Culture

In A Word... age

Who would want to be 21 again? It was grand at the time but it’s someone else’s turn now

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Dec 1 2018 - 06:00

He just keeps rolling around. He? Old man December of course.

Every old man I see reminds me of December, “…when he had fallen in love with death”.

With apologises to Patrick Kavanagh, and his lovely poem Memory of My Father.

December is the perennial ‘old’ month of the year, culminating in that image of Father Time on the 31st shuffling off to make away for Baby 2019, in this instance.

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Because he cannot stop for Death, it kindly stops for him. The carriage holds but just Himself - and Immortality. With apologies to Emily Dickinson.

As a child, and when time dragged oh so slowly, I used imagine January as the beginning of a long slow climb up a seeming endless hill that just went on and on until eventually December arrived and Santy Claus was in sight - so to speak - once again.

Yes, life could be weary when measured out by Santy visits. Remarkably it sped up fast once he removed me from his list of the naughty and nice. Now he seems no sooner departed than he is upon us again.

How true the cliché that life speeds up as we get older!

And like so many old men, not least old US presidents, December is vain. For a start he is dishonest about his age. He is not the tenth month, as December translates from Latin. He is the 12th month.

Why do we just accept this? I mean that Dutchman Emile Ratelband (69) has had to go to court to try to legally change his age to 49 (with the aim of boosting his chances with the ladies).

Would were it that simple! Would that ladies were so gullible!

“You can change your name. You can change your gender. Why not your age? Nowhere are you so discriminated against as with your age,” he said.

His doctor told him he had the body of someone more than 20 years younger than his age (must have borrowed one!). A father of seven he describes himself as a “young god”. More like an “old goat!”

Who would want to be 21 again? No desire to repeat all that. It was grand at the time but it’s someone else’s turn now. While I grow old, gratefully.

Age from Old French aage, eage.Modern French âge. Latin, aevum.

inaword@irishtimes.com