Discovering Myself in Cronehood

 

As I approach my seventieth year, I am continuously reminded by some of my women friends, as well as by publications dedicated to women’s issues and awareness, that I am in my “crone” years. I am now of an age when younger women (and possibly even young men) are supposed to look to me for guidance, counsel, and sagacity.  My diverse range of life experiences have supposedly lent me a flavor called “sage.” It is assumed that I have developed profound wisdom based on this nearly three-quarters of a  century of living.

 

I don’t feel wise. In fact, for the most part I feel confused, disappointed, and baffled. I am far less certain of what I know than I was when I was in my twenties. Then, issues were clear and goals were well-defined. These days when I consider an issue, I am deeply aware that issues have histories, have sides, have clear spots and murky areas; have, in fact, a great many human factors behind their every aspect. An issue that I could hold up like a sphere of clear glass four decades ago now sits heavily in my palm, a multi-faceted polyhedron filled with opaque smoke and ever-changing oil slicks.

 

Goals were easier then, too. Anything seemed possible, with the long roll of years ahead for opportunities to present themselves and for plans to proceed to realization. Looking back, I realize that no matter how well one plans, there is no way to prepare for the numerous unexpected events, disasters, turning points, missed opportunities and choices one will face in proceeding down that road of years. Now I see some of my goals as ingenuous, others that were noble but that were shattered by the circumstances of my life.

 

There is a quotation that I have seen attributed to John Lennon that is one of the more profound little aphorisms that I have adopted, no matter who uttered it first: “Life is something that happens when you are busy with other plans.” Only the experience of years of living can reveal the validity of this phrase. In most cases, it is a poignant reflection on what might have been.

 

However, I refuse to linger on what might have been. The depression brought on by thinking in those terms is equaled only by its pointlessness. Perhaps that, in itself,  is the beginning of wisdom. In the end, whatever wisdom I have acquired has been through living, through life experiences, and not from some higher enlightenment. The greatest lessons, in fact, have been far too mundane to be called enlightened.

 

To be sure, some of those lessons were passed along to me by older women whose advice I sought.

 

As a new (and very young) mother, I agonized over the decision I had made to give my baby a pacifier when information was published that criticized pacifiers as being emotionally addictive. My elderly landlady at the time listened to my anguish, then melted it away by saying, “Well, I always figured it was easier to take away a pacifier than it was to cut off a thumb.”

 

It was this same landlady who gave me another tidbit of her wisdom. Once, when she was extolling the virtues of her late husband and their “almost-perfect” marriage of over fifty years, I asked her the secret. She summed it up in one terse phrase, “Never go to bed mad.”

Years later, when I was distraught over the constant bickering of my two young-teenage daughters, I appealed to an older friend, the mother of seven. “What did you do when they fought with each other?” I asked. “If I intervene, they both turn on me and tell me to stay out of it.” “Well,” she said with a benign little sigh, “I just went in the bathroom with a good book and locked the door until it was over.”

 

Perhaps, after all, this is the wisdom that can best be passed those younger than ourselves. We surely cannot advise them on the larger aspects of their lives...what career to choose, whom to marry, the meaning of their lives. They do not want our advice, won’t take our advice if offered, and often our advice is out of date. What we can give, and give wholeheartedly, are these tiny chips of reality from our own experience of daily living. We can dispense them like chocolate chips, sweet and palatable little morsels, or – in some cases – like withered raisins that encapsulate a tiny bit of energy and truth no matter how aged they become.

 

 

Some of my crone-sisters are adopting habits such as dressing in flowing skirts and embroidered cloaks, with garlands of flowers in their hair and lighted candles on their Goddess alters. I think what startles me most is that these contemporaries are even calling themselves crones. Until recently, I have been thinking of myself as middle-aged. Suddenly being inundated with offers for senior citizen insurance, prepaid burial offers, and the obituaries of younger friends, has brought me up short. I realized that I must have passed through Middle Age but I failed to notice.

 

Perhaps that’s why I don’t feel ready for long skirts and garlands. I still feel comfortable in the jeans and sweatshirts I have worn most of my life. I love garlands but if I tried wearing one on my head, within minutes it would tilt like a tarnished halo and slide into the candle flames, igniting my hair and anything else flammable in the room. Heck, I don’t even have a Goddess alter, although I do acknowledge a small piece of female-shaped driftwood that I stuck in a rock niche in the garden, and I sometimes chat with a burl on the side of a hoary old oak tree in the back yard that very much resembles a wood sprite.

 

The fact that I have noticed, or adopted these images does tell me that I may be ready for cronehood. I can only hope that it’s ready for me.