Witnesses to Aging
Dear reader,
Wherever you find yourself on the timeline of aging, I hope you will see your own experiences reflected in the textures, stories, and voices gathered in this Winter issue. It weaves the humor and joy of aging with the changes and loss that time inevitably brings to us all.
Preparing this issue, I was reminded of the summers I spent camping in the redwood forests as a little girl. The ancient trees appeared unchanged year after year, but I knew they silently added a new ring to their trunks each season. Some of them spread wider than my family could reach — the nine of us, in descending ages and sizes, with our cheeks and chests pressed against the rippling bark, stretched our arms wide, reaching for each other’s fingertips, trying to capture the age of a redwood inside the circumference of our arms.
Years later, as a young mother, my arms closed easily around a soft, precious little thing — my tiny son, his whole body fitting against my chest. And now, at 39, I find myself stretching again, trying to gather up the years of that same child who now stands 6’3”, an adult who must bend down to hug me. But just like those redwoods of my childhood, I cannot hold all of who he is. I can only witness day by day, year by year, his aging — his becoming.
This witnessing feels like a sacred honor. An honor offered to you, dear reader, as you explore the pages of this magazine. Compared to trees rooted for millennia, human aging is quick and delicate, and this issue explores that fleeting experience, tracing the transformations of the bodies, minds, and spirits of our contributors and those they love.
The range of voices and styles in this issue — from Cherie Taylor Pedersen’s short, witty love story about a casket to Shannon Adams’ reverent sacrament talk about Christ’s resurrection — reflect both the diversity of our community’s experiences and the common threads that shape us. Our contest-winning poem by Lorren Lemmons and essay by Karen Rosenbaum add to this tapestry of aging.
Aging shows up physically in Andee Bowden’s “My Body, Her Echo,” a tender, triumphant essay about reclaiming their “soft and round and grey” body after years of shame. Emily Lundberg Bastian’s “Caretaking” reflects on the reciprocity of caretaking for the young and old who mirror each other in surprising ways. And in “Open Water,” an essay grappling with the changes of menopause, Cindy Madsen Reid captures the cadence of her age through daily swims.
Many of these pieces demonstrate the breadth of aging, from childhood to old age. In her early adulthood, Emma Tueller Stone reaches for and questions her community in “What Did You Get for Question Seven?” and octogenarians like Lorraine Jeffery offer their experiences as they look back through their memories. Marilee Campbell, a deceased artist, is preserved in these pages through the portraits she painted and her granddaughter’s memories.
Like the thin red rings concealed within a redwood, memory shapes us. Hannah Elliott-Lindh memorializes her father in “Vitae per Mortem: Of Life, Through Death,” while, in “Vigil” by Dianna Cannon, generations are held within a poem.
Through paint, fabric, faith, fiction, photography, poetry, and a variety of prose, the creators in this issue offer us a glimpse into their inner rings — their years, their stories, their change.
This past summer, I explored the redwoods again, this time with my four growing children. While time seemed to stand still among those majestic trees, I was amazed by the change in me. As a new generation pressed their cheeks against wrinkled bark, their arms stretching wide, I realized that aging is not just something we endure, but something worth witnessing in ourselves and those we love.
Warmly, and ever aging,
Natasha
Categories: Letter from the Editor
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