Fear of Aging

At twenty-eight
she longs to be twenty-five again.        

I’m reading Lydia Davis, Our Strangers, it’s a book of overheard conversations, of tiny moments caught. It’s jewel after tiny jewel. These two lines are simply titled ‘Fear of Aging’ and of course it’s funny and wry and bittersweet because we all remember being old at twenty-eight. I write these two lines in my notebook and in the empty space under them I wonder, at fifty-one, who do I long to be?

Looking back….

*

The last week or so we’ve been slowly weaning lambs and when I say we, I mostly mean J.

The paddocks are an album of pale yellows. I’ve been on Frank bringing mobs in and then leaving J to the hard slog in the yards. On Thursday, in cyclonic winds, we had to get the fat mobs¹ in for the agent. It was hot and I was nearly blown over catching Frank. The wind put us all on edge, it’s disorientating, maddening.

I ride up the lane² and Frank has grown two hands taller. He’s walking on springs, his muscles tense and bunched. J roars up on the four-wheeler and he shies and I think I might just go home. We don’t. I lean down and open a gate. When I push it, a little mob of ewes in tall grass startle and bolt and Frank spins and it takes me three, four, five strides to calm our racing hearts and bring him to a standstill. All this in the first half an hour.

J goes ahead roaring down the track through the bush. At least he will have startled the wallabies curled asleep in the bracken. We split up on the edge of the bush and Frank and I canter up Dry Creek turning small mobs of ewes and lambs back towards our meeting place. At the top of the paddock we stop for a moment, protected from the wind. Frank blows hard through his nostrils and shakes himself. I get off him, rub his ears, adjust the girth and we both look around. An echidna goes about his day, his long thin nose on the scent of ants. There’s the chime of a currawong calling. No sheep up here, just a pocket of peace. Far away I can hear J’s piercing whistle. I get on and we turn back down the paddock and into the wind.

The older ewes take the lead and slowly make their way through the bush. It will take an hour or so to walk them to the yards and we split up again. Frank and I push through bracken, follow wallaby pads and check a small waterhole. Sheep have been here as well as deer and wallaby and birds and possum and devil, all leave their prints in the mud on the water’s edge. We find a small mob of ewes and lambs in amongst the wattle and set them walking to join the big mob.

Once we’ve cleared these paddocks the job grows easy. J putters behind them while Frank and I head out to move another mob of ewes and lambs one paddock closer so they will be easier to muster in a few days. Frank swings along, his stride long, so light in my hand and balanced underneath me. The crashing, nervous energy of the morning is gone and he’s happy and eager. We push the mob gently. Frank works the back like a sheep dog. Most of the mob goes calmly through the gate, except for a handful of lambs who run blindly past. Frank is off and I’m up out of the saddle trying to stay balanced and soft. He turns into them to block them before I touch his rein. It’s a quicksilver thought between us, instinct working. A delight to experience. We back off and watch as the lambs make the right decision and follow their mothers. I slip off and shut the tricky gate. He rests his muzzle on my shoulder and blows in my ear. Clever, I say, you’re clever. And then I put my foot in the stirrup and swing up on his back.

Was Lydia Davis writing about herself? A friend? Or just an observation of a young woman on the subway? It doesn’t matter, but under her words I write mine. What a privilege it is to be fifty-one and strong enough to put my foot in the stirrup and swing up onto the back of a horse and then let my hips move in time with his stride, the reins loose against his sweaty neck. There is no audience save for a curious crow, no ambition to be anywhere but exactly where I am. If this is aging, then I say, yes please.

mm

READING

January: Prophet Song, Paul Lynch. Worthy winner of the Booker, a timely dystopian Irish novel a mother fighting to keep her family safe. Grim but I loved it. Also, I confess to being relieved it was over. Perhaps this is the point. Then Maggie Smith, You Could Make this Place Beautiful, a memoir about divorce. I’ve had this for ages and haven’t had the head space to read. So many pages turned down (which is my system for going back and writing out quotes - which i only ever imagine i am going to do, but still the pages are marked, waiting for me). It’s all the things the reviews say. The structure is enviable. Very very good. Another beautifully structured book was Richard Flanagan’s Question 7. I loved it, which I confess I wasn’t expecting. His writing on his parents and grandparents is beautiful. Tasmania is made alive too. There is a vulnerability in this book that muffles a few jarring echoes. Finally Anne Enright’s novel The Wren The Wren is my book of the month. I have had phone conversations, message conversations and dreams about this book. It’s so good. Why? Oh so many reasons. They way she inhabits an internet native. The portrayal of the brutalisation of a young boy. The way the absent men wreak havoc. The shifting perspectives. Rush out and buy it. It’s a novelist working at the height of her powers. Oh, do you want the actual plot? Here, read this.

LISTENING

So many audiobooks and my choices have been mostly because they are either free or the 3 dollar daily deal. The latest (I am very late to the party). One Day by David Nicholls, this is so beautifully narrated by Anna Bentinck. Also enjoyed Caroline O’Donoghue’s Promising Young Women.

I’m stopping now. But here’s a tiny treat for those of you who’ve made it this far - Tracy Chapman live at the Grammys with Luke Combs. Have a good week sitters.

1. Mostly we run Merinos, but every year we put our second class merino ewes to Southdown rams to sell as lambs. They are known simply as ‘the fats’.

2. I feel i should clarify that our lane is not a quaint country lane, but rather a long paddock that runs the length of all the other paddocks so we can move stock around easily…just so you don’t imagine me riding up a pretty hawthorn lined track, instead think barb wire fences and plenty of space to move hundreds of sheep.