Finding a metaphor for an active life – Redlands Daily Facts

The start of the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2006 in Mumbai, January 15, 2006. (Photo by INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP via Getty Images)

I’ve always thought of myself as an adjective, or sometimes an adverb. But last week that changed.

As I sat in my aisle seat at A Noise Within Theater in Pasadena, I heard something that would change my entire future. The words were spoken by the spirited young woman who played the role of Hypatia Tarleton in George Bernard Shaw’s play “Misalliance.”

She laments the boredom of her privileged life and declares with enthusiasm: “I want to be an active verb.”

I felt like I had just heard a manifesto for aging. Jump on your horse and keep riding, even if it’s trotting slowly. Especially if it’s trotting slowly.

“Larkie,” I sang to my cat as I returned home from that life-changing evening, “Mommy is becoming a verb.”

As if to remind me that I’d forgotten the word “active,” she leapt into the air and ran toward the kitchen, stopping once to turn around and make sure I was following her. My sweet little shelter cat, who I adopted five years ago, has never had a problem being an active verb since she stepped out of her tiny cage and into my house, so to speak.

My humble home has turned into her little mansion, and she never runs out of new places to explore. She even finds new places in her new places. After a year of sleeping on pillows in the linen closet, she went two shelves up to the blankets and quilts and had fun tricking me and panicking when I couldn’t find them. Then she finally wriggled a delicate, white tuxedo paw out from under the lavender and purple quilt my mother-in-law had made as a wedding gift for my late husband and me. I was relieved, but also admired her creativity, as she went to the bottom of the closet and disappeared behind the Red Cross disaster preparedness kit.

Even now, as I write this, she is actively jumping on my desk after making me “feel guilty” (see how I’m already turning adjectives into verbs) to give her a late-night treat.

She’s got the aging thing under control. Now that I’m becoming a verb, she’s becoming a metaphor.

E-mail [email protected]. Follow her on X @patriciabunin and patriciabunin.com.