A Lesson

I don't know why the following little dialogue between teacher and student touched me so deeply.

Of course, the teacher is my nephew, Matt, with whom I just spent time (for the first time in some years) in Florida. This April I turn 60, and three days later he turns 30. These are just two of five milestone family birthdays crammed into that one month (my brother Ally will be 50, Matt's sister Molly will be 20, and their mother Martha, my sister, will be 55), so we had only thought about it in that context. Suddenly we realized that there was a special relationship between our two birthdays: I was going to be twice his age, and I had been exactly his age when he was born.

I asked him how he felt about turning 30, and he said it didn't seem like a big deal because he'd already felt a little different -- no longer "young young" -- for the last few years. So the transition was already well under way. No true believer in astrology, but willing to entertain it, I told him I remembered reading about the first Saturn return. As I look it up now, I discover that not only are both Matt and I also going through Saturn returns -- his first, my second -- but my dad, Matt's grandfather, who just turned 88, is coming through his third one:

The Saturn Return

Each twenty-nine years naturally presents us with the challenge to rise to new levels of awareness, or face the consequences of having failed to gain the wisdom required so to do. When Saturn in the heavens returns to the zodiacal degree where he was placed in your birth chart, you are said to be experiencing your Saturn Return. This only happens once every 29 years, so at around age 28-30, 57-59 (and if you live long enough) 86-88 you have what astrologers call a Saturn Return. This signifies a time of transition, from one life-phase to the next. The first Saturn return (around age 28-30) marks the transition from the Phase of Youth to the Phase of Maturity; the second from the Phase of Maturity to the Phase of Wisdom. The last one, if reached, seems usually to mark the transition either to the next world or else back to a second childhood!

As the Saturn return approaches, often our lives seem to speed up, as if hurrying to clear out old baggage from the past, to lighten the load for the next stage. Important things that either finalize old issues, or prepare the ground for new developments tend to occur with increasing frequency. Relationships and major life-decisions are often the focal points for this clearing out of karmic baggage.

I had the chance to have a couple of wonderful conversations with Matt and to get to know him a little bit as a grown man, but the following dialogue with one of his second-grade students, which he reconstructed for his blog Stepping Stone, allowed me to see his heart as a teacher. I was so touched by the first line, by the intimate way he draws his student in, promising a reciprocity to the relationship -- someday, their roles will be reversed -- that may not literally come true between the two of them, but that is generationally true. How did Matt know to project that comforting continuity that the Stone Age child still needs to look forward to even though Space Age life will give it the lie?

And I was touched by his candor -- to the child and to himself -- about mortality, as he gets ready to turn 30.

Teacher: I'm going to be old, then, and you're going to take care of me.
Student: You're going to be old?
T: Yes, I'm going to be an old man, walking with a cane.
S: Yeah... And then are you going to die?
T: Yes, I am.
S: Then what happens?
T: After you die?
S: Yes.
T: No one knows.

It goes on, and it gets funnier. Read the whole thing.

Comments

[Tom Strong]

That's pretty good. It reminds me of one of my favorite haiku, by Issa:

Do not kill the fly.
See how it wrings its hands!
See how it wrings its feet!

Now, back to my own Saturn Return.

[nappy40]

I like Stepping Stone. Just added it to my blogroll.