England: Thinking About Aging in Ancient Surroundings

I was in Newcastle Upon Tyne. I had finished ripping around Scotland and arrived at my hotel, where a group in the lobby might have been meeting up for prom night. It’s only a guess because, as we know, I cannot understand my birth language and it’s been fifty-four years since my last prom. But they are wearing long dresses and tuxedos. The girls are huddled together whispering, and the boys are preening their feathers for each other.

Seeing teenagers always makes me feel light in my Crocs. I found my room and fell into the dreamless sleep of a woman relieved to be of a sane post-prom age and in bed before dark. I cluck at them, at myself, lucky as an old hen. The next morning, I’m back at the train station with a vague idea of where my departure platform is and still time for breakfast.

I smile at the young man behind the counter and ask for a bap and a flat white, as I point at a flyer for their daily special. He asks me a question, and I cannot hear any spaces between letters. I can’t pull out a sound that I can use to decipher his question. Excuse me? I say, squinting my eyes to help me hear better.

He repeats the same sounds, quicker and a bit louder. I watch his lips as I roll the sound in my ears. Check to see if my hearing aids are in as if it was a volume problem which it is not. Pardon me, I plead. What did you say?

This third time he nearly shouts, but the same quick discordant sounds come out. Is he speed-mumbling? Is he speaking English with a British accent, but with an extra accent thrown in that disguises the first? I finally shrug and hope he’ll give me my order, anyway.

This happens with us and horses. We substitute volume for understanding. As if shouting is the same as explaining. And we’re supposed to be the smart ones. I flick an ear.

A few hours later, I’m at a friend’s farm having tea and scones and laughing with her family. I’m still listening hard but it’s light-hearted. Her dogs lean against my knee, and I feel welcome. Relieved and safe. Same as working with horses again.

My friend asked what I wanted to do during my visit and it’s always a hard question when you are in a strange place. How would I know?  She says she has an idea, something different that I don’t usually do.

She suggests sightseeing. What a lark! It may sound obvious to you, but when you travel for work, it just doesn’t happen. By the time the clinic is complete, it’s time to head to the next stop. This trip I’m a tourist.  Not to mention, I have a driver. I notice I like myself this way.

In the morning after barn chores, we took the dogs for a walk in the woods. The ground was carpeted with wildflowers, the air was moist and sweet. It was good to be in the trees rather than watching them from a train window. The woods are a sacred place, a church without human interference.

Then we changed clothes and headed into town to the Lincoln Cathedral. We had a ladies’ lunch, another rare event, at the Cathedral cafe and then went inside. It was like a manmade stone forest, with stained glass windows in the branches above. Construction on the cathedral began in 1072, for crying out loud. It was an immense undertaking, and for over two hundred years, the cathedral was the tallest building in the world. So huge that I had to stand a block away to get it all in one frame. Beyond religion or politics, it is a marvel. And here’s me having an attitude about coming up on seventy years. Aren’t humans arrogant little bugs?

Then we walked through the neighborhood, where the buildings were newer. Meaning only dating back to the 1600s, Shakespeare’s time. We wandered the narrow, steep cobblestone lanes lined with shops and galleries. Their high ceilings had massive rough-hewn wooden beams hacked from hundred-year-old trees. History rolls us back in time. It is palpable in every stone, and yet it feels almost like a movie set. Real as rock and as translucent as fantasy.

The act of traveling can provide a perspective of who we are from another vantage point. Home is what we compare with what we see. The United States is so young in light of the history that has passed through these lanes. We are like an unruly schoolboy country with an awkward mix of silly misunderstandings and immortal dreams. If we took care of our heirlooms like this, maybe we could have nice things.

From Lincolnshire, I leapfrogged to other friends who took me to meet the New Forest Ponies, a native UK breed. They live in the 140,000-acre national park area they are named for. The herds have welfare management, but they roam freely on unfenced acres. Not entirely tame and not fully wild. Just like the horses in our barns.

It’s foaling season now, so there were very rotund mares biding their time and foals braced on new legs with wide eyes. Their calming signals are subtle, their heads down grazing, telling us they are no threat while watching our every movement. They are subtle communicators, not showing the glaring calming signals our “domestic” horses do. The earliest record of horses in the New Forest dates back to 1016. New Forest ponies are surefooted and agile. Older than cathedrals and just as mystical.

It’s a job of work to make sense of all these bits and pieces of experience. I always know horses are the through-line. For now, I will collect the bits all in a pile, to be examined for their weight and texture, then turned over in the light. A paradise for an overthinking tourist like me.

I notice I continue to have a lot of attitude for a puny little human life, a speck of dust floating in the air somewhere between birth and death. Aren’t all of us just passing fads in our own minds?

I will wait for these pieces to make sense, so I can eventually eat my birthday cake in peace this fall. Meanwhile, my mind returns to a certain bit of advice that asks more questions than it answers. It’s a synthetic voice in the recorded announcement that is repeated every time the train stops. The first step to the platform is sometimes not as close or even as it could be.

I think I heard it right. The unearthly voice warns, “Mind the gap.” That I can do.

And PS. They are right about the sticky toffee pudding.

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