The Middle Distance 10.26.12: Doin’ the Math


Photo by Sean Cayton

Much to my surprise, I have two sons who are math whizzes. They love mathematics and are both pursuing careers in math. Twenty-five year old identical twins, math is their shared language. When I asked one of them what he was learning when he was taking Abstract Algebra in college, he said, not completely ironically: “I’m learning the secrets of the universe.”

I admire their minds and their talent for math, while at the same time, it leaves me blank. To be perfectly honest, it leaves me feeling inept. It’s not something I can talk to them about because my mind turns off when the language of math is spoken.

Except recently, out here in the middle distance, where I obsess regularly over the mathematics of aging.

It’s a cruel mind game. You’re walking along, enjoying a beautiful fall day, and your mind turns to your next birthday and how old you will be. From there you begin calculating backward. What is half that number? How old was I then? Is it possible I will live another half a lifetime measured by that number?

Here are the numbers: I’ll be 58. That’s hard for me to say, because for many years, since I turned 40, I have lied about my age, rounding up a year so that when the birthday came I would be prepared for the impact. It’s a good strategy. It worked particularly well the year I turned 50 but had been telling everyone I was 50 for an entire year prior.

But I digress. Here’s how it works. I’m 57. For real. So half a lifetime ago was somewhere between 28 and 29 years ago. I had a 7-year old daughter. I wasn’t yet 30. Looking forward, if I live another half-lifetime, I can expect to die at 85 or 86. I can either be comforted or depressed by that simple math fact, depending on which way the wind is blowing that day. I can choose to ignore the current predicted life span of American women, somewhere between 81 and 84, or I can seize on that prediction and grow gloomy.

This is how obsession with the mathematics of aging works at its simplest level. Sometimes it’s meeting someone who’s, say, 42, and calculating the number of years since I was that age, fifteen. This leads to more qualitative thinking about the passing of time: What did I accomplish over those 15 years? How much younger did I feel then than I do now? Will I be able to keep up a similar level of productivity for the next 15 years, until I’m 72? And it leads to reductive thinking — fifteen years ago, my daughter was a sophomore in college, my oldest son was 12 and his little brothers were ten. How long does that distance in time feel? Will the next 15 years feel as long?

Sometimes I try to assign existential meaning to a given time period, say 15 years. Fifteen is the number of years between the birth of my last two children and the time I got serious about being a writer. Fifteen is the number of years between the breathless exhilaration of my first serious boyfriend and the birth of my second child, during a year when I remember feeling incalculably old.

It’s a slippery slope. These calculations can lead to thoughts of probability and inevitability. What is the probability that I will ever fall in love again? That I will die alone? Publish another book? That I will still be able to walk my dog in the foothills 15 years from now? Is it inevitable that I will become less adventurous as the years advance? How wide, exactly, is this middle distance, and at what point does it cross over into the land of the elderly?

Despite my general math-phobia, I confess I like to go to the math calculator on the Internet that breaks down age into finer components, the seconds constantly ticking forward. I’ve lived 57 years, 690 months, more than 3,000 weeks, more than 21,000 days. If my half-life calculation turns out to be true, I have more than 10,000 remaining days and can expect at least half of those to be good ones, if I’m lucky. That’s as many days as it took me to get from 43 to here — 5,000 days of sweeping change, stagnation, creativity, exhaustion, frustration, excitement, adventure, disappointment, loss, renewal, satisfaction, despair, and gratitude.

A vast sea of mathematical navel-gazing. Five thousand days of starting back there and ending up here, a lifetime within a lifetime. Here’s to the next five thousand.



4 Responses to The Middle Distance 10/26/12: Doin’ the Math

  1. rose enyeart says:

    I recently attended my 50th COLLEGE Reunion. I am delighted that I was alive to go, so many of the people I knew then are gone. I’m alive and Hooray for that. I hope to keep on keeping on and when I saw Pikes Peak this early morning with snow and sunlight on that snow, I knew I was alive.

  2. Carol says:

    I thought only I did this math…wondering how much longer I have…will I accomplish it all…then thinking “who cares”…am I still in the Middle Distance or am I considered Elderly? Some days my physical self feels elderly,,,my mind youthful, wanting to do more than my body agrees to, now with a birthday leering at me and acquaintances gone from this year’s 56th h.s. reunion, it all seems too morbid. I averaged my parents death, thinking I might live the average, until my doctor disqualified that thought by adding x number (I don’t remember what the number was) to the age of one’s longest lived parent. Egads…REALLY!

  3. Isabel Benell says:

    Dear Kathryn,
    Not to worry, age is just a number. I am 85 and yet my mind doesn’t know it. I continue to enjoy good health and life in general and live each day to the fullest possible. I am very blessed.
    Much love, Isabel

  4. Neil Myers says:

    Another beautifully expressed essay. Having recently turned 50, I’ve had similar thoughts, most notably, that for a typical lifespan, the halfway point of my life likely happened somewhere in the last decade. And it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who has been mentally rounding up my age for much of the last decade.
    But I also have to comment on the photo accompanying this ‘Middle Distance’ on the Web site. It’s of Prof. Melvin Henriksen, one of my math professors at Harvey Mudd College in the early 80’s. It seems I’ve seen it elsewhere on the KRCC site recently, but then again, at my age my memory does seem to behave differently than it used to.


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