I was entranced while visiting good friends yesterday, who exulted in introducing me to their beautiful seven-week-old great-granddaughter. Her name, Aubriella, was as lovely as she was (named after her grandfather, Aubrey). But my entrancement was nothing compared to Aubriella’s. There she was in her crib, completely fascinated by, of all things, her own hands. She was grabbing one hand with the other and opening and closing her fingers with a look of sheer wonder on her tiny face.
Watching Aubriella made me realize that we spend our infancy and childhood finding so much to marvel at in our very limited worlds because everything is so new and fresh and therefore intriguing in its novelty. If the age periods of our lives were represented by punctuation symbols, our childhoods would definitely be assigned the exclamation mark.
That era passes all too quickly, at least for parents, into the adolescent and teenage years. Here an expression of wonder can often be terribly uncool. World-weariness seems to set in at about the same time as the first acne blemish. Nothing is full of wonder; everything is probed and usually found wanting. Why was I born into this lame family? Who decided that teachers are the boss of me? Why do my clueless parents need to know where I am every minute? If childhood is our exclamation mark, teenage-hood is stamped with the question mark.
Adulthood is long enough, if we’re lucky, to require two different punctuation marks. The first half of our adult years is all about exploring our options both professionally and personally. It is a series of adventures —new jobs, changing jobs, changing positions within the same organization; new friends, changing friends, new romantic partners, changing them too. It is an ever-changing series of multiple experiences, separated, once again if we’re lucky, by growth. This is the age of the comma: mostly learning episodes, strung out in a row.
But in our later adulthood we tend to settle down, often for good. Find The Spouse. Buy The House. Decide upon The Job. Grow The Family until it is complete. Full stop. We have moved from the comma to the period. We hope our lives will continue with many more adventures. But in our latter adult years, we come to appreciate the completions more than the strivings.
And that brings us to the ultimate time of life, the one which I assume a majority of you are lucky enough to be enjoying now: that of the Seniors. Do I designate a new punctuation mark to describe our concluding era? Surprisingly, no. And I think it is due to my wondrous experience with Aubriella.
When I saw the expressions on the faces of my friends watching their beloved great-granddaughter, they revealed the same wonder that Aubriella showed for her tiny hands. And my own expression at that moment was probably just as “wonder-full”.
I think that in our later years, if we’re lucky, we return full circle back to the exclamation mark in our outlook on later life. Rather than being awed by everything around us as infants are because it’s all so new, in old age we feel more reverence for life because our horizons are limited. We can no longer take for granted that we shall be enjoying life for decades and decades. Appreciating the beauties of a life that we may soon be leaving makes those beauties all the more precious. Our perspective is shaped not only by the wonders of the present but also by our memories from all those years now behind us. We are like mountain climbers. Yes, we may get a little out of breath, but now our view is ever so much more breathtaking.
Elliot writes:
Earlier in the same week that I met Aubriella, I also went to the hospital to visit a fellow retired English professor who had to have half his Iarge intestine removed due to diverticulitis. He was doing remarkably well. When I told him about this new essay I was writing, he insisted that I inform you that he may now be the only English professor who is in full possession of a semi-colon.