Older Than My Former Student

How do you know when you’re old? Is there a moment when you’re better off acknowledging this fact, or should you keep trotting along not paying much attention to where you are on the age spectrum? If you are at least approaching whatever “old” is, are you seeing more and more differences between yourself and the ever-increasing number of people who are, at least physically, “young”? 

In this lead-up to Thanksgiving, when many of us will be (with any luck) attending multi-generation gatherings, I’m thinking about how much, in our minds and also in our activities, we are playing out our particular ages and how much we’re not. Maybe the seats could be re-arranged any number of ways.

I’m also thinking about how important it is, or isn’t, to preserve our memories; do they usually serve us well, enhancing our elder years? Should we work at holding onto them, as if they are glittering treasures or at least shells worth keeping, offering proof of our journeys? 

On the Big Screen

OK, enough questions. The fact is, it’s not so much Thanksgiving bringing all this to mind but a movie my husband and I saw recently, in our local theater.

The last time we went to Red River was more than a year ago; we saw The Banshees of Inisherin, featuring excellent acting with hauntingly beautiful scenes of the coast of Ireland as well as the equally shocking removal of one character’s fingers. That was a kind of trade-off. 

Going to see The Holdovers was a no-brainer, in a way: we weren’t deep in a Netflix series, I’d heard positive reviews, and since Rob and I each had some history with boarding schools (one in particular), our ears – maybe just mine – pricked up a bit as this film got launched. There was another reason, too, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Still in High School

First, though, keeping in mind that barrage of questions I started with, and adding a note of seasonal gratitude for good measure, I want to say that I’ve been noticing, almost as if I’m perched on my own shoulder, how much I’ve been appreciating my own job over recent weeks.

I’ve worked in schools with teenagers for a long time, but somehow this fall it feels like more of an honor than usual to try to “meet them where they are” — find opportunities that match their interests, introduce them to people who work in areas they’re curious about, etc. I was especially conscious of this on a recent morning when a 10th grade girl, a three sport athlete, came to talk to me, eager to start figuring out whether her interest in working with numbers could be an indicator that she’d make a good accountant.

I realized, with something like glee, that I wasn’t burned out — I was actually still energized by these encounters, and thank goodness for that.

And, on the heels of seeing The Holdovers, I also felt relieved that my still-there-enthusiasm made me unlike the main character, Paul Hunham, a teacher who’d been at the same school forever and was dripping with disdain for the students he taught. He is played by Paul Giamatti.

While it’s not spelled out exactly how old Hunham is (or maybe I missed a reference), he’s clearly gone stale in the job and, despite projecting complete confidence in his subject matter, has lost any real sense of connection with or caring for teenagers; he’s not interested in seeing them as individuals with distinct characteristics, abilities, and challenges to overcome. It’s only when he’s forced to spend time with one particular boy that he begins to see the light.

The funny thing for me, watching the movie, was that I got to remember a time when Paul Giamatti — the actor playing the man — was a 10th grader in my classroom at Choate Rosemary Hall School. I can still see him, slumped in a blue chair attached to a tan desk, slightly smirking, reading lines from Macbeth. We were up at the newer, Rosemary Hall, part of the campus, where the long windows let in plenty of light and allowed glimpses of chatting or laughing passers-by going up or down the wide, paved walkways. (My husband, who had graduated a few years before, tells me he used to ride his unicycle on these same walkways, getting off temporarily at the steps.)

Counting back the years to that time, I was about 25 and P.G. was about 15. That means I was definitely older than him, then. Based on who he is in this new movie, though, and considering my ongoing (surprising?) enthusiasm for my current occupation, I swear you’d think it was the other way around.

Dorms in My Past

The Holdovers wasn’t filmed at Choate Rosemary Hall, but it was filmed at several other New England boarding schools — giving an amalgam effect. I found myself straining to recognize where exactly this scene was and feeling sometimes frustrated that I couldn’t quite nail it. I wanted my memories to kick in, maybe even be validated by them. Once, Rob leaned over to me and said, “That’s Northfield Mount Hermon, isn’t it?” He was right. We’d been there occasionally together during our time living in the Pioneer Valley, but my main experience with the school happened a couple of decades before then, when I was an intern teacher — traveling back and forth between the then two campuses.

Once, on a trip back from Canada, we stopped to see the dormitory where I lived during that year. It was here, on the first floor, where I had a wide screen door into my tiny apartment, so that when I was there I had the faintest bit of demarcation from the girls bounding in and out of Merrill-Keep Hall. It was this big door I went through on the cold morning when I headed up to the Lake Placid Winter Olympics with a college friend. I don’t remember everything about that year, but — phew– I still have many of those shells in my pockets.

Then and Now

Unquestionably, I was young back then; middle-aged already, when I had three darling eight-and-under kids. As we prepare to host another Thanksgiving in a home we hadn’t envisioned a dozen years ago, I can’t deny that I’m getting, if not downright old, then something approaching it. But my husband (yes, a tad younger than I am, but an older version of himself) can still ride his unicycle and, while I definitely don’t always know how to proceed with particular kids, I’m not jaded when I talk to them because I know each one is trying to carve out a path that is somehow right for that individual, stumbles and all.

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving! And if you get to see the movie, please leave a comment with your impressions of it — or about your perspectives on aging.