Nike and Fearlessness

Fearlessness, Nike, and victory are just names, and what's in a name? I have a couple of names, as did Toni Morrison, and my story is as accidental but full of emotion as hers. Actually, I named myself a few times over my 62 years but one name that has stuck has been Niki, short for Nicola, based on the word Nike, which as everyone knows is a popular running shoe with some odd political opinions.

According to Greekmythology.com (and most Classics scholars), Nike was the goddess of victory in Greek mythology, depicted as having wings, hence her alternative name "Winged Goddess". She would fly above the battlefields and champion the winners. She may be the daughter of Ares, who was the god of war. A tough chick. Being a Goddess, she didn't worry too much about getting old.

Getting Old

Turning sixty can be a big deal for people. In our society, we can feel like our lives are over. Younger people don't respect us. Our jobs may have become useless or boring. We can gaze upon a flat future full of medication, mediation, monotony. Our dogs die. Our kids leave town, and come back hardly ever.

Ya, well, that wasn't me. I turned 62 this past summer and I still have some kick in me. I'm channeling when I was fourteen and hiking in the Rockies on my own. If all else fails, I can always go back to being a doula and charging an exorbitant amount to provide people with the kind of compassion their mums or their aunties would've given them in a better day and age. I can head up to my mountain hideaway and live off mushrooms and wild strawberries. Or I could move to Rome and do private prenatal classes in English. Then again, I could just stay here in the 'burbs and live off my pension. Either way, one has to capture that fearlessness in life that gives you a charge, that element of surprise that can light a fire under your butt.

My Great Aunt Tillie lost her fiance in the Great War, and never married. She and her brother lived out their lives in Hackney, in a small flat. She was an armchair revolutionary. "To the barricades!" she would yell with her fist in the air.

Can you be a fearless charioteer in your own life? What is something you've done this week that makes you proud, that lights that fire? I'd love to hear from y'all! #fearless #Nike

Oh, Oh, Older

I dropped the gratefulness ball. I'm back with Oxytocin but I couldn't write intelligently about it at all. Neither Oceans, which I love. Nor obstetricians, whom I also love and respect. Thank God for obstetricians, who save mothers' and babies' lives every single day!

But, today I am grateful for getting Older.

Babyhood was probably a hoot. I was born in Uganda and spent much of my babyhood on someone's back, and the rest of the time naked learning how to dance or playing in the sand. But I remember nothing before I was three.

Then young childhood was spent trying to avoid having to speak to anyone, and learning the joys of reading and using my imagination.

And being a kid was pretty ok I guess, I was taken for fun hikes in the Rockies and we went to England for a year. I learned to play the piano and the clarinet. I loved doing homework. Still terribly tormented by shyness, and self-conscious about my crooked teeth, frizzy hair, and knowledge of words with more than two syllables.

Adolescence? Terrifying, creepy, and awful, mostly. I was the weird kid in school, never had a date. But I still loved reading, which kind of saved my life, except when I got a little Older I started traveling and spent hours in the Rockies on my own.

So, being a young adult is kind of weird in this society, at least it was in the seventies because we didn't know what we were supposed to do. Anyway, I did it and emerged with a baby in the eighties, and then life was just a whirlwind, magnificent, crazy, uplifting, we had a farm and lots of babies....

Babies grow older. They get bigger and then they also turn into adults, usually. Mine did anyway, except the last one who is still an adolescent. It's a fun trip, having kids. I wasn't a career woman. I raised children, had a farm, created two non-profits, stay married for a really long time.

Middle age was fucking awful. I spent about ten years thinking I could please all the people, all the time. I twisted myself into a pretzel, to no avail. I trained to be a midwife, but a wee bit too late so now I can only work illegally. I'm some kind of a legend in the birth world here, which is bullshit because I know very little really.

Now I am getting Older. Turning sixty this year, I hope. No more pretzel. I am starting to say no, and it's a little freaky. Some people don't like it.

So, I am mostly very grateful for the chance to be old, I'm not there yet but I am getting a glimmer of what it might be like. Of course the body changes in weird ways, kind of like adolescence. But you get to be yourself because what the fuck, you might as well, right? You might as well say what you want to say. Of course I always like to try to not hurt people, but I am learning that its not always possible.

So here's a big L'Chaim to getting OLD!