Dear Old(er): aging with grace

This is the third in a series of letters between me and my friend, author Margaret Roach, on the challenges (and joys!) of aging. I’m Old (just 55) and she’s Older (facing 60 this year). And since we’re surely not the only ones buying wrinkle creams, we decided to share our exchange with you, too. Be sure to read Margaret’s letter to me .

Dear Old(er),

I’m thinking maybe we should come up with some new words for us.

Have you noticed that a few of our (older) readers have pointed out that, at 55 and 60, we aren’t quite “there” yet?  My guess: to them we look less like a pair of wise elders and more like a couple of adolescents who are insisting they’re adults and want to be treated as such.   No matter that our curfews these days are entirely self-imposed or that, rather than indulging in hedonistic excess, we’ve pretty much renounced all our youthful vices. The point is, if we’re old now, what will we call ourselves at 85 and 90?  (We are planning to be writing to each other thirty years from now, right?)

At first I didn’t think much of it.  I certainly feel old many mornings, as I gently lift my creaky left leg over the side of the bed, confront the wrinkles in the mirror, and brush a bit of concealer over the dark circles under my eyes.

But lately it’s occurred to me that maybe we haven’t really earned the right to our epistolary nicknames here.  True, “middle-aged” doesn’t quite fit either, since we’re both technically on the back side of the middle, somewhere in the grayish  two-thirds territory – well beyond the half-way mark, not yet approaching the end, and still advancing along the path on our own two feet.

Yet, I have to say, lately even the “old” people I meet don’t seem all that old.

I’m thinking, for instance, of Helen (that’s her up top), who is 81 and works in a hip little boutique in Ojai, California, where we met while I was on vacation last month.  I stopped in to try on a pair of shoes and ended up staying to chat for half an hour, so much did we find in common.

Helen took up yoga in her fifties and went on to get certified as a teacher.  She and her husband bike around town on a red tandem and teach yoga to anyone who’s ready to release a little fear and open up to a little love. That’s the kind of practice they do, meeting students exactly where they are.  Between her “real” jobs, Helen  volunteers at a local organic farm.  I think she looks pretty great in those overalls, but she also happens to be a great model for the lovely clothes she sells.  With her short, chic, silver hair, her funky round eyeglasses, dangly earrings, pedicured toes, and cool, chunky sandals, she just doesn’t fit any of my “old” stereotypes.  If I had to describe her, old isn’t even a word that would come to mind.  She is beautiful, alive, warm, lithe, engaging, compassionate, open, curious, fun.  If I lived in Ojai, I’m pretty sure we’d be great friends.  Instead, we exchanged email addresses and made plans for a yoga date next March, when I return.

I think of Pat, who was in the audience at a talk I gave last week.  I spoke about change and loss, and about letting go of old roles and routines and dreams, to make space for new ones to begin to take shape.  After everyone else had left, Pat stayed behind to clear tables and empty trash.  “I’m 85,” she said, “and I’ve let go of a lot, including my husband. I couldn’t imagine how I’d go on after he died.  But I did, and now, I have to tell you, I love my life.”  Pat explained that she didn’t need to rush home to a family, so she could stay out late and help with clean up.  She didn’t expect any special treatment; in fact, the opposite.  “I just look around to see how I can be useful,” she said, folding a tablecloth into neat thirds.

And then there’s Shirl, who’s 88 and just getting back to yoga this spring after having to take the winter off.  “I had an operation on my eyes,” she explains, “so I couldn’t put my head down for a while.  Right after that, there was the time change, and I don’t drive after dark anymore.  So I missed the whole winter, but now it’s light at 5:30, and here I am.”

Indeed.  Her balance is a little wobbly, and her hearing not what it once was. But her forward bend is graceful and quiet, her delight in her practice palpable, her spirit infectious.  She gives me a friendly wink and a wave from across the room. Did I mention that Shirl comes to class in a pair of pink sweatpants with two words across the back: Bad Ass? “My grand-daughter gave me these,” she says, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “And I figure, at my age, I can wear whatever I want.”

I tell Shirl that when I’m 88, I want to be like her, climbing up the stairs to yoga class and stretching my hamstrings and wearing pink.  She laughs, takes my arm, and says, “Oh, dear, I hope you’ll be better than I am.”

My own mother, 78 and battling Lyme disease, isn’t moving as quickly as she was just a short time ago. But to me, she’s aging in reverse. When I was 17, she seemed really old to me, an ancient thirty-something who couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to be young.  But now, almost forty years later, I don’t think of her as old at all.  Our mother-daughter friendship is so precious, and her perspective on things so fresh and insightful, that I think of her as more of a peer than a parent.  My mom is my best friend and a constant source of inspiration and encouragement.  Who else would chop a bunch of CSA vegetables to roast, see the beauty in nature’s artistry, and share it with me in a photo?  (Snapped with her iPhone, no less.)  Old?  Not!  Curious, joyful, perceptive? More so than ever before.

Finally, we must consider Gloria.  Gloria Steinem celebrated her 80th birthday a couple of weeks ago by presiding at a fundraiser in Philadelphia. And then, the next day, she flew off to Botswana.  According to a recent article in the New York Times, she asked herself, “What do I really want to do on my birthday? First, get out of Dodge. Second, ride elephants.”

See what I mean?  These women, so much older than us, aren’t exactly old, are they?

So where does all this leave the two of us?  Well, I keep doing the math and finding it somewhat reassuring.  If our luck holds and if we take good care of ourselves, we might get to follow in their sprightly footsteps.  Blessed with a couple more decades, twenty or even thirty years more on the planet, what shall we do?  How will we keep life meaningful?

When I think of all the time I spent in my younger days trying to figure out who I should be and what I should do and how I should look, I’m pretty grateful to be exactly where I am.  At fifty-five, and aware as never before of life’s preciousness, its fleetingness, its randomness, I finally do know what matters, or at least what matters to me.  Keeping a sense of wonder, for sure.  And this: loving well and being loved in return.

So maybe it’s not surprising that something one of Gloria’s friends told the Times reporter really hit home with me, too. Robin Morgan, a fellow feminist from the early days, says one change she’s noticed with age is a deeper appreciation for the special, intimate relationships that sustain us.

“I’ve noticed that we, all of us, sort of cling to each other more,” she said.  “We say ‘I love you’ at the end of conversations.  We call to say ‘It’s very cold out – did you wear an extra scarf?’  There’s a lot of tenderness.”

Tenderness.  I love this word and all it represents.

No longer in ascension but not exactly in decline yet either, no longer needed by anyone in the way I once was, I do still have something to offer the world — though  I’m not always quite sure just what.  Most days, I figure out my next step by standing still, looking around, and asking the same question Pat does: “How can I be useful here?”

Well, maybe my answer comes down to this one rather old-fashioned word.  Tenderness.

Tenderness toward my own imperfect, vulnerable, aging self.  Tenderness toward my young adult sons as they flail and fall and find their way into lives of their own.  Tenderness toward my husband, ten years older than me, as he looks ahead and does his math and tries to form a vision for our next chapter together.  Tenderness toward my dear friends and loved ones – for aren’t we all absorbing losses and meeting challenges in our lives, even as we discover some unexpected new freedoms?  Tenderness for all beings, including those who struggle simply to stay alive and those who struggle to lead us forward.  Tenderness for the earth itself, resilient and vulnerable and in need of our care.

My guess is there’s nothing and no one in this vast, needy world that couldn’t benefit from a bit of unconditional tenderness.

So I’m thinking — maybe the best way to stave off the encroaching sense of ourselves as “old,” and all the diminishment the word implies, is simply to take a cue from some  mentors in the art of growing older. There’s an organic affinity, as William James astutely observed, between joy and tenderness.  It sounds right to me; joy and a youthful spirit are the side-effects of loving  –– perhaps not quite so passionately as we once did, but more wholeheartedly and tenderly than ever.

Back to my idea of coming up with a label for this nameless liminal space between mid-life and old age.  How about the Tender Years?

Love,  Old

P.S.  It’s still chilly out there.  Are you wearing your jacket?  And did you hear that concert the birds put on just before sunrise?

(P.S. To our readers: Margaret is , with her latest letter to me. And if you missed our first letters, they are here.)

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