Aphrodite and Me

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Vatican Museums. Image: Freepik.com

Sixty years ago, I sat in a café in Crete, pondering the myths I had encountered up close. They seemed less like artifacts of the past and more like powerful stories begging to be reclaimed. At twenty, on a solo adventure, I came from a young country where 100-year-old things were considered ancient and history was all about men. So it struck me hard: There were goddesses everywhere—in ruined temples, in the Mary Renault novels I was reading, and on the pots and artifacts I gawked at.

And that’s when I claimed Aphrodite as a muse.

I can’t say I spent much time in the years that followed investigating the goddesses, but I saw their competing messages. Hera, wife of Zeus, whispered of marriage, a predictable life, and the need to tolerate men’s excesses. Athena, goddess of wisdom, called me to my chosen work, to a feminine form of leadership in a chaotic, conflict-filled world. Both urged me to “settle down,” make plans, and create routines. But Aphrodite seemed the most complex, claiming beauty, pleasure, and mischief. Her sacred animal may be the gentle dove, but she is also a trickster, playing with humans, challenging other gods and goddesses, and meddling in the male worlds of war and love.

It was the beginning of “second-wave feminism,” which called women to expand their horizons and aspirations and consider different ways of being. I felt Aphrodite’s power as an embodiment of something clearly female yet not subservient.

It was an era when noisy, accomplished women were newly celebrated as beautiful—Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir—and they also claimed the right to choose love without letting love define them. Women hung on their words, marveling that they were so accomplished and also sexy, desirable, and desiring. They cultivated distinctive words and a distinctive look—hairstyle, clothing choices—as if it were easy to be exciting and powerful at the same time.

It was what I wanted.

And Aphrodite, along with Gloria and Simone, taught me to love my body, whether slim or pregnant. I didn’t like the little pad of fat on my knees, but otherwise I saw that my muscular calves, wide feet, and prominent collarbones did not deter the male gaze or women’s appreciative looks. I could be both physically attractive and interesting in a group of men and women while we engaged with bigger ideas.

But all of this reflects the superficial Aphrodite, captured by Botticelli as Venus on the half shell.

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, Uffizi Gallery. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Oh yeah, beautiful but superficial. And goddesses don’t age: They have no stretch marks, wrinkles, or hip replacements. I now have all of these…and I am retired. Why, then, haven’t I put Aphrodite on the back burner, influential in my early life but irrelevant to an 80-year-old?

Because she gives me different guidance than when I was 20.

Because we also often use “superficial” for sensuality, pleasant conversation, and the quick attention we give an idea or image, storing it for later contemplation. But that is part of how I still try to live: not obsessed with one person or one passion, but open to the fleeting – and curious. Aphrodite meddles because she sees interesting details, wants to know more, and wants to see what happens if her touch changes the course of the wind or the meeting of eyes. I often need to remind myself to stay observant, to stay sensitive to life’s nuances. In those details, I find the most joy.  Rushing toward a goal, I may miss a beautiful flower, someone else’s kindness, a sky more beautiful than any painting.

Aphrodite is nothing if not social, weaving together the small and large details of others’ lives and bringing people together. Of course, I wouldn’t mind being called to solitary greatness, like Athena on the Acropolis, looking out over the world. But in the last years of my professional life, I really wanted to be Aphrodite, someone who brought all kinds of people together and encouraged them to create something new that would endure after I left. I love the story of Theseus establishing the cult and temple of Aphrodite Pandemos (Aphrodite of the people), where people celebrated her each year for fostering civic unity.

Relying on her mattered as my husband Dan and I, drawn by family, moved from Minneapolis, where we had lived for decades, to Boulder. Aphrodite encourages me, when I meet someone new for coffee, to say, “I think we can be friends,” an explicit gesture that invites relationships and connection beyond the superficial and seems to speed the dance of creating meaningful connection. The joy I feel from creating new bonds that matter—not displacing but adding to dense relationships that have grown over decades—is one way she works on me.

Her mischievous side—including her willingness to intervene in the lives of gods and mortals—is part of the story of my old age: no longer an elegant temptress but an everyday oldster who has adopted the credo “stir the pot and see what happens.” It doesn’t always work as I hoped—Aphrodite’s intrusions can sow chaos—but being playful still pleases me.  These days, however, I am much more comfortable apologizing if my playfulness misfires.

She still meddles with me. It just looks different at 80. More tender, more relaxed, but still pointing toward love, beauty, and relationships.  She is always calling me to slow down, pay attention, experiment, and have fun.  Aphrodite may be ageless, but she understands women’s aging with a fully female compassion.

Part 1: Stuff. . . and Change

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I rested my hand on my cherry dining room table, knowing they would soon load it on the moving truck. I’d contacted Bridging, a local organization that furnishes homes for families in need, to pick up items from our house that wouldn’t fit in my new, downsized, condo. The table was to be last on the truck, so I had time to linger.

My hand was still, but my heart screamed at my mind. “What are you doing? Remember those family dinners, ten people talking at once? Remember the times you used your china? You know, that is going to end up in a thrift shop, too.”

I saw the cards flying in bridge games with our friends, Karen and Dan. My husband, Jim, sitting opposite me, would maneuver the bidding so I’d be the one playing the hand.

Birthday celebrations—I remembered my cake for my 80th—Jim had died three months prior, so we didn’t get to share the milestone birthday. We’d shared much at that table. During COVID, endless games of Scrabble—I played to win, and he played to engage.

And my vase that I filled with questions about each other that we answered after meals. It was revealing fun.

“Don’t worry. Someone will love that table as much as you have.” The man from Bridging reassured me. I let my hand drop and they loaded the table, aghast when they started to put boxes on it.

“That’ll scratch it!” I shouted. They took the boxes off.

It was no longer my table. I didn’t want to think about what might happen next to it.

I bought the table at Dayton’s Warehouse Sale, back when Dayton’s existed. It wasn’t my style, but the beautiful wood caught my eye, and it was the right size. The legs matched chairs left to me by my second husband, Gary, who died at age 55. He didn’t value stuff, but he loved these chairs, which he’d bought in Pennsylvania, another memory. Every time I pulled a chair out, I’d see Gary at his desk, which was the dining room table.  

My table was hard to part with, but holding on felt like grasping at a life that used to be—the one filled with family, friends, careers, holidays, parties, the sad and the happy, around that central gathering place. My heart hoped that letting the table go would make room for my children to carry on traditions.

“Stop it!” my mind admonished. Stuff is work, and it takes up space. Remember how you had to store those leafs under the bed. They were so heavy, you needed help to slide them out and carry them to the dining room. Wake up! No one’s here to do that anymore. Let it go!”

My heart gave up, watching the door of the van close, the men getting in and driving the truck out of the lot. “Goodbye,” my heart whispered.

*****

What was I really grieving when I gave away the table?

Memories stay with me, whether I own the table or not. What I grieved are the roles the table signified, mother, grandmother, hostess, and the keeper of traditions. Beneath my sadness about the table was facing the problem of who I am as life shifts and changes, particularly in retirement

My husband, Jim, who was more sanguine in his approach to retirement, stayed involved, with people, sports interests, and adult education courses. He didn’t seem worried about roles, but then he never downsized as a widow either. One Easter, when our families were mostly busy, Jim suggested that we invite other people with no immediate plans for a light brunch. I look back and remember how interesting that day was. Roman Verotsko, a well-known artist and neighbor came. He spent much of the time talking art with my granddaughter, who came without parents. Other neighbors mixed with each other. The party created a new role for Jim and me. We didn’t need to be the grandparents who have everyone over. We could bring friends together.

Shortly after, Jim bought a big Bunn coffee maker and started inviting neighborhood men for coffee. He’d found his niche. My friend, Johan, used to hold what he called “musical soirees” about old jazz and Mozart. He’d invite all the people he knew who lived alone and had an interest in music. In my condo association, various people give short talks about finding and roasting coffee, astronomy, and even puppets.   

It’s not easy to find new ways of being in the world, yet the ubiquity of change requires adaptation. Roles, to some extent, are what we project to the world, but what about inside us, our personal authenticity. As I’ve aged, I’ve turned more inward to access that person.

Memories from the past, like the ones my table evokes, can cohere around life themes. Timelines of your life can also reveal these. The classic about doing this is Writing about Your Life, by William Zinsser. I participate in a church group called the Elder (wince) Gathering, and we are reading a book called The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul, a book I’d already read in another church group. Soul work seems to call people my age. But that’s a big topic for another blog.

Where does this leave me about the table?

I treasure my memories ‘round that table. It’s an album of my life. But now when I feel sad about giving it away, I imagine a family in their first real home. It’s tiny, but there’s room for a table—a lovely cherry one. Children are gathered at it doing their homework. Someone nearby is making dinner.

          “Put your stuff away,” she calls.

Books and pencils and paper and laptops are put away. Someone sets the table. Everyone sits down. Dinner time.

I smile. My table is home.

Stay tuned for Part 2

Knitting Lessons: Crafting and Life

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Christmas Anemone Hats 2020

I am a knitter. I first learned while living in Norway in 1955, when knitting was still part of the required national curriculum in Norwegian schools. My first project was a ski hat with a traditional Setesdal cross pattern in the brim. There were clearly no low expectations for 11-year-olds in those days. 

I gave up knitting when my children were young, just as I gave up sewing my own clothes. Both require long periods of concentration — hard to come by when elementary-school children fill your life. I began again when they were older and haven’t stopped since. In other words, knitting has become a significant part of my life.

Non-knitters assume we knit because we want the product: the scarf, the hat, the sweater that emerges from all those stitches. But for most knitters, those things are merely a byproduct of the experience itself, which is meditative and soothing — something done in contemplation, letting yarn slide through the fingers while listening to the soft click of needles. It is a Zen-like state that, at least for me, comes close to true meditation. The grocery list disappears; the endless whirl of memories and ideas quiets. The report that needs to be written can wait.

(Photo by Oksana Maselko on Unsplash)

I spend hours in yarn stores, admiring as often as buying. Going through my stash is a sensory experience — even when I decide that I have too much and can donate some.  

Knitters love yarn…when we have too much, we “destash.”

Of course, knitting can also be social. There are knitting circles, retreats, classes, yarn shop gatherings — dozens of ways to connect around a shared pleasure. But these are not why we knit; they are another happy byproduct. It helps, after all, to know there are others who can read the bizarre language of knitting, who do not blanch when confronted with instructions that begin: p2, skp, *yo, k2 through back loop, yo, rep from *. Others who understand your delight in a yarn that is half silk, half alpaca because their own hands remember that softness slipping through them. Others who want to be part of a “knit-a-long” where people from many countries knit the same pattern at the same time and discuss their progress online.

But knitting teaches other things as well — especially now that knitting socks is an expensive pleasure for gift-giving rather than a necessity…      

If I am not a perfectionist, it is because knitting taught me that most mistakes are invisible in the finished piece. If I am patient, it is because I learned not to swear — more than once, anyway — when encountering an error too serious to ignore. There is the inevitable acceptance that I must tink (knit backward to undo a row) or even frog (rip out substantial portions, sometimes the entire thing) because it simply is not right.

What would frustrate me enormously if it involved hosting a dinner party, causes only a moment of regret in knitting, because I never knit to a deadline. The process is what matters.

And yet the finished objects matter too. If a purchased sweater is attacked by moths, I mend it and donate it. If the same thing happens to a sweater I knit myself, I mend it carefully and continue wearing it for years. Hand-knit sweaters are passed down. I own one that belonged to my mother and is now 60 years old. My eight-year-old granddaughter wears one I first knit for her mother, later worn by a grandson now in college, and — invisibly mended — treasured by a third owner.

2018 and 2026

Vintage is cool; vintage made by someone you loved is even cooler.

But knitting is also a metaphor.

In relationships, when do we overlook the small flaws, invisible to others? Mend the holes? Can we knit back to the point where things first began to strain and begin again? What happens when one person decides to rip it all out — declaring that the sweater in progress is no longer the right color, no longer the right style, no longer wanted at all?

And perhaps the deepest lesson knitting teaches is this: even after unraveling, the yarn itself remains. Something new can still be made from it.

Growing Soup

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When my daughter Jane was small, she would put her hands on her hips and declare indignantly, “When I grow up. .  . I’ll stay up as long as I want. I’ll watch as much TV as I want, or I won’t clean my room unless I want to.” We smiled and let her complain.

Sooner than I imagined, Jane was in her twenties, with an undergraduate degree, no job or clear vocation, wanting a car, and those things that come with growing up. I remember her declaring to me, “All my life, I’ve wanted to grow up, and now that I am, I don’t like it. Nothing is the way I thought it would be.”

Those words could well apply to me and growing older. Unlike Jane, I was never in a rush to grow old, but still, I’ve been doing exactly that, making me inclined to say, “Nothing is the way I thought it would be. My body just can’t do what it once could.” Some days I rail against these changes. I want 45-year-old Karen back. I plan exercises and diets that will magically restore me. I adopt schedules to take better care of myself. I resolve to make new friends, find a passion or renewed purpose in an unknown something. Maybe I’ll paint a bird house, make a resistance hat, or start making my own bread. Maybe I’ll do all of these things – or something else that is different.

But I still go to bed another day older.

This morning, reading a Lenten meditation by Parker Palmer, I saw another way to consider growing older. He argues that although we were originally an agricultural society, tied to seasons of growth and rest, we are now a manufacturing one, and the “master metaphor of our era” comes from manufacturing. Rather than “growing” our lives, we make them. He notes our everyday speech: “We make time, make friends, make meaning, make money, make a living, make love”.

I wondered, could I reframe growing older into a positive perspective?: I could ask how can I grow time, grow friends, grow meaning, grow money, grow living, and grow love? I could move on from the “making” approach that probably fits much of adulthood and embrace the growing in growing old.

One suggestion for growing old is from Cynthis Bourgeault’s Ten Practical Guidelines for Conscious Aging.Number 5 is:

Watch what happens when you try to draw energy from an outmoded image of yourself.. . .You get an immediate rush of ‘Ah, I’m my old self again!!’ But that is exactly who you do not want to be. Your old self is the sacrificial lamb you will lay upon the altar of your deeper becoming.

Sounds like Bourgeault is talking about hanging onto our former self versus growing into a deeper becoming. I have no idea of what the “deeper becoming” might be, but I’m willing to find out.

As I engage with these ideas—growing instead of making myself into the perfect aging senior, I’m reminded of my second husband, Gary.  Gary did not cook at all. When I met him, he lived on Special K for breakfast and Healthy Choice frozen meals for lunch and dinner. When we married and forgot to say “no presents,” someone gave us a crock pot. Gary thought it was the greatest cooking invention ever.

He loved homemade soup, and the crock pot was perfect for making it. I’d be off to the office in the morning and he’d say. “I think I’ll make some soup today. What do you think should be in it?” I’d add some broth and maybe leftover chicken and, as I ran out the door, suggest that we could add noodles later.

While I was gone, Gary grew the soup, scouring the refrigerator for leftovers and the cupboards for things that might add flavor. I’d come home to a completely different amalgam of soup than the one I left. He grew the soup with what we had and with his imagination. And like many things that grow, some soups were forgettable, others unexpectedly outstanding.  But because they grew organically, there was no recipe for replicating any particular soup, and that’s what made his soups so interesting.

While I was busy making a life, I was also growing my own life soup, with a variety of personal experiences. Some have turned out great and others I wish I could do over and would just as soon forget. But in the end, it’s the growing that counted.

The other Karen mentioned in her blog, Who Is the Old Lady Directing the Circus? “growing down,” acting with greater spontaneity and less regard for the product than the process. Surely by 82, I’ve earned the right to grow up, down, or sideways. I hope I can grow like Gary’s soup, adding wisdom from my cupboard of life and a pinch of adventure, stirring in love and more love to taste.