Shock and Awe! I Survived Long Enough to Become Someone Else’s “Old Lady”
Strategies for enlisting courageous, productive and involved elders who exemplify how it’s done.
“Do you think of YOURSELF as ‘an old lady’?”
“Yes, Jane, I do,” I say to my good friend of 60 years. I suspect that’s not the answer she’s hoping for. Who wants to see herself as old?
I started picking up “good” much-older women — my old ladies — before I turned 50. Now I’m old enough to be one.
“My friend Frederick recently told me I was his ‘old lady’,” I also tell Jane, “and I loved it.”
Once I got over the shock and eased into the idea.
It happened at Frederick’s 35th birthday celebration. Admittedly, I stood out, being the only grandma in the group. It didn’t help that Frederick’s mostly Millennial friends teased him about being “old.”
“Fred’s told me so much about you,” several said. “You’re that Melinda!” That’s me, living history — the hip old lady who danced at Studio 54 in her youth.
“Can you find that picture of you?” Frederick asks at one point. I know the one he means. A few minutes later, my phone is being passed around the table. I watch his guests look at the thirtysomething in the photo and then look up at me now.
“Thanks for the good PR,” I say to Frederick who sits across from me at the long table.
“Of course! You’re incredible,” he says, beaming. You give me hope about aging!”
With press like that, who wouldn’t want to be someone’s “old lady” — shorthand for someone who’s aging well?
The Magic of Old Ladies
Jane and my other sorority sisters have heard me talk about my old ladies, and they like the stories. They just don’t want to think of themselves that way. I don’t blame them. In an ageist culture, who wants to see herself as “old”?
To be clear: I don’t feel old. I don’t act old. And while it might required a leap of imagination to see that I once was the babe in that photo, I’m not old inside. Like my friend Marge, I still see the world through 25 year-old-eyes.
But let’s be honest: in no universe is 78 “young.”
And yet, I’m good, better than I’ve ever been in many — perhaps the most important — respects. My writing keeps improving. I’m more self-confident and at peace with myself. I’m more skilled at relationships.
I also have my old ladies to light the way. I watch what they do and how they navigate a territory I hope someday to traverse. While it’s vital to have acquaintances up and down the generational ladder, only someone much older can describe what might lie ahead.
As the saying goes, forewarned is forearmed. Praemonitus, praemunitus.
“Advanced knowledge allows for advanced preparation; knowing about potential problems makes it possible to prepare for them.” — writingexplained.org
My old ladies live with what life throws at them — wrinkles and sags, aches and pains, scares and close calls, loss and more loss. They don’t glorify aging. They just keep on keeping on and somehow manage to maintain a sense of humor. They live until they die.
My old ladies inspire me to write about age, but not to rail against it. This much I’ve learned from them: It wouldn’t matter if I did.
If you’re lucky, “old” is something you eventually become. As fellow Medium writer Brian Dickens Barrabee recently reminded me, Jim Morrison put it best: Nobody gets out of here alive!
And if we’re very lucky, we become someone that younger people admire and want to learn from.
Having a “good” old lady (or man) in your corner betters your odds of aging well.
How to Enlist an Old Lady of Your Own
I know from others’ writing, as well as comments on pieces about my old ladies, that some of you — wisely — have one, if not several, much-older female and male acquaintances that are aging well. If not, I can’t stress how important it is.
Allow me to share the ways I…
- Find a “good” old lady
- Bring her into my life
- Mine the relationship for valuable insights and strategies, despite the barriers that age often brings
- Handle the loss when she’s gone
The Hunt: Spotting a “Good” Old Lady
I picked up my first old lady, Henrietta, in a fiction-writing class at the New School. I didn’t set out to forge a relationship with a much older acquaintance. Quite the contrary, I harbored unkind, ageist thoughts when I first walked into the classroom. Oh, no, a roomful of old people!
And then, I began to see them as individuals. Henrietta (also my mother’s name) stood out. She was 75, wore coke-bottle glasses, and walked with a cane. But that didn’t stop her from bopping around New York City to attend classes. Though we were worlds apart in age and experience, writing was common ground. I loved her stories, which were rooted in her early experiences as a kid on the Lower East Side where my grandparents also started out.
As years went by, I purposely sought much-older women. A rule of thumb evolved: She had to be 20 to 25 years my senior — an age difference I’ve had to trim as I’ve gotten older! Ten years from now, someone five years older might qualify.
Of course, it isn’t just about being older. Being in one’s late 80s or beyond only puts the woman in the territory. Age itself doesn’t necessarily make her someone to emulate. Other qualities do: She contradicts societal expectations; she fully embraces life. She’s still productive in some way. She has passion. She doesn’t complain. She is wise without self-consciousness.
If you keep the image of a “good” old lady in mind, you’re bound to spot one during your daily comings and goings — the supermarket, a doctor’s office, the bus stop. Or, you might be on a trip and see a brave old lady traveling solo. Make the first move.
Also, ask friends about “good” old ladies they know. Admittedly, I have an advantage: I write about them. A recent email from a total stranger who read one such story urged, “You’ve got to talk to my mom.” I did; she was right.
Meeting: How to Pick Up an Old Lady
The art of meeting anyone new —a consequential stranger — is the same, regardless of her age. You reach out; you find something you have in common — an interest, the place you meet — or something unique or note-worthy that you notice in her. You share about you; she shares about her.
It’s not always simple. Personalities and cultures sometime collide. I almost didn’t connect with Lois, an energetic, no-nonsense octogenarian. We met for the first time at one of her monthly mixers for Smith alumnae in Paris. Watching her work the room, I had to know more.
“Hi, I’m Melinda,” I said, sidling up to her. She looked puzzled as the strange, fast-talking New-Yawker blurted out: I didn’t go to Smith…Christine invited me…I love your apartment…I am new to Paris…You seem like such an interesting woman… I want to have coffee, lunch — something — with you.
It worked with Marge, but she’s lived in Manhattan her whole life. Lois, an ex-pat for more than 50 years, and originally from the Midwest, is more “French” (read: standoffish) than American (in-your-face and, worse still, smiling).
“I didn’t quite know what to make of you,” she would later admit.
She gave me her number anyway. And the rest became our history. Still, it’s always best to judge your audience first!
How to Sustain the Relationship, Despite Limitations and Lapses
Your old lady might have physical limitations. Don’t be shy about acknowledging them. Marge, for example, wears the kind of hearing aid that only an audiologist can change. The battery life is around three months. Knowing this, I ask questions (When did you last have the batteries changed? Is this your better ear?). I adjust accordingly — talk louder, sit on her good side.
Each of my old ladies each has favorite stories and jokes I’ve heard more than once. The repetition, I suspect, is a combination of memory lapse and habit. Some, with failing eyes and ears, might also take in less new information. Whatever the reason, it’s a chance to go deeper. I try to come up with new questions each time. That makes it more interesting for me and dredging up memories is good for her mental and emotional health.
When an old lady has lapses — typically, short-term memory fades first — it can also work in my favor. She doesn’t notice when I repeat myself! Lapses can also minimize past transgressions. Recently, I reminisced with Lois about my “accosting” her when we first met. She smiled, but I could tell — and was a little relieved — that she barely remembered!
Limitations and lapses are reasons many people give for avoiding old people in the first place. As someone once put it to me, “How can you hang out with that old lady? Isn’t it boring?”
Not at all. The key is to pick the right person, savor the good times, and hang in there for the precious memories you create with that particular old lady.
In 2017, Marge, then 98, invited me to see a production of Junk at Lincoln Center. Then as now, Marge is fiercely independent but not shy about asking for help when she needs it. I felt honored that she trusted me. I called an Uber for us, helped her into the car. She sat in the seat of her Rollator while I got her an amplifying headset. She held my arm as we navigated the stairs to our seats.
Was the responsibility a little nerve-wracking? Yes. But I felt special to be in her presence. A few years later, she remembered our being there together and said, “You know, that was the last show I ever attended.” I am glad I was there.
Handling the Loss
I know I will lose my old ladies; I already have. All relationships have an expiration date, due to disinterest or death, but with a person in her nineties and beyond, the clock is always ticking.
I know this going in.
Still, last times can only be known in retrospect. So I pay attention each time. I call. I visit. I listen. Any time could be my last.
My last lunch with Sylvia was at a Miami Beach restaurant overlooking the ocean. She was like an excited kid, ticking off Broadway shows and gallery openings she would attend when she returned to New York that spring. She died a year or so later, just shy of 98. Just as she’d done throughout her nineties, she was planning her own birthday celebration.
The last time I spoke to Zelda, she opened the phone call with, “Honey, I’ve got something for you. I think you’ll like it.”
“Hold on. Let me grab a pad and pen.” It made Zelda happy to know I wrote down what she said.
“I realize,” she continued, her voice strong, “that there’s a time for making memories and a time for remembering.
“I’m in the remembering time now,” she added without a hint of sadness, “and I’m grateful that I have so many good memories to look back on.” She died a few months later.
Zelda would want me to be specific: She died at 104 and three quarters. “At my age, you get to count quarters, dear.”
I miss Zelda and Sylvia and Henrietta and other old ladies I’ve lost, but they are always with me. I never really “lose” them. It’s not just a saccharine platitude: loved ones, especially those you invite into your heart, do live on in memory.
I hear Zelda now as I write this piece: “It’s not how old you get, it’s how you get old.”
My old ladies teach me how to be old — a good old — and to be grateful that, at least at this writing, I’m still making memories.
Yours might do the same for you! And then you can pay it forward and become someone else’s old lady.
Contact me if you have a friend in her 90s and 100s who’s aging well and is willing (and able) to talk about it.
