“Would you like to learn to knit?” I asked when my mother unwillingly moved into a nursing home.
“No.” She gave me a hostile look.
I felt maternal toward her. What was I thinking? Now that she had health problems, now that I had watched her shrink from a size 12 to size 2, now that I’d rolled her in the movie theater’s wheelchair out to a taxi after she got ill at Bridesmaids (the last film she saw in a theater), I thought I should counsel her. Just as she had encouraged me long ago to go to Paper Doll, a junior high dance at the Recreation Center, I felt she should try some new activities. Just as I’d been miserable at Paper Doll—my rebellious friends and I wore cute miniskirts and big hats but were not asked to dance—so my mother hated the idea of wielding knitting needles and yarn.
I wished she would leave her room more, but the activities were lame, I admit: doing jigsaw puzzles, making your own sundaes, and selling handmade crafts. “Who would want a bead bracelet?” Mother hooted. She explained that you never feel old, that you remain the same person, only eventually have health problems. And I remembered the Gray Panthers, founded by Abbie Kuhn in 1970, a group of activists who lobbied for nursing-home reform, the creation of a government-subsidized, single-payer national health insurance program, and against mandatory retirement age.
I do not yet belong to the AARP. They’ve been sending info since my forties. A friend joined in her fifties and got discounts at hotels. But my husband shudders over the idea of the AARP.
Mother loved the AARP discounts. “But then nobody can believe how old I am.”
As old age approaches, it is good to be vain. “We look great,” Mother said. Of course! Our Bodies, Ourselves! One day, while grooming herself in a hand mirror, she pulled back her face with her fingers and said, “See how much better I’d look.” “No, you look perfect.”
Of course we are shocked to see friends age. When my mother’s most popular friend visited, I was surprised by her drooping face and posture. One minute of conversation and i’d forgotten it. “Do I look beautiful? I just had my hair done.” And she invited me to have dinner in the hospital cafeteria. Finally I was a popular girl!
It’s not that I like aging or look forward to old age, but we will remain exactly the same people. Let’s hope the Gray Panthers have luck in making our lives better.
And here are 10 great books aging, with links to Goodreads pages.
- Simone de Beauvoir’s The Coming of Age. A study of aging over 1,000 years.
- Doris Lessing’s Love, Again. A novel about a 65-year-old woman who falls in love during the production of a play.
- Barbara Pym’s Quartet in Autumn. A novel about four old people who work in an office and what happens when they retire.
- Florida Maxwell-Scott’s The Measure of My Days. Am 86-year-old Jungian analyst on the experience of aging.
- Cicero’s On Old Age (De Senectute). The Roman orator’s philosophical treatise on old age.
- Nora Ephron’s I Remember Nothing. A collection of humor pieces and essays.
- Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty. Heilbrun is a scholar but you may know her as Amanda Cross, the pseudonym under which she wrote the Kate Fansler mysteries.
- Kingsley Amis’s Ending up. An outrageous novel about a group of aged friends.
- Mary Wesley’s Jumping the Queue. An elderly widow is about to commit suicide, but when she encounters a young man about to kill himself in the same spot, she saves him and changes her mind, too.
- Margaret Drabble’s The Dark Flood Rises. A brilliant novel about the fates of different characters as they face old age.
Do let me know other favorite books about aging!