I worry less now about lung cancer, even though I used to be a smoker. It’s been forty-two years since I quit. I started smoking when female film stars untangled their complicated love lives with cigarettes in their beautiful hands. Stars even appeared in cigarette advertisements. Their smoky, sexy portraits pulled me in. I wanted to be like them. I had my first cigarette when I was sixteen or seventeen, along with my first mixed drink: a daiquiri. I felt extremely sophisticated as I posed on a barstool facing my date, Kenny.
Smoking was a way to announce my independence and step over the threshold of youth into adulthood. Then I turned to throat-scratching Gauloises Bleues and pretended to be French when I was a guide at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958. Soon smoking became a habit. I could not write, or even think, without a cigarette. I seem to have escaped the ultimate punishment for that indulgence—so far. But when I get out of breath walking up a familiar hill, one that never taxed me before I turned eighty, I wonder if the ashes of those long-ago cigarettes still rest inside me.
Flying is not a new fear for me. I never liked to fly, but because I have flown so much in my career, I am getting better at it. I know that it is unlikely my life will end by falling out of the sky. Still, my palms sweat when there is turbulence. My body fights back against the plane’s rattles and shakes. I try to inhale and exhale slowly and lecture to myself that the pilot wants to stay alive as much as I do. But what if he doesn’t? In 2015, when a Lufthansa airliner plunged headfirst into the French Alps, it was flown by a suicidal pilot.
I understand (sort of) how cars move, but I don’t know how airplanes fly. The sky is wide open, a mysterious ether with no perceptible speed limits, no white lines. I know that pilots are told by air controllers to fly at certain heights, and even stay within certain lanes. The trouble is, I can’t see them. If there were chalk marks in the sky, I could easily peel my fingers off the armrest and “enjoy my flight.” Lately, whenever the captain announces that the flight attendants should stop serving drinks, sit down, and buckle up because of expected turbulence, I tell myself that I am ready to die. I have lived a good life. In my mind, I begin to write my obituary. I wonder, will my death make the headlines? Then the air becomes smooth again, and I take it all back.
Driving a car is no doubt the most dangerous thing anyone can do, and I am more conscious of the risks now that I am over eighty. What if I put my foot down on the gas pedal instead of the brake; what if I don’t turn my head around far enough (because it hurts) when backing up? My worst fear is not my own death but killing someone else: a bicyclist pedaling up the road or a child running across the street. I sometimes rush through a yellow light and then chastise myself midway across the intersection as it turns red. I am no longer young. Drive carefully, drive slowly, I remind myself, even as I suspect that the person in the car behind me complains that I’m driving “like an old lady.”
I no longer like to drive at night. One evening, going north on two-lane Route 7 at twilight, the sky turned from blue to black too soon. It became harder to follow the tire-scuffed white lines where the asphalt shoulder turns into dirt. I shifted my eyes slightly to the right of center to avoid the direct glare of oncoming cars. It seemed as if every car had its brights on and aiming directly for my startled pupils. My eyes adjusted slowly, too slowly, I feared. I was afraid to look up at the stars. As night’s blanket folded over the road, I saw small squares of yellow light glued onto black houses. I thought of the families inside, clearing the dishes, or already sitting in the living room watching TV. There might be a fire, a curled-up cat, a sleeping dog. Soon they would go upstairs to a nice warm bed. I envied them. They were home.
A stroke could happen anytime, anywhere—a marble-sized blood clot traveling through my body and then, pow, it hits my brain. I try to recall the diagrams of the heart that I memorized in high school and have not thought about since. I have no idea how strong my aorta is, or the condition of my jugular vein. I take a steady flow of blood to my heart for granted until I encounter a friend being pushed down the hall in a wheelchair at Wake Robin. I say hello. She smiles a crooked smile back.
Some strokes are baby strokes and leave little evidence of their impact. Others are like a tornado ripping through the body, leaving destruction and silence in their wake. Please God, spare me. Don’t leave me half alive, or half dead, I pray. An easy death, a good death, is what I wish for, just like everyone else.
Old Age. The two words together shock me. Am I there yet? But I am not really old, not as old as she is, who needs help dressing, not as old as he is, rolling slowly past me in his wheelchair. I live independently. I don’t need a walker. I can walk upstairs and down (okay, my knees hurt a little). I can hear (with the help of new hearing aids) and see (just reading glasses). I take pills, yes, but not that many.
I know that death is close, but life is always closer. Although my future no longer feels infinite, it is filled with possibilities that I want to explore. As long as I’m curious about what will happen next, how things work, how the world works, I want to be alive. I try to cultivate awareness, what Buddhists call “mindfulness.” But of course, it’s impossible to practice it all day long. My mind wanders after three minutes, drawn to the blooming sunset spreading across the horizon while I cover my husband’s hand with mine. I focus for one minute when my tongue tastes a delicious salad, or another minute or two when I sidestroke in the cold waters of Lake Champlain and feel reborn. Savoring moments. Giving thanks, to someone, or something, even God. Perhaps that’s enough. Maybe I’ll get better at this with time. It may be one of the unanticipated benefits of old age: experiencing an intense love for life with only a tinge of regret. I don’t believe in life after death, although it is tempting to believe that I will meet my parents and grandparents, Edgar, and all my loved ones in heaven. It would be a crowded reunion. When I am close to death, I hope I will have someone hold my hand. Then I will let go, say farewell to life, and go to sleep in peace, as if I were resting on a cloud.
LAST SPRING
First the daffodils die,
then the tulips stiffen,
then the lilacs’ perfume
turns bitter brown,
and the peonies slump
to their graves.
I mourn them,
each one,
like I never did before.
16
The Lake
THE LAKE FEELS LIKE A BODY, subject to reconfiguration by any change in light, wind, and temperature. Some nights when I can’t fall asleep, I calm my mind by visualizing its smooth sea and synchronizing my breath with its rhythm. Other nights the lake is capable of giving me nightmares. More than once I saw a black and white sea pound at the foundation of our house or smash against our sliding glass doors. Bits of wooden siding fall into the ravenous sea. Other nights I am a figure in a Japanese print watching a white-frilled tsunami swim toward our beach. Waves threaten to eat their way into the house. I wake up with my heart pounding, followed by relief. It has only been a dream.
Each day, often each hour, the lake changes its contours to obey the wind, the master choreographer who orders it to lie flat as a floor or to rise like soup bubbling over. And so, I watch the lake’s body change, slimming down twenty, thirty, or sixty feet from the shore in the fall and gaining all its pounds back in the spring like a woman on a failed diet.
As I prepare my departure from the lake, I tell myself that I should have devoted more hours to looking at it, doing nothing but looking. I’m a remorseful lover. I wish I had said “I love you” more often. I seldom took the time to sit and stare, except on those few hot days when I would allow myself a half an hour to sit at the beach and gaze. I console myself with the understanding that I will have visitation rights at public beaches, though the lake will no longer be mine.
Submerging myself the first thing in the morning feels like a baptism. The lake pulls me in, filled with eons of accumulation of minerals and flotsam and jetsam. It has been laid down layer upon layer
and it will continue to build long after human life disappears.
In the lake I measure progress against the shore. But the lake is deceptive. When I swim against the waves, I cannot tell if I am moving or if I am swimming in place. I am a humbling dot. The lake has boundaries, but they are so expansive that I remain a small creature.
The lake is indifferent. It does not care if I keep on swimming or sink to my death. “Those are pearls that were his eyes,” wrote Shakespeare. But I am not ready for a watery death.
A LOVE POEM
Each night
I wheel you to your door
with a kiss on your lips.
I smile my love at you,
generously, I think.
You don’t know how much I love
you, you say.
I do, I do.
We’ve formed a ritual
of waving goodbye as I retreat
slowly down the hall.
At first, I wave with one
hand in the air, and then
my arms go wild before
I turn the corner,
as if struck by a storm
or signaling for help.
We wave in tandem.
You are there, and I
am here.
The nurses now know
we wave not for them,
but for one another;
to have and to hold
the love we swore to
once and forever.
AFTERWORD
ON JANUARY 21, 2017, I spoke at the Women’s March in Montpelier on the steps in front of the Vermont State House. There were ten to twenty thousand people assembled below. The State Police had to close the interstate exit to prevent more people from coming because traffic had clogged the streets.
One day after President Trump was sworn into office, women marched who never had marched before. They became instant activists because of Trump’s frightening campaign promises, including the repeal of Roe vs. Wade and the destruction of the Affordable Care Act. Vermont held one of 633 women’s marches that took place around the world. The march in Washington was the largest protest in a single day in history.
Some observers questioned the march’s impact—that it would be destined to be a one-time event, that women would pack up their signs and go home.
They were wrong.
THE SURGE OF ACTIVISM that burst out of the marches has not died. One indicator is the record number of women who are running for office. And several have upset long-time incumbents. Change is happening where it never surfaced before. For example, the teachers’ strikes last spring in several conservative states resulted in teachers winning higher wages and increased funding for school supplies. And the MeToo movement has toppled sexual abusers off their pedestals at a dizzying rate.
But the rate of devastating decisions made by the president—from his Supreme Court nomination to his separation of immigrant children from their parents—has left many women and men outraged, but fatigued. I am often asked: “Tell me, what can we do?”
I give a short-term and a long-term answer. One, continue to protest, because sometimes it works. The Trump family separation policy was stopped (but not fixed) after members of both parties expressed outrage. The answer is that we must continue to take to the streets the old-fashioned way. Be vocal and visible. The long-term answer is at the ballot box. Organize, vote, register voters, and get out the vote. It sounds simple, but it’s hard work.
THE FOLLOWING IS THE SPEECH I gave at the march in Montpelier. The spirit of the Women’s March cannot flag. Women are beginning to turn their outrage against injustice into action in the workplace, the home, and the community. We cannot stop now.
Hello Everybody, Sisters, and Brothers,
What a beautiful sight you are. It’s like spring has arrived in Vermont and thousands of flowers are blooming in front of the State House. I feel a “crowd hug.”
We are not alone in our fear; we are not alone in our despair; we are not alone in our grief for what might have been. We are together in our strength, together in our power, and together we march. Why do we march? We march for respect.
We march for equal pay.
We march for the right to control our bodies.
We march for a livable planet.
We march for the end of violence against women.
We march for health care for all.
We march for public education.
We march for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
And who are we? We are brown, black, yellow, and white. We are gay, straight, transgender, and queer. We are wives, mothers, grandmothers, singles, sisters, daughters, and lovers. We are teachers, students, professors, waitresses, sales clerks, bartenders, nurses, doctors, artists, lawyers, farmers, factory workers, cooks, and caregivers. And we are immigrants.
We are here to pledge to be our sister’s and brother’s keepers. And we are here because women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights, all over the world. Can we do this? Will we make a difference? Have we got the power?
The pendulum has swung so fast from Obama to Trump that we are experiencing whiplash. I assure it will swing back again—when we push hard. We have a rock to stand on. It is called Democracy. It is called the Constitution. The center will hold.
But, only if we are vigilant. Only if we use our voices and our feet. We must demonstrate that there is another America. An America that looks like us, that thinks like us, that believes in the America that we believe in.
It is we who make America.
It is we who make America great.
We are the makers, the doers, the dreamers.
We are the citizens who have the power of the vote.
In the next four years, we will be heard, not only in this place, at this time, but throughout the land, in towns and cities and in our nation’s capital, and all over the world where people are marching with us.
We pledge not to be silent.
We pledge not to be interrupted.
We pledge not to be sidelined.
We pledge not to be stopped.
We pledge not to be afraid,
and we pledge not to lose hope.
We must keep hope alive. I will read the first stanza of a poem called “Hope” by Emily Dickinson.
Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
About the Author
Twenty-five years ago, Madeleine Kunin became the first woman to be elected governor of Vermont, serving three terms. She was American ambassador to Switzerland and U.S. deputy secretary of education. Madeleine Kunin has written three previous books: Living a Political Life (Knopf), The New Feminist Agenda: Defining the Next Revolution for Women, Work, and Family (New York Times Editor’s Choice), and Pearls Politics and Power. She has more energy than two forty year olds. She is currently James Marsh Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont, where she gives guest lectures on feminism, women, and politics. She also serves on the board of the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), a nongovernmental organization that she founded in 1991, and she recently launched Emerge Vermont to encourage and support women in politics. She lives in Shelburne, Vermont.
Coming of Age was typeset in Minion. In designing Minion font, Robert Slimbach was inspired by the timeless beauty of the fonts of the late Renaissance. Minion was created primarily as a traditional text font but adapts well to today’s digital technology, presenting the richness of the late baroque forms within modern text formats. This clear, balanced font is suitable for almost any use. The name comes from the traditional naming system for type sizes, in which minion is between nonpareil and brevier, with the type body 7pt in height. As the name suggests, it is particularly intended as a font for body text in a classical style, neutral and practical while also slightly condensed to save space. Slimbach described the design as having “a simplified
structure and moderate proportions.” The ornaments, or dingbats, used throughout the text are also from the Minion family.
DESIGN BY DEDE CUMMINGS BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT
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