GROWING OLDER…
…AND WISER…I THINK
Mistakes have never worried me. Even big ones. Throughout the years I moved from success to failure to success again, looking at all the big mistakes I made and knowing, if I hung on a while longer, I would realize some valuable lesson helping to make my struggles worthwhile. Little did I realize all the little mistakes lying around unnoticed like the tiny threads I clip from my quilting pieces and that someday these tiny threads would weave together into a spider’s web, ready to catch and ensnare me as a juicy treat for some unseen monster lying in wait in dark corners.
In my senior year of high school, we had a memorable substitute in my English class. She was a young black woman, which in itself might be memorable for this young white girl in an all-white school. But that wasn’t what caught our attention. It was her gentle smile beaming out as a spirit of kindness toward us, radiating a joy for life.
During her one hour as our teacher, she fired our imaginations with stories about her interesting travels to exotic foreign lands, about falling in love, and finally, about getting married. She had been everywhere the storybooks tell about. How wonderful to talk with a person who had really sipped coconut milk in glorious places! “Oh, yes,” she assured us. “This is your time to explore life. You must travel.”
With quiet excitement, she told us about meeting her husband and getting married, a new adventure she could now savor just as she had the foreign countries of her travels. I remember being inspired by her to see the world. But more than that, because we asked, I remember her recommendations for us as we got older.
Drinking in her enthusiasm for life, we wanted her advice. She was one of those rare adults who talked to us teens with respect, who seemed to understand our hunger for new experiences and excitement. She wasn’t telling us to plan for the future, get serious, and put away our childish thoughts. She encouraged our dreams. She was someone to trust. She had time to talk with us and to take our questions seriously.
A young girl across the room raised her hand. She asked about marriage, wanting to know if the young teacher had traveled with her husband. “Oh no,” she said. “You have to travel when you’re single. Don’t get married too young. You have lots of time.” How much time, someone wanted to know. My ears perked up. I knew I could count on her answer.
I had had boyfriends in high school, but nothing serious. There were dates to the dances and proms and a few movies. There was even an older boyfriend in my senior year who was safely tucked away for most of the year at a California college until we figured out that ‘love’ looked brighter from a distance than when we were sitting next to each other. We each moved on to other things.
In high school, loved ice skating, singing in Chorale, traveling with family and friends, playing cards, sewing, dancing…and someday…boys. I figured, like everyone else, I would eventually marry, not because I was anxiously waiting, but because it seemed like one of those requirements for life. I was fired with curiosity. How long should I wait before I thought about marriage?
We all held our breath. The young teacher had a relaxed smile on her face. “Oh, don’t get married too young. There’s so much to do. Don’t even think about it before you’re twenty-five.” I sucked in my breath. My brain stopped. Twenty-five?! Why, I would be dead by then. Well, maybe not. But I might as well be dead at twenty-five, because that was old.
My husband and I today have some great pictures of our two children. There are the standard naked baby pictures I intended to blackmail each of them with one day. And pictures of Justin and Jamie at 5 and 7, in Dad’s long t-shirts, painting the bedroom wall. Crawling through mud. Laughing and throwing pillows at each other. Sleeping angelically. Swimming. A special laughable photo of Jamie shows her, one month old, in a red flannel sleeper, wearing a candy striped elf hat, and looking like a soft tree ornament. That picture is special to me for another reason.
I remember the night at my parents’ home when we took it. We were all in the living room of Grammy and Grandpa’s house, passing baby Jamie around, chatting, tickling her chin, and enjoying being together. Jamie’s Grandpa, my own father, was holding her, and I had been admiring her quiet sweet face for several minutes. Slowly I raised my eyes from Jamie to gaze at Grandpa,…but he had vanished. In his place were the wrinkles, the gray thinning hair, long silver eyebrows, and quiet smile of my grandfather who had been dead many years. I blinked quickly, and grandfather melted back into my father’s familiar face. For one moment, one brief moment, I knew he was old.
Years later, watching Jamie run across the backyard, I remember standing at the edge of the patio and plucking the first gray hair out of my long brown hair. With disgust, I threw it into the backyard grass. There! Gone. Not old, yet.
Needless to say, that gray hair grew back in the company of others. Still, Victor didn’t have any. He would laugh and tease. He was older than me by years, but younger by hairs.
As gray hairs persisted and accumulated in numbers too great to pluck, I searched for new ways to explain them. Eventually, as a classroom teacher, gray hairs were valuable evidence of my maturity and wisdom for the young students in my classrooms. I was still young, but at least old enough to be wise.
Like my students, like all ‘kids’ today, I has always been in a hurry. Every day I pushed to see what new thing I could experience: shaving my legs in 7th grade, high school with lockers and a huge campus, a driver’s permit and finally a license, college applications, dorm life, a really serious boyfriend, jobs, paychecks, rent, cooking, phone bills. Each new goal accomplished, I would set my sights on a future challenge and hurry to reach it.
In college, I remember watching television personality George Plimpton interview a man who had made a list of all the things he wanted to accomplish in life before he was 30. What a great idea! I made my own list. I was in a hurry. I wanted to get life organized. Get on with it. Make sure to live it…before I was old.
Moving from college into the work world, years ago, I remember people my age discussing their jobs and what they liked about them. I was always amazed when someone mentioned their good retirement plan. Who would even think to ask about that? I wasn’t going to retire. Old people retired. Or, more likely, they just shriveled up to the size of a walnut and rolled under a tree…I wasn’t ever going to have to worry about that.
Much to my amazement, I did reach the ripe old age of 25. Yet, it didn’t bother me, because by that time, I’d discovered old age was really 35. Today, at the middle age of 45, 35 sounds pretty young. I can see how Jamie and Justin might think I’m old. They tell me so. But I’m sure they’re teasing. Thankfully, looks are deceiving, and even if I do have gray hair, I always make sure to remind them how lucky they are to have a mother with such a youthful view of life. At least…that was what I was saying until the day that Jamie dyed her hair.
On that particular Saturday morning, my mind was focused on the perfection of life. For three months, we had arranged to live in the middle of a Tennessee farm, eating garden vegetables, laughing and chatting daily with my aunt and uncle. I loved looking out the kitchen window each day after school, watching Justin fish in the pond down the hill.
New to the small Tennessee town, both of our kids had met friends from the countryside. On that perfect Saturday morning, Jamie was due home shortly from a fun overnight at the home of one of her new Tennessee friends. Victor left to pick her up, and the sound of tires on gravel announced their return. Two car doors slammed shut.
I heard them approach, laughing and talking, footsteps on the wooden deck, and front door squeaking open, when what to my wondering eyes should appear. Jamie, huddled under a jacket draped over her head, went whizzing past me through the living room faster than a speeding bullet, wisps of hair trailing out under the jacket. Whoa! Wait a wispy moment…is that purple I see?
Now, a year earlier I had given her tentative approval for blue hair—only after she had assured me it was a wash-out color, not permanent, try-it-for-a-day-or-two color. Even if I were able to see any blue streaks in her long brown tresses, my imagination pictured a gentle blue-brown, a deco brownish-very-brown blue that blended ever so nicely with a brown-blue wardrobe. I was a perfectly modern mom. I could be open-minded enough to accept a brown-brown-bluish hairstyle for a day or two. And then…it would wash out.
Needless to say, on this particularly perfect Tennessee Saturday morning, as I stared after the girl who had just passed by, disappearing into the back of the house…I was not prepared! Purple, bright definite violet, shouting PURPLE. It was the favorite color for my 5th grade students, the purple marker that always went dry first, the crayon always missing from the box. My friend Melody had a beautiful purple dress that always perked me up when she wore it. But nothing could have prepared me for the color purple on top of my daughter’s head. Wow!
Take a deep breath, I told myself. Remember. You’re open-minded. It’s just a color. Thinking: Holy ____! THAT’S purple!!
Saying: Boy, this time the color really worked. Oh,…a new brand, huh? Great. Thinking: Holy COW! They’re going to kick her out of school!
Saying: Are you sure they will let you go to school like this? Remember, this is a small, conservative town. It’s not like the big city…a kid came with green hair last month? Great. Thinking: OH, DEAR! They’re going to run us out of town. Uncle Jimmie’s reputation is ruined.
Saying: Well, I hope McEwen High School is ready for this. Thinking: Won’t Uncle Jimmie be surprised!
He was. He handled it well. Especially for a country gentleman in his sixties. I have never been certain if Uncle Jimmie was as relaxed and accepting as he seemed when he opened his front door with a big smile. “Boy, look at Jamie’s pretty hair!” We sat down to our garden dinner, laughed, and talked,–no one aware of my panic of fears that the following Monday morning I would get a call from the high school telling me purple hair fit into the same category as shorts, beards, and mustaches…all prohibited.
Monday morning…school came and went. Safe. Two days, three days passed, but I was never called to the principal’s office. Thirty days later, purple was still purple, and we were rereading the label on the box, wondering if washout color would really wash out before we moved back to our big Arizona city home next month.
It didn’t.
We packed boxes and loaded clothing, bicycles, television, computer, and printer into the U-Haul. As Vic slowly pulled away from our temporary home, turning around to wave goodbye to Uncle Jimmie, we barely thought about purple.
Fortunately, returning to a big city, I felt certain we could survive until purple did finally wash down the drain. Except for church. During our three months in Tennessee, we had confirmed one thing. Churches are for old people. Small and large, in all of the southern churches we visited, the membership was at least 50% ‘old.’
In Phoenix, our home church was no different. Worse yet, it wasn’t only old…it was Dutch. Betty and Barnie were dear friends, but they were over seventy years of age, Dutch immigrants to the southwest from way back. I can’t imagine anything more conservative than Dutch Old, and friends though they were, I didn’t look forward to explaining purple hair to them on our first Sunday morning back. I worried so much about Betty and her Dutch friends that I didn’t see the huge spider web slowly forming in the corner of my life.
Betty has one of those engaging faces you just love to look at. She doesn’t just look at you, she looks at you with a smile, a genuine smile, and she is one of those people who asks you questions and waits, smiling at you, waiting for you to answer, listening to every word you say. Her warm face is framed with puffs of white hair, and you almost forget her age because she makes you feel so important.
Considering their ages, I was doubly impressed three years earlier when Betty and her husband Barnie were two of the first names on the sign-up for a church camping trip. Very impressed. It caught me short when Barnie asked if we could find a level camping spot for them. He reminded me of Betty’s crippling arthritis.
I studied her the following Sunday and noticed, indeed, that moving was a supreme effort for her, one that involved severe pain. Even after three years of being in the church with Betty, I hadn’t noticed. Her face and smile held that much power.
Home now from Tennessee, the inevitable reunion wouldn’t wait forever. Finally, on our first Sunday back, looking out of our car to the people gathering on the sidewalk outside the church building, I tried to imagine walking into church with Jamie of the Purple Hair. Thankfully, I figured Betty liked us enough to forgive us. I only hoped the rest of the church elders would follow her lead.
Resolutely, purple as ever, we opened the car door and stepped out to begin the long walk. Some people turned directly in our direction, opened their eyes a bit wider, and whispered to me as I came close, “What did you say when Jamie dyed her hair?” Their questions implied their own answers, “Wow!”
Other people were more discreet, focusing intently on their conversations as we approached. But as we passed by I could feel the movement of their eyes behind us, their glances following and grabbing hold of our family and our purple hair. I knew what they were thinking, “Wow!” The first hour was the hardest. Eventually, we settled comfortably into church life, purple hair and all, one of the family again. I was simply not prepared for Betty.
Later that same week at a church potluck, most people had finished eating, and in the dining hall I sipped the last of my coffee. People were streaming through the halls to and from classrooms. Men wandered about, picking up the remaining dinner trash and folding chairs. Betty peeked in the door, saw me, and came to sit in the chair opposite me with her open smile. She leaned forward. “I love your daughter’s hair.”
I paused. How did I handle this, I wondered? I needed to be tactful. All of the young kids of the church looked so alike. I could name only a handful of them, and there were three related families with a pool of ten children that I still could not successfully sort into the correct households. I didn’t want to embarrass Betty by pointing out that she didn’t know our family yet. “My daughter? Do you know who she is?”
“Yes, she’s the one with the purple hair. It’s so pretty. I always wanted to do that to my hair. I just wanted to make sure to find you and let you know. I’ve got to get to class now.”
I was speechless, dangling from the middle of my web.
I aged a lifetime in that moment, admiring Betty’s youth and hoping someday to be as young as she.
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ATTITUDE
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.” –Charlie Rhyan
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WHAT You Can Do TODAY TO AGE SUCCESSFULLY
Reprinted from the book WE LIVE TOO SHORT and DIE TOO LONG, by Walter M. Bortz, M.D.,, published by Bantam Books, 1991.
1. Do at least 30 minutes of sustained, rhythmic, vigorous exercise four times a week. Seek out patterns, times, places, and contacts that make exercise as much a part of your day as eating and sleeping.
2. Eat like a bushman. Return to the habit of eating what nature first laid on our tables: fruits, whole grains, vegetables, and lean meat.
3. Get as much sleep and rest as you need. Make quiet time a major priority. Exercisers, in particular, must acknowledge that their bodies require respite from workouts and the general clamor of the day.
4. Maintain your sense of humor and deflect anger. Make each day an opportunity for optimism for yourself and others. A positive mind-set creates the expectation that something good is about to happen and opens the door to new options for success.
5. Set goals and accept challenges that force you to be as alive and creative as possible. Nature operates in such a way that growth and living are nearly synonymous. When one stops, so does the other. Creativity is not confined to the first part of your life. In fact, accumulated knowledge and experience should make the later decades even more congenial to new accomplishment.
6. Don’t depend on anyone else for well-being. A well developed sense of self-efficacy is the crucial link to a long and meaningful existence. We all need to maintain mastery, autonomy, and independence in our daily lives.
7. Be necessary and responsible. Live outside yourself. Beyond independence, we also need to see each day as a chance to help someone or something. Associate with other active, involved individuals. Sharpen your sense of duty to the Earth, which nurses us all.
8. Don’t slow down. Stick with the mainstream. Avoid the shadows. Stay together. Universal law dictates that natural order is ordained by only one mechanism–a well-directed, purposeful flow of energy. Aging need not be characterized by loss. Maintaining your energy flow is the antidote.
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Walter M. Bortz II, M.D., is one of America’s most respected and acclaimed authorities on aging. He is former president of the American Geriatrics Society with over 35 years of clinical experience. He co-chaired the AMA-ANA Task Force on Aging and is presently Clinical Associate Professor at Stanford University Medical School.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
