aging well

[snugglekitty]

Tell me about someone who was old when you were young, who you admired.

And then tell me the thing that scares you most about getting old.

Comments

[hanseth.livejournal.com]

someone who was old when you were young, who you admired
My grandmother. I have her hands -- dry, wrinkled, with thin skin.

the thing that scares you most about getting old
Losing my memory. I have enough problems with that as it is.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

tell me the thing that scares you most about getting old.

Well, the memory lapses are a bit scary. And my hands being at only 50% of operating capacity for the first few hours in the morning.

[nepenthedreams]

My mom's best friend. She was funky and cool, and had her own sense of style, and I just loved that she felt free to be herself.

Getting old - Mostly I fear _looking old_ and what that entails. ie loss of prestige (as a woman), loss of desire (my desire is highly linked to my perception of my own desirability), loss of opportunities that young women have. I really really fear getting old.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

It depends on how you define "young." When I was in college, I worked part-time doing clerical work in the Women's Studies department. My boss, Fran, was a woman who was theoretically past retirement age but who didn't feel ready to give it up yet. She was very engaged with life, volunteered with Planned Parenthood, read about nutrition before it became popular, and was obviously in love with her husband. She was plump and had grey/white hair cut in a style that was obviously more about ease of care than about vanity.

Fran made it clear that you could be old and still be progressive, that you could be old and still keep up with current trends (or even anticipate them), that you could be old and still be as active and engaged with life as anybody else. She made it clear that you could be old and still be sexual and you could be sexual when you were old without having to look as if you were young -- plump old ladies with no-nonsense hairstyles can still have a good time in bed. She was kind to young people without focusing her life on them -- she was focused on doing the things that interested her; she wasn't living vicariously through anybody else.

ALL of these things were very different from anything I saw in my family. Goddess bless Fran Price.

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful example. Thanks for sharing. :)

answering my own questions - part one

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

When I was a child, I was friends with a very old woman, a retired art teacher in her seventies, named Dorothy Perloff. She was very different from the other old people I knew. She had children and grandchildren, but she only talked about them if you asked about them. She still painted, and she had a big house full of her art. She always wore her hair in an elegant twist at the back of her neck. But she didn't wear jewelry, and the clothes she wore and the way she wore them suggested they could have hardly had less importance to her.

She was the first adult that I formed a friendship with independent of any connection to my parents. She would invite me over for tea and cookies. She mostly had me talk about my life, although the few times she talked about her life (her marriage and why it ended, being an art teacher) it sunk in very deeply. When I turned sixteen, she told me I could choose one of her paintings to have. I choose the small blue painting of the tree that many of you have seen in my bedroom. We were close even into college, until her children decided to put her in a home. I never heard from her after that, unless you count a few very vivid dreams, and she's passed away now.

I loved that she was feisty and spunky and didn't care about what other people thought. I loved that she never told me how to live my life - so many adults do, when you're a kid. And I love the way she listened to me.

answering my own questions - part two

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

Like nepenthe01, and probably lots of other women, what I fear about getting old is no longer being desirable. It's hard to know how much of the way people treat me, and whether they want me, has to do with my looks and youth.