Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old

 By Richard J. Leider & David Shapiro

Berrett-Koehler     2021

145 pages     Self-Help

“Everyone is getting older; not everyone is growing older.” This is the premise of a compact, but profound look at aging. The authors, Leider and Shapiro, have been friends for many years. They are intrigued by their own aging as well as the concept of aging in general, and offer a guidebook to thinking about the process, without offering definitive conclusions. My husband and I used the book as our morning reading exercise, taking turns reading and then discussing what we read.

If we have fewer outward responsibilities, the authors propose, then we should have greater inner growth. This has been one of the concepts that my husband and I have struggled with for several years. The struggle has never been more pronounced than when we were reading this book. My husband has always felt that he would work at his business forever. Yet, now that he is in his 80s, he has begun to rethink his purpose. Each day, as we read, he considered some alternatives; finally he announced that he was going to stop working on Fridays. I almost fell over with surprise. Now we will see if he is going to follow the plan.

On the other hand, I have been completely retired from my career as a librarian for several years, and this year, I retired from my editing business. The retirement was very short-lived, because family members needed covid-related help with children. I felt lucky that my schedule was flexible enough that I could help out. The points made in Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old helped me in my decision-making. One of the authors’ points is that often retirees feel a loss of relevance. Lucky for me, I still feel very relevant.

Finally, the last chapters of the book concern death and dying, and we were able to have some significant conversations about what we still wanted to do, but also how we felt about dying. There are excellent discussion questions in the last chapter: “1) What do you think happens when you die? 2) How would you like to die? 3) What gifts do you want to leave the world before you die?” These questions offered us several hours of thought and discussion. As we read each morning, we felt our relationship grow closer and our conversations become more significant. We would certainly encourage couples to have these discussions. I am very grateful to the authors for opening these doors for us. I appreciated their personal stories as well as the people they quoted. The final discussion questions are excellent.

“The path of purposeful aging is a choice to wake up every day with the intention to grow and give.”

An interview with the authors.

 

Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

 By Anne Lamott

Riverhead     2021

208 pages     Spiritual

Like me, Anne Lamott is in the “third third” of her life. (I love that thought.) Newly married for the first time, she is coping with her life that has changed dramatically and the world that she is living in which has changed dramatically as well.  In Dusk, Night, Dawn, Lamott is trying  to manage all these changes and to find a way forward. She is looking for revival and renewal—something most of us are seeking, as well.

Lamott is a recovering alcoholic, and that horrific time in her life as well as her recovery is seldom off her mind. The lessons she learned continue to reverberate in her writing. She is also a Christian, and the spiritual side of her life determines her outward actions as well as her inner turmoil.  What makes her writing compelling is that she laces practically every paragraph with a self-deprecating zinger. For example, in speaking of surviving this difficult year, she says, “I am sober, loved, grateful, sometimes brave, and wearing dry pants.”

The chapters in the book are random essays, each written on the general theme of managing life and calling upon the grace of God to help get through the turmoil of our current situation. Of course, she discusses the Trump years and this Covid year. Each essay is filled with her personal experiences, laced as they are with  humor and insight. While she attempts to justify the reasoning for her marriage to Neal, and to understand what being married means, she is ultimately so pleased that she was able to find someone to share her craziness with. One of the strengths of her writing is the humor. The reader can say, yeah, I’ve felt that way. While she is a very spiritual person, she is not a very pious person, and in a lot of ways, her faith matches mine.

Probably Lamott’s greatest strength is her ability to connect with her readers. The strength of her faith is matched only by her questioning. Here is one of her prayers: “Help me start walking in your general direction. And the greatest prayer: Help me not to be such an asshole.” What we realize when we read Lamott is that this life of ours is a major journey, and it is through the grace of God that we survive and perhaps even thrive.

I have read several of Lamott’s books, and if you have not read one of her books, I highly recommend them, although this is probably not the one to begin with. This may just be agism fatigue on my part, because much of this particular book by Lamott deals with aging. Several of the last books I have read concerned aging, including Face: One Square Foot of Skin by Justine Bateman and Women Rowing North by Mary Pipher. In a conversation with my brother-in-law last night, he mentioned that everyone he knows is talking about Covid, aging, and dying. He said he was sick of talking about it. I am feeling the same, although in both of the aforementioned books, and now including Dusk, Night, Dawn, I have gained inspiration and encouragement to persist and move ahead.

Other Lamott books I have read and reviewed include: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, Hallelujah, Anyway, and Some Assembly Required.

Here are a couple of interviews with Lamott about Dusk, Night, Dawn. One with Maria Menounos and the other with Caroline Myss.

 

Face: One Square Foot of Skin

 By Justine Bateman

Akashic     2021

270 pages     Social Science

Tonight as I was watching the PBS news, I paid special attention to Judy Woodruff, her guest Senator Capito, and a reporter Charlayne Hunter-Gault. These were all women in their 60s and 70s and they presented themselves in all their power, faces and all. They are the women that actress, writer, director and producer, Justine Bateman, is addressing in her new book Face: One Square Foot of Skin. In this book, Bateman examines aging faces and describes the discrepancy between men’s aging faces and women’s aging faces. She says that “traditionally, men’s older faces signify power, and women’s older faces signify a loss of power.” She goes on to say. “I hated the idea that half the population was perhaps spending the entire second half of their lives ashamed and apologetic that their faces had aged naturally.” I was proud to see those women on the news. They did not appear at all to be ashamed of their beautiful, intelligent faces.

As Bateman entered her forties, she found that she was being treated differently than when she had been a young, fresh-faced ingenue. As a consequence, Bateman chose to explore the issue of women’s faces through very short stories that are based on interviews she made with women of all ages. The stories are intimate and are significant examples of the tenuous nature of women’s self-assurance and confidence. The stories are very revealing because Bateman argues that a woman’s confidence should grow rather than deteriorate as she ages. It should not be destroyed by society’s misled attitude about that “one square foot of skin.” I saw this happening recently when a woman I knew in her early 50s was forced to find a new job. She knew that she was more than qualified for the job for which she was interviewing, but she worried that she might be too old. Did her face have too many lines? Were her eyes puffy? Was her neck saggy? Would her face be judged rather than her immense capabilities.

Bateman feels that cosmetic surgery is a “Ponzi Scheme.” She wants women to walk out into the world with an attitude that says, “Fuck you! I look great.” I would imagine that for celebrity women like Bateman, the pressure to “fix your face" is especially intense. Occasionally, I get caught up looking at Facebook entries headed, “You won’t believe how (so and so) looks now.” Bateman has made me look at myself much more critically in the mirror, scanning my face for wrinkles, etc. Other than a saggy neck and no eyelids or eyelashes, I am looking my age. I think I feel worse about my flabby upper arm than by my saggy neck.

Last night my book club met virtually. There are twelve women in the club, with ages from 38 to 78. They are all extremely intelligent, confident women with faces to match. We were having a Zoom call with a well-known author, who was obviously impressed by our analysis of his book and of our questions. I was so proud to be one of those beautiful, strong women.

This is what Bateman’s book emphasizes—celebrate who you are, wrinkles and all. As she says, "So, let's imagine that our one-of-a-kind faces are a new kind of NFT, a currency backed by a life lived without hesitation in the sunshine of good days and bad." Read Face: One Square Food of Skin in conjunction with Women Rowing North that I reviewed last month. Your confidence will be renewed.

An interview with Justine Bateman in Vanity Fair. Time magazine’s review concludes that Face is "an engrossing look at an issue that continues to be problematic for millions of women every day."

Women Rowing North

 By Mary Pipher

Bloomsbury     2019

262 pages     Self-Help

Sometimes a book comes into your life at just the right moment. My spiritual growth book group read Women Rowing North this month. I had come home from a winter vacation with a really bad case of shingles and was feeling old and in a lot of pain as I began the book. Mary Pipher helped me focus on the good of my life experience, including the early spring, the birds that had returned to the feeder, and the care my family took of me when I was hurting badly.

More than anything, Pipher is encouraging women to accept who they are, where their life experience has brought them, and the will, strength, and grace to face the future. She encourages us to show mercy to ourselves and to others. This is a hard concept for me, because I generally tend to think of others first—such as what my husband would like for dinner, rather than what I might want. I am an accommodator, but the book showed me several ways to take care of myself. 

Pipher had a realization upon looking at a cactus in full bloom. It caused one of my favorite quotes from the book: “I realized that this cactus with its withered arms symbolized what my life would be. It would consist of thorns and fruit, pain and beauty. My body would age; my soul would expand.”

One of my friends really connected with the chapter about women who are caregivers. She is the caregiver for her husband whose health is deteriorating rapidly. She said that she really needed to hear what Pipher had to say on the topic. She is also experiencing a lot of loneliness because her husband is in a care facility. Pipher speaks to that as well in a chapter on loneliness and solitude.

My favorite chapter was about building a good day. Until very recently, I have been working most of my days at my computer editing graduate student work. When I stopped doing that work, I felt such a loss of purpose. Pipher spoke to me when she says, “There is no magical future. Today is our future.” Especially meaningful was this comment: “Life becomes so much simpler when we find we are in no hurry.” A friend’s husband died a week ago after a long illness. He was at home under hospice care. The children and grandchildren  came home to spend time with their parents in the days before his death, and now they are spending the weeks following his death celebrating his life in their childhood home. I appreciated this statement so much when thinking about my friends: “When times are tough, think short-term. Long-term we are all going to die. But short-term, we can plan for happiness, one day at a time. If life is particularly rough, think in terms of the next ten minutes.”

The Washington Post reviewer felt the book was trivial with several words overused such as “bliss”, “transcendence”, and “awe.” Another reviewer was kinder and felt that Pipher upended the myths of female aging. The reviewer felt that Pipher’s primary goal was to instill in women the concept of self-acceptance. The Library Journal reviewer said that “This is bound to become the bible of baby boomer women.” NPR named it one of the best books of the year.

It is my hope, as is Pipher’s, that my friends and I will be able to rise above the inescapable pain that we will inevitably suffer and “experience bliss.”  

 

On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity & Getting Old

By Parker Palmer

Berrett-Koehler     2018

198 pages     Spiritual

Parker Palmer, author, poet, visionary, has been a part of the spiritual growth movement for almost forty years. I first met him when we read The Courage to Teach in an education group. Then I read A Hidden Wholeness in the church library. So, when my spiritual growth book club at church chose On the Brink of Everything as our January book,  I was so pleased. The group met today and the discussion was outstanding.

Parker Palmer is 80 years old—the same age as my husband—and I know how my husband felt on his 80^th birthday! Palmer believed he had at least one more book in him, so he created a compendium of essays he has written through the years. In On the Brink of Everything,  he explores how he is responding to this new era in his life, and he is not hesitant to express everything he is feeling--the  good and the bad. The essays and poems that he chose to include fit the several themes outlined at the beginning of each section. 

  

I embrace his feelings about aging. He says, “I like being old because the view from the brink is striking, a full panorama of my life—and a bracing breeze awakens me to new ways of understanding my own past, present, and future.” I honor his struggle with depression and his ability to speak about it with humor and understanding. I appreciate his candor when he announces his disdain for the current president in an essay called “The Soul of a Patriot.” I agree with his desire to reframe aging “as a passage of discovery and engagement, not decline and inactivity.”

I love how he wove his love of nature into every chapter of his book. I could very much relate, because I am finding that as I am aging, I love to just sit and observe the natural world. I love taking walks with my grandchildren and pointing out the little pieces of nature that could so easily pass us by. Besides that, Palmer loves to hike and canoe in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota—part of the world where I grew  up.

I enjoyed so much the self-deprecating humor with which he faces life—except for the righteous anger with which he deals with our broken political system. A lot of our discussion yesterday at book club was about people's fear of “the other.” His essay entitled “In Praise of Diversity” addresses this issue head on when he quotes Jean-Paul Sartre: “Hell is other people” and then goes on to say: “My hell is much more specific. It’s a place populated exclusively by straight white males over fifty who have college degrees and financial security—which is to say, people like me. For me, variety is more, much more, than the spice of life. It’s a basic ingredient of a life lived fully and well."
 

One of the best parts of On the Brink of Everything is the inclusion of a great deal of poetry, both Palmer’s and others. He closes each section with one of his poems—all beautiful, all meaningful. Several years ago Palmer began a collaboration with the singer Carrie Newcomer. I heard Newcomer in concert several years ago, and for some reason, I had not remembered that she frequently composed works using Palmer’s poetry for the lyrics. Her musical partnership with Palmer can be found here.  

This is an easy book to read in small bursts, but I suggest that you sit down with a pencil because you will find yourself underlining passages on nearly every page. The Publisher’s Weekly review closes with this astute observation; “Warm, generous, and funny, this impassioned book invites readers to the deep end of life where authentic soul work and human transformation become pressing concerns.”

Olive, Again

By Elizabeth Strout

Random House     2019

304 pages     Literary

Well, friends. I am a wreck. Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout affected me like no book that I have read in the past several months. Was it because I identified so thoroughly with Olive as I watched her age like I am aging, or because she is a master of sarcasm, like my children accuse me of being, or because it was such a fitting and moving sequel to Olive’s story? My thinking was captivated by Olive’s life and her struggles, her burdens and her joys. I knew this woman.

Like Olive Kitteridge, Olive Again has stand-alone chapters with numerous characters from Crosby Maine that Olive interacts with intermittently. Olive has her opinion about everything, but she is willing to change her mind—very egalitarian as she deals with a rapidly changing community and world. One story line concerns the Somali Muslims that live in a neighboring community. Another mentions the problems in the national government with “that horrible orange-haired man” in the White House. In some stories, Mrs. Kitteridge is only mentioned as a former teacher, while in others she plays a major role. One story concerns a former student who is dying of cancer. Olive visits her frequently and listens to her fears and concerns. (That particular story affected me greatly.) She says to the woman, “You know, Cindy, if you should be dying, if you do die, the truth is — we’re all just a few steps behind you.”

Olive replays the moments of her life—the good and the bad. She grieves over the ways she treated her first husband and son Christopher, and reaffirms the moment that she decided to pursue a relationship with her second husband. Jack. Olive and Jack are a somewhat mismatched pair, but they made the decision to have a relationship at the end of the first book, and they remain together until Jack dies. Olive bemoans the fact that she had left the house by the ocean that she had with Henry, her first husband, and now she is stuck in Jack’s house.  I recently began watching the HBO series that bears her name from 2014 in order to remember her as a younger woman—the house, her husband Henry, and how she got to be the way she was. Frances McDormand played Olive brilliantly in the series.

As Olive ages in the book, her body begins to betray her, and she ends up in the community’s assisted living. Her son, Christopher, who lives in New York and seldom visits her, comes frequently and fills her life with a joy she had not expected. She has a heart attack, has trouble with her bowels and bladder, and ends up wearing Depends—"diapers for old people. . .my foolish poopie panties.”  

Through it all, Olive remains as cantankerous as always. Actually, the review in the New York Times is titled, The Curmudgeon Returns. She frequently is irritated and dismissive, yet she longs for the beauty of nature and craves human companionship, even though she is not very good at companionship. In the last chapter, for example, she finally finds a friend at the assisted living, plants some roses outside her window, and lives to see them bloom the second year.

Strout marvelously captures the inner lives of her characters. She is a brilliant author, and Olive, Again is a brilliant book. Thank goodness I got to read it.

Elizabeth Strout’s website.

Still Life with Bread Crumbs

by Anna Quindlen

 Random House   2014

272 pages     Fiction

Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen is a comfortable book--or maybe I just think that because I am slightly older than the protagonist Rebecca Winter and my life experience parallels hers in some ways. Or maybe it's comfortable because the author writes in the third person, and we can read about Rebecca while remaining slightly detached. Or maybe it's because it is a "romantic comedy of manners," as one reviewer calls it, and the reader can enjoy it in bits and pieces.

Well, no matter. Still Life with Bread Crumbs is a delightful read. Rebecca Winter has been a hugely successful photographer, but she has rested on her laurels for too long, and the royalties for her most famous photograph "Still Life with Bread Crumbs" have virtually dried up. She rents a small cottage in upstate New York so that she can lease her New York apartment for a huge sum of money which she needs to pay for nursing home care for her mother and rent for her father's apartment. But life in the country is lonely, and at first she hardly knows what to do with herself. As she slowly adapts to her surroundings, she finds her creativity returning and she is able to produce some of the best work of her career.

This is a book about moving on, and most women who have lived for 60 plus years know how to move on because of parents dying and children leaving. I suppose that is why it is so easy to identify with Rebecca. On the other hand, part of Rebecca is having a hard time moving on--the part that had an unfortunate marriage and a failed career. That part needs the break and the solitude the cottage in the woods affords. As the book nears the end, Rebecca finds that her body has rebounded as has her mind and her creativity--enough so that the sojourn in the country becomes her life's choice. Rebecca's thought process: "when she really thought about it, she realized she'd been becoming different people for as long as she could remember but had never really noticed."

Still Life with Bread Crumbs is funny in many places particularly in the clever and obvious foreshadowing, the flashbacks, and the delightful chapter titles. The NPR reviewer says that Quindlen has her "finger firmly planted on the pulse of her generation." In an interview, Quindlen says,  "I got the jump on reinvention some time ago, actually. I reinvented myself as a mother in my 30s and as a novelist in my 40s. But I never say never. I think one of the most wonderful things about how much longer we all live now is that people feel free to mix it up, to have a third or fourth act in life." 

I am trying to figure out which act I am in. Perhaps just moving out of the third and into the fourth. 

The review in the New York Times: http://www.npr.org/2014/01/29/264553979/anna-quindlen-is-still-the-voice-of-her-generation

The review on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2014/01/29/264553979/anna-quindlen-is-still-the-voice-of-her-generation

The interview in the Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/16/6112620/ann-quindlen-is-back-with-still.html#storylink=cpy

Fierce With Age: Chasing God and Squirrels in Brooklyn

by Carol Orsborn

Turner Publishing, 2013

244 pages     Spiritual

Sometimes a book comes along at just the right time. That's the case with Fierce with Age by Dr. Carol Osborn. I have been having a few hard months. First, I turned 70; then I was working way to hard; then a dear friend died quickly and abruptly. Then I read Orsborn's memoir of a hard year she had after she turned sixty, and I found sustenance and the will to move beyond the restlessness that has been plaguing my days and nights. Orsborn is an expert on the "baby boomer" generation and the author of several self-help books.

Orsborn describes a year in her life through entries much like a diary. She is on the "wild side" of sixty when a job change causes the couple to move from Los Angeles to New York. She left behind her work, which was waning anyway, and found herself at loose ends and feeling very old. At first she rages against the concept of "ageism" and loses her spiritual footing. Then slowly, she finds herself becoming spiritually whole again and ready to move on fiercely. She says that she is "surprisingly re-energized about who I am becoming, and fiercely curious about what lies ahead."

But becoming "fierce with age" doesn't come easily to Orsborn, and apparently it is not coming easily to me. We see Orsborn's progress through the year from a bout of self-pity to the moment when she rages against God and comes to the spiritual understanding that while she is not about to give up, she is at a new stage in her life's journey. And like most women, she feels like she is on this journey on her own with very little guidance.

The Publisher's Weekly reviewer suggests that this is not "naval gazing" but a rich description of what most thoughtful women of a certain age experience. Before her year is over, she has developed 11 spiritual truths of aging, some guiding principles that she wishes to convey to others moving past middle age. I particularly like number five which says, "We can dance with rather than struggle against the essence of who we are."

"But I now understood, not just intellectually nor even just emotionally, but in the very depths of my mortal soul, that it was not only my destiny but also everybody else's to die someday. I would not, could not, make peace with aging until I had come to terms with the finitude of existence, including the possibility of suffering and the guarantee of death, none of which were likely to be on my own terms."

Nearly everything Orsborn struggled with resonated with me. Last night my husband and I were discussing her book and we mentioned how people--like servers or store clerks--now view us as old, when, in fact, we forget that we look that way. It is always a shock to be treated with deference to our age.

A year ago, I had the opportunity to work with a major children's publisher on a large project, which lasted for four months. It was a very exciting gig for me and extremely satisfying. At one point I mentioned to the 30-something woman who was running the project that I hoped I was being useful. "Oh." she said. "It is wonderful to have you in the group! You know the backlist so well." meaning that I knew all the old books. A back-handed compliment if I ever heard one.

I was inspired when Orsborn detailed the moments when her focus changed from fighting against the aging process to being inspired by the process. She vividly describes the moment when she realized that "...life is mysterious, awe-some and awe-ful all at once. Can we be wise enough to embrace it all?" That is what I want to do. Embrace the mystery. Live to the fullest with grace and wisdom.

Carol Orsborn's website, aptly called "Fierce with Age." http://fiercewithage.com/

The Publishers Weekly review: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-62045-375-9