Everyday Math

My son’s math curriculum is called Everyday Math – the idea is to use math concepts in everyday situations we encounter, rather than keep math separate, a subject during the school day that has no tie to real life. Thus, he can figure out fractions when we need only 2 of a dozen eggs, or find the perimeter of a Lego base, or do fraction and percentage equivalents on things like what percentage of his teeth got brushed (we haven’t actually done that one, but it sounds like something I just might do tonight). As the homework checker, I’m frequently required to check long division, perimeter estimates, areas of geometric figures I’ve forgotten the names of (“rhombus” just doesn’t seem to have a permanent place in my neural network). I have to follow the many manipulations of numbers to find out if there was a small error at any point in the calculations that would have led to a wrong answer. Did he do the addition correctly? Put the number in the right column? Did he carry the right number over if he is subtracting and regrouping (the politically correct, updated name for what I was taught was “borrowing” – but I guess there might be too many problems with borrowed numbers and who they really belong to, so now children must “regroup”).

Recently, my Mom turned 75. Neither she nor I can quite believe this. My husband and I spent most of our pillow talk the other night reflecting on the necessity for the math to be in error. We can’t have 75-year-old mothers (both our Moms are the same age, even though he’s 7 years older than me). There is no skill within the Everyday Math curriculum that we seem to be able to bring to bear that can solve this problem. We keep getting it wrong. The answer keeps being 75.

The narcissistic injury of being old enough to have old parents is so particularly painful that I think I’ve glossed over my Mom’s own difficulty – it is, after all, she who just turned 75. I know she doesn’t feel 75, as if any age has an actual feel. I remember my ”golden birthday” - turning 7 on the 7th of the my birthday month – and waiting, watching the clock for the numbers to turn to 7 am, absolutely expecting to feel different, but the second-hand passed the 12, and there I was, 7 years old, but I didn’t feel any different. I also thought 13 would have a feel, and then 18 (I always assumed the “little” birthdays wouldn’t feel different). And you’d think if any birthday could have made me feel like a different person it would have been my 20th, spent in Paris – Paris! Me, a Midwestern girl doing the oh-so-sophisticated study abroad thing, and here I was, turning 20, spending the night out with two new best friends who I’d met just a day or so prior to the trip, and we came back late to the youth hostel we were to stay at and were locked out. Locked out! So we took turns sleeping on a bench, one person always awake, until the hostel doors opened in the morning. And when they did, I was a full-fledged 20-year-old, and I felt worldly and grown up. I was full up with what I now know was the power of youth, but at the time I thought it was the magical power of adulthood.

But for most of my years since 20, I’ve felt that I’ve remained in my twenties. This is almost embarrassing, as I’m middle aged, but I don’t feel it. So my Mom’s math must be wrong, and maybe, maybe, if we re-worked the problem I’d end up 30-something, but certainly not 40-something. If I get surprised looking in the mirror and seeing the age, or simply looking at my hands as I type and seeing dry skin that has not a hint of youthfulness in it, imagine my Mom’s surprise. She blinked one day, got married, had some kids, raised them to adulthood, had some grandkids, sure, you can’t really deny that grandkids are gonna add some numbers to the equation, but there’s no way it should all add to 75.

75 is the age of old-age homes and prosthetic devices and dentures and things I associate with my own grandparents’ aging process. Of course, 75 is the new . . . give me a break, it’s not a new anything, even if 50 is the new 30 – but this can only be asserted by other people who are basically my age on the outside but haven’t matured a day past their inner age which is decades younger. But my Mom has her hair, her teeth, her sense of humor, and she’s able-bodied. She doesn’t color her hair, and hasn’t had a thing “done” – she’s the template for me as I grow older (again, it’s all about me) - if I ever stop coloring my hair.

In the short time since her birthday, she’s noticed a change in her energy level, a way in which pain stays just a bit longer than before. Psychological or real? After 75 years of walking upright, you’d think our bodies would groan, sag, buckle at time. We’re made out of flesh and bone and muscle tissue – not the strongest building materials around. My own body, so much younger than my Mom’s, groans, creaks, pops, a percussion section protesting moments when my mind announces imminent action. My husband has titanium and ceramic hips, but the rest of him is pure human, so it’s possible his hips will outlast the entire rest of his body. There’s a visual – all the rest of him gone except expertly crafted replacement hips.

My Mom is 75, and she has no idea how she got there. Sure, if pressed, she could recreate the narrative, a whole timeline of what she did and when, but that’s not the same as having the emotional sense that one has lived such a long time. How is it that lived moments seem so short, especially when some of them - such as the painful ones - last for an excruciatingly long time? I, too, can create a timeline and plot exactly what would account for my years and my life to date, but in general I just walk around assuming my life has always been this way and then getting surprised to (re)learn how much it has changed.

There is nothing original to say about the existential yearning for youth, for power, for the gift of more time; if we’re honest, what we want is time coupled with the strength and vitality of bodies we no longer have and wisdom we haven’t yet achieved. I have the luxury of being a generation behind my parents, and can continue to be foolish enough to think I’ll have a few more decades of time, and that I can still accomplish things, be the person I want to be, get closer and closer to . . . something. I wonder what my parents yearn for. Time well-spent before death? Time in a healthy body? Does my Mom still think about making a mark or leaving a legacy or things she’s hoped to accomplish in her lifetime? Does her life make sense to her? Is it the one she wanted? I sure hope the answers are “yes.”

I am in the midst of middle age, and my Mom is square into her old age. I feel more powerful now than I ever have – partly physical, since I’ve taken to exercising in a way I didn’t when I was younger, but not wholly physical, as I get that there are bits and parts of me that just don’t have the benefit of youthful resilience. And, my hearing is intact, so I hear every audible sound of protest my body now makes. I’m more resilient, more able to stand up for myself, more able to realize that certain things are just gonna work themselves out so I don’t need to do much except get out of the way and let the process continue. Not a strength of my youth, where I inserted my will, opinions, and any other control option available to me to try to force outcomes. Again, I thought I was being powerful and that it was the essence of my grown-up-ness that led me to be such a participant in my life; now I see the desire to control that which we can’t as something between youthful folly and the wistful tragedy of the human experience.

Happy Birthday, Mom. May you come to find – even at 75 – a feeling that your life makes sense to you. This is the only gift I can imagine being of any true value (other than the bonsai tree I had sent, which apparently died an early and unceremonious death, and a package of 75 Hershey’s kisses mixed with 75 little love notes, requiring my son to use Everyday Math to count out 75 of each), even though I can’t be the one who gives it to you. It’s the only gift that’s ever mattered to me, and it’s a crime it took me this long to receive it. But I did, and I think I’ve gotten it in time to bring with me as I step, year by year, right in your footprints, headlong into my own old age. It’s just a matter of adding more years to my current age – the most basic of everyday mathematics.