I’m Old

From Retirement Communities of Care to Communities of Meaning

Written by Maria B. Dwight (President of GSI)

Published in Longevity Rules:  How to Age Well Into the Future, edited by Stuart Greenbaum

I’m old.  I am 75, which through no stretch of the imagination can be considered “middle aged” and certainly isn’t young.  Ergo:  I must be old.  I am not young-old, also euphemistically known as “an active adult.”  I am not “a frail elder” either and probably have a decade before I hit that benchmark.  So, I am just plain old.

There is nothing wrong with being old.  I still work 50 hours-a-week at a career that I love.  I don’t always make my bed before I go to the office, and often leave the dishes in the sink, but I still do the Times crossword puzzle, to keep away the dreaded brain atrophy, as much as for pleasure.  I eat well (sometimes, I must admit to peanut butter-folded over, over the sink).  I kayak, get undressed and dressed in the security lines within the three-minute allotted timeframe, put my own suitcase in the overhead bin, and other miscellaneous exercises.  I am very careful to take my vitamins, eat leafy green stuff and make sure that I drink the prescribed red wine for a healthy heart.

I must look 75 since the only nips and tucks in my body were followed by radiation, none of which are enhancing procedures.  My chin and my neck have slowly become one.  My waist must be somewhere between my breasts and my hips, but no longer invites a glittery belt and only seeks refuge under layers of tunics, capes or sweatshirts left behind by forgetful adolescent grandsons.

I am no longer carded at the movies.

I am old, but I am also very lucky.  I am one of the 12 percent of women over 65 who have a job, so I have health insurance as well as Medicare.  This means it is not a struggle to find a doctor who “will see me now.”  I am in good health, in spite of myself.  I have a good education.  My children are happy with their lives and are self-sufficient.  I have an annual income over the ($16k!) median of a “white,” “widowed” female.  I own a house whose mortgage will long outlive me.  I was frugal and tucked away my savings, only to have them evaporate in the last couple of years.  But I still have enough to live comfortably, unlike many of my age peers.  The early lessons of depression-era childhood have held me in good stead.  “Use it up, make it do, do without” was the mantra, along with “Turn off the lights!”

So now I am working on becoming a female curmudgeon.

I can’t seem to find new movies that interest me.  Spare me the retirement communities’ staples of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  Save me from the dreary reruns on PBS of passe rockers and crooners, and I couldn’t stand Lawrence Welk the first time around.  Why are movies so dreadfully loud, rude and gratuitously crude?  Who are these young women, like cloned Barbie Dolls, who seem to have forgotten to put on anything over their underwear?  And these wannabes of all sizes, shapes and ages who frequent my supermarket with their tattooed bulges on display?  And their beaus, conversely in clothes that are far too large and hang, often precariously and sometimes unsuccessfully, off their hips, sharing with us the brand of their boxer shorts.

What’s with the compulsion to be on the cell phone?  The plane lands and everyone turns on their phones to tell the world, in a chorus, that they just landed.  So?  People walk through stores and down streets talking to air.  Are they mentally ill or just impolite?

What is with this glorification of “multi-tasking”?  I was taught (often unsuccessfully) to do one thing at a time and do it well.  But I also was taught to save for a rainy day, to stand when older people entered the room, to not interrupt, to make my bed with hospital corners, to write thank you notes, to watch my language, to not take the biggest cookie on the plate and to chew with my mouth closed.

So, I am old.  I am one of the “Silent Generation” that was squeezed between the “Greatest” and the “Boomers.”  Our war was Korea.  We cam from small families and we spawned large ones.  We believed in “togetherness” and “at home moms.”  We volunteered in our communities and behaved… until we didn’t.  Then we led the most pervasive changes for social justice in our nation’s history.  It is our generation that crossed the bridge at Selma; marched on Washington, D.C.; rode the Freedom Buses; opened the doors for the Feminist Movement; fought back at Stonewall Inn; landed on the moon in Apollo 11; and redefined art, poetry and theater.  Elvis Presley was among the “Silents” and that boy could howl and he could rock!

So, keep on howling!  Rock on, all you old people!  Keep changing the world, or at least your part of it.  Don’t forget about the others who are old and keep their needs in the faces of the politicians and the bureaucrats.  Show all the younger generations what it means to be “Old and proud of it!”