Tricia Rose Burt

Speaker. Storyteller. Coach.

Blog

Aging with Attitude

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Lynn is one of my dearest friends. We’ve known each other for at least 40 years and we are regularly in touch. She knows the people in my world; I know the people in her world, including her new husband, David. In fact, I was the one of the first of her friends to meet David. In the three years they dated, we talked frequently about David. For several months, my refrigerator door featured a party invitation celebrating Lynn and David. I am well aware that Lynn’s husband’s name is David.

And Your Name Would Be?

But last week, someone innocently asked me, “What’s Lynn’s husband’s name?” and I just stared at him. I had no idea. He might as well have asked me to prove some obscure mathematical hypothesis. The name of Lynn’s husband had simply evaporated, and I just sat there, blinking.

Desperate, I called Lynn and asked, “What the heck is your husband’s name?” She was laughing too hard to be offended.

I am lucky –Lynn is one of several devoted childhood friends with whom I will grow old (a process which has, apparently, already started). For those of you who have seen I Will Be Good, you may remember Jan, Jan, Heddy, Lynn, Lee, Saf and Alvie. I have an equally faithful group of college friends who are at the ready as well. In the close friend department, my blessings abound.

Watching the Trailer, Waiting for the Movie

This is good news as I watch my mother, now 81, and her octogenarian pals experience old age. While we in our 50s deal with the occasional memory loss, reading glasses, and minor surgery to fix worn-out parts, many of Mama’s buddies endure Alzheimer’s, chronic pain, and what seems like the weekly death of a close friend.

But Mama and her friends are not allowing their older age to keep them from not only doing good, but also having a good time. Mama recently hosted a birthday party for a close friend who was turning 84. She invited three other 80ish friends to celebrate. All of them volunteer at the local hospital (and have done so for years) with a younger couple – also invited to the party — who are in their 50s and ride motorcycles. Big motorcycles. I think they call them “hogs.”

A bit blurry, but you get the point

Damned if Mama and her friends didn’t hop on the back of the motorcycles and cruise the streets of Tampa. I wouldn’t exactly call them biker chicks, but I’m sure  the neighbors were impressed.

I hope to face old age with the same spirit as Mama and her friends. In the meantime, I’m reviewing the names of my friends and their husbands, just in case.

 

Control and Grace

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Highly recommended any time of year

I’ve got ashes on my forehead, which means Lent has begun. For my secular readers and those without a liturgical bent, Lent is the time in the church calendar for self-examination — a healthy exercise, whether or not you buy into church, Lent, or God. For 40 days, we enter our psychic wildernesses, root out the weeds in our internal gardens, prepare ourselves for Easter and hopefully our own annual resurrection. Most everyone associates Lent with self-denial (I’m giving up sugar), but I like what Martin Smith says in his book, Seasons of the Spirit, about disciplines, which he says so many of us have been trained to invoke at the beginning of Lent:

It should help us smile at our anxious attempts to bring our life under control, the belt-tightening resolutions about giving up this or taking on that. What we are called to give up in Lent is control itself.

No Control

I chose to give up sugar and not control for a reason. Sugar is much easier. I don’t know about you, but giving up control — or the illusion I have any — is a bit of an issue for me (understatement). Just last week, I was gripping tightly on an important creative project, a book proposal I’m developing. It’s a big opportunity, and there’s a lot riding on it. But instead of getting out of my own way, letting the work flow through me, trusting the creative process, and in my case, God, I was convinced that I alone was in charge of the outcome. Nothing of value was coming through. Frustrated and in tears, I stomped the 2.7 mile walk in front of my house, yelling at God the whole way. Loudly. With expletives. My dog Andy trotted along, confused.

Grace Firsthand

Another book worth reading

Upon my return, I begrudgingly went back to my studio, sneering at the futility of it all. In my research, I happened upon an interview with the author Anne Lamott, where she talked about grace and our attempts to be in charge.

 Grace is that extra bit of help when you think you are really doomed; also, not coincidentally, when you have finally run out of good ideas on how to proceed, and on how better to control the people or circumstances that are frustrating or defeating you. I experience Grace as a cool ribbon of fresh air when I feel spiritually claustrophobic. Sometimes I experience it as water-wings, something holding me up when I am afraid that I’m going down, or the tide is carrying me away. I know that Grace meets us whereever we are, but does not leave us where it found us. Sometimes it is so small–a couple of seconds relief here, several extra inches there. I wish it were big and obvious, like sky-writing. Oh, well. Grace is not something I DO, or can chase down; but it is something I can receive, when I stop trying to be in charge.

Reading those words, I received a boat load of grace. The work has been flowing ever since. Even still, I know I’ll be back to the place of control again, what with my being human and all. But hopefully in the next 40 days, I’ll make some progress. Wilderness, here I come.