I love the health of summer. Me old bones don’t ache in the sultry heat, I swim a lot, I am outdoors a lot, I eat fruit and veg without thinking about it. I take vacation, I visit with friends, I sleep. I read. I lie on the grass and watch the clouds.
It’s good for body and soul.
This summer, for the first time in nine years, I am doing another big summer musical that will run eighteen performances in August. Rehearsals are creatively fulfilling, the production team and cast are wonderful, and I love my character. I am thrilled to be part of creating an original musical and to play a role that no actress has ever played before.
What I do not love is the after-rehearsal meals that inevitably involve something fried or slathered in cheese (our cast “place” is a pub that serves really good food, but it’s definitely pub food). In fact, all of summer seems to be one big opportunity to eat absolutely delicious fried foods – oysters! onion rings! wings! — and desserts (ice cream! pie with ice cream on top! red velvet cake!). I’m not much of a drinker but there’s also a lot more opportunity to have a beer or a cider or a cocktail.
Dern it all! I’m trying to make healthy choices: skip the fried stuff or have a few bites, stay with the raw bar, have one cucumber martini (YUM, by the way), and avoid the bread and butter (which is my favorite thing in the world so let me tell you something, babies, if that’s good bread I am EATING SOME).
But it’s the late night, hangin’ with the kids, post-rehearsal (or post-performance, which is worse because you’re really hungry at 11pm) socializing that I cannot seem to work with.
This is an emotional thing, I understand. It’s about pleasure and a sense of reward that just isn’t going to come from ordering the salad. Lots of the kids are on diets and order water, or share their quesadillas, or don’t order anything fried. That kid isn’t me. I am the old lady who is in a strange emotional territory that I’m not quite clear about yet (my therapist can help with this, I’m sure). It has something to do with memory and nostalgia and life roles and habits. I’ve been doing theatre since I was in first grade, and doing summer shows since I was 14. The rhythm of the summer theatre schedule is one that my body associates with youth, and being back at home in my family unit when my dad was alive and my siblings were in rooms down the hall and mom was up waiting for me at 2AM happy to chat with me about that night’s rehearsal or show. I associate this lifestyle with being a schoolgirl on vacation, when I’m not the grown-up in the household. I associate it with being so young that concerns like blood pressure or blood sugar or cholesterol are completely off my radar. I think when I eat those onion rings, I’m 15 years old and 109 lbs.
Body memory is a powerful thing, children!! Just the process of memorizing lines, singing for — and following the direction of –a demanding conductor, and listening to the critiques and suggestions of stage directors and choreographers puts me right back in my youth self. I am a girl: not a leader, not responsible for anything beyond doing my best on that stage, not a preacher or pastor (which is compounded by the fact that I’m on vacation this month), and not an old broad with a retirement account.
Do you know the other night I was driving home and I had this sense of total thrill to be driving myself in my own car? I thought, “I am so lucky to be driving home in my OWN CAR on this beautiful summer night.” It was just the same sort of thing I used to feel when I was 17 and finally able to drive myself to and from rehearsals. Regressing!
The summer season undoubtedly puts me back in my body in a way that is healing, necessary and a blessing. The question is, what body am I in, exactly? Today’s body, or the body that I had in around 1984?
Correct me if I’m making an inaccurate generalization here, but doesn’t it seem that the inner talk we have with our aging (or aged) bodies is overwhelmingly cautionary and chastising? “You should do this. You shouldn’t eat that. Oh boy, you’d better check in with your doctor about that.” The idea of eating fried or cheese-slathered foods late at night should activate just that inner voice of criticism and caution, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depending on how you look at it!), the inner voice that I’m living with right now belongs to a much earlier self.
I will be thinking about this theologically and spiritually in the next days, and praying about it. There is something here about the spirit body that transcends time and aging that I am experiencing, and I am grateful to God for that. Experiencing myself as a spirit being dwelling in a human body messes with my concept of chronological time and development in a way that makes me more certain than ever that the mind-body-spirit connection is not just a bunch of woo-woo new age nonsense. Most of the year, I drag my body around like a mule whose job it is to get my head where it needs to go. This season, my mind is not the whole story of who I am. I am flesh and blood and voice and body, an incarnate being who takes up space and sleeps and swims and happily stuffs her face with strawberries and watermelon, empty-brained while juice drips down her chin. This being is chronologically 46 years old, fat and out of shape and not wise to get fries with that. Spiritually, though, she isn’t 46, fat or out of shape, and she resents being tethered to those realities.
I’m going to stop this incoherent rambling now and end with one of my favorite quotes by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I use this at every baby christening and if you haven’t heard it before, I know you’ll love it:
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
Off to the pool. Kiss, kiss, loveys.
“Spiritually, though, she isn’t 46, fat or out of shape, and she resents being tethered to those realities.” Amen.
Thank you for this great post. I loved the quote as much as you anticipated. I’ve been channeling a younger self these past couple days too. Hubby and son are away,and it has thrown me back to the last time I lived alone. It is funny to see those old eating patterns emerge when I am not trying to “put healthy food on the table, be a good role model, and make sure we have dinner together as a family every night.” The quotes are so show the expectations I am usually trying to live up to. [I hear this from both men and women: when they’re alone, they eat just like they did in college. There’s a great book of essays about the strange eating habits people fall into when no one else is around. It’s called, “Alone In The Kitchen With An Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone.”- PB]
Wow, I think you cannot possibly know the help this brings to me! I am 36, no children, with a life that hasn’t changed much over the past 18 years. I have grown profoundly within, but my outside life and lifestyle are really not much different. Your thoughts here give me so many ideas about my own experiences, how to understand and best live this precious life – I can’t even describe. THANK YOU. [You’re so very welcome! It makes me very happy to have this wonderful feedback. -PB]
I remember talking to a woman during my CPE stint – she was there in the hospital bed in the long term care unit and said, “You know, I don’t think of myself as 83. Inside here, I’m still 20.” I’ve thought about her words for a long time. Perhaps spiritually we mature but we don’t age.
My ex-husband actually asked me once why I still wasn’t the 19 year old he first knew. Not only did the body grow older but fortunately I matured. I think we can all conjure up how we felt at certain ages. I’m with that 83 year old and perhaps I still am the 19 year old that my ex was looking for – just smarter and wiser. [Yea, when a man expects you to stay 19, that’s not real healthy. Now we know why he’s your EX! – PB]
When I was a teenager I used to wonder why my parents and their oldest friends acted so goofy and, in my eyes, immature, whenever they got together. Now that I’m in my late 40’s, I know it’s because they still felt like the kids they were when they all first met. I know this because my husband and I do the same thing with our old friends.
I feel ya on the bread and butter – one of my faves too, especially good bread when it’s toasted. I’ve often thought that if I were ever on death row, toasted bread and butter would definitely be part of my last meal.