Stardust

We’d cranked up the heat at our Ultimate Frisbee practices (for the organization I work with – Ultimate Peace) so our players were far more invested in the tactics and outcome than in the first tournament; then they were a rag-tag crew with a still-rocky foundation of skills and only fuzzy notion of basic strategy, but enough audacity and arrogance – a combination that can only be found in teenagers and campus police – to still tell me how to do my job as I coached them from the sidelines.

This time we’d had a few more months to trample on their egos and try to sculpt the leftover putty into a team culture built on a frame of respect and desire to learn. The frame hasn’t fallen yet, but a couple of kids have threatened to quit under the new loads they’re bearing for the greater good. We’ll see how they hold up. One kid in particular will be an interesting one to watch as the season unfolds.

Adam* is one who’s wrestling with two foils within himself. Half of him is still a floppy puppy – eager to please, eager to learn, eager to strive. He’s the first one to raise his hand (or, more accurately, to shout over the others) when we’re reviewing our offense, and the first to volunteer to pick up the cones after practice. The other half of him is slowly comprehending that he is a chiseled, good-looking young man of 17 who has all of the superficial qualities to snuggle into an elite position within the patriarchy. I notice how often his nose rises in superiority and falls with deference during practices in a very subtle internal battle as each of his identities try to gain the upper hand.

*(I changed the name in the story to protect his privacy.)

After we had won our first game (of the tournament and ever as a team) the players wandered off to throw the disc into the wind or hide out in the bathroom as girls tend to do. Adam got a few sips of water and then came to find me. “Rachel! Umm. When is our next game?” “About 15 minutes from now.” “How many more do we have today?” “Two more – the next one is against Arrabe.” “Ok. Arrabe. And then we finish after two games?” “That’s right – we’ll leave around 3:30.” “Ok. And Rachel, do you think we’ve improved a lot? Did you notice my throws getting better from last time? Wow! You know you have a lot of…” At this point, Adam leaned in closer to my face to examine my ratio of silver hairs to the rest of my mud-brown tresses. He snapped back and brushed his hand slowly across his own black hair, looking off into the distance like the cover of GM. I read his rationale as if he’d said it aloud - as if by stopping mid-sentence and looking off into the horizon, I wouldn’t be able to paddle his stream of thought and therefore wouldn’t be offended or embarrassed. My laughter tanked his flimsy hope. He tried an adolescent redirect: “My mom’s 50.”

I continued chuckling and tried to help him steer over the rapids. “And does she have any grey hairs?” “No….Say, how old are you?” “I’m 33. I think.” He smiled and nodded and seemed to have absolutely no idea what to say or whether to run or not.

We looked at each other for a moment longer. I told him that my grandma had a completely white head by the time she was 33, like a sheep. He laughed. I told him to go warm up for the game and he trotted off gratefully.

This moment stuck out to me at the tournament the most because it was just a moment of raw human connection, stripped of (or rather, before adding) social norms that I guess start to show up in adolescence but only pervade our manners more consistently sometime after high school. And it made me wonder how age is actually perceived. I feel a lot younger by hanging out with teenagers, but I also started this work when I was 27; a time when I could actually pluck the occasional silver strand during my morning routine.

That was before a lot of moving, a lot of stress over figuring out how to pay bills in a foreign language, after witnessing a lot of violence and hiding in the stairwell during air raids, after comforting a lot of kids who are not mine, travel to foreign lands, back-and-forths about how to fix a broken world then deciding it’s too much to care, a passionate love affair and a devastating breakup… and then repeating it a few more times, a few existential crises (my friend and I aim for about one a year; we try to sync them up together like one monster cycle), driving in Middle Eastern traffic, missing my family, visiting my family, and job changes; oh, and genetics from my grandmother (who’s British, not mutton).

But what does aging actually look like? I see myself every day. And to be honest, I’m not sure whether it’s my Biotin supplements or the serum I got from EarthFare (rest-in-peace you badass grocery store, you served us all well and I’m mourning your closure from afar), but my skin has never looked this good. So how do I know how different I actually look compared to my cheap-beer gut, overly idealistic post-college former self? As I round the half-way mark of my 33rd year on this planet, I look in the mirror and wonder what others see.

My childhood friend just posted a picture on Facebook of himself in a neck brace after surgery. Looking back at me was this dichotomous individual who was both 11 and 33 years old. His face isn’t wrinkled or “old” necessarily. I’d describe it as more full - not fat at all, but like his skin itself holds experiences – pockets tucked back under the ears filled with memories of friendships, jobs, lies. His eyes, which never actually grow or change in shape biologically, do look like they carry more. The baskets just below his eye lashes carry college exams, family meals, and every intersection he has ever jaywalked.

Maybe we are just in the business of coagulating stardust – like a magnet shuffling along to collect the metal shavings after the construction project in which our egos have been trampled and the putty is sculpted and resculpted into a frame that holds up our understanding of the world. That stardust has to settle somewhere, and it nestles up right under our chin or at the scalp, pushing our hair back to make way. Aging isn’t just the wrinkles or random knee pain that surfaces when we wake up; maybe it’s just the collective dust of our experiences settling into our skin & bones, or shimmering outward in our hair.