Youth

How does youth go so quickly? Does anyone ever truly use up his youth to the very fullest, doing all his body can do while it is soaring towards its physical climax, and finally, having spent the last drop of youthful effort and movement and endurance and beauty, come to the end of a day and think, 'Yes, today I have reached the fulfillment of my youth. I can now greet with a smile the slow degeneration of my strong limbs and swift feet like a visitor, Age, who enters my home a stranger, unknown and uninvited, but wise, and with whom I will be sharing tea and tasks for a lifetime.'

I revile the thought of losing youth, of losing a strong body that can carry me through on my own, by myself if need be, to where I need to go. I haven't been paying close enough attention the first 25 years of my life, and there they are, behind me. I fantasize about what I might do differently (better) with years given back to me, with a second chance to spend every last drop of every day given to me.

Sam gasped this morning as he heaved a queen-sized mattress off of its leaning position against the wall, cracking his hand somehow and then muttering dark curses on it through the throbs. 'I won't take growing old very well,' he said. 'My shoulders and wrists,' he rotated both wrists to test what they had left, 'they can't do what they used to.'

Now Sam, at 29, is the picture of youth and beauty, tall with a slim waist, flat stomach, and a natural athleticism that allowed him to train only a handful of times for the Nashville half-marathon a couple weeks ago and yet finish the race in 1 hour 47 minutes, an enviable time even for a collegiate runner. Some may say I digress as his enamored lady, but I'm quite sure his physique is what the Greek sculptors had in mind when they fashioned men out of stone, striving for the ideal that we were made to be, that we know we should be, but somehow always fall short. Sam may be losing his youth, but his beauty astounds me still, and I see a sweeping field of possibility before him, where more than his physical prowess - his talents, his exacting approach to a problem, his compassion to someone overlooked - refined by years, will meet the groaning world.

 

I couldn't really find a suitable picture of Sam in Michelangelo's David pose, but perhaps we can all be thankful I didn't have anything too terribly similar.

I should think the same then, I believe, for myself, as there is no good for anyone wallowing in what is past. My body may not have the same strong form as Sam's, but how many women would give a heavy price to be back in time to where I am now, growing large with my first child, happy to be with the one I love, and able to run and move and flex and lift?

But it's no good to look at what I have left to comfort me, for what I still have left will always be diminishing. Even with the addition of a child, or more, the ever-present worry over their well-being, and the little losses that are difficult and good as they grow independent - children too are not meant to be hoarded for a lifetime - will diminish what I have according to this world. It must be beyond all of these things that a true hope may rest; for if there is no kingdom of Christ coming to this earth to make all things new - my body, my mind, and those of my beloved - what can I do but clinch tight around what is mine now, and utterly spend myself vying to grasp what no one can keep ahold of?