Excerpts

Home Page

Getting Tattooed - When I was close to 50, I decided to get a tattoo—a tiny little rose. It would be a symbol of my frequent desire to flout the norms. It would be thumbing my nose at 50. When I went for the tattoo, I had several scotches to ease the fear and pain that (believe you me) is a big part of getting a tattoo. Trouble arose, however, as the tattoo artist was also drinking one scotch for every one I drank. He got drunk and, as a result, couldn’t color within the lines. When the great unveiling of the tiny rose came, what was revealed was a blurry blob with leaves.  

The Dating Game - Men of all ages are not as proactive as women when looking for a relationship. They would prefer to sit at home watching ESPN with a remote in one hand and a Michelob in the other, truly believing that their pizza delivery person will be a twenty-something 5’7” blond. This syndrome becomes more pronounced as men age, with the exception that even the appearance of the hot young delivery girl may not be enough to get them into action.  
 
Ejecting Unnecessary Body Parts - I developed my own theory that went something like this: Organs should stay inside of bodies; babies should come out. Clearly, anything that came out of that particular place in my body should have a face on it. That theory stood me in good stead until I turned 50. This brings us to that fateful morning when I was confronted with the SOMETHING coming out of me. A mirror between my legs informed me that the SOMETHING that was now highly visible DID NOT HAVE A FACE.  So if it wasn’t a newborn, then I was starting to eject body parts.

In about ten percent of women, most of them post-menopausal, the uterus falls down and reaches for the nearest exit. In extreme cases like mine, several body parts were competing to get out.

Men, Damn Them - Men can lose weight simply by declaring their intention. I have timed it.  At 2:05 p.m. on a Tuesday, my friend John will say, “I’ve got to lose some weight.”  At 2:10 p.m. he says, “Ha!  Four pounds down!”
 
A Mind Is a Terrible Thing - Recently when traveling with a friend, I told him that I had finished a lengthy report the night before. He asked me the name of the report. I couldn’t think of it. He asked me the subject of the report. I couldn’t remember that, either. Four days later, while touring a museum, I remembered the name of the report. I wanted to send up a flare.  

…(T)his afternoon I dropped the plastic bag with a cut up lemon inside into a drawer, only to be discovered as I was putting the box of sandwich bags into the refrigerator.
 
Comments on Age - “You don’t look your age.” From age five to just under age thirty, this comment borders on insult. From ages 30 to 50, the same comment morphs into a compliment. Past age 50, for many women it can be a veritable lifeboat, sent to save them from the shark-infested waters of decrepitude. Past age 30 …unless we are running for political office, looking older isn’t much of an asset. And, as far as sex appeal goes, the popular media doesn’t give extra points for the years accumulated beyond that magic moment when “girl” becomes “woman.” 

If I stop trying to look like someone else’s age, I can make my age, whatever it is, fabulous. I can set new standards for whatever age I am. I can keep raising the bar as I raise the numbers. I can change the world as well as my hair color.

Joy of Aging - Aging has never been about diminishing physical appearance, or whether I look my age. Aging, for me, is not about numbers. While I do care about my looks and fret sometimes over the wrinkles, aging means much more to me. Aging is growing wiser, putting my past behind me, and being fully alive. Aging means healing and maturing on the inside, accepting myself and who I am.

I attract others when I am attractive to myself, when I love myself. I love my face. I love the smile and laugh lines around my eyes and mouth, the creases around my cheeks where my face crinkles into a smile. I cannot begin to count the hundreds of times people I don’t know have paused in passing me on the street or in the hall or elevator to tell me how beautiful my smile is. I love to hear that. My face tells it all.

In those moments, I no longer mourn for that young ballet dancer. Instead, I am filled with gratitude for what life has given me and for what I am capable of giving to life. I do not see the aging process as a betrayal of my body. My body has not betrayed me because I never was my body. I have been and always will be something more. My youthful vitality had nothing to do with flexibility and muscles, any more than it did with my firm breasts and unlined face. My vitality now is not diminished by the absence of any of those. I am the woman I have always been and will continue to be. And more if I wish. Much more. I am not this fragile body.

Taking on the Past - Experiencing sexual abuse by my father created a dislike for my body and how it could be misused. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be a girl. It was that I was not like other girls. My body was a trap. It held my pain, resentment, fear, worthlessness, and rage, and I could not escape it. Since I did not like my body, it followed that I did not like myself. I thought I was not normal.

I was well into my 50s before I fully appreciated my body, mind, and spirit and all they are capable of doing. One part is no longer separate from the other. The sum of me is greater than my parts.


Sexuality By my 50s, I (got) that my sexuality was totally in my control and that whatever “rules” I followed would be created by me alone. If I chose, I could enjoy sex without being in love. If I chose, I could give sex without expecting a commitment. If I chose, I could use sex as a way to communicate my deepest feelings about my partner. I could choose to trust my sexual partner. Most importantly, I could choose to trust myself. And the deeper the trust, the more exciting and rewarding would be the sex.

I am a survivor of incest that started when I was a young child. My father abused me until I was well into my teens. The abuse colored every relationship in my life. It poisoned my sense of self. It took my confidence, it made me feel less than whole, it made me feel different and abnormal. I grew up to become an angry woman, bitter and filled with hatred for my father and men in general.

I never knew or understood the depth, the implications of my childhood declaration. I never understood that my overwhelming desire to be tough was a barrier to the very thing that I craved in my life: emotional intimacy with another human being. So the realization was there, but I still had no way to reach what I wanted.

The Sexual Revolution - In the 1960s and 1970s, the world was having a great time in bed, or so it seemed to me. I was not. What should have been the simplest act, the most natural act, the act that Adam and Eve had no trouble with, was to me loaded with trouble and peril. I did not experience sexual passion.

I am tired of allowing an event from childhood to control the sexual aspect of my life. I am tired of disappointing partners who expect a continuation of the person they knew, only to get a big baby in the bedroom. I regret that I allowed this situation to remain, even after I reinvented and created myself in virtually every other arena.

Many men our age are dealing with diminished libido and/or erectile dysfunction stemming directly from a drop in testosterone. The deluge of Viagra commercials tell us the problem is common. Drops in testosterone may also cause men to experience temporary impotence problems. They may not be as easily aroused, may not be able to respond as readily as they like, or their female partner may have to go to extra lengths to engage them.

Memories - Alzheimer’s is unique among fatal diseases. It steals personalities before it steals lives. It is detected as much through observation as by testing. It can cause more pain to those not afflicted than to those who are.

“There’s something wrong with your mom.” Not memory lapse, not confusion. It was a tiny personality quirk, nothing more. A split second of impatience in a lifetime of steadiness and even temper. It took months before the memory lapses began. It took even more time before anyone else noticed what I knew in my gut. All I was aware of was that she was leaving.

Fear is what I experience: fear that my failure to recall a fact or name draws attention to my age. At such times, I believe that every person I work with is as keenly aware of my memory breakdown as I am. I fear that they think I am too old, incompetent, not up to the challenge.

Lo, how the mighty have lost their memories. Last week, when I was staying with a friend in New York, I brushed my teeth and walked out of her bathroom. Fine, except I left the water running in the sink. Even worse, my friend, not I, discovered it.

Breast Cancer - …(M)y attempts to cover my (mastectomy) scar lasted for about two minutes. In complete abandon, I let it all hang out. Later, Andy wanted to know what the big deal was. He said the scar wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I made it out to be. But best of all, he said that my breast was so beautiful, the loveliest he had ever seen, and that one breast was better than most of the pairs of breasts he had seen!

This was unthinkable. Two sisters, two cancers within ten months.

Solitude - Solitude is a gift. It is a gift that is given to us as we get older so that we might live fully, happily, and peacefully no matter what our life circumstances. It is a reward after all the years of “trying.” It is a sweet treat at the end of the day. It is a secret pleasure. It is the bonus that was always there, if we had only known. It is God’s gift.

Marriage and After - For years I had dreaded losing the perfect marriage. I was now able to see that the “perfect marriage” never existed. If I lost anything during those years, it was my commitment to my relationship and my courage to take a stand for the life I wanted. Had I admitted that at the time, there could have been an opening to work on my marriage and make it healthy; or, at the very least, a way to end it with integrity.

I have worked too hard to become the person I am today. I still wrestle with the desire to be liked, accepted and loved, pitted against the desire to be authentic with my partner and true to myself. I know I must continue to attend to this if I am ever able to share my life with anyone.

I gave up a domestic partnership in order to actualize my vision for my life right now. It was a powerful decision to move out—even in a bad situation it is difficult to reach for more or better. And in the end, I realized that I could not, and did not, lose what I didn’t have.

“How could he leave/betray/mistreat me when I have given up so much for him?” The fact is, we have “given him” everything but our true selves. The fear of failing this most basic of female “accomplishments,” having and keeping a man, has led us to be insincere and inauthentic with our loves. My lesbian friends tell me that the conditioning is so strong that despite the fact that their partners are female, they engage in the same behaviors.

Spirituality - Now I refer to “God” by many names: God, Goddess, Creator, higher power, spirit, the Universe. I use all of these interchangeably. When I say God/He, it is an old habit. God is amorphous to me, an all-pervasive spirit. God resides in me, God is my soul.

For twelve years, I was a minister’s wife. I went to church, was the church organist, taught Sunday school, and attended the ladies’ bible study. I was miserable but putting a good face on it because I had no explanation for my misery except my own shortcomings. I certainly never made any real connection between myself and anything bigger than myself.

In my mid-fifties, the ground beneath me began shifting. There is something about turning 50, I think, that triggers such activities of the soul.

Mothers - When my mother was one year younger than the age I am now, she contracted lymphosarcoma, a fatal form of lymphatic cancer. She died five years later. I was 24 years old when my mother became ill. I have no memory of a healthy mother after that time.

My mother’s life can now only be lived in my memory and in the characteristics I see developing daily in my children. In one or another of them, I see a generosity of spirit, gentleness, compassion and humanity. It is these out of all my mother’s traits I hold most closely and value most highly in my children. As my children begin to create their adult lives, I will call upon these traits as I continue to parent them. I know my mother would have done no less.

My mother, Anna May, died one year ago. I still have not yet recovered my balance. I am suspended in space, floating, drifting. I hold my breath. I wait. I want the pain gone. I want to experience the joy of her again.

My choice to forgive my mother was the best decision I could have made, and I have never regretted it. I never told her about my process and that I had forgiven her. I felt we both had been through enough. I put my grief and anger about her behind me, and in my mid-thirties, I created a loving, connected relationship with her. I began to see her with new eyes, and as the decades rolled on, I discovered how lucky I was to be her daughter.

On the surface all was well in our relationship. I loved my mother, and merely designated her as a person who was difficult to please. Under the surface, I was conflicted and miserable and at a loss as to how to gain my mother’s respect.

The New Generation - Hopefully, if the grandchildren balk at having such an atypical grandparent, my children will be able to tell them that under the eccentricity, and in spite of some imperfections and much frustration, there was usually a lot of good, solid parenting going on. There was always sound advice. There were always arms to hug, ears to listen and a heart to care. There was always a wish for them to fly, but solid ground for them to land. And always, there was a commitment that they came first.

My grandchildren love me, and they think I am strange. That is just great. That is as it should be. It is my job to model for them, to provide for them an alternative to “fitting in.” So if anyone ever says to one of them, “Who do you think you are?” they can simply say, “I’m my grandmother’s granddaughter.”

The Artist Within - In defiance of a decided lack of any kind of serious creativity on the part of my family (with the possible exception of my mother’s uncanny ability to sculpt large swans out of chopped liver), I was always into something. I wrote, I drew, I painted, I danced. I scattered my thoughts across pages, my visions across canvasses and my body across wooden floors. Whatever experiences life handed to me, they were always more clearly processed when I transitioned them from my brain to my hands or my feet.

I note the difference between my writing since turning 50 and my writing before. It mirrors the total change in my life when I made a conscious decision to take myself on at my 50th birthday. My goal was to become “better” each year, to take on new physical and mental challenges, to expand both my inner and outer horizons.

I am aware that my life after age 50 has already achieved a level of creativity that is deeper, more profound and more mature than what came before. And, unlike the vagaries of athleticism which often depend on strong, healthy bodies, I am comforted by the knowledge that the creative process often improves as one ages, allowing us to see with a degree of visual acuity that can’t be measured by an ophthalmologist. As the notion of our days becomes finite, our creative capacities can become infinite. As the road ahead shortens, the creative process can become more far reaching. As our creative reach expands, our world becomes bigger. And bigger really is better.

Starting Over - I have taken risks in my life, but realized in my 50s that most of those “risks” were calculated ones. In other words, I took risks, but I was reasonably certain that I would succeed. I was never outrageous.

Giving up my career frightened me. My work was not only my identity, but it was my sole source of income. If and when I got well and could work again, I wondered what I would do, where I would find a job. Quitting teaching seemed like a reckless act, a plunge toward an unknown future that I did not want to take.

I learned several huge lessons which I took into my 50s:

I am strong. I can survive whatever I need to overcome to move on with my life; I can start over at any point in my life; I can go kicking and screaming, or I can surrender to the flow. Yet I still have my fears. They never really go away. I worry that I won’t be good enough, won’t have enough contracts, don’t know enough, will make an ass of myself, or be penniless. It doesn’t matter what I worry about. What matters is that my fears no longer stop me. I can have my fears and take action on my dreams.

I have reinvented myself several times, and every time I do it I hear my no-nonsense coal miner forbearers hissing, “Are you crazy?” I remember Greek myths about the costs of hubris, and I shiver in my shoes…(I)t was only after I identified the life I wanted and after I replaced my value on security with my value on being who I wanted to be that "women of a certain age" and modeling and new sources of income appeared in my life.

Uncharted Territory - What’s important is that you can laugh your guts out at the absurdity of getting older, and, while you are laughing, still know how totally incredible you are. And then, when you’re finished laughing, get up and turn the world on its ass. Or take on a physical challenge you swore you’d never be able to do. Or stand in front of a mirror naked and know that for some lucky guy, you’re a dream come true. Or, at the very least, look at a calendar and circle your birthday and say, “Damn, am I lucky or what?”

What I heard from these women indicated to me that a shift is occurring at this very moment in history. The shift is in how women over 50 view themselves.

I am a member of a population group that is the untapped resource for change in this society. I am part of a group of women who have lived past the expectations of society regarding marriage and child rearing. We have outlived the old concepts of the purpose of women. We are past the politics of it now. We have lived long enough to go beyond the biological imperative. We are on the edge of a largely unnoticed revolution.
 

*