This Old Mermaid

On Sunday when we were loading up the boat to come home, I was walking on the dock with a huge Rubbermaid bin in my arms and there were two men, leaning on a rail, talking, and there wasn't room for me to pass because one of the men's butts was sticking out and it was as if he didn't see me. As if I was invisible, standing there with my heavy burden, needing to get by him to the boat.
Just as I was saying, "Excuse me," a woman who was on another part of the dock said something like, "Honey..." and the man straightened and let me pass but he never said anything like, "Oh, sorry," or "I didn't see you," or, well, anything.
And it's completely impossible that he didn't see me. My footsteps alone on the wooden boards had certainly alerted him to my presence.
I am still wondering what that was about.

I realized a few years ago that I was no longer really on the radar screen. This happens to most women, I think. No longer do we walk into a room or down a street and garner any sort of attention. It is only when this happens that we realize that we had been getting attention all along, all of our lives since we became teenagers, perhaps, and to cut even more deeply, we realize that no longer do we seem to register with check-out people except as another cog in the wheel of their day. There is no longer any need for anyone in the service industry to register us at all except with the merest of polite attention.
Unless we are asked if we qualify for the senior discount.
Which does not help.

It's odd because like I said, we may have not even realized we were getting any sort of special attention, attracting any sort of gleam of real connection before it disappeared. I see it again when I am out with my daughters- there it is- I am not making this up. It happens all the time.
Until it does not.

I was thinking about that this morning as I walked. Today's walk was a sort of agony, as so many of them are. My iPhone's pedometer app said that I took 7,957 steps on that walk and each of them was filled with a sort of hate on my part for the action. And as I almost always do, I wondered why in HELL I was doing this, this hateful thing, this painful walking which never fails to remind me of the Little Mermaid and how each step she took after legs replaced her tail was an agony.
And why do I do it? Why do I force myself out the door every weekday morning to experience that again? Oh sure. Because I want to lose weight, I want to lower my cholesterol, I want to feel stronger, better...so many good reasons.
But mainly, I think, because I feel that at the age of fifty-eight I have given up so much, and so much has been taken from me by time and living, that I need to hold on to whatever it is that I can, no matter how effort it takes, no matter how much it fucking hurts.

Does this make sense?

I don't know.

When you're young, the whole world and its possibilities seems to stretch before you. You are told, as a child, that you can do ANYTHING. Be a doctor, be a lawyer, be a dancer, open a restaurant, a bakery, travel the world...anything.
And then you take this path and then that one and before you know it, you've eliminated the possibility of one thing and then another. Or at least, in your own mind. It seems impossible to go back, start down paths which would take so much time and so much effort that reaping the benefits of them would be, to say the least, hardly cost effective. And some things, well, unless you start to train for them young are never going to happen.
Beauty pageants and dance careers, for example.

And so life seems to narrow. Maybe not for some. Some people seem to have a gift for reinvention. I think of Jimmy Carter and how his life expanded after he left office and how vital his life and mission are, perhaps more so now than when he was president.
I am not Jimmy Carter.

Perhaps I am only feeling sorry for myself today. This is quite possible. Pain can do that to you. It can sap whatever confidence and ambition and enthusiasm you have right out of you. So can being ignored on a dock by a man your own age on a beautiful Sunday morning, your arms straining to hold a Rubbermaid bin, thinking that surely he will move his damn butt, surely, and let you pass by. You are two inches behind him, he is obviously neither deaf nor blind.
Have you disappeared entirely?

I wonder if this is why some older women adopt a gypsy-sort of demeanor with wildly colored clothing and heavy make-up and tons of jangley jewelry. Why some women chop their gray hair off into crew cuts and wear earrings the size of stop signs? Paint their nails and lips brilliant scarlet and wear silk scarves and shawls with fringes that tremble and wave as they walk?
"Look at me!" these women seem to demand. "I am not only still here, I am most definitely alive and you will notice my presence, you will see me, you will hear me, you will stand aside when I want to pass!"Is that what those fucking stupid red hats are all about? Red hats and purple scarves? Merely an attempt to recapture some of the attention that youth had provided so easily?
Older age and old age do not even garner respect any more. Not in our culture. Not usually. Maybe for someone like Bill Clinton or yes, Jimmy Carter, or even Hillary Clinton but certainly not for most of us.
We are simply dismissed. We are no longer worthy even of true eye contact.

I should have told that man, "Move your ass, you rude motherfucker."
Why didn't I?
Do even I myself feel as if I have disappeared? Do even I doubt the fact that I deserve to take up space on a dock, on the planet?
Does my pain remind me that I no, I have not? Is each one of those 7,957 steps a tatto that I am stomping into the earth telling it in no uncertain terms that I am still here? Still very much alive, still capable of...something? Even as I withdraw more and more into myself, this small place where I live?

I think T.S. Eliot said it all in his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock, a poem which I loved and which captured me when I was so very young that the very idea of the mermaids not singing to me was nothing more than a wisp of smoke on a far distant horizon.

Well. That's what I'm thinking of today. And I guess I am writing these words as my own way to ask and answer the question of whether or not I am truly fading into complete unimportance as I age, as I become so obviously and painfully invisible.

Here. Here's the poem. You probably already know it. I am going to go hang my clothes on the line on this beautiful day and then, I think, I will dare to eat a peach.
And take some Ibuprofen. And go to town.
Maybe I should wear a purple dress. I have a few. I never wear them. It may be time. Although honestly, it doesn't seem to matter much any more. It doesn't seem to matter much at all.

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965).  Prufrock and Other Observations.  1920.

1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats         5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question….         10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,         15 The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,         20 And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window panes;         25 There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate;         30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go         35 Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—         40 (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare         45 Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,         50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.   So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all—         55 The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?         60   And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress         65 That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.   And should I then presume?   And how should I begin? .      .      .      .      .      .      .      . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets         70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. .      .      .      .      .      .      .      . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!         75 Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?         80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,         85 And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while,         90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—         95 If one, settling a pillow by her head,   Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;   That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while,         100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:         105 Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say:   “That is not it at all,   That is not what I meant, at all.” .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .         110 No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use,         115 Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old … I grow old …         120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.         125 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown         130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.