LETTERS FROM HOME: IN PRAISE OF FORGETTING AND REMEMBERING TO ACT YOUR AGE

April 23, 1998

Dear Pat,

To say DC just celebrated a birthday would be inaccurate. She observed it, reluctantly allowed herself to be treated to dinner and accepted her gift of an urn large enough to hide Ali Baba and the 40 thieves.

DC says she feels older since we moved back to Cape Girardeau. She is 3 1/2 years older but she means she's more aware of her age here.

Indeed, I am now a "Sir" when addressed by my juniors. I take it for polite respect due one's elders. What can be difficult to accept is that you have become one of those elders while you were napping.

California has a reputation as a place where people pursue eternal youth, but a byproduct of that chase is the fading of the barriers between the generations. In Southern California, the shared goal creates a kind of brotherhood of Porche lovers, a sisterhood of the aerobic leotard.

In Southern California, 40-year-old men and 20-year-old women are perfectly matched.

Southern California gave birth to a new meaning for the verb "flake": to skip an appointment or a promised rendezvous because something better came along. Bride: "Where's Trent?" Best man: "Oh, he probably flaked."

In Northern California, where the souls have aged a bit more in the barrel, life is more "Turandot" than "Days of Our Lives," and the fog lends itself to internal examination rather than to the external delights of bronzed bodies.

Riders of all purposes and ages fill the bike lanes on the city streets. At the best nightclubs, like the Jambalaya in Arcata, 60-year-old poets recite their tales of bad love to hip 21-year-olds who already know the truth when they hear it.

And grey heads crowd the rock 'n' roll dance floors right beside those whippersnappers.

In Cape Girardeau, it's rare to see people over 20 riding a bicycle. And the night spots tend to be segregated by age: Jeremiah's for college-age, Broussard's for 25-35, Rude Dog for 30-50. Most of the others seem to fit in one of those categories.

If you're over 50, there's always "Walker: Texas Ranger."

Most people here act their age. I can see the good and bad of it.

If you spend your 40s trying to look and act like you did in your 30s, then you've missed the changes that occur to people in their 40s. Accompanying the widening physical dimensions we might not welcome is the broadening of our emotional and psychological selves.

Maybe you'll get around to having those 40s experiences in your 50s, but either you'll always be a decade behind or you'll have to skip a decade to catch up.

In your 40s, you are the age your parents were when you rebelled against them, left home for college. Finally, you can identify.

I missed a lot of my 30s being a twentysomething and quite a few of my 20s being a teen-ager because I spent most of my teen years being a boy. Maybe what we call late blooming is just fear of growing up.

Last weekend, DC and I took my 92-year-old grandmother to a dance. It was big band music played by both high school musicians and older professionals. High school students waltzed and fox trotted alongside people old enough to remember when those were the most popular dances around.

DC and I hadn't danced together since our wedding. I'd forgotten that she tries to lead.

The scene in the gym was almost miraculous. The crowd kept the musicians playing a half hour past quitting time. When you dance, you forget your age, whatever it is.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.