Today is my birthday. I woke up with a hankering to listen to “Afternoons and Coffeespoons” by Crash Test Dummies. If you’re not familiar, do yourself a favor and give it a listen!
The lyrics to the (very hummable) refrain strike me as quite perfect for a birthday:
Someday I’ll have a disappearing hairline
Someday I’ll wear pyjamas in the daytime
I retired 18 months ago and can attest that, yep, I sometimes wear pajamas pretty late in the day! But is that good or bad?
Brad Roberts, the songwriter (and CTD’s lead singer) said in an interview: “Afternoons & Coffeespoons is a song about being afraid of getting old.”
The refrain continues with a reference to T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and then shouts-out to the author:
Afternoons will be measured out
Measured out, measured with
Coffeespoons and T.S. Eliot
The first time I heard the song, I gasped in recognition. I well remember the first time I read “Prufrock” in an introductory English Lit class my freshman year of college. Later I took a one-month intensive on T.S. Eliot’s work, which included “The Wasteland” and the epic “Four Quartets.” Of all the hundreds of pages of poems that we studied, it was “Prufrock” that stuck with me.
The lines of that poem, at times wonderfully obtuse, run in every direction and tease the reader by changing scenes and moods. Ultimately, I believe, the poem revolves around the experience of aging, and of how we find meaning in that process. To what degree do we let the opinions of others dictate our life’s meaning? There are no straight lines here.
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
Then comes the coffee spoon line that Brad Roberts alludes to (and which, incidentally, I quote in my memoir).
For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
My husband and I had the good fortune to hear Crash Test Dummies in concert twice this year, first in Long Branch, NJ and a few days later in Washington, DC.
Serving as a pastor has a way of keeping a person grounded in the transience of life. Yesterday I learned of the tragic death of a 19 year old woman who grew up in one of the churches I served; I recall her as an angelic kindergartener. Once again I am keenly aware that not everyone gets to get old.
Given the privilege, how will I choose to age?
Eliot writes:
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
We measure our lives by something, don’t we? Coffee spoons work for me because I was a coffee hound for decades. (I switched to decaf a few years ago.) To me coffee represents writing, always a cup at hand. But it also represents the writing I don’t do, because I have gotten comfortable in my leisure. (I note that I haven’t written a blogpost in 2024.)
I have authored some provocative articles and books. But not lately.
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
It’s the right question. I need to harness its power. The question puts me in mind of John Lewis, the powerful civil rights leader. He closed every speech with the reminder to get in “good trouble.”
If advancing age is good for anything, it can remind us that time is not inexhaustible. Each of us has work we are meant to do. I don’t believe mine is done.
What about you?
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