Some Troublous Birth

 

Some seed in me,

Some troublous birth,

Like an awkward awakening,

Stirs into life.

 

Terrible and instinctive

It touches my guts.

 

I fear and resist it.

 

I don't know its nature.

I have no term for it.

I cannot see its shape.

 

But, there, inscrutable,

Just underground,

Is the long-avoided latency.

 

What I fear and desire

Pokes up its head.

                             Seed by William Everson

 

For many a year I’ve been trying to identify something I’ve had an intuition about. But, I’ve failed, until now. 

 

I had the feeling there was something unique and special about old age. I just couldn’t identify it. Then, this morning, it came to me. I’ve carried the poem that opens this piece since 1985, and didn’t realize, it carried my answer. Later life involves a kind of experience like none other, an inside-out development that is largely unknown, yet wildly persistent. Out of within comes a troublous birth.

 

I first gained a whiff of this experience in the aftermath of my stroke. I was torn physically apart, losing physical functioning, and the life I’d known up until then. With marriage, family, home, career, and health gone, I was reduced to a trembling mass of uncertainty. I survived, in part, because I turned to what remained. Unbeknownst to me, I turned toward the long-avoided latency within me. In a desire to live beyond the stripping, I turned to the only life that remained, the inner dimension of my being. 

 

It is there from which this troublous birth emanates.

 

Being disabled isn’t easy. There are a lot of misconceptions, prejudices, and insensitivities. Living through all of this strange love opens one up. If the bitterness doesn’t get one, then there is a possibility of coming to appreciate the rare ability that disability brings. For me, it was the recognition of the gifts of loss. Aging, I found out later, is a time when these gifts render we humans particularly available for the troublous birth. The poet refers to it, and now I recognize the unique, and special aspect, of later human life. My intuition has taken a surprising turn.

 

There is a birth that accompanies, and sometimes precedes, death. It is a miracle of Nature’s — the evolution of a species — and the fulfillment of a creative spark in the Universe. I think of it as troublesome for several reasons. Birth with death is so unexpected, fraught with societal baggage, superstition, and spiritual apprehension. What is laden with so much potential, frequently causes the old ones to choke. Of course, Nature proceeds anyway.

 

There is some kind of new life coming through our elder years. Getting old looks bad — birth pangs are not pretty — but a new potency is being unleashed. Old people reel under the weight of this confusing unexpected pregnancy. Sometimes they shine with radiant potency. Society is typically cruel, judgmental and aloof, when it comes to the unexpected. It provides no midwife. 

Evolving isn’t easy. Especially when the future is coming from within.  

 

Old age contains a new form of pregnancy. It’s time for a new form of celebration to go with it. A joyful and troublesome shower.