Hello Sixty

Hi Y’all,

I officially turn 60 on Wednesday 1/10. Yesterday I had a wonderful celebration at Hyde Park Theatre featuring music and readings by some very talented friends. Below is the piece I read—bit longer than my usual weekly offerings. I hope you enjoy it. I also hope, in honor of my birthday, you’ll take some time to do something wonderful and meaningful for you, you, you. You deserve it. Happy My Birthday to us all!

Love,

Uncle Spike

HELLO SIXTY

I have had many jobs. Carnival barker. Waitress. College cafeteria cook where I, vegetarian, routinely ripped the fat off of hundreds of pounds of raw chicken. Nanny, restaurant owner, assistant to a child with autism. Journalist, memoirist, writing coach, secular minister, private school teacher. I once penned online descriptions for three thousand calendars which got pretty boring pretty fast, though— given how many mountain calendars there are— I did get to use the descriptive “craggy” more times than all of you put together in your lifetimes.

But the job I took last year? It is hands down the best job I have ever had. 

This job is the job I was born to do. I am now, officially, a kooky docent. For those of you unfamiliar, a docent is someone who guides people around museums and spouts facts. Sort of like a hipster elder Walmart greeter.

As an aside, I was recently in the Riverside gas station—the one with a mural featuring Stevie Ray Vaughn AND, wait for it, the Riverside gas station!—when I spotted another docent in front of me. I couldn’t believe it. But there it was, tattooed in huge letters across her back. O-C-E-N-T, the “D” obscured by a spaghetti strap. Then, I took a step closer, disappointed to ascertain the “D” was actually a very bad number 5.  So she wasn’t a docent, though possibly, the rapper’s ex-girlfriend. 

Anyway, my docent gig at the O. Henry Museum is like a Saturday Night Live Skit. I sit on a big fluffy red chair in the parlor of a house built in 1886 and wait for visitors. My co-docent, Toro, sits at the mid-19th-century piano in the other room, coaxing songs from that old thing, mostly tunes from the 1990s— Flaming Lips, Lucinda Williams, The Replacements, Pulp. Every now and again visitors wander in, at which point one of us springs into action, proffering more minutiae about the short story writer than anyone has true use for. 

When they leave we resume our lives—me knitting or reading, Toro singing like there’s no tomorrow: Car wheels on a gravel road, Car wheels on a gravel road.

A month or so ago it was an extra quiet day at the museum. I had just finished reading the impressive obituary of Norman Lear, whom I greatly admire, most especially his wish to put the same bumper sticker on every vehicle: Just Another Version of You. 

I like how this can be interpreted in different ways, like another bumper sticker I used to have: Jesus is Coming, Look Busy. Maybe Lear meant, “Just another version of you, asshole”—meant for tailgaters. Or, maybe, “I must remember before getting angry at someone that they are just another version of me.” 

Upon finishing the obit, I wandered over to the Starbucks next door and was boisterously greeted by The Extremely Enthusiastic Barista. I had watched her over-engage with customers before and, failing to remember she was just another version of me, I had judged her as likely fake. No one is that nice. 

But now, on the receiving end of her palpable excitement, I found myself swayed by her flattery.

“You are my favorite customer of the day!” She exclaims, adding, “Because you are so obviously self-possessed.”

I consider this. First of all, she’s definitely getting a great tip. 

A Pavlovian urge to shush her overcomes me—for I have been taught since I was knee high to a fire ant that having a vagina mandates dismissing any and all praise. I resist this urge. I do not hold up my hand to stop her. I do not self-deprecate as I have been conditioned to do. I look right at her. 

I say, “Thank you.”

Suddenly I find myself in a short but deeply satisfying conversation not just with Barista Enthusiastica but her co-workers, also young women. What do I tell them then to reveal the secret of my self-possession? Maybe I say, “I gave up men!” Maybe I say, “That’s thirty years of therapy for you!” Whatever the case, pretty soon we are bobbing our heads like synchronized swimmers out of water. 

We are women. Hear us roar. 

On the day of this Starbucks Spontaneous Women’s Empowerment Session, I am 59 years and 49 weeks old. It has taken me this long to feel this way. Self-possessed. I am so grateful to have it acknowledged by these young women, for their reminder that, though I don’t always like who I am on a particular day, I do like who I am becoming in the big picture. 

I am a crone now. I am Miss Havisham in the attic eating stale wedding cake. Only there is a difference. I am not lamenting my senior solitude. I am rejoicing. I realize that I have been practicing being in my sixties since I was in my twenties. As Michelangelo chipped away all the parts of the marble that were not the form hidden inside, I have been chipping away all the parts that do not serve me, slowly revealing if not a masterpiece, at least something I feel good about. 

Key to feeling better, I have learned, at long last, is the importance of not biting off more than I can chew. A very big lesson given that I have been biting off more than I can chew since before I had teeth. Or, if I do backslide and bite off too much, I know it is better to spit some out than choke. 

To illustrate this point—One morning in late December, I led the funeral of a man so interesting, I regretted we’d never met in life. Then, before heading to my kooky docent job, I made a quick pit stop at the ranch to swap out my somber ensemble for something more suitable for the rock concert I had agreed to attend that evening. I was 100% unfamiliar with the band but the invitation had been extended by another new young woman friend I’d met at the museum. Her boyfriend, a rock star, was in the band.

Just inside the closed gate stood my cows. Bobby Jo, a 1200 pound longhorn and her constant companion, Pepe, who looks like a calf but is actually a full grown mini steer. Let’s put Pepe at about 400 pounds. 

I honked and shouted for them to move. They looked at me like I was an idiot. Irritated, I got out of my truck and slipped inside the gate, hollering louder, “GIT!,” chasing them away. 

Simultaneously, my Methuselah-ean bladder reminded me, again, that its warning bell had ceased operating. In an act of radical self-care, and without bothering to hide behind the nearby dumpster, I wriggled my black tights and worn granny panties down to my ankles and took a long steaming piss, right there out in the open. 

I commandeered my foundation garments back into place after a good hard shake and resumed shooing. Thought I got them far enough from the gate. Dashed out, hopped in my truck, pulled into the yard, but, miscalculating in my haste, did not pull far enough in, leaving the gate stuck open and 400 pound Pepe prancing toward it at about 70 miles per hour, Bobby Jo hot on his heels. 

You really would be surprised at how swiftly cows can move.

As the saying goes, It All Happened So Fast. Suddenly they were outside of the gate. Maybe it was my withering look or the tone in my voice. Somehow, I got them lil doggies back inside. I’ll never know for sure what did the trick because, though they were safe, all I could think about, standing there, heart pounding, was What If. What if they had taken off? What if they had caused a horrible car wreck? What if, what if, what if? 

Yes, I was having a panic attack. Having had more than a few hundred such episodes in my life, I knew immediately that I was in for 96 hours of waiting for all that adrenaline and cortisol to exit my system. 96 hours of having to tell myself over and over that the worst had not happened, that I was safe, followed by still more horrific imaginings of what might have been. 

I dashed inside, applied fresh granny panties, settled on a denim-on-denim super butch ensemble, and raced off to work, my insides twisting as that fucking fictional cow car accident movie played on a loop in my mind so fast and dizzying as to make a Tilt-a-Whirl seem slo-mo. 

I reminded myself that being in the museum always calms me. I burst through the door eager to be soothed by Toro’s singing.

But wait. I had totally forgotten it was Holiday Party Day, the tiny house bursting with goddamn holiday cheer, some big jolly stranger pounding out Christmas tunes on the old piano, my coworkers in 19th century period costumes bustling about the tannenbaum. And me, taking all of this in, absolutely flipping out on the inside, understanding that I must fake outward calm and attempt to muster something cheer adjacent. 

I took my seat. My face was grim. I turned to Toro and mouthed, “My Cows Got Out. Panic Attack.” Having witnessed many of my prior panic attacks, he offered a sympathetic nod.

This went on for hours, a swirl of people all around me, celebrating a holiday I think should be overturned by the Supreme Court, my gut a heaping mess of Post Cowmatic Stress. 

Discreetly I extracted my 21st century phone and texted my friend Brandon. Brandon is a real cowboy, not a hobbyist like me. Brandon has been saving me from my livestock hoarding tendencies for years, having already relieved me of four sheep, eight cows, two horny mini billy goats, and an entire family of evil mini donkeys.

It gutted me telling him it was time for the last two cows to go. But I knew it was the right thing, the only thing, the SELF-POSSESSED thing to do. I understood with great clarity that otherwise, one of these days a real cow-tastrophe would occur. 

I sat then, surrounded by my cosplay cohorts, listening to all that fucking jolly music and wondered if I was overreacting. Was this swift dismissal of the cows overcompensation for all the men over all the years that I had let stick around too long?

I decided this was possible. And then I decided it didn’t really matter. I would miss those cows, yes, but I would miss far less the perpetual anxiety of possible future escapes. 

After work, still paralyzed by my protracted panic attack, I met my new friend outside the venue. She handed me an all access pass and introduced me to the rock star. I told them about the cows and the panic attack. They were very nice about it.

The opening act happened to prominently feature a theremin and ginormous glass singing bowls. If you have not been in the presence of these instruments, let me tell you—no matter how wound tight you are, you cannot share space with either without picking up some good vibrations. My blood pressure dropped a few notches. 

Relatively soothed, I managed to enjoy the headliners. From my balcony perch I looked down upon a sea of middle-aged white guy heads bobbing relentlessly as the band thrashed for 90 minutes straight, all drums and guitars, no vocals, just a wall of sound.

Backstage afterwards I told the rock star, “You really helped me forget about the cows.”

“Really?” He asked, solemnly adding, “Because that’s all I could think about the whole show.”

I looked at him, incredulous. He smiled. He was punking me. 

Driving home in the dark, something I really should not do anymore, the looping cow movie returned. I remembered something a therapist drilled into me. Our work together would never fully cure me. The trick, she said—again and again—was learning to get the lag time down. I had to pull the plug on that movie.

I got home way past my bedtime, knowing this old body would rouse itself before dawn as it does every day now, like it or not. In the morning profound joy and profound sorrow awaited in the goat pen. Twin mini kids had arrived in the night, one living, one stillborn. Their mother, Lisa, having to choose between mourning her lost child or nourishing the needy bleater beside her, did not need to consult a therapist. She kept calm. She carried on. She got the lag time down, tending to the baby demanding a teat, leaving be what she could not change.

I gingerly carried the dead one out to the back pasture and laid his little body where last summer we dragged the sheep killed by the heat, to the open air grave where the circle of life completes itself as the vultures move in and do their work.

Back in the house I slid back on my black tights and dress, preparing to head out to yet another funeral, this one for a young woman who could not make herself believe that her current pain would ever subside. I would honor her properly, stand before the weeping crowd, fully self-possessed, and lead them in their sorrow over the loss of this woman who, I understood, was very much another version of me, so sorry she could not hold long enough for the sweet calming that comes with age. 

I recalled the old me, by which I mean the younger me— the me who so very many times could not believe one pain or another would ever leave. A relic, another version of me, my mind is its own history museum now and I its docent. On my better days I can travel through its rooms, and observe all that ancient pain, reel of facts about my past without needing to touch it, tap into it, re-experience it. Just look at it all and know that it’s gone now, ephemera all of it. 

I finally understand, like Dorothy the day she learned about self-possession, about tapping those shiny red shoes of hers together, that I have the power. To rearrange the mosaic of sixty years and countless versions of me. Take all the shards of pain, lay them against the more easily forgotten joy—and there has been so much joy, too—make it all into something beautiful, something that shines in the light, that beautiful light, the greatest gift of age.  

NOTES:

I hope you’ll consider a paid subscription—$5 per month/$50 per year. If that’s not your thing another way you can help is to share this with someone you think will dig it. One time tips also accepted on Venmo: @spike-gillespie

My next FREE writing workshop at Hampton Branch Library is 1/16. Please register so we have a headcount: https://library.austintexas.gov/event/writing/write-spike-writing-workshops-spike-gillespie-7738255

My next six-week Memoir Writing Workshop for Women also starts 1/16. I have a couple of spots left. It is so healing. Email me if you want to sign up.

Thanks so much for reading y’all. I really appreciate it!