a place that doesn't exist

Yesterday, I talked with my step-mother on the phone. She just turned 90 and wondered, "how did that happen?!"

And I spoke with my mother, who is 96. Her hearing is poor and our phone calls are herky-jerky at best, but I somehow think she is beyond wondering "how did that happen?"

My step-mother invited me to a birthday celebration planned for her and to be held, as it happens, on my birthday next Saturday. I will be 73.

The birthday numbers made me think that there is a quiet and relied-upon assumption that goes with age. I was somehow consoled or pleased or given-definition in the fact that there are still people who are older than I am. That fact meant, in some quiet corner of my mind, that I could, somehow, rely on someone else to be firstest-with-the-mostest ... that I wasn't alone ... that I had a place in some acknowledged scheme and did not have to stand friendless on some bare-assed mountaintop.

I don't generally think of people in terms of their age. I seem to pay attention to whatever substance they choose to display... that's the interesting part for me. And in that display is a place that has no age. Good or bad, like or dislike, there is no place to it, no reliable touchstone, no staff to steady my step.

And yet occasionally I do segue into that realm that seeks reassurance, consolation and affirmation ... a place in which I am younger or older, a place in which to fit, a house among houses ... a place.

Just because there is no such place doesn't mean I can't want one and be pleased for a moment that I imagine it exists ... hell, at 73, I still fit along some imagined bookshelf holding volumes one through infinity. It may be true that I cannot be found (just like anyone else), but that doesn't mean I can't find myself ... if only for a little while.