Aging – What is This All About?

It seems that just the other day I was forty, the father of three teenagers, and just starting over after the end of an eighteen-year marriage. We have regular situations in life which cause us to start life anew, to reassess and change course and alter our view of the world. For me, they were: going off to kindergarten, entering high school, college, marriage, fatherhood, starting a career, end of marriage, new relationship, traveling to other countries, unexpected health problems, kids off to college, retirement, and now grand- fatherhood. Each of these periods opened with a new big situation that required learning and rethinking my existence; each one seems like a sort of life era from this vantage point. I’m old enough now to see my own life story as it has played out. Each of the big changes was fraught with stress and difficulty at first, followed by a gradual peaceful normality. Sometimes I thought I wouldn’t get through; it was just too hard. But I always did. And later in life I realized that no matter how difficult the situation I have ever been in, it has always resolved to a tolerable level of stress within a few weeks and resolved within a few months one way or another. That knowledge does not, however, keep me from being anxiety ridden every time something big and new comes up, but it does give me some valuable perspective. Every difficulty will pass.

I don’t think it’s true that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You just end up the same or a bit weaker while carrying a heavier emotional load. I mean, sure, you might be wiser, and you might look stronger to outside observers since you can carry so much, you might not have bent, but it gets harder to trudge along the trail of life carrying the baggage from so many battles. You just get more tired from the burden of life. At first, as youngsters, we spring along like little antelopes. Everything is new and hopeful. By 65, meh, not so much. Things get heavy. It doesn’t seem like one should wake up each day wondering how much longer they will live rather than leaping out of bed wondering what the new day will bring.

It is strange to feel emotionally and intellectually forty when looking in the mirror but seeing a much older person looking back at you. Who is that, I wonder sometimes. Whenever I go to an event where the crowd is older, like the symphony, I find myself studying the people and thinking to myself who ARE all these ancient people. It never occurs to me that any of them are wondering the same thing about me. I see older people as if they are a different animal, another species, even though I’m one now. I can’t help it. You can’t tell by looking at them that they were once beautiful and full of vivacity, which is how I still feel. Yes, everything hurts most days, but so what. I have things to do.

I am thankful for mostly good health and an outlook on life that has allowed me to live in a relatively peaceful state in each era. I tend to be happy and content from within. When things have gone wrong with me physically, they’ve mostly been fixable, allowing me to look at how it affects me with some detachment and bemusement. And when not fixable, I just think, okay, this is what I have to work with now. And that’s what I do.

My newest era is being a grandpa. It has taken me a while to embrace the role. I didn’t know how to be one. Still don’t. I think my job is to play and demonstrate a certain reliable solidness to the two little tykes, a solidness they can always look to for comfort when it seems the world is falling apart. And love them, which is surprisingly easy. The role makes me feel lighter, not heavier. It’s a thrill to see the world through the eyes of a toddler again, watching the gears turn and awareness setting in and listening to the sounds of mirth and surprise when something new (which is everything) tickles them in some way. The little brain soaking up everything with astonishing speed, the absolutely flawless skin and physical perfection of youth radiating out like a sunbeam. Life is just better when everything is new and exciting, and partaking of that excitement through the eyes of a little one is perhaps better than one’s own first time around. At least that’s how it seems to me. I loved being a little kid, but I think I love seeing my granddaughters be little kids more.

We pulled up stakes and moved across the country to participate in this particularly important era. We left our friends and the rest of our family, our community, our home, and just drove away to something new. And now, once again, the stress of adjusting, changing our lives, learning new cultural nuance, finding additional friends, learning the ropes of living here, getting a house and making it a home. It’s been a very long time since we had a disruption like this, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it, so close upon the heels of my retirement. I hadn’t quite yet found my legs after retirement when we jumped ship to being grandpas, so the determination of how I will be living my post-retirement life is not yet entirely clear. In spite of the drama and difficulties and uncertainties of the past year, though, I feel invigorated by all the change. I was getting bored before we decided to move. I’m not bored now!

How does a guy stay vibrant at this stage of life? It is true that one feels unseen once the gray appears. There’s a lot to sex appeal in forming friendships and work collaborations and in being noticed socially. It’s as if sexual vitality is the key to every sort of attractiveness, and to being socially visible. I can see it easily from this age, how it matters so much, how the appearance of youth and fertility greases the skids for having a social life. People in the prime of life talk to you and notice you when your hair is still black and your physique still has bounce.

I guess older women notice me now. At the gym I wear a t-shirt that says SISSY in big bold letters. It’s a joke, as I’m not a sissy, and I don’t look like one. It’s fun to wear it. I can see people studying the shirt, and then studying me, trying to figure out what in the world I’m trying to say. I should have put LIVE LIFE IRONICALLY on the shirt, I guess, to make it easier. One day as I walked past a much older woman, she looked at my shirt, looked me up and down, and said with gusto, “Oh, I don’t THINK so!” Good point, I thought. And then, the same week, while lying on my back doing a stretch for my lower back, suddenly another much older woman was standing over me. “Mmmm, do you mind if I ask you about the stretch you are doing? It looks so interesting.” I think she was looking for a different sort of stretching, however. So, I guess I’m still being seen, but now it’s by older women, the same ones that seem like a different sort of human to me.

My husband and I used to travel on occasion, and when we could, we would stay at a gay inn or resort. We were young and vibrant and got lots of attention and social cache from the other men there who typically ranged in age from eighteen to fifty-five or so, the period of life when you’re still youthful enough that it is hard to tell your age for sure. Our handsomeness was, apparently, notable. But the age range over fifty-five was distinctly absent at these places, partly due to the deaths of so many young men from AIDS in the ’80s and ’90s, but also because of the emphasis on relative youth that seems mandatory for such resorts. And now that we are in that absent age range, we find that we are hesitant to stay there anymore. People will think we are old, we think, and the physical signs of our age will be a detriment. No one will talk to us, we think. We don’t KNOW this for sure, but we sort of do. So, to protect our egos, we stay in regular places. I sometimes think this is such an odd perspective for both of us. We are both smart, socially reliable and funny. Why are we so sure we won’t be interesting to all age groups? We are both a bit introverted, so that may be part of it. Reaching out to engage and make new friends seems like a leap too far at times.

Maybe it’s like studying oneself in a mirror; it took me a long time to realize that to really see an older person, you had to dig in. You have to ask them questions, study them. Who were you at eighteen? What did you do? What has your life been like? My goodness, I’ve been surprised out of my wits by some of the things an old dodderer has told me they had done in their lives. Wonderful things, great things! But you don’t know it unless you give them the time of day. You have to assume they have an interesting life, an interesting story to tell, or you don’t bother to engage. Maybe we can fix the problem of not being noticed in old age by taking the time to notice and engage others. It should go both ways, shouldn’t it. Maybe the problem is not the lack of being seen, but rather, making assumptions about not being seen and then withdrawing. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s time to travel more and do some social experiments to find out.

In the meantime, we’re playing with our granddaughters every day and getting our home situated to our liking. With any luck we can live here for twenty years before everything really goes south, so the house and gardens have to be just so, as does the way we live our lives for this last part. This is no time to wear out and wind down! Onward!