In recent weeks, the donkeys and the sheep have been going to the outer pasture to graze, the grass in the main pasture is dying off after a few frosts. We are offering some hay, but they have been mysteriously indifferent, which means they have been getting food elsewhere. Today we followed them across Lulu’s Crossing and out into the outer pasture and we found their secret hideaway out of sight of the main farm and barn, down a sleep hill by a couple of apple trees, there is also lots of brush and shrub out there. The donkeys have found several apple trees out back and lots of brush, they walk hidden along the electric fence on their own special paths, this is donkey heaven, perfect terrain for them.
Maria and I both had the feeling the donkeys wanted to show us their new special places, it was windy and beautiful out there. Donkey’s love exploring, their love to find secret places.
Some of you may remember the weeks long standoff between me and Lulu over the passageway to the new pasture, Lulu would not cross it until we had an excavator come and pour a ton of gravel over the crossing and put a culvert in to carry the water. Her stand enthralled the internet. Now the donkeys and the sheep march over their every day, and they are finding lots of good things to eat in there. It is a beautiful setting for the back of the farm, our 17 acres into the woods, donkey and sheep paradise. Maybe goats next year.
In America, the public narrative for growing older is grim. Aging is mostly seen as a dread and expensive nightmare that we must begin preparing for when we are very young. We are bombarded with medications and proceedures, warehoused into nursing and urgent care facilities, then blamed by society for not being able to afford our lives.
In the culture, older people exist only in the context of health care, long-term health insurance, entitlements, nursing homes and pills and surgeries, downsizing and IRA’s. Older people have vanished from TV, media, movies and magazines, and are mostly portrayed in horrific ways in novels as doddering, sexless fools. Since we have the shortest time left in our lives to spend money, we are the Corporate Nation’s least desirable demographic, unless you are a pharmaceutical or health insurance company. Older people have vanished from public consciousness in any meaningful way other than draining the collective treasury.
The only time I ever see anyone my age on TV is when he is having that friendly chat with his nice, white-coated physician who has tons of time to talk to him. Love without medication is just presumed to be an impossible dream for older people, there are no images of that kind of love anywhere in our world.
I decided a long time ago that this would not be my narrative, that I would not accept this path that the Fear Machine that runs America chose for me. There is no room in the Corporate Nation for anything that does not have long-term buying power. I saw I needed my own voice, my own identity, that I needed to reject almost every single idea the culture present to me about aging, about growing older, about what I could do and should so, about what I had and needed to have.
I am grateful for my decision, it was a good one for me. I did find love, and I also found sex without pills, I might not be able to do all of the things I once did, but I am creative when I need to be, I think older men can be wonderful lovers, often more sensitive than their younger versions. I hope so.
I started a blog to give myself a voice, so that I would not be defined by the view of me held by publishing, politics, the media or the culture beyond. And my voice online is loud, my blog is moving towards 200,000 visits a month, there are nearly 15,000 likes on my Facebook page, I am accepting subscriptions as payment for my work. I am happy to say that many of my readers are young, we are all quite comfortable together. I am the only one defining me, not the many institutions crowding around to diminish me and make me small.
I refused to let the health care system decide by itself what health is for me. I accept some forms of conventional treatment – as in diabetes care – and refuse most of the tests that would draw me into a life of pills, pharmaceutical visits and the idea of myself as fragile human being in need of constant medication and nurturing. This requires a constant balance in our world, it is a never ending challenge.
I do not talk about my health, monitor myself constantly. I do not tell struggle stories or wallow in grief, I do not dwell in the past or focus on what I have lost rather than what I have.
I have not downsized my life, I have broadened it – re-marrying, buying a new farm, getting a donkey in need of saving, getting a dog from Ireland, taking up teaching, hospice work, therapy work with veterans, and new forms of media that support my work – podcasts, e-books, social media, teaching, videos, open groups on Facebook.
My story is not about a perfect life, it is about a life that is of my own choosing, in which I give voice to myself, construct my own narrative for life. Growing older is a challenge and a joy. As Joseph Campbell said, I am finally learning who I am and how to help other people in a bounded and appropriate way. So many of life’s battles are behind me, even as some of the biggest ones remain. As I choose to live meaningfully, so I will work to choose to die well. I do not have IRA’s and long-term health care, I do not have money in the bank, I have refused to trade a life I love for one other people think I might need. This, for me, is the challenge of growing older in America.
Day by day, Minnie has begun returning to her life, this morning she was reunited with her hens – she loves to hang out with chickens – and sat on the porch with them in the morning sun. She has several good hiding places now – one in the woodshed, one in the barn, one underneath Maria’s studio barn, she is rebuilding her life, and she is standing more confidently upright, moving more quickly, returning to her life as a barn cat, as we hoped she would. We are still bringing her inside at night, but she is increasingly reluctant to leave her other world. Seeing her with the chickens was heartening, a big step.
Her instincts for her life are returning, she is gaining confidence, seemingly in no pain, feeling a bit less vulnerable every day. My wish is her for to return to her life – I known many happy three-legged barn cats here – and I think this is beginning to happen.We’ll see. I see that cats are very smart, very good at figuring things out, protecting themselves – at least some of them. The farmers always say the smart cats live a long time, the foolish ones do not last long.
Post card to P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 from Hermosa Station, South Dakota:
“10/16 – Cranes flying South, their gurgling mixing with the spatter of cottonwood leaves – rain whispers on the rooftops. The grass is green and gold – with thousands of dead cattle lying from the October 4 storm..” Linda Hasselstrom.
