, though no longer as rock-hard toned as it once was (as if!). So, yes, between FIVE and SIX.

Which is somewhat comforting at my age: still one and a half to go! And no more of that bothersome “Sighing like furnace” of age THREE, with its requited or unrequited loves; or, now that I’m retired, “Creeping like snail / unwillingly to school” (or work, nasty word) of age TWO. Though there may still be a reprise of age ONE in my future –  “Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms” –  to go along with the “sans everything” joys of age SEVEN.

I may no longer quite be in the “prime” that Miss Jean Brodie (i.e. Maggie Smith, in HER prime) proclaimed so magnificently, but now that I can loosen my belt enough, thanks to suspenders(!), to breathe, without risking the embarrassment of falling pants, it’s not too bad.

It took me years – indeed, decades – to reach my suspenders age. Not that they wouldn’t have been efficacious earlier, but as one who grew up at a time and place where only fat old men and farmers wore them, there were psychological barriers to wrestle. I could not, after all, take the role of Farmer Randy, no matter the play, no matter the stage.

Now that I’ve got here, life is easier. I even manage to suspend disbelief, and look on them as stylish statements; breathe easier without the suspense: Will the pants stay up or not?; proudly present to the world as an engineering wonder, a Brooklyn (Suspension) Bridge among men. All thanks to suspenders. Now I wonder that I took so long, capitulating to an inevitable that is not really so bad after all.

I suspect there’s a lesson here that I can (should!) apply elsewhere in my life. It’s not only my personality that has evolved with age. And so holding on to (“desperately clutching” seems too strong a term) youthful preconceptions (some might call them “misconceptions,” but that sounds so blaming) of what life – my life – should be like now that I’m old may not always be my best approach.

I remember when 30 was old – and also the ideal (and attainable)  waist measurement. Neither is now the case. Time to let go of both notions. Long past time. Time to send the size 30 jeans, even the size 40 ones, to Goodwill. Time to admit that one car will do for us, since we go everywhere together anyway – and don’t go anywhere all that much: home is where it’s at now, not gay discos and shopping malls. Time to stop calling it a “trekking stick”; it’s a balance bar now. Time to stop thinking that maybe Indian food will sit easy this once; that a full night’s sleep is 8 hours; that sex is little more than a concept. Time to admit that springing out of bed in the morning – as I so vividly remember doing at 25 – is a young man’s sport; time to be grateful for still getting out of bed anyway at all.

As with suspenders, there’s still resistance to confront. I still try Indian food once or twice a year – insanity for me, considering the same result. I still sometimes curse the darkness at 3 AM, instead of turning on the light and reading chapter 6 – and some nights, chapter 7 too. I still hold on to those size 40 jeans, just in case. “To every thing there is a season,” is still a lesson in the process of being learned, not without resistance, too bad for my serenity.

But there’s still hope. Where would we be in this life without hope? After all, I’ve embraced my suspenders age, however belatedly, and now I’m breathing easier – and my pants stay up.