My new passport arrived a few weeks ago. The little book that, if fate allows, will be my companion for the next 10 years as I travel to where life takes me. It’s the booklet that, as yet, has no stamps of entry or exit, but it will be what lets me visit places beyond the country of my birth. And it has a new photo of me. Until I saw this latest photo, I thought I was holding up rather well as the years rolled on. Yeah - right!
Nope. Not when I compared that photo of me to the one taken 10 years ago in my now expired passport. I got intrigued. How had my face changed over the previous years? In a drawer in my spare bedroom, I have all my previous passports, each marking the places I’d been to, and my face. My face stamped in time. Each 10-year period since 1991; apart from one passport that got retired much sooner - its pages became full of stamps and visas in less than 5 years, so I needed a new one a lot sooner.
There they all were, in my hands, showing my face at its austere-passport-photo best; decade by decade.
“I’m not Peter Pan, after all,” I said to no one but my denial. I put the old ones and the new addition back upstairs in the drawer. I made a cup of coffee, ready for my next client call.
After I switched off my laptop that evening and lounged on my sofa, my mind went back to the passports and my changing face. I was twisting inside. Time had sandpapered my skin. Robbed me of tight jowls. Sucked me wider. Weathered the colour from my hair. Squished away my symmetry. I creaked my way to bed that night; my Peter Pan illusion: demolished. Truth be told, similar doom-laden mental rabbit holes of ageing have visited me since I turned 50. This one bit a little harder. I stayed in that bite’s grip until I fell asleep.
The next morning, at around 10am, I had a message on one of the few WhatsApp groups I belong to. It said, “I’ve been given only a few weeks”. It was from a friend and colleague who’d told us of her diagnosis 2 years ago; and made us promise to keep the news to ourselves. I stared at the screen on my phone, not knowing what to say, think, feel or do. After some staring, and blinking, I messaged her privately and made a plan to go to see her the next time I could make it in to see her in her London Hospital ward.
It was not the way I’d have wanted to be pulled out of my ageing story of the day before. But it did give a shot of perspective. And a dose of not making everything in life revolve around me. For a few moments, at least.
I can’t remember much about the rest of that morning, other than it was sunny. That afternoon I took advantage of the sunny day. I had a longer gap between client calls; long enough for me to have a ‘proper break’ with a green tea in my garden. I donned my winter bobble hat and gloves, unfolded the deck chair and sat. My mind wandered between my passport faces, my friend in her final few weeks, the birds in the trees, ageing, my mortality, mortality in general, and back to my passport faces.
Then a new thought came in: “One day, I’ll wish I were as young as I am now.” It broke my maudlin rabbit hole and snapped my low mood into little bits.
Sure, I’d heard similar words of wisdom from other people, read smarty-pants memes and such over the years. This one was different. It was not a ‘comforting idea’. It felt true. And came to me, not borrowed from someone else.
I mumbled the thought aloud: “One day, I’ll wish I were as young as I am now,” and laughed. “What the heck have I been thinking?” and laughed again. I took off my gloves and looked at my hands. Dry and rough from the relentless cold winter. The skin: less elastic than it used to be, yet more elastic than it might ever be again. My cup was back to half full. Scrap that. 100% full. No. Overflowing. I had no idea if I will wish in the future to be as young as I am now. That wasn’t the point. The point was, I was free from the nonsense that looked attention-worthy in my head. Back to ‘now’. No future, no past, no realness there. Just imagination. An imagination that can take me anywhere. Anywhere but here.
I’ll never get tired of seeing that, again and again. It brings gratitude for all that is, right now.
For as long as I’m here, I will always be as young as I am.
With love and thanks,
Wyn