I want to go on record as saying, “This Seems Poorly Supervised.”
I am about to turn 65.
I know this because the United States government has been sending me mail.
Lots of mail. And AARP started blowing me up ten years ago.
Apparently, there is a point in every American life when the federal government, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and approximately four thousand organizations I have never heard of simultaneously become extremely concerned about whether I understand Medicare.
For most of my life, birthdays arrived with cake.
Sixty-five arrives with a three-ring binder.
And while I understand that 65 is really just another number, culturally it is one of those numbers that comes with baggage.
At 16, you can drive.
At 18, you can vote.
At 21, you can legally drink.
At 65, apparently, someone hands you the ceremonial staff of elderhood and trusts you not to poke anybody with it.
This seems poorly considered.
When Did I Become the Older Person?
I have six adult children. That should have been my first clue.
They range from their late twenties to their late forties, which means some of my children are now the age I still vaguely imagine myself to be.
This creates occasional glitches in the Matrix.
Someone will mention a 45-year-old woman and I will automatically picture someone roughly my age.
Then I remember. No. She is roughly the age of my children.
Rude.
My grandson is 22 and is expecting his first child later this year, which will make me a great-grandmother. A GREAT-grandmother. (as opposed to just a “good” grandmother)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a great-grandmother. It’s a beautiful thing. I just feel there should have been some kind of proficiency exam first.
Shouldn’t great-grandmothers know how to can peaches?
Shouldn’t I own an apron that has been in the family since the Hoover administration? Mine only date back to Nixon.
Shouldn’t I have a secret pie crust recipe that I refuse to write down?
Instead, I have progressive lenses, a laptop, a small traumatized dog, several businesses, and an alarming number of opinions.
Apparently, this qualifies, based on the evidence.
I Thought Elders Knew Things
When I was young, older people seemed so incredibly established and that was back whne I thought people in their forties were “older people.”
They knew how insurance worked.
They understood mortgages.
They knew what to do when the toilet made that noise.
They had recipes they didn’t need to look up.
They could identify trees.
They owned things called “good scissors” that you were absolutely forbidden to touch.
Most importantly, they seemed to understand life.
I assumed this happened automatically.
You just kept having birthdays and eventually the Great Wisdom Download occurred.
Perhaps while you were sleeping.
One morning you’d wake up, stretch, and suddenly understand escrow, grief, plumbing, human nature, and exactly how much potato salad was required for seventeen people.
I’m still waiting.
I do know more than I did at 25. Considerably more.
I know which battles are worth fighting and which deserve a pleasant nod followed by doing whatever I intended to do in the first place.
I know that very few disasters are improved by an immediate response.
I know that sometimes people need advice and some just need a sandwich.
I know that love and compatibility aren’t the same thing.
I know that adult children remain your children while simultaneously becoming people whose lives belong entirely to them.
I know grief doesn’t really end. It changes address.
I know you can lose almost everything you own and still eventually build another ordinary Tuesday.
That’s something.
But I also just spent ten minutes recently looking for something that was, in fact, in my hand.
So let’s maintain perspective.
The Elders Are Just People Who Got Here First
Perhaps that is the revelation.
The elders I admired when I was young weren’t finished either.
I just couldn’t see it.
My parents died young. My mother was only 60. My father was 51.
I am already older than either of them ever got the privilege to be.
There is something profoundly strange about crossing that line.
As children, our parents establish the outer boundary of age. They are always ahead of us, standing farther down the road.
Until someday they aren’t.
You keep walking. And eventually you reach places they never did.
There isn’t a parent farther ahead who can tell you what 65 feels like.
There is just you.
That doesn’t make me sad every day.
But it does make 65 feel less like an ordinary birthday and more like entering unexplored territory.
I am becoming the person farther down the road.
Good Goddess.
Please Stop Calling Me “Young Lady”
There is, of course, another peculiar part of becoming an older woman.
Everyone suddenly becomes terrified of acknowledging that you’re an older woman.
“You’re not old!”
“You don’t look 65!”
“Sixty-five is the new 45!”
And the especially irritating:
“Hello there, young lady!”
If I roll my eyes any harder, I will need yet another eye exam.
I have been menstruating, raising children, paying taxes, working, grieving, loving, rebuilding, and accumulating lower-back opinions for longer than some nations have existed. I have cookie sheets older than the people who say this to me.
You do not have to pretend I’m 32 to compliment me.
And while we’re here, don’t tell me I’m “65 years young.”
I’m not.
I’m 65 years old. It took me 65 years to get this old, and I refuse to have my accomplishment linguistically repossessed because we’ve collectively decided that “old” is a dirty word.
Nobody tells a six-year-old she’s “six years young.”
Nobody congratulates a 30-year-old on being “30 years young.”
We only start performing these grammatical gymnastics when the actual number becomes something we’re apparently supposed to be embarrassed about.
I’m not embarrassed. I have no desire to be 32. Thirty-two-year-old me was doing the best she could, but she was exhausted.
She worried about things I wouldn’t give ten minutes to now.
She had more stamina, certainly.
She also had considerably less sense.
I’ll keep the trade.
Being old isn’t an insult unless we agree that it is.
I’m fat, too.
We’ve covered this.
I refuse to spend the remaining portion of my life turning perfectly accurate adjectives into personal attacks.
Fat.
Old.
Grey-haired.
Grandmother.
Soon-to-be great-grandmother.
None of those words erase woman.
None erase Katrina.
And none erase Goddess.
They are simply additional chapters.
Maybe Wisdom Isn’t Knowing Everything
I used to think wisdom meant answers.
Now I suspect wisdom has considerably more to do with questions.
At 25, I could be astonishingly certain about things I understood very poorly.
At nearly 65, I’m much more comfortable saying:
I don’t know.
Let’s see.
Maybe.
I was wrong.
Tell me more.
That isn’t the kind of wisdom they put on statues.
There should probably be a statue of an older woman shrugging and saying, “Hell if I know, but let’s figure it out.”
I’d visit her.
Maybe an elder isn’t the person with all the answers.
Maybe an elder is simply someone who has survived enough wrong answers to recognize that certainty is overrated.
Someone who knows that life changes.
Bodies change.
Marriages change.
Children change.
Plans change.
Fortunes change.
Homes disappear.
New homes rise.
People leave.
People arrive.
And somehow you keep making dinner.
There may be more wisdom in that than I once realized.
And evidently, all you need to do to get your hands on the elder stick is not die.
I Accept the Position
So yes.
Apparently, I am becoming an elder.
I would like the record to show that I did not apply for this position and remain suspicious of the hiring process.
Nevertheless, I accept.
I will try to use my powers responsibly.
I will tell younger women the things I wish someone had told me, regardless of whether or not they want to hear it.
I will remind them that almost nobody knows what they’re doing as much as it appears they do.
I will tell them that bodies are allowed to change.
That leaving can be brave and staying can be brave.
That starting over does not have an expiration date.
That there are worse things than being fat.
There are worse things than being old.
There are far worse things than being boring.
I will tell them that love sometimes looks like romance and sometimes looks like sleeping peacefully on opposite sides of the house.
I will tell them that surviving something terrible does not obligate you to become inspirational about it. Sometimes you just survive.
I will tell them to use the good towels.
Order dessert when they want dessert.
Take the picture even when they don’t like how they look.
And never, ever save the expensive candle for some sufficiently important occasion.
You are the occasion.
Maybe that’s what elders are actually for.
Not to stand at the end of the road shouting instructions back at everyone else.
Just to stand a little farther along it, holding up a lantern.
Not saying, “I know the way.”
But: “I’ve made it this far. There’s room up here. Come on.”
I’ll be 65 soon.
I don’t know everything.
I haven’t figured it all out.
I am still changing, still learning, still screwing things up, still laughing, still working, still loving, still becoming.
But I’ve been around long enough to know a few things worth passing along.
So perhaps I am ready after all.
Just please don’t ask me about Medicare.
I’m still reading the binder.