I posted a note in Chat here a while ago, asking readers what they would like me to address in a future post. The only one who responded is Nina West, a fine artist and writer from Atlanta (and collaborator on a project with me — more about that in the future). So, the lady’s request gets priority. She’d like to hear my thoughts on aging.
I have some experience of this, as I’ll be turning 77 in December. I was born only three years after WWII ended. The aging process varies from person to person, but is inevitable, and has some well-known markers — slower reflexes, reading glasses (and where did I leave them??), trouble adjusting to change, occasional memory issues, and the impulse to whip out a cane and belabour some fool with it, while yelling “Goldarn ye! Why, back in my day…”
Yes, I’m old. Old enough that I heard Jimi Hendrix play live, saw the Rolling Stones when they didn’t look like codgers, have met/worked or studied with Anne Waldman, Robert Duncan, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and in Canada, Irving Layton, Eli Mandel, Frank Davey, Miriam Waddington, and Margaret Atwood. I have seen many of my cultural heroes pass away, and now it’s also my friends and acquaintances who are shuffling off this mortal coil. In my life, I’ve gone from rotary-dial phones, film cameras, library card indexes, and handheld calculators to today’s miracle/curse, the smart phone. I learned to type on a manual typewriter, then mastered the very early word-processing programs like WordStar (a real clunker), and next WordPerfect. I could go on, but you get the idea. I’ve been around.
To frame my personal acquaintance with aging, let me first thank the fates (and family genes) for my very good luck. At three-quarters of a century, I don’t need glasses for driving or everyday sights, take no medications, am still living on my own, writing, photographing, and playing guitar, and keep active playing pickleball, walking, and paddling my kayak on clement days in Lake Ontario (a block away from my apartment.) I’ve never had major surgery or a chronic condition, broken a bone, or given up my tonsils or appendix. Three of my four siblings are still alive, and well into their eighties. I’m a lucky old dog, I know.
Yet, I do recognize some of the traditional mileposts of becoming an elder. People may offer me seats on public transit, which I sometimes accept. My memory, always an asset, is not quite as quick as it once was. Sometimes I blank on the names of well-known public figures, only to remember them a few minutes later. I at times go into another room and then stop, wondering what I went there for (this is apparently a common experience, something to do with crossing a portal, according to psychologists). I’ve learned to laugh at my “moments” , rather than get mad at myself. That way I don’t have to belabour myself with the proverbial cane.
I also note some mental or attitudinal changes. I’m more judgmental than I used to be, prone to noting minor sins like adults riding bikes along the sidewalk, dumb dog owners with their pets off-leash near fast-moving traffic, and worst of all — the Guy with Baseball Hat Turned Backwards. As for the latter, there are sometimes reasons to reverse your ball cap — if the bill gets in the way of your camera, or the wind is threatening to unhat you. But a lot of middle-aged guys seem to turn it backwards, thinking it gives them a cool, nonconformist, rapper-like presence — even when the sun is glaring in their eyes, and they have to shield their vision with a hand. I’m tempted to lecture them on the logic of their hat orientation, but don’t… so far.
One of the drawbacks I’ve noted about being a retired old person is that you become somewhat sidelined. In Western society much of both our social status and self-image comes from our work. When you exit that workplace, you have to create a new sense of your value. I was a full-time professor in a community college, first teaching English, and then doing faculty development. I thought I was pretty good at both roles. Since retiring, I’ve focused on extending my creative powers, getting better as a “full time” writer, photographer, and guitar player.
But, several times, I’ve politely reached out to people in institutions (including my former employer, Centennial College), to suggest I do a reading, book launch, or class visit, and the result has been … silence. Even people I knew and worked with don’t return my messages. I’ve become invisible, to them at least.
Aging should be a time for reflection, for summing up. I think this is why many cultures venerate their elders, relying on them for sage advice and counsel. Not so much in North America in the 2020’s. For my part, I am deeply sorry, and sometimes want to apologize to younger generations for the mess we Boomers are leaving them to clean up. AI is ravaging entry-level jobs. We’ve done little about limiting global warming or plastic pollution, protecting vanishing species, or making the world a better place.
We had great intentions, fuelled by the idealism, liberalism, and social activism of the 1960s and 1970s, but have not been good about the follow-through. And too many of us, perhaps made more conservative by aging, still vote for mostly-male morons who deny global warming, want to reset the social clock to the 1950s or earlier, and lack the perspective to oversee positive social change.
Are you younger than me? I do apologize. But I’m still voting, contributing, signing petitions and writing angry poems, so I haven’t totally given up. As for continuing to age, I’m going to keep at it it. After all, as has been said before, consider the alternative.
Like what you’re reading? You could encourage more of the same by buying me a coffee… no decaf, please. That’s for old people.
Wise words, my friend! I turn 70 next year!!! Egads!! During the pandemic, I began to write posts on this that and everything that I compiled into a Google doc. It's now novella sized and contains musings in no particular order. I dub my magnum opus "Vetere Vignettes" and i continue to archive my musings in no particular order. It's cathartic!
Thank you, John, for indulging my request. You strike such a good balance between humor and (which I always appreciate) and being honest and satisfyingly introspective.
I will be 68 in just a couple of weeks, so I'm younger than you, but the age difference seems less significant than it would have seemed if I were 10 and you were 18.
As with yourself, on the whole, I am physically healthy. So far.
And I, too, remember various things... like seeing Jerry Garcia play live, though not with the Grateful Dead. And witnessed, even participated to some extent in many of the major events of the latter 60s and early 70s, though I am just enough younger that my perspective was a bit different.
I used to be a really good speller. Excellent, if I do say so myself. But sometime in my fifties that began to slip a bit. I struggle more with spelling than I used to. I, too, forget names that come back to me 15 minutes or even 2 days later.
It's the feeling of being irrelevant that I especially don't like. Strangely, perhaps, when I was younger I liked and was interested in experiences and memories older people had. I worked as a teen serving tables at a retirement home. Sometimes I also was assigned to coffee and tea, refilling cups as people raised their hands. One day, when no more than 16, I stood there looking at all the gray hair and glasses, the elderly bodies... and suddenly I could really FEEL how swiftly the time had passed between when they had been my age. That was a profound experience for me. And here I am, in that age category I was regarding years ago and I can confirm that the time has passed swiftly in many ways. I do not know through what wrinkle in the fabric of space time gave me that insight at such a young age. But this is mostly to say that I have valued that experience all of my life, and therefore have always been interested in and curious about the experiences older people had as younger people. I've been curious about how life looks to them as they reflect back, and to their future.
But it is clear that this is not how most younger people feel. I hear and feel often the resentment of younger people who blame our generation and want us out of the way. Dare I admit that sometimes one of the reasons I regret I won't live another 50 or 60 years is that I will miss the opportunity to see those youth experience the same thing... aging bodies, failing memory, and the sense of being irrelevant.
I, too, can enjoy a well-aged whine. And I thank you kindly for allowing me to share a glass with you.