Aging

I have the distinct pleasure of volunteering with a very “young” woman who is approaching the age of ninety-three. We have worked together for the past several years at Select Seconds, the hospital thrift shop. About once a month, Ann puts me to shame. She has more energy bottled up in her tiny little body than most of the teenage boys in my high school foreign language classes.

I remember one Saturday when we were working, Ann asked if she could leave a bit early. She needed to finish mowing her lawn. Mowing her lawn! Now mind you, it was a Saturday in June and it was at least ninety degrees outside. Mow her lawn! I was thinking about going home and lying in the shade with a big glass of iced tea. This mowing stuff from a woman who was literally twice my age!

So, I came home from the thrift shop only to find my neighbor, Mrs. Frye, out working in her vegetable garden! Now if Mrs. Frye is not yet ninety, she’s terribly close. Mrs. Frye’s yard is immaculate, on a bad day. Her vegetable garden would put any master gardener to shame. And there she was in the heat out working in her yard.

I pulled in my driveway, laden with guilt. There would be neither shade nor iced tea that afternoon. As I sat in the car, I wondered what I would be like at ninety…or if I would even make it to ninety. I smiled as I realized I would very much like to be like Mrs. Frye or like Ann. I wanted to be an active “young” elderly woman, and I had excellent role models.

I also thought about trends in our society; the trend to appear as young as possible, to somehow extend youth. We’re bombarded with advertisements for gels and creams that will make our lines of aging “disappear.” Ads for plastic surgery and energizing drugs and drink mixes. Why are we so afraid of aging?

In other cultures, there is much respect for and admiration of the elderly. In France, the elderly are allowed to take the best spots in line. People in other cultures look up to the elderly as the wise ones. They admire those wrinkles of experience. We want to erase them.

“Age is a state of mind.” I’ve heard that phrase many times, especially from older folks who jog around the tennis courts or who are in training for a marathon. My husband recently commented on an actress who was at least in her late fifties and had clearly succumbed to the surgery trend. “Her face doesn’t even look real,” he said. And I was reminded of the Velveteen Rabbit and the Skin Horse who explained to him, “Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.”

Maybe we needn’t worry so about maintaining our youth…maybe we just need to focus a little more on being real. Ann and Mrs. Frye are so real that I when I grow up, I want to be just like they are! Real “young.”