Seventy is different than the sixties. How do I know? Because just two months ago, at the tender age of 69, the outcome I’m about to describe would have been very different. And the young nursing student who had been eavesdropping on my conversation with old friends at lunch may have been scarred for life. As it is, we all walked away from the encounter unscathed and I have lived to tell the tale.
The four of us in conversation, each sporting variations of wrinkles and gray, had passed the hour over Caesar salads regaling one another with age-appropriate subject matter, beginning with what my colleague Bob Weber refers to as “an organ recital”: progress reports on ailments. Then came the loss assessment: working our way down the line from parents through cousins, acquaintances and celebrities. After that, seeking advice on parenting issues. Yes, still. Forging on through frustration over politics, updates on projects, aspirations and so on. Just then, the future nurse, having paid her bill, walked up to us and offered: “I could not help overhearing your conversation. I cannot believe what you’re having to go through. I’ll keep you all in my prayers.”
So, two months ago, at 69, I would have felt judged by entitled youth’s assumed mantle of superiority over the aged. Truth is, all I still wanted to do was tell her where she could stick her prayers. But I’m seventy now and I didn’t. You know why? I didn’t want to squander the glow of good times I had been experiencing with my friends.
So, here’s the difference between the sixties and the seventies. For me, the sixties were like training wheels on growing old. Even though I write and teach about older age as a life stage with meaning and purpose of its own, I still spent a lot of valuable energy trying to extend midlife as long as possible. And mostly, in my sixties, I could pull it off. When I looked in the mirror and saw my mother’s face, I could change to a brighter shade of lipstick and grow dreadlocks, and voila: people could be counted on to be shocked when they heard my age.
Since seventy, there’s virtually no shock coming at me, and more of, if anything, of “You look good for your age.” At 70, I no longer see my mother in the mirror. Now I see my grandmother. In hip clothes, albeit, but still my aging looks is some kind of genie that I now realize I am not going to get back in the bottle. But the thing is, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s freedom in this. I have finally stopped going to doctors trying to figure out why my flat tummy, previously such a source of pride, now poofs out. It’s not a tumor, as it turns out, it’s genetics. Instead of an ultrasound, I can take the time and go to lunch with friends.
What the young nurse failed to notice is that even though our complaints are real (mostly), justified (mostly) and valid (mostly), we are not poor things to be pitied and prayed over. We were and are having the time of our lives. Over the course of one lunch, we laughed, we cried, we sank and we transcended. We left nothing out because we have lived it all—are living it all—and the more life comes, the more living we are doing. We are comrades in arms, a band of sisters, a people’s march on the road to transcendence.
If the young nurse wants to pray for me, that’s her business. But if I were to tender my own, a prayer for 70, it would go something like this:
“Dear God, so okay. I get it. I’ll take it. And thanks for the Caesar. It was delicious.”
Amen.
*For Me
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Carol Orsborn, Ph.D., is Founder of Fierce with Age, the free monthly Digest of Boomer Wisdom, Inspiration and Spirituality. Carol, who earned her doctorate in the history and critical theory of religion specializing in adult and spiritual development from Vanderbilt University, is the best-selling author of 30 books, including The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker’s Guide to Growing Older (co-author Dr. Robert L. Weber), winner of gold in the category of Consciously Aging, Nautilus Book Awards 2015. Carol’s blog Older, Wiser, Fiercer is available at CarolOrsborn.com.
