Gray Pride

Aug 032015
 

(reposted from July 2014)

Last week I took two Pilates lessons, biked 10 miles, worked in my garden, painted two walls, wrote 6000 words on my new novella, recorded a podcast, drove to the beach, drove to New  York and went out to dinner.

I’m still getting older. . . and now my back hurts.

Getting older, as the popular meme has it, is not for sissies. Of course, advertising agencies are bound and determined to counteract that message with a line of persuasive arguments that taking this or that medicine can restore you to full function and make you content, if not happy with your life.

Ever notice how very slowly the people in those ads are moving? Sure, it beats not moving at all, but that’s setting the bar a little low.

older sophisticated couple

Don’t we wish we could all age like this?

The hardest part about growing older is not physical or mental but social. We live in a youth-oriented society. We pretend otherwise, especially as advertisers are lately realizing it’s the older folks who have the disposable income. This may explain how it is they come up with phrases like “golden years” and hawk cruises for couples and Viagra for gray-haired men and their much younger-looking wives.

But most people in the senior citizen demographic can’t help notice how invisible they become as they age. For women, it’s just north of sixty, for men a little later but eventually, older citizens are just so many short people behind the wheels of large cars. Or as one millennial said of the Who, “They’re just old guys playing soundtracks from TV shows no one watches.”  Now THAT hurts.

“Age is a number,” my (mostly younger) friends like to say. But age is a way to measure how much time you’ve had and how much time you have left. In this country, the former is scarcely honored and the latter induces a panic that fuels both the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Even so, it’s difficult, when you’re looking around, not to notice not being noticed.

Aging in a first world country is a first world problem, if you’re lucky—that is; if you have insurance and someone you can guilt or hire into looking after you in your declining years. Before then, sagging skin, minor aches and a dearth of fashion choices aren’t even close to critical in a world where so many of the very young and very old are so very vulnerable.

Still, I spend a lot of time thinking and it’s pretty hard to avoid thinking about infirmity, loneliness, mortality, and yes, even relevance. One moves from wanting to contribute something (and be recognized for doing so) to hoping not to be too much of a drain. It’s not a fun journey.

This ruminating goes on largely out of sight. I promised myself I would age gracefully, or at least graciously. I mentor, I share, I don’t dwell on the good old days or reflexively disparage “all” young people; heck, I’ve even got friends representing several generations. I take my role as village elder seriously.

Of course, I also promised myself not to get cranky as I get older and I’m having difficulty keeping that promise. It helps that I recognize my bad mood as based less on pain and immobility (yet) than on fear and projection.

There are gilt-tinged nuggets and rays of sunlight in the dismal dreariness of time’s march. I’m generally less stressed, far less competitive (if I ever really was) and (big change) far less concerned with what people think of me. This allows me to render opinions that gain in clarity and conviction what they may have lost in influence or reach.

So while I don’t cry out “Bring it on!” (as if I had a choice in the matter), I am learning to take a quieter sort of satisfaction in the way I’m meeting my new, older self—with a mixture of attention, adjustment and acceptance. It’s not hubris, or if it is, it’s tempered by the humility that comes from understanding the fragile nature of one’s existence.

Still. . . those walls didn’t paint themselves.

Geraldine Doyle, model for WWII "We Can Do It!" poster at age 85.

Geraldine Doyle, model for WWII “We Can Do It!” poster at age 85.

Silver Lining

Mar 292015
 

All my life I’ve been trying to communicate. The funny thing about wanting to say something is that no matter how articulate you become, how presumably skilled in getting across your point, you may never feel you’ve nailed it. I’d guess most writers are plagued with the impulse to make themselves understood. I know I’ve been that way since, well, forever.

old fashioned little girl illustrationI wrote my first short story when I was six. By the time I was sixteen, I decided music was the medium and wrote all sorts of original songs, including music and lyrics for school productions. After graduate school and a short stint on Capitol Hill, I was slaving away as a “singer-songwriter” before falling back into the less glamorous but more lucrative career of public relations. Along the way and relatively late in life, I got married. I was forty.

A dozen years later, he was killed in the 9/11 attacks. Impelled by the need to express my sorrow and find my healing, I wrote. The very public death of my husband along with thousands of others gave me a platform. I produced essays, editorials, speeches, delivered via major outlets. I was fifty-two.

I then wrote a book about post-9/11 contemporary culture. Because I Say So: Moral Authority’s Dangerous Appeal, published in 2010. I  also began publishing on a now-defunct platform called Open Salon. Two years later, another book I wrote was published about my search as a skeptic for a version of hope I could believe in. Hope in Small Doses was published in 2012, when I had just turned sixty-three.

After nearly three years of practicing on short stories, some of which were published and many of which were not, I published my first novella, Don’t Move, a suspense thriller. Now I’m working on a novel.  I’m. . .well, you do the math.

Second chance vocations, avocations and passions are all the rage nowadays with organizations like ENCORES and AARP promoting opportunities. A recent New York Times article focused on people finding (and defining) success “well past the age of wunderkind.”

Silver linings.

I have yet to discover whether I have a literary career ahead of me. I’m occasionally appalled to find my chosen field so very crowded. Everyone is a writer; really, ask anyone: they will tell you they’re writing.  #amwriting is a more popular hashtag on Twitter than #amreading, which begs the question: are there any readers for all the writing being put out there?

No matter—well, most of the time, no matter. I’m human after all, still searching for a way to be heard above the din. Age has possibly made me a little less competitive, though, I never really was.

And I’m financially secure enough in my retirement that I don’t need to scramble for $50 in order to supply “content” to some website that makes no distinction between good and not so good writing.

Good writing—including my own—is paramount to me. I delight in putting words on paper but I’m a deliberate sort. Although I’ve written dozens of essays and short stories, I not a “high producer.” Not only that, I’m a very compact writer—I say what I have to say in a few lovingly crafted and carefully edited words.  Industry standards say 40,000 (sometimes 50,000) word count is the necessary minimum for a non-fiction book and 80,000 words for a novel. E-publishing and even improvements in printing, along with varied delivery systems allow us to blur, if not challenge those numbers.

Good, because I’m not about to spend ten years on a novel.

Age is not just a number; it’s reality. I have fewer years ahead of me left to write and possibly fewer than most of you. I fight some anxiety about having the time and the cognitive ability to send into the world a decent number of thoughtful, interesting and above all entertaining things to read. Writing helps, though; it gives me purpose and focus.

Age may make you wiser, but in my case, not less sensitive. I sense my age may make me irrelevant to the world at large, until I turn eighty-five and turn out a book and have everyone ooh and ahh and say, “Isn’t that amazing! At her age!” probably while I’m in the room and can hear them saying it.

Oh well. I need writing and I hope to discover that writing needs me.  So full speed ahead.  BTW, I’m almost cool with my impending role as elder writing statesperson, should that be an option. Almost.
mellow Nikki with computer