One thinks of massage as soothing, healing, relaxing. Mwa ha ha. Despite my screams of agony, my sister pressed on — and demanded that I participate (by moving my hand from the wrist) in my own torture.

I’m thinking that this is exactly what happened to Edvard Munch before he painted this:

I think from now on I’ll stick to drugs, thank you.

(p.s. You know I really appreciated it, sis. Mwah!)

I used to look at older women (like my lovely aunt) who were terribly deliberate about their movements. Carefully put down scissors before reaching for the tape, carefully swung their coats into the car before closing the door. I fling myself around the world like I’m on a tether. I leap into cars, I hurl knives into drawers, I toss bags on to benches, I fall into bed, I spring up again, I lunge, I hop, I dance, I move, always, as if something’s about to fall and I’m stretching to catch it.

Now I’m wondering if perhaps I should slow down a bit, watch where I’m putting my feet, take time to put my bag on properly. Only last week I put my shoulder out so badly (while sleeping) that I was in agony for a day and even now I can feel it twinge a bit. The following day I wrenched my neck just turning around.

I fear that this is the first step on my own slippery slide into dementia. And I also know that whether or not I surrender to the fear, I will carry that fear around with me from now on, as I watch my mum disappear. I fear that I’m getting old and that this is what getting old feels like. I fear that I could ward this all off by getting into better shape but I don’t really want to because I’m so very lazy. But I want to carry on hurtling through the world, not stepping politely. I want to carry on feeling like me.

And in the meantime, I think I should get more bandages and an aloe plant.

Then this popped up over my Gmail:

Pablo Picasso – “It takes a long time to become young.”

Well, yes, Pablo, as it happens, I agree. But something happened between the early seventies and now, or between the 1920s and now, depending on how you look at it — the triumph of youth culture. The pressure on us to remain young despite the natural, and in some ways, welcome process of aging, maturing, growing up, is immense. Lord Peter Wimsey today would at the very most be a lusciously ripe thirty something, not a greying man in his late forties or early fifties. It’s a shame.

Except for a few aches, you couldn’t pay me to be twenty again. But I would like there to be a space in the world for fun, glamour, romance, high-jinks and long parties for those of us leaving all vestiges of youth behind. The space that there is, is shrinking. And it is time to resurrect it.

Last year I was both mother and motherless.

I have an aching wrist and a cut on my hand that is taking a long time to heal. I can no longer entwine my fingers and bend over and have my arms loop over my head. I used to be able to do that. I could do all sorts of things that I didn’t think were hard at all that are now impossible. I can’t hold my balance the way I once did. My neck gets sore. My eyes get tired. My lips crack.

I’m going to yoga and what I don’t know is how much is recuperable. Can I reclaim the (limited by my basic structure) flexibility I tossed away through years of blind inactivity? Can I reclaim the lost lung power? Can I push away the pain in my wrists? Knit together the diastasis of my stomach muscles, long after birth? Or am I aging past these things?

Aging is not something I want to fear, but I want to balance what I should cling to with what I should gracefully surrender. What goes on each list? How can I decide? I suspect that the neck pain, a long term legacy of a car accident in my early twenties, is here to stay. Surrender headbanging gracefully. All right. The wrist pain is new, perhaps due to too much laptop use at a bad angle. Fight that! If I can choose well, I will have more energy to fight the good fight, rather than flinging myself against the brick wall of the inevitable.

But what about my dreams? Some dreams I think I do have to gracefully surrender. No chance I’ll be in the RSC now. Nor will I dance. I am unlikely to live on a yacht or learn to speak fluent Dutch.

I can hear all your caring comments now, urging me to never give up on dreams, and you’re quite right — as far as it goes. But I think some must get cleared out of the way so that I can see the future spreading out before me, not cluttered with might-have-beens, but with maybes. If I can choose well, I will have more chance of fighting gracefully, rather than tripping over my somewhat wretched, aging feet.

Last year I was considering my place in the blogosphere.

But now that we’ve moved, for my father (who didn’t so much ask as insist), and in the hopes of making this house a more welcoming place for my parents, we have caved and installed cable. The children don’t use it, and hopefully will not for years, but now that it’s there, I sometimes tune into the Daily Show or a TNG rerun and, for my beloved sister, I have tried to catch Dancing With the Stars.

Now, my sister Maria (not the professional dancer but a dancer nonetheless) has wanted to learn ballroom dancing for years. For YEARS. Her husband has not been so keen. Finally, she went off by herself and is learning to dance. She’s already performed at an exhibition and is loving it. She has found so much joy in this new pursuit, and while I can’t spring up to NYC as easily as I once might have to watch a rehearsal, I can support her in other ways. Like by watching Dancing with the Stars so that we can talk about it.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the program, though, beyond its value as a sister-bonding ritual. Marie Osmond! Jane Seymour! Older women, looking good and dancing their hearts out. Like Bridget Jones, I sometimes feel the need to chant Jane Seymour Jane Seymour or Helen Mirrin Helen Mirrin to myself when I fear aging. And I have loved and adored Jane Seymour ever since high school and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Jane herself seems particularly conscious of her participation in the program as potential role model for older women. I mean, she’s 56 for goodness’ sake! And she’s wonderful! Beautiful! Graceful!

I frankly love to see the routines, the effort everyone puts in, their joy in dancing. I love that they partnered the older women with such gentle, gentlemanly partners. I love that Brazilian race car driver guy and his enthusiasm. It seems such wonderful television in a televisual world that so often seems like a train wreck. Unlike most things on telly, it’s something I can imagine watching with my children.

Thing is, meaning and inspiration are everywhere. What somebody sees as trash, is another person’s trash-picking treasure. So maybe this is stupid television. But I find beauty in it, grace and hope for my future, wherein I very much hope will be many lessons, adventures and perhaps (oh yes, MizMell, me too) a tango or two.

Last year at this time, I was complaining about images of motherhood.

The story.

The children (and their parents and helpers) of our Friends’ meeting go to an old people’s home once a month to lead a service. Today was the first time we’d ever gone and Ed stayed home to sleep off a migraine and to keep on revising the DD (the Damn Dissertation). So the children and I were in uncharted waters and Daniel’s not so great with new things, especially when, as he said, they smell a little funny.

But we get there okay and everyone is nice and we realize that, logically enough, most of the service is going to be singing. So that’s fine. Singing is good. Only the leader of our little band of Friends forgot to remind the piano player of the group to come along. And everyone was clearly feeling a little unhappy about going a cappella.

I’ll do it, I said, wondering if I’d gone mad. And I did. Not well, but I did it. It helped when I knew the song (How Great Thou Art, anyone?) and when I didn’t — well, I kept on faking it.

But boy. It would have been much better if I practiced occasionally. Still. Lovely part of being a grown up? Not caring so much when you’re not that good at something. Who cares? I made music and people sang.

Last year I was musing about my (lack of) social skills.

Yoga is telling me that I have never before had a grippably wobbly belly and that it gets in the damn way.

Yoga is telling me that I have seized up in all sorts of uncomfortable ways.

Yoga is telling me that growing that enormous second child really did do weird things to my hips.

Yoga is telling me that I rarely draw a full breath.

Yoga is telling me that I almost never stand straight up.

Yoga is telling me that knitting (typing, driving, sleeping) screws with my shoulders.

Yoga is telling me that I had better go easy on myself.

Yoga is telling me to push just a little harder.

Yoga is telling me to take it slow, but go deep.

I should probably keep going.

Then, Shape of a Mother wrote about it better than I could and you should all go look at the post here. I know I’ve sent you over to that website before, but go again. As the author writes, we need to learn to celebrate the art our bodies become as we go through our lives, whatever our life brings, whether children, illness, health, wealth, fitness, trauma, pleasure. Our scars are stories, our wrinkles, legends. Our hair is the magic carpet of our years, our hands the well-used tools of all our crafts.

I am not at peace with my body or what it has become. But I’ll be damned if I contort myself, punish myself and pay through the nose to put myself under the knife to erase what my life has made of it — in order to cling to some artificial ideal of female beauty.

My body is not what it was and it is not what it will become. It is what it is today. Its story is my story. Its life is my life, its strength, my strength, its beauty my own. My body is on a journey. So am I.

Word to the wise? After almost five years of almost no exercise at all, don’t do two yoga classes in one day. And if you do do two yoga classes in one day, despite my advice, pretend you’re sixty and stop trying to keep up with the teacher.

ow. ooh ohh ouch.

I no longer have muscles. I have formerly fit flab pockets. They don’t know Warrior Three from nuthin.

So in normal life (ha!) I’m much better at tuning out the wants-and-needs-of-others static than I was a child. And I no longer have to feel crabby just because everyone in the house is crabby. I can go be cheerful somewhere else. Or vice-versa.

But whenever I’m with my mother these last few months, something odd has been happening. I feel foggy, forgetful and absent. I feel nervous and strange. I forget the names for things. I lose my keys. I wander in a purposeless daze around the house. It might be simply the stress of facing up to what’s happening. But what it feels like is empathetic dementia. Which is almost as scary as the real thing and makes me want to do ten crossword puzzles every day.

Empathetic dementia. That could have been a whole episode on Star Trek. Where someone you love is losing her marbles, so you spill all of yours out of the bag and watch them all roll around on the floor together.