The rainy, blustery weekend finally yielded to an azure sky during a recent camping trip, though camping is hardly the word. Gargantuan recreational vehicles, buses commandeered by graying couples and their miniature pooches, dwarfed our tiny fold-up trailer, which disappeared into their neighboring shadows. But we were living the high life: full connections to water and electricity—and a porta potty.
When the sun eventually broke through, we headed for the hot tub, where I soaked until my wrinkled skin steamed. Then it was off to the pool to attack a few of the exercise laps I had deferred for years.
As I descended the steps into the water, an elderly man bisected my anticipated lap lane. He was swimming sideways, across my lane. Not only that, the lane stripe was painted across the pool. But why?
Adjusting to the altered terrain, I heaved my trunks, and me with them, to join the sideways-swimmer. With my crosswise laps accomplished, my curiosity wouldn’t subside. So I paced, or rather bounced along the bottom of the pool, measuring the length and width of the pool with my stride. I discovered the pool was actually perfectly square. The rest was optical illusion. The lane stripe could have been painted either direction with equal merit. Which direction to swim? Lengthwise, at right angles to the older guy, or with him, across the pool? It didn’t matter. Same distance.
The illusion gave voice to a struggle that had been rising all weekend: what was a youngish guy like me doing hanging around this generation of RV-commandeering oldsters? The pool lanes described my dilemma. I was out for a brisk, youthful pool-length lap workout. Instead, an old guy drifted lazily, blocking my swimming lane, and I fell in behind him. Where were the high-energy folks my age that I could hang with? Our youthful, tiny trailer was buried amid hulking, slow-moving diesels with scarcely a non-wrinkly face within sight.
That evening, on our way to the restroom, we paused to view the RV resort’s neighboring meeting room, reserved for social gatherings. It was packed with oldsters, chatting convivially around tables bedecked with emptying wine bottles. One of the partygoers beckoned us to come in. Warily, we cracked open the door.
“Come on in!” she invited. “It’s a birthday party! For all of us! None of us wants to admit our birthday anymore, so it’s a birthday for nobody and everybody!”
Oldsters again. Where were the hip RV’ers our own age? We couldn’t get away. We seated ourselves beside the couple that invited us in. The wine bottles emptied as the guests intermittently nibbled on chocolate birthday cake soaked with melting vanilla ice cream.
We exchanged pleasantries with the older couple that invited us in. Where were they from? Where did they meet? Where did they go to college? Gradually, our swapped stories filled in the details of our lives.
Within minutes, lightning struck. In one of those rare lifetime moments you experience with someone you’ve never met, we realized our lives intersected. With a start, I discovered that I was talking to the sister of a girl I went to college with! In Chicago, in the 1970s.
And that meant that the older-looking woman I was speaking with, along with a good many other folks in the room were roughly—my own age!
In some ways, we will always miss our past, our youth. But we also know that we really don’t want to live that uncertainty and stress all over again.
We don’t belong there, but we’re not sure we belong here, either: older, among these older people. Is this really who we have become? At moments like these, we’re not sure how to go forward. Can we muster the courage to become like these people?
Ah, yes, I realize…I already am one of “these people.”
Maybe all of us are most comfortable when we reckon ourselves neither young nor old. Someone’s always behind, but someone else is also ahead of us. We’re always just arriving, always capable of, and ready for–change.
So which way do we swim the laps in the pool? Lengthwise, as we did since we were young? Or sideways, joining the older generation?
It turns out that they’re the same distance. Remember, the pool is square.
I think I’ll swim the diagonal.