The older I get, the more I appreciate the wonders around me. I’m not just talking about nature’s extravagances — zebras, cuttlefish, dragon flies, octopuses, though they do still amaze — but rather the wonder attached to the everyday things a younger me might have not paid much notice to, the happy social interactions, coincidences and surprises that counteract all the sorrows and horrors, and say by their existence, we too are life, maybe most of it.
Perhaps the mundane becomes more wondrous as we age partly because we move slower. We are more careful. Each step we take becomes fascinating, an object of exquisite study, not only because the stability of your body rides on it, but also because it takes on a disembodied life of its own.
Age concentrates the mind. The moment you realize you will no longer do something you’ve done all your life. The moment you realize that you will now need to do something you’ve never had to do before. The moment you realize that what used to be will never be the same. Some of this could lend itself to melancholy. But there is also a bigness to such moments that allows for wonder. A sense that you can’t quite comprehend it all.
Like any life, mine has had its pain, yet from the outset it seems to have been graced by unbelievable people and events. An anthology of miracles. Before me and around me as a child, and with me ever since.
At times the wonder is so fleeting you could easily miss it. A glance of sympathy in a stranger’s eyes, a warm handclasp. The quiet wonder of durable friendships. Of the dependent companionship of small animals. Of the sad antique beauty of tenements. Of shared secret jokes. Of long exploratory walks. A moment when you and someone you’re with spontaneously break into song, hearing Louis Armstrong in your heads. “I see trees of green, red roses too.” And you say to yourself, it’s a wonderful world.
Some wonders you cannot see at all. More progress has been made in cancer research in the past 25 years than in all the time before it. Therefore more lives saved. Unless you’re a doctor or a researcher you cannot know how such a process of discovery works, but you benefit from it. Knowledgeable people thinking about vital problems and solving them, for everyone, unseen.
How do you find a wonder? Often they find you.
The wonder of my wife, Ginny. The wonder of watching her as she sits waiting on a bench, or reading, or wrapping gifts, or writing a letter to a sick friend. The active serenity of her. These are things she’s always done. But now, as I watch her, I realize how strongly each gesture is tied to character.
The wonder of still learning how to do new things. The wonder of writing this sentence. The alchemy of language. The scope and sweep of the imagination. The wonder of the mysteries of the weather. Of wind. Of sound. Of prayer, of faith. Of art. Of gifted people. Emily Dickinson, Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald, Vermeer, Bach, Monk. These things have always brought me joy. Now I have the time to question how they do that. That I have no answers only makes these joys more wondrous.
My childhood began in New York at 36 Gramercy Park East, a magical early 20th century Gothic revival building with stone gargoyles on the outer walls and cast stone knights in armor out front. With my doctor father seeing patients, and my mother teaching public school all day, I was quasi-adopted by three ladies who lived upstairs. They read me Mark Twain and taught me card games. I was 4 years old.
On Christmas Eve they would hire a limousine and tour the shop windows on Fifth Avenue, taking me with them. I would sit in the back of the car and stare at the lights, my eyes wide with the bright stories told by the window displays, my heart content with my three ladies, with life.
In the end, the tendency for peace. In the beginning, a car ride in the dark city on Christmas Eve.
At the age of 6, I was on vacation with my parents in Westport, Conn. The day of our arrival, I went off for a walk by myself. I was always doing that, to my parents’ dismay. And I came upon a large beautiful house with a sun room with glass walls so that I could see a Steinway concert grand in the middle of the floor.
The door was open. I went in and started playing, eventually looking up to see a princess-like woman standing beside the piano and smiling. We chatted. She took me back to the rented house. My mother was appalled, and she apologized for my bold behavior. No need, said the woman. It was a pleasure to see how innocent and unafraid I was. “Yes,” said my mother. “That’s how he is. He thinks the world is a room with a piano in it waiting to be played.”
In fact, it is.
Roger Rosenblatt is the author of “Making Toast,” “Kayak Morning,” “The Boy Detective” and, most recently, “More Rules for Aging.”
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