The "A" Word

INGRID THOFT

I was recently searching for a birthday card for my college best friend and one of my sisters.  I found one I thought would work for both (hope you’re not reading this, Kirsten!) and it features card producers’ favorite topic: aging.

A huge percentage of birthday cards focus on aging and the physical failures that come with it, but outside of the card aisle and the beauty aisle, there doesn’t seem to be much discussion about a process we will all experience (hopefully).

We all know that we’ll age and die eventually, but I’ve found over the past couple of years that knowing and knowing are two different things.  My own back surgery and chronic back issues, and the recent major surgery of a loved one, has forced aging to the forefront of my brain.  There’s no shortage of advice for staying and looking young, but what about best practices for accepting the aging process?

A friend suggested I read “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande, M.D., a book that takes an unfiltered look at aging.  According to Gawande, the average life expectancy during the Roman Empire was thirty-years-old, a far cry from the 81.6 years now predicted for American women by the World Health Organization. Gawande argues that the medical community fails elderly patients because doctors are trained to fix problems, and there’s no fix for aging.  Instead, he thinks that the medical community, and the rest of us, should reframe aging as a natural process to be managed, not ignored or discounted.

In our age- and appearance-obsessed society, who do we look to for lessons in aging?

Before her death in 2014, Maya Angelou was a stellar example of someone embracing aging and celebrating the wisdom that comes with a long life.  She was a woman who seemed to get better with age!

Helen Mirren seems to embrace her current age and continue to blaze her own trail, whether in the roles she plays or her choice to rock a bikini at aged sixty-two.

And the queen of aging well? That would be the Queen, herself, in my estimation.   Queen Elizabeth II is 91-years-old and has held a most demanding job for 65 years.  Yes, she has lots of help (someone has to shop for those matching hats and outfits,) but she maintains a tough schedule and has to be “on” more than most people.

So, what are your thoughts on aging? How do you deal with the inevitable? Who do you think is aging well?

An old woman to remember...

HALLIE EPHRON: Today I'm celebrating the release of the paperback edition of THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN. My favorite reviewer's comment was from Maureen Corrigan in the Washington Post who called it the perfect "thriller lite" for readers who "love Gotham and abhor gore."

And can I just say that I'm thrilled that they kept the cover the same as the hardback. Fist pump!

We've been talking about "crones" a bit lately on Jungle Red, and I just want to say that the old woman in my book is anything but.

"Crone" is a scary word, a caricature loaded with negativity. Writing 91-year-old Mina Yetner, the old woman of the novel, I was determined not to make her into that kind of caricature or a joke. I've been fortunate to have several old women in my life who are anti-crone role models. One of them was Freda Touger, my husband's mother, who lived to be 92.

Freda was one of those fortunate people who, though she grew forgetful, did not become feeble-minded. Though she slowed down, she could walk my feet off at the mall. Though she grew less patient, she never became shrill. In fact, she seemed very much the same person a week before she died as she had when I met her twenty-some years earlier.

In short, she aged but she was never turned into a crone -- just an old woman.
To write Mina, I drew a lot on Freda. Like Freda, when Mina was young she worked on one of the top floors of in the Empire State Building. Like Freda, she remembers looking out the 79th floor windows and feeling the building swaying. 

To write in Mina's voice, tried remember that Freda told me she felt like she was exactly the same person at the age of 90 that she'd been at 12. So though she's baffled by computers and cell phones, her voice isn't geriatric or enfeebled. Mina's biggest fear is the same as Freda's -- that she'll become a burden. Worse, that she'll lose her marbles and not realize she's lost them.

Every morning, Freda would open the paper to the obituaries and look for people who were older than she. So that's how I opened the book. Making a list of dead people is something I do.

Mina Yetner sat in her living room, inspecting the death notices in the Daily News. She got through two full columns before she found someone older than herself. Mina blew on her tea, took a sip, and settled into her comfortable wing chair. In the next column, nestled among dearly departed strangers, she found Angela Quintanilla, a neighbor who lived a few blocks away.  

Angela had apparently died two days ago at just seventy-three. After a “courageous battle.” Probably lung cancer. When Mina had last run into Angela in the church parking lot, she'd been puffing away on a cigarette, so bone thin and jittery that it was a miracle she hadn’t shaken right out of her own skin.

Mina leaned forward and pulled from the drawer in her coffee table a pen and the spiral notebook that she'd bought years ago up the street at Sparkles Variety. A week after her Henry died, she'd started recording the names of the people she knew who'd taken their leave, beginning with her grandmother, who was the first dead person she'd known. Now four pages of the notebook were filled. Most of the names conjured a memory. A face. Sometimes a voice. Sometimes nothing -- those especially upset her. Forgetting and being forgotten terrified Mina almost more than death.

 So here's my question -- please, share the older women in your life who are neither comic caricatures nor crones. 

Whose A&& is That?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I have a new pal for you! 

Having spent the early part of her career in the sometimes-friendly skies, author Marylu Zuk says she perfected the art of smiling through anything - at least until she was out of the passengers’ sight. (Like what? Like: "Really sir?  You actually need me to buckle your seat belt for you?")  Her career path has taken her from babysitter, to playground supervisor, flight attendant, road warrior, workshop presenter, sales manager and enrollment VP. The titles have changed, but the job responsibilities did not – maintain order and keep people happy. 

An avid people watcher and eternal optimist, Marylu says she always finds the silver lining.  So listen to this--we always wonder where book ideas came from, right? 

While getting ready for a promotions event a few years ago, Marylu says  she used the two-mirror trick to see how she looked in her jeans.  

‘Oh my God! Whose ass is that?!’ she exclaimed… and the idea for her first book was born.

 A storybook for women with illustrations by Traycee Bosle, WhoseA(XX) Is That? –  invites every woman to relax her abs, exhale, and laugh at what we rarely see – our own backsides!

Today, Marylu reminds us that it's all about how you look at it--and not just our rears.

You say it like that's a bad thing.. 

    by Marylu Zuk

Picture this. Somewhere in your mid-twenties your best-friend and sometimes-roommate blurts out ‘you act like a fifty-year-old woman!’  My reaction of course is a simple, ego-injured, ‘Huh?!’

She then proceeds to pack her bags, ending her post-graduate, three-month visit, and heads back to the east coast for a fabulous new job – leaving me wondering, in the blistering desert sun, what on earth she meant. And it gnawed at me… for a minute.

 

Perhaps it was the fact that my roman nose was always buried in a book. Sue me, I like to read.

  Or maybe, it was my total aversion to the whole bar scene. Or that I preferred the 4:00am shift at work, which had my alarm going off when most folks my age were rolling into bed. Or, that my fashion sense was inspired by the dominant female presence of my early years - the Sisters of Some Super Holy Saint. Pick one.

Whatever triggered her comment, I responded in my typical non-confrontational style. Rather than ask for clarification, I absorbed the sting and buried those words somewhere deep in the back of my brain with other barbs instead – another story for another day perhaps.

Fast-forward a few decades through my crazy, hectic, working mother, balancing act lifestyle and I, like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, tripped over and arrived at the 50-year mark.  Seeing that number over and over again on all those birthday cards reminded me of those long ago words.  My friend? She pleads the fifth, claiming no recollection whatsoever.

As for me?  In the interim, I’ve managed to add a bit more color to my wardrobe, overcome those self-diagnosed, nightlife anxiety attacks – ‘yes bartender, top mine off please’ – and have come to realize my dear friend had actually given me a glowing compliment all those years ago.  If I knew then what I know now, my ‘Huh?!’ would have been a sassy ‘you say that like it’s a bad thing’.

I’ve discovered a certain feeling of freedom that comes with each extra candle on my birthday cake.  My vocabulary, while still politically correct, is now peppered with salty language (my father and the nuns would be mortified). But, the most significant personal change has been in my once omnipresent need to control things. It diminishes a bit each day as I continue to morph into a more mindful lifestyle – embracing the whole don’t-sweat-the-small-stuff movement and intentionally focus on enjoying the moment I’m in rather than stressing over what’s passed, and agonizing over what may never come to be.

This mindset change is no doubt attributed to all that nose-in-the-book-reading (that hasn’t changed, by the way) of mountains of self-awareness articles, books and blogs… and just living life. Like those grade school connect-the-dot pictures – life experience itself brings the big picture into focus. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go act like a fifty-year old woman!

How about you? I’d love to hear what you’ve come to embrace on your life’s journey.

HANK: And hey, reds, how do YOU feel about your rear?

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Gettin' Older... Movin' Faster??

HALLIE EPHRON: In my new book, THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN, one of the two main characters is a 91-year-old woman. When I tell people this, they ask how can you write a character who is so old?

She's based loosely on my mother-in-law, Freda Touger. Freda died when she was 91, a few days after taking one of her routine subway rides from Brooklyn to Manhattan and walking from Lincoln Center to the Donnell Library where there were free events for seniors. She missed the friends who used to go with her and who had mostly faded from her life.

Did she feel old? Sure she had aches and pains and had less patience for foolishness, but she said she felt basically like the same person she was when she was 8, or 28, or 58. What had changed, she said, was that time seemed to pass much more quickly.

I know just what she meant by feeling like I'm the same person (that's me at 8), and that surprise of looking in the mirror and finding that I'm not.

So here's my question. Do you feel you're changing or are you, too, the same person you were when you were eight?

ROSEMARY HARRIS: First off, bless Freda for still taking the subway and wanting to go out at her age. We all should be so active and engaged.

Two answers ( I always hate it when my husband does this, so either I've picked it up from him or there really are at least two answers to every question.) In many way I'm still the same person I was at sixteen. Scary, since most sixteen year olds aren't known for their common sense. Wisdom, good judgment, etc. I will still talk to strangers, dance around the house and start singing in elevators when properly motivated.

I'm probably most like me at thirty. Wise, dignified. Aren't I?

LUCY BURDETTE: Where's the second answer Ro, did I miss it?

Time definitely flies by at this age, that much is certain. But in many ways, I too feel like the person I was at thirty. (Let's not even talk about those teenage years--such agony!)

You know what's changed the most? My time schedule. I chose my classes in college according to how late they allowed me to sleep in--because I was up until one or two in the morning. (Until I reached organic chemistry, where 8 am was the only option.) Now the only reason I'd be up at 2 am would be a trip to bathroom:).

ROSEMARY: Ah yes, the second answer. No. Every day and every way I'm learning more and hopefully turning into a better person.

RHYS BOWEN: I got an email from one of my fans saying"I just saw your photo and until then I thought you were 21 like Lady Georgie." I was flattered that I'd created a twenty one year old so convincingly, but when I thought about it, I still do feel that I'm twenty one.

I have to remind myself not to jump over that chain across the track. But I still swing on swings, slide down the slide and generally behave as if I'm still five. Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder who put my grandmother's photo there. But time has speeded up. It was Christmas, and now it's Easter and the year is rushing toward next year. And I don't know how to slow it down....

DEBORAH CROMBIE: One of the many reasons I so loved Hallie's new book, THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN, was her portrayal of Mina, the title character. Mina is ninety-one, but she doesn't feel old. 

Well, neither do I, although I have a bit to go before I reach ninety-one. Since I was a child I've wondered if there was a certain point when you began to feel "old." In some ways, I think I feel younger than I did in my thirties. Those were the "mum" years, but once your children are grown there's a sense of liberation. I still feel a tremendous sense of enthusiasm about learning new things, and doing new things.

But there is also that sense of time speeding up, of knowing there are going to be limits to your experience. That's bittersweet.

P.S., Lucy, my body clock hasn't changed. Maybe I have being an "early bird" to look forward to!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Why do we have the sensation that time speeds by as you grow older? Is it because once you're settled into your adult life, the year-to-year touchstones are the same? I mean, my family has had basically the same Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving every year for the past decade. We do many of the same things each summer, year after year.

Or is it because there are so many more memories to access? When you're twenty, you have maybe fifteen springs you can recall. When you're sixty... Perhaps whenn we say, "It's spring again? So soon?" it's because we can so readily envision last spring, and the spring before, and the spring before.

Or maybe, you know, time really DOES speed up. We need a physicist to look into this!



So, Hallie's question: I've changed for the better as I've grown older (my knees excepted.) I feel much more confident, much more comfortable with stating my mind and setting my own needs front and center. That sounds kind of selfish, but all of you know that when you're a young woman, being unequivocally opinionated and putting yourself first is almost unthinkable!

I look forward to becoming a "I-can't-believe-she-just-said-that" old broad. At the same time, in my head? I'm somewhere in my thirties. The weather warms up and I get the urge to strap on the shoes and go running, and I have to remind myself, no, I can't do that anymore.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Time clearly speeds up. Summer used to be forever. A kid could be--"bored." When was the last time you were "bored"? I can't even imagine.

In college, we had forever. (And that t-shirt says "Sigma Chi. THAT was a long time ago.)

I'm in the second half of my life, my husband too. I honestly can't think about it. There used to be "all the time in the world." Now--that feels short. So I dont think about it. Much.

How I'm different? I'm careful with people. I think--five years from now, a week from now--will that matter? If not.. then, so what.

I got hit with the physical part when I decided to take a ballet class several years ago. After all, it's like riding a bike, right? (Another thing I cannot do.) Anyway, ballet. My body simply would not do it. I could envision it, I could imagine it, but I could not do it. Game over.

The good news--I'm a little more confident. A little. But time is FLYING by.
 HALLIE: So how about the rest of you? Do you feel as if time is ganging up on you or flying past?