NOTES, JUNE '07 – I WENT TO A MARVELOUS PARTY
In The New York Post on May 24th Liz Smith wrote "NATHAN LANE proves again what a master he is of every word and nuance. His remarks before giving the National Corporate Theatre Fund award to the legend Elaine Stritch were a life-saver for the Tavern on the Green evening at which regional theaters were saluted. Nathan brought things up to super pro par, saying he is a "Stritchoholic" and adding, "Al Gore has also told me she is indirectly responsible for global warming, because wherever she goes, things tend to heat up!" His story of Stritch waltzing into theaters without paying, and only "Mamma Mia!" saying no to her, was priceless."
I was at that party at Tavern on the Green, one of the most beautiful restaurants in the world and better yet I was at the “family” table of the honoree, my old pal Elaine Stritch (who gave me the title “Disregard First Book"). And it was some table. The picture above is of (right to left) Shelia Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary who as Executive Producer has collected over 80 Emmys and 17 Oscars. She produced the documentary about Elaine that won both of them Emmy Awards two years ago. Next is the adorable Nathan Lane, then me, next the columnist Liz Smith and then the gorgeous Arlene Dahl. Not in the picture was Olympia Dukakis who was one of the presenters as was David Hyde Pierce.
It was one of the great nights of my long life and when I thought about it later what struck me was that at seventy-four I was one of the youngest women there. Shelia is much younger but Elaine Stritch, the toast of the town, is 82, Liz Smith shares her birthday but is a year older, Arlene is in her seventies as is Olympia. All of these great looking women are energetic, active and excited about plans for future projects. Arlene who is as bright and kind as she is beautiful has a motto, "Love life and life will love you back." And all of these women appear to buy into that as evidenced by the positive and joyful way they approach their work.
I keep a picture on my dresser of myself as a four year old with my grandparents and Grandma is every bit the “little old lady” but when I did the math she had to have been in her early fifties. Perhaps eighty is the new sixty and we who are on the far side of seventy can take heart. Gypsy Rose Lee may have said “I have everything now that I had twenty years ago except now it’s lower.” But more encouraging is a quote from my treasured friend Helen Hayes who claimed “The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.” She felt after seventy you had nothing left to prove, no one left to astonish. That age offered great compensations.
These compensations of getting older were put best by the brilliant Judith Viorst who wrote
“We aren’t as self-centered as we used to be
We’re not as self-pitying – or as just plain dumb
We aren’t as uncertain as we used to be
We’ve learned to tell the real from the tinsel and fluff
We aren’t as compliant as we used to be
We choose our own oughts and musts and got-to’s and shoulds
We aren’t as judgmental as we used to be
We are quicker to laugh and not as eager to blame
There’s time left in this game
We’re deep in the woods yet we find
(Along with the inability to eat a pepperoni pizza at bedtime)
A few compensations"
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NOTES, OCTOBER '07 – PEAS UP YOUR NOSE
I come from a family of talkers. Once when we were having dinner my Father shouted out, “Shut up!” And we did. He continued “There are eight people at this table and five of you are talking. One of you does not have a listener. Either pick up a listener or be quiet.” He seemed unaware of the reality that his six children, in the interest of self-preservation, had perfected the device of talking and listening at the same time. And, to facilitate this and speed things up, we’d developed some short-cuts... phrases of a few words to indicate a more involved thought or idea. These phrases culled from memorable events in our young lives.
When faced with a predicament that required prompt action to effect self-preservation and avoid disappointment, the phrase was “Take a bite of your éclair” which originated on the Sunday when instead of a home-made dessert our Mother had splurged on eight French bakery pastries. And just as we were about to eat them there was a knock on the door and we realized our parish priest was paying his Sunday visit. So the cry went out, “Quick, take a bite of your éclair.”
Another such phrase went back to a Thanksgiving dinner when Grandma’s dining room was full and all of us children were relegated to a card table in the parlor. Aunt Flossie brought us plates of food, admonishing, “Whatever you do don’t put the peas up your nose.” That had not occurred to any of us but guess what everyone did the minute she turned her back? And the phrase “peas up your nose” became our shorthand for an idea which, however ill-thought out, once planted, caught on like wildfire.
So even now as I am confronted with news of the unexpected consequences of women’s emergence in the marketplace, I think, “Peas up your nose.” For instance, today for the first time women in their 20’s who work full time in cities like New York, Boston and Chicago, are earning higher wages than men in that age group which skewers the dating game and sabotages the mating game. What we may have is a gender war where there can be no winners.
Also, a Princeton study has found that there is a growing happiness gap between men and women. In the early 1970’s women reported being slightly happier than men. Today the two have changed places. Since the 1960’s men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant and now work less and relax more. But over the same period women have replaced housework with paid-work and are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past.
The big reason that women reported being happier three decades ago is probably that they had more narrow ambitions and compared themselves only to other women. This doesn’t mean they were better off back then but it shows how incomplete the gender revolution has been. American women have flooded into the work force but American society hasn’t fully come to grips with the change. And unlike other industrialized countries, the United States still doesn’t have universal preschool or guaranteed paid leaves for parents.
What has changed is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once had and can’t get it all done so they end up feeling as if they are somehow falling short. And they’re, frankly, exhausted.
One finding in this study that I found particularly troubling is that men apparently enjoy being with their parents while women find time with them to be less pleasant than doing the laundry. Maybe because for men family gatherings tend to involve sitting and watching football with their Dads while the women are hustling in the kitchen.
I have only one line of advice for these women. Take a bite of your éclair.
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NOTES, NOVEMBER '07 – HOPING FOR A DUCK
Many of you have contacted me regarding last month’s NOTES which you saw as critical of the Women’s Liberation Movement. You’re right. The courageous women who founded it recognized unconscionable gender injustice and sought to rectify the problem. These predominantly well-educated professional women took action appropriate to the hurdles they faced achieving political and social equality. And they moved mountains.
Regarding the efficacy of Women’s Movement, the anthropologist Dr. Lionel Tiger wrote, “Events have far overtaken the boldest expectations…Millions of years of evolutionary regularity have been altered in a very brief period.” But. to mix metaphors, their revolution caught on like wildfire then overshot the runway. Maureen Dowd nailed it writing that. “Feminism lasted for a nanosecond, but the backlash has lasted forty years.” And I can’t figure out why our leading feminists who were so successful in getting women equality of opportunity in education and business didn’t also deal with the needs of their sisters who, encouraged by them, became working mothers?
I am personally thankful that, in 1994, with barriers lowered, I could become the first woman mayor of my hometown. And I’m grateful that my eight granddaughters have, thanks to Title IX, opportunities to play school sports and have equal entree into colleges and universities and professions once dominated by men. But it’s time for us girls to regroup and get energized because that first wave of feminist leaders seems to have lost steam. In 1978, 100,000 women marched on Washington demanding equal rights Currently called “The Women’s Equality Amendment” it still hasn’t passed.
In these endless months of the most dreary and prolonged presidential debates ever there’s much talk about “bearing arms” and nothing about “bearing children.” Lots of sententious palaver about the rights of the unborn but nothing about what’s due to the child that embryo will become. Like healthcare. In Washington our lawmakers have consistently and vociferously voted to protect animal species they’ve never laid eyes on. How tough should it be to prompt them into protecting mothers when everyone in Congress has one?
I never was convinced, even back in the seventies, that the feminist leaders appropriately appreciated motherhood as a spectacular prospect and a compulsion for many women Because you really can’t fool Mother Nature the pressure to reproduce will always be a driving force and motherhood is not a trivial role Family is still the core value of most societies and mothers are its backbone. As a species, we are mammals who receive our first food from the bodies of the mothers who gave birth to us. And whose survival depends on mother and child being nourished and sheltered. A mother is the most powerful. person in a child’s life and as that child’s foremost protector she warrants protection. Lip service is given to motherhood as “the most important job a woman can have” and children as “the hope of the future” but the tax breaks go to the oil companies. And as our feminist leaders marched forward, the problems of American mothers, particularly working mothers, have been largely ignored.
The last census revealed that over 1,300,000 babies were born that year to single mothers and four out of five of them had to cope on less than $35,000 a year. When you also recognize that most two parent families are dependent on duel incomes, it’s obvious that our current laws do not begin to meet the needs of working families. In August ’07 the National Geographic reported that 170 countries offer paid maternity leave and 98 of them offer at least 14 weeks off with pay. The United States is not one of them. In fact we are one of only four countries with no paid family leave, putting us in the fashionable company of Papua New Guinea, Liberia and Swaziland.
The stalwart leaders of the original Women’s Movement have much to be proud of. But they, and we, now must marshal our forces to give working mothers and their families the support they deserve. And not just by throwing them a bone here and there. Because all we’re doing with that paradigm is, to quote my Irish grandmother, “pasting feathers together hoping for a duck.”
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NOTES, JANUARY 2008 – AN OLD BROAD MEETS A NEW YEAR
I was touched by how many people inquired about my health because there was no posting for December. I tried to answer each query relating how I spent most of the month having cataract surgery one eye at a time. The operations were successful. The good news is my sight is now 20/20. The bad news is I have more wrinkles than I imagined and find that my apartment needs painting.
But I am thrilled to have my vision improved. Because my great joy has been reading and like anyone who lives to read I have always been intrigued by words. And am fascinated with how often they are used, mostly by politicians, more to obscure than enlighten. The London Telegraph recently ran an interview with me which prompted me to buy the paper to follow up letters etc. And I came across the obituary of their own obituary writer Hugh Massingberd who had transformed the paper’s obits from ponderous, sycophantic eulogies into warts-and-all profiles of the delectable departed. It related how he carefully coded euphemisms when describing the lives of the deceased gentry. “Did not suffer fools gladly” meant monstrously foul-tempered. “Gave colorful accounts of his exploits” meant a liar and “A powerful negotiator” a bully. A flasher was described as “An uncompromisingly direct ladies’ man” and “Relished the cadences of the English language” meant he was an incorrigible windbag. “Convivial” meant habitually drunk.
Mr. Massingberd’s elegant phrasing is, in it’s own way, a lesson in civility which along with courteousness seems to be vanishing. As previously mentioned, I am a great fan of the Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith (he of the “Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency”) and commenting on contemporary society he recently wrote “ If things are to change, then the culture itself must look into the mirror and see what rearrangement are required . . . It has to realize that we have almost entirely squandered our moral capital, built up by generations of people who had striven to lead good lives; capital so swiftly lost to selfishness and discourtesy. It has to admit that we have failed badly in education and that this can only be cured by restoring the respect due to teachers and cajoling parents into doing their part to discipline and educate their ill-mannered children.”
And we all know about ill-mannered children. My sons have restaurants and one constant problem is families with children who act out and run around and the parents think they’re cute, looking around at fellow diners smiling and nodding, telegraphing the message, “Isn’t he adorable?” The answer is no. The child is annoying and, when he runs about, is a threat to the servers who have to dodge him. What are they thinking? Teachers complain that when students seriously misbehave their parents blame them for not understanding junior’s need to express himself. At what point do these parents think their child is going to understand parameters? That in a civilized society there are accepted rules of behavior which benefit all.
Recently I was invited to meet with a group of female high school seniors enrolled in a mentoring program funded by the amazing Judge Judy Sheindlin of TV fame. And these girls were an inspiration. They were predominantly first generation Hispanic and when I asked about their career plans almost every one began, “I want to help people.” They expected to have to work hard, harder than their classmates who probably had better educated parents without language barriers. And what did they ask of their school? More discipline, uniforms would help, and less tolerance for fellow students who were acting out. The ill-mannered youths McCall Smith wrote about who consumed their teachers’ attention and interfered with their education.
I didn’t start out to be so preachy but I am increasingly bothered by a world I often don’t understand. The incredible Chris Rock put it very well. “You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America’s Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance and Germany doesn’t want to go to war.”
Perhaps I need to become more “convivial”.
Happy New Year.
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NOTES, FEBRUARY 2008 - PUNDITS
On January 8th I became the proud owner of a new right knee. My left knee was replaced a year ago so unless I grow a third leg the worst is over. The operation was done by a brilliant surgeon and the recovery has been fine but slow and painful. In addition to other therapy I had to spend six to eight hours a day on my back in an automatic leg-flexing machine.
So I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to television. Now last year when I had the first knee surgery the big television story was Anna Nicole Smith and it was, by any standards, a compelling soap opera. This year I got politics . . . caucuses, debates, primaries . . . it just about drove me mad.
This is no place for politics which is fine. But locked into my therapy machine I became intrigued by the tv pundits who knew it all and forecast every aspect of the process. These intellectual and experienced (and often pompous) commentators called all the shots and made carefully calculated pronouncements.
Giuliani is the sure front-runner.
McCain’s campaign is dead.
Mr. Obama is not black enough to corner the black vote.
Mrs. Clinton is invincible.
Mrs. Clinton is falling behind.
John Edwards will pull ahead.
And the beat goes on. I love Doris Kearns Goodwin but the pretentious stance of most of these tv personalities began to irritate me although, on the up-side, it took my mind off the ache in my knee so it wasn’t all bad.
It was ever thus. Some decades ago there was a prominent survey among American intellectuals on various subjects of historical interest. My favorite questionnaire reply came from the brilliant writer Gore Vidal.
The question was, “How would history have been changed if Khrushchev had been assassinated instead of John Kennedy?” Vidal’s answer. “Well I’m fairly certain Onassis would not have married Mrs. Khrushchev.”
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NOTES, MARCH 12TH
I am late with this month’s notes because of the consuming rehab of my new knee but today I was pressed to write about the startling revelations concerning my state’s governor having to resign because of his involvement with prostitutes. And while Governor Spitzer’s story made the front page of the New York papers, my little hometown paper actually had two equally shocking front page stories today. One concerned a local woman attorney and mother who was sentenced to three years in jail for having sex with teen-age boys. The other concerned a high school girl’s soccer coach convicted of raping a 15 year old player. What are these people thinking? Are they thinking at all?
I have met Elliot Spitzer and found him, unlike most politicians, quite uncomfortable in a social setting. Rather forbidding actually. And because of his crusader, holier-than-thou reputation, this sexual problem was shocking…jaw dropping. Every tv newsperson analyzed him in depth and ad nauseum but the best line came . . . as usual . . . from former NY mayor Ed Koch who simply said, “He must have a screw loose.”
Whatever, he is in elegant company. While Gov. Spitzer was client #9, it looks life #6 is the Duke of Westminster who is Prince William’s godfather and according to Forbes, the 46th richest man in the world. So he too could afford $3000 tricks but what equipment do these call girls have that others don’t possess? Or do these guys simply have itches their wives can’t scratch? Indeed the media came up with all kinds of theories but one of the most unusual came from The NY Post columnist Cindy Adams. She wrote today that many married women don’t have a problem with their husbands using prostitutes seeing them like take-out food . . . less work for mother. Interesting hypothesis!
In all the palaver about prostitution (about which I am woefully ignorant) I remember the words of the iconic theorist and philosopher Jackie Mason. He spoke about sex as having economic value, driving many industries and he enumerated them. He noted that when a john spent the evening with a “paid escort” the restaurant where he took her to dinner made money, the hotel where he took her made money and the room-service waiter made money. The only person not legally allowed to make money was the woman . . . and she has the goods.
It does make you think.
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NOTES, APRIL 2008 - FOR BETTER OR WORSE?
So many women contacted me after last month’s piece on male infidelity that I have to share their thoughts. Most of the comments came from wives who’d been deserted by their children’s father . . . women frightened at being alone to raise angry and confused children and usually facing poverty, unprepared to earn a decent living for their families. Many mentioned having been in battered women’s shelters and Alanon rooms where they’d have been delighted if sexual infidelity had been the worst breech of their marriage contract. They saw infidelity as painful and destructive but trumped by the damage divorce would do their children.
Infidelity is the ultimate betrayal given that you can only be “betrayed” by someone you trust (think Judas and Linda Tripp). Unfaithfulness in marriage is excruciating because it is disloyalty on the part of the one person you trust the most. Having known that pain I am the last person to trivialize infidelity but it has to be put in perspective by honestly tallying up the real costs of divorce when examined from the viewpoint of mothers.
I’m persuaded that (except in the most extreme circumstances) once you have taken on the spectacular obligation of having children you should expect to forfeit the right to a divorce if its only function is to place your happiness above theirs. A divorce which will be the determining event in their lives, often sentencing them to lifelong problems.
There is increasing scientific evidence that the sexual genetic differences between men and women are greater than previously recognized. Many men have a tough time with monogamy even though it is practiced successfully by the chin strap penguin, the long eared owl and the black vulture. Monogamy is uncommon in most species and statistically rare in modern marriage.
Every marriage has its own trajectory but whatever the motive or excuses, adultery is wrong and disrespects both the spouse and the family. But men can have strong sex drives . . . often more complex than women recognize. Husbands can be drawn to fetishes their wives can’t comprehend. Or even imagine. So it can follow that a man who would never commit a malicious sin can be tempted to commit sins of the flesh.
Decades ago when there was a TV expose on the real best little whorehouse in Texas, a townswoman told the interviewer that she was happy her husband had someplace to go and take care of his needs. Face it many men have preexisting sexual urges that their loving wives cannot satisfy. Itches their wives cannot scratch. Or would rather not.
On the flip side, I questioned a young man as to why, in this age of sexual permissiveness, when a guy can almost always pick up a girl in a bar who’ll go to bed with him, does he still turn to prostitutes? He said, “Men don’t pay them for the sex. They pay them to go away afterwards.”
Wives of adulterers who choose to stand by their husbands have made difficult but often pragmatic decisions, recognizing that once upon a time never comes again. No couple lives happily ever after and romantic love can be fragile and inconsistent. It was ever thus. The brilliant George Kaufman once urged Irving Berlin to get real and re-word his song ALWAYS so it went, “I’ll Be Loving You . . . Tuesday.”
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NOTES, MAY 2008 - “TILL DEATH DO US PART ???”
Thank you to the women who responded to last month’s column on infidelity…I am grateful for their insights and will edit some of their stories for June’s posting. It is an emotional and often painful subject.
A minister friend confided that in pre-wedding counseling he always asks couples to define what would break the marriage contract and they invariably say infidelity. They reject his suggestion that perhaps substance abuse or financial instability might present difficulties. But years later when they come back for desperately needed marriage counseling infidelity is rarely the overriding problem.
Although most of us would not condone adultery I have, after much soul-searching , come to the conclusion that there are only a few valid reasons to demolish a family and adultery is not one of them. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple solved many murders because of her knowledge of human nature claiming that since she knew all about her neighbors in St. Mary Mead, she knew about the world. I have lived in a small village in the Hudson Valley for fifty years and have watched my neighbors live their lives. And I could (but never would) name a dozen lovely families where the parents are celebrating golden anniversaries although the husband had at least one flagrant and scandalous affair.
The Dutch have a word, “gedogen” which means turning a blind eye. These wives (like several clever First Ladies) implemented it, often pretending not to notice, and hung in there and kept their families in tact. And I see these couples now, enjoying their grandchildren, holding hands and caring for each other as infirmities of age crop up. And I think how brave and unselfish these wives were, putting aside their own hurt and humiliation for the greater long range good of their families. And perhaps themselves.
The conundrum posed always is, “But how can she ever trust him again?” Well some of these wives probably felt they could trust their husbands to bring home their paychecks, trust them to love the children as only their own Father can, trust them to keep their family safe and protected. And those were the “trusts” that they believed carried more weight than trusting them to keep their pants on.
Remember, in many stable societies respectable married men are presumed to have mistresses. Which is a tough one. Having your husband go off the deep end after too many martinis at a convention is one thing. But it would be agonizing to know that your husband has another woman stashed away whose company he prefers. Who he turns to not just for sex but for intimacy. However, given time, most often the guy returns home. He wants the excitement of a piece on the side. He doesn’t want confrontation. He doesn’t want the hassle of moving out of his home and breaking in a new wife. He especially doesn’t want to hurt his children.
And if he’s really smart he’ll recognize the self-defeating futility of ditching his wife for his girl friend because when a philandering man marries his mistress he all too often creates a job opening.
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NOTES, JUNE 2008 -
YOU CAN’T GET PIZZA FROM A CHINESE RESTAURANT
The emails on the issue of infidelity have been numerous and somewhat predictable. Younger wives see sexual infidelity as unpardonable and older wives not so much. And many of their stories were worthy of a movie of the week on the WB network. But I will limit this posting to my own stories.
I haunt flea markets and came across a book from 1909 titled “The Journal of a Neglected Wife”. The first line from the wife is, “Is he with her tonight?” and 253 pages later the last line from the husband to his wife is “ … the future would not seem so blank if I felt you were still with me. I have relinquished all right to your love, even to your pity. But … I hope you will stay.” And she does of course.
On another front, years ago my daughter was baby sitting for a young couple going to a party. About mid-night the wife called asking me to come and get her. Turned out she’d caught her husband having sex with the hostess in the powder room and panicked. She was sobbing when I picked her up and said she wanted to kill herself. Halfway home she’d decided she wanted to kill him. By the time we reached her driveway she decided what she really wanted was a BMW. Thirty years later they’re still together and every so often when I see her riding through the village in yet another snazzy new car I wonder what he’s been up to. Literally!
Basically each couple cuts their own deal and chooses the compromises they’re willing to make. And deals with the consequences of those compromises. And frankly it’s no one else’s business. Just this week a New York social column featured a picture of former Governor Spitzer’s wife at a charity event. Having weathered enormous humiliation and pain when she stood by her husband’s side as he resigned, there she was wearing a bright red dress and an equally bright smile. I found it very courageous and gutsy, notwithstanding that the caption on the picture identified her as Silda Wall.
Older women have been advising younger women on handling infidelity through the ages. I recently saw a revival of the 1936 play THE WOMEN by Claire Booth Luce (a smart cookie if ever there was one) where the lead character is urged by her friends to throw out her philandering husband while her wise Mother urges her to hang in there. Eventually she follows her Mother’s advice and there’s a happy ending.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received on relationships came from a wise older woman who explained in a heavy Russian accent, “You can’t get pizza from a Chinese restaurant.” She meant you can’t get what someone hasn’t got to give and so we are too often sabotaged by a culture which burdens us with unrealistic expectations especially where marriage is concerned. There is also the issue of pernicious discontent which often is the overriding quality in people’s lives. Individuals unable to get beyond gloom and disappointment to be happy and grateful for the blessings they might enjoy.
There is a folk story about a terribly grouchy old lady. Nothing, nothing, was ever good enough for her and her one and only soft spot was for her little grandson. One cold day she took him walking along the beach and a huge wave came in and swept him out to sea. The horrified grandmother began to plead with God, begging Him to return the little boy, promising Him her undying devotion. When a second wave delivered the child back into his grandmother’s arms she looked toward heaven and shouted, “He had a hat.”
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NOTES, July 2008 - On Happily Looking Forward to My 76th Summer
Last week I had a long lunch with three friends from our all-girl Catholic high school. Now in our seventies we’ve known each other for almost sixty years. We knew each other’s parents and children and attended their funerals and weddings. We’ve shared good times and bum times but when we get together we mostly laugh.
We talked about why we’re still thoroughly enjoying life when most of our classmates are gone and it was clear . . . our sense of humor. It had taken us through widowhood, divorce, deaths and disappointments. There have been scientific studies indicating the happiest people are the most resilient. So it follows that we, and other cheerful contemporaries, are better off because we have a positive attitude toward life combined with curiosity about our world and delight in its pleasures.
We schoolmates agreed that each day when we gratefully wake up we choose to be happy. Because happiness, especially in later life, is not an entitlement or a gift…it’s a choice. I certainly realize that terrible things happen and cause astonishing pain. But I believe our survival is contingent upon optimism combined with what the French call “joie de vivre.” In a television interview the still remarkably beautiful Arlene Dahl was asked what secret allowed her to remain so vibrant and attractive and her answer was “I learned that if you love life, life will love you back.” She nailed it.
Old age can bring aches and pains, dependency, isolation and loneliness but if you have decent health and enough money to pay your bills, it could be the best time of your life. All endings involve new beginnings and once I got used to living alone…something I dreaded . . . I began to treasure my freedom. And delight in the knowledge that no one expected me to do anything. I didn’t have to answer to anyone. I didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission. I was only responsible for me. I realized I was less driven and more the driver. I came to grips with the reality that my new life had to be crafted . . . needed new arrangements. And offered unanticipated opportunities. I discovered that when you’re over-the-hill you learn to coast and then you might even pick up speed. My former neighbor and treasured friend, the great actress Helen Hayes, was over ninety when she told me the hardest years are the ones between ten and seventy. I doubted it at the time but I believe it now.
As the writer Michael Drury discovered, “Age is not a penalty, it’s the homestretch and there is natural pride and modest glory in having gotten there . . . Age brings proportion, the long view . . . Life is neither subjective nor objective but both in precise balance (so) no wonder it takes a lifetime to get the hang of it.” This may be what the Chinese view as the wisdom of the aged.
What amazes me about my contemporaries is that we’re all so cheerful given the inevitability of approaching death with its attendant suffering. Most of us treasure each day even though there’s little good news in the newspaper and none at all in the mirror. The excellent John Mortimer (author of the Rumpole stories) claimed that no one should grow old who isn’t ready to appreciate the ridiculous and PG Wodehouse said, “The great privilege of becoming an octogenarian is that you are no longer expected to go to parties. The thought that I shall never have to wear a party hat again is sustaining.” When Ruth Gordon won the Academy Award at seventy-two she said “I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is.”
So, buttressed by our humor and optimism, we seniors continue to look ahead, often convinced that the best is yet to come. Even though the prospect of humiliation is omni-present. My Aunt Jane and Uncle Harry, late in life, rented a beach house on Dune Road in Westhampton where the homes are close together. Aunt Jane insisted on bringing along her old dog Buster but the poor creature, disoriented by new surroundings, kept her awake all night. By dawn, exhausted and frustrated, she shouted, “Buster, I can’t take this anymore. You’ve made a terrible mess. And you’ve been passing gas. And now you’ve wet the bed. Buster I could strangle you.” Uncle Harry, also at wits end, seeking solace from the ocean, grabbed a robe and shuffled out to the beach-front deck where the neighbor next door called over to him, “Morning Buster”.
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