The Old Woman and the Wave: Sage-ing, Age-ing, Wage-ing Wander & Wonder by Margot Van Sluytman

“Set out, pilgrim. Set out into the freedom and the wandering. Find your people. Godde is much bigger, wilder, more generous, and more wonderful than you imagined.”
― Sarah Bessey

Joy and justice reside in grace. Thrive in gratitude.  Find fulminating llanos of miracle, might, and magic contoured in story. Etched in song. Sculpted in the untempered and unmanacled invitation of HER resplendent and resounding voice and vision willing us to be the very creative fires we wish to live. To come to recognize, at the time of age-ing and sage-ing, the call to freedom.

The call to be wage-ing pilgrimage and poetry with and because of being Grandparents, is a gift SHE bestows upon us, often when we are not even aware of the liminal’s need of our life’s learnings.

For several years, I have been reading stories to my Grandchildren, as well as to the Grandchildren and Great-Grandchildren of family, friends, and colleagues. I have been recording treasured books which I yearned to share with them so that they come to know about Grandparents, as much as they come to delight in wonder, adventure, possibility. Myth and magic too. Coming to know themselves through story, image, and connection.

Recently, I read a beautiful story entitled: The Old Woman and the Wave by Shelley Jackson.  I chose this particular book for several reasons.  Firstly, because the expression the “old woman” is one that my father used since I was a child growing up in Guyana, South America. My father’s life ended when he was a young man of forty, and I a girl of sixteen; however, the tone, timbre, and texture of his voice, along with his love of words, myth, adventure, and story continues to live on in me. Secondly, the artist’s rendition of the old woman in this precious tale is: me. Me in my sleeveless, red and white polka-dotted dress. Me with long white hair, had I continued to grow mine. Not only does the old woman look like Granny Margot, but her dog, Bones, shares part of a name with one of my wonderful sons-in-law. He is known by those who love him as: T-Bone. Further, love and loving dogs is a visceral fact and act in the lives of my Grandchildren. Grizzly, Jasper, and Maeve are the Grand-dogs who bring such richness to my “great” Grandchildren, enlivening their hours with feisty cavorting and luscious, dripping licks. These four-legged souls ever teaching of life’s poignant cycle of birth and death. Bacardi is ever-present in their hearts, even as his death was several years ago.

The old woman, too, is part of the cycle. Life’s poignant cycle. An abundant cycle of teaching and of learning. The old woman’s new learning came in an unexpected decision she made. A wild and wonder-full decision. A HEaRt decision. Not pre-planned. Not mapped and researched. Not discussed, debated, deliberated over time. In a flash, staring into the eyes of possibility offered in a way she would likely not have chosen, she knew what she had to do. She made a decision because of love. Because of her Bones. Not her “old bones”.  Bones her dog. Her love. Bones for whom she would do anything. Including risking. Risking: adventure! Putting her debilitating fear aside. Doing so because her profound love for him meant the time had come for her to leap. To leap into the unknown.

The old woman and HER call to adventure anew, knew each other. Knew each other in a flash of a moment’s clarity of vision. A flash that demolished the historical notion that old womyn are supposed to be finished with adventure. Done with creativity’s call, with risk, with wonder, and wander. The ponderous and pernicious notion that old womyn are supposed to be resting, weary, wearying, and wary of life. Notions capriciously grounded in imagined and fabricated ideological views about cessation and ennui. About old womyn being surfeited upon reliving memories and living in the past, awaiting “their time”.

For generations old womyn have been ridiculed, talked-over, interrupted, denied, negated, maligned, dismissed. Their Wisdom slowly swallowed by patriarchy’s dualistic platitudinous cries of divide and conquer. Patriarchy’s creation of exclusionary hierarchies of gender, age, abilities, race. Hierarchies that diminish, demean, and staunch HEaRt, art, poetry, vision, story. Voice.

The phrase “old woman” has been used as a weapon for waging exclusion and diminishment. However, at the very same time as this narrative, if political and ideological agenda, has been insidiously spread, generations and generations of Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Grandparents, and Grandchildren, pay little heed. Generations of Elders and Wisdom-Keepers, of Canatadoras, Bards, Sangomas, Music-Makers, Story-Speakers, Word-Weavers, Spell-Binders, Story-Spinners, have continued to teach, to reach, to shape-shift vision. To birth burgeoning meaning. Meaning-making. Ever awakening.

And, as this old woman shows us that even though for a time her fear and her unconscious imbibing of patriarchy’s pronouncements had her stalled, she could and would make a choice. A choice grounded in love. Love that meant no longer hiding.

In one brilliant spark of a moment, she recognized that her call to answer to love and to wonder surpassed the tiny, limited, and limiting patriarchal space and scripting of being, and of becoming. Of expectations and fear-based perceptions. Of learned-behaviors. She learned about un-learning. Was open to it. Because of love. And the call to answer it in the affirmative. Never for a second imagining what her decision to leap because of love would bring to her and her life of hiding under the dreaded and unknown wave.

She knew instinctively that sage-ing and age-ing are life’s invitation situated in the crucible of Sophia’s moist, salty, aliveness to say “yes” to adventure. To say “yes” to and for and because of the liminal’s call to go wHERe she had not gone before. To do what she had not done before. To lean into her life as a gift of time’s invitation to move. To move forward. To move forward with her courage. And with her grace. With HER guidance and delight. On one day. In one moment, she knew what she had to do. She leapt.

In the link below, I share with you this beautiful, beautiful story. An expansive metaphor for each of us. Old souls. Old spirits. Wisdom-Keepers. And ever Wisdom-Seekers. This generous story is an invitation to step into our own fears with boldness. With surrender. Surrender to the fact that each and every single one of us can accept an invitation to thrive. To leap into raw-rich surrender to the precious Wisdom that knows us. That longs for us to know ourselves each and every single day of our one unique, compelling, and beauty-filled life. As love contours each step, teaching us to embrace the abundant and wonder-full waves of wander. And wonder. The wonder-full alive, alive, alive rememberings of the Grandchildren that we were and the Grandchildren with whom we are bounteously blessed.

Margot Reading: The Old Woman and the Wave

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Poem by Dr. Sr. Brenda Peddigrew, RSM, PhD, Poet.
https://soulwinds.ca/brenda.html

Given to Grace

 At seventy-six, I am swept

into a sea of gratitude – wave

after wave after wave- do they

ever stop?

Perhaps not. Perhaps

the gifts of a long life illumine

the years behind, but also

the years ahead. Perhaps

there could be no other life

than this one I have been

given. Given.

Not even chosen –

how could I know?

But given – so – no other

word but gratitude can speak

for such a life…
 

And the waves still come,

sweeping through a wondrous

heart – Given to Grace.

sending it out in waves. Perhaps

my heart – all along –

was a sea…