Filling the Well

One of the pleasures of this past weekend was long and meandering conversations with two good friends of mine. We talked a lot about life and death and the end of life and how we imagine it might end, how we want it to end, how we do not want it to end. Both of my friends have lost their fathers in the past two years. Both are engaged with mothers in some type of assisted living arrangement. We talked of dementia and how the mind ages. We talked of our own aging bodies. 

When I was in my twenties, I dated a woman in her forties. I suppose it was, at the time, somewhat scandalous. I suppose some would say, Mommy Issues. It worked for a period of a few years. I liked her. I liked the sex we had together. I liked her friends. In retrospect, one of the things I learned from her was about what life is like in one’s forties. I learned more about loss and the middle struggles. What I did not learn was about how in middle age life just seems to pile it on sometimes. Set backs, even tragedies, seemed more singular in my twenties. Not getting a particular job, various disappointments in trying to pursue different career paths, even losing my sister, all seemed to be discrete incidents. Moments for mourning and licking the wounds of disappointments. Still only moments. At this age, life seems to pile it on: lose your mother, don’t get jobs, lose your home, be thrown into care work for your grandmother, watch a nut bar be elected. There are no longer singular moments of pain and difficulty, but many and they all bleed together, amplifying one another.

Part of this is probably complexity and the awareness of complexity. In my twenties, I rarely though, if I do this, then I cannot do this. I think that way often today. Similarly, I think, if I do this, this might happen and that might no happen and I weigh those options. I am starting to think this is what middle age is. Life piling it on.

I am hoping that old age is dissipation after all of this accretion. It will be a welcome change. One of my friends is like me in this moment of life just piling it on relentlessly with little pleasure. In one of our long and meandering conversations, I asked her, what are you doing to fill the well. The question sent my head spinning as I tried to answer it for myself. What am I doing to fill the well?

Here is my list of well-filling activities:

Traveling. Small trips, yes, but traveling a bit for work, combining bits of work with bits of pleasure, visiting old friends and new. That fills the well.
Reading capaciously. Lesbian novels from the entire twentieth century. Narrative non-fiction. Biography. Poetry. Essays. I am dipping in and out of about ten books at the moment and loving it.
Dreaming. I am starting to imagine new projects. Big ones. Hairy ones. For the past year, I though my work was to simply wrap up things I had started. Yes, things must be complete, but filling the well requires new dreams.
Scheming. A central question of my life has been how do we mobilize resources to support the lesbians. I continue to scheme about how to do just that.
Supporting the dreams and schemes of others. Little bits of money here and there to support the dreams and schemes of other folks, help fill my own well. I have been planting those seeds.
Sitting in the cold, wearing warm sweaters. I may be living in Florida, but I am a Michigan girl and I like these cool evenings in the low fifties that require wool socks and soft sweaters.
Watching it rain and walking in the rain. There was a good soaking rain in San Francisco this weekend. We did not take a long walk, but it felt good to have rain on my face, in my hair. The well does not fill by dumping buckets into it; the ground around it must be soaked for water to run down and then be pumped up.

What are you doing to fill the well?

Filed under: Uncategorized