The Good-Bye Moment to Middle Age from a Once Beautiful Woman
Take me down to the harbor now
Grapes of the summer are low on the bough
Most of my history will follow me there
And the winds of the old days will blow through my hair
— Winds of the Old Days by Joan Baez —
It’s my first winter in Nashville and I wear heavy coats much earlier than I would if I were in Pensacola or San Miguel de Allende. Yesterday I put on a beloved wool jacket, stuck my hand in the pocket and pull out a love letter from a guy I dated in high school. He was a swell guy.
A sophomore at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Bob Fox plied his intellect against the trappings of the young. His news about his super afternoon in organic chemistry doing fractional distillation with some neat looking apparatus is dubbed “so cool.” Cooler yet was the evening. He heads out to get smashed at a frat party.
A stick-drawing of a martini glass was always below his return address on the envelope of the weekly letters. I loved his honesty and exuberance for life. He made me laugh.
On one of his visits home from college, he bursts in the front door of my house holding a record album. “You’ve got to listen to this!” he boomed. It is the debut album of Joan Baez.
On the fourth page of the letter, Bob reminds me that it’s nine more days until Homecoming. He has picked up the tickets to the Glenn Miller dance and made my motel reservations.
I am 18 years old. Nine days later he will find out I can drive 6 hours and spend the weekend only if my mother shares that motel room. I divulge this information late on the evening of my arrival. He wasn’t pleased but he was gallant.
Reading the letter reminds me I was young once.
I smile.
It was all a long time ago.
Pass Go, Advance to Middle Age. Now What?
In my life, I stayed young for as long as I could. Then somewhere along the way became adult-like and entered my middle years. I don’t seem to remember a particular marker for my transition. Do you remember yours?
Childhood and adolescence have clear demarcations. Middle age, not so much. For sure there is no milestone to tell you when to leave middle age and be old.
Most of us take full advantage of that. In my interviews, individuals who are over 60 push back hard when I ask them if they are old. They seem put out that I ask the question as if becoming old were something that is never going to happen to them.
We see it all around us, people growing old. Perhaps there is a time when we don’t really believe it will happen to us. In our 60’s lacking a boundary, one can be neither young nor old. Great, we think, let’s stay in the middle.
So do we stay in the middle because we can? Or because the next age group descriptor - old - lacks a sense of wonder and amazement?
Dire Straits
The developmental tasks normally associated with middle age are: we establish a family, find a clear career direction in which we peak during the middle, take responsibility with respect to our children, and often, our aging parents. Many of you, like me, have done most, if not all, of this.
When will our midlife end? Currently, the edges of midlife remain blurry. Most studies seem to say that the ages of 40-60 comprise middle age.
Here’s the confusion:
One factor affecting how people define midlife is their own current age. Those in middle-age tend to push out a later ending for midlife than the young (60 instead of 50) and use a high boundary for when individual enter old age (65 instead of 60.)
A new Pew Research study says we are old at 68.
Another study reveals that 1/3 of those in their 70’s see themselves as middle-aged.
Do a review of the literature and you’ll find this phrase - the third stage of adulthood - used to describe the period between 62 and 85. That sounds catchy.
Today, chronological age is not a salient marker of becoming “old.” While the understandings about aging and old age will change drastically in the coming years, culture changes take 40 years or so.
It’s not likely in your lifetime or mine that being old is going to be met with boy-oh-boy-oh-boy.
So now that we are relying on our own selves to tell us when it is time to leave middle age, what will you do?
What’s in Your Attic?
Here’s what I’m doing.
I am walking away from middle age. Why? Because it’s time and I am ready.
That 1962 letter is one of many things showing up in my life to remind me I have lived a long time. Many boomers choose to move. I’m one of them.
In the last two years I cleaned out an attic (prom dresses, a wedding dress, college textbooks, love letters, tax returns). I meticulously went through each item and found a home for it. Then I moved the selected stuff of my lifetime from the big house we sold to a rental condo to another rental and now to a house in the suburbs of Nashville.
While I’ve been remarkable in shedding stuff, I open one of the last boxes here in Nashville yesterday to find my sterling baby cup, two photos of unidentifiable old people holding me as a two year old, VHS tapes of my daughter in the high school talent show, and the bow tie my 8-year-old brother wore as a ring bearer at my first wedding. Significant tokens of my seven decades.
I cursed. What am I doing with these things?
Two days later I find the letter from Bob postmarked 1962.
My first thought: Ahhhh. A glimpse from the 60’s.
My second thought: The 60’s are over.
Going through your stuff? It helps you to understand how many years you have lived. If you don’t have time or are not inclined to go through your stuff, take a selfie or go take a look in the mirror.
That’ll do the trick.
Tic Tock
One afternoon about ten years ago I took a new friend upstairs to show off a closet I had created with the help of IKEA. I slide open the door to reveal a shelf of photos.
“Who is that?” she asks pointing to an 8x10 black and white framed headshot of a woman with her hair pulled back shoulders draped in black wearing pearl screw-back earrings.
“That?” I said pointing to my engagement photo. “It’s me!”
I’m baffled. It was incredulous that this woman did not know that this picture is me. After she left, I went upstairs, looked at the photo then went close to the long mirror in the dressing area.
There was no likeness between the me in the mirror and the me in the photo.
Aging happens gradually and is essentially a biological process. The skin wrinkles and sags, fat deposits around the torso, and broken capillaries are everywhere. We shrink and lose sexual potency which, from what I hear, is only slightly detectable in some.
Age changes appearance. Not just mine. No one at my high school reunions looks like the senior picture on their nametag.
I met Marvin on the shuttle bus from Mexico City to San Miguel de Allende five years ago. Last week he texts me a picture of a lanky, long-haired beautiful twenty-year-old boy. “Guess who?” he asks.
Marvin is a handsome man in his sixties. Still I could never have paired the photo with the Marvin I know.
Life is a sequential irreversible journey through stages, and we all pay homage to youth.
Everyone in their youth is beautiful. To be young is to be beautiful, to glow with anticipation and expectations. Middle age isn’t so bad either.
Many of us still turn heads or command attention in middle age either in our physical appearance, intellect, charisma or prestige. In my forties, I was late entering a Delta Airlines gathering of 500 pilots and their significant others to meet my husband. I walked through the crowd sitting at tables wearing a blue sequined pencil skirt and a matching jacket splashed with more red and white sequins of stars and stripes. Think conspicuous American flag here.
A man drops to his knee, grabs my hand, and asks, “Will you marry me?” Those pilots are a patriotic bunch.
In my late 50’s my daughter, Elizabeth, and I crossed the Mona Passage in a 3-day sail in a 42’ sailboat. We set anchor off the coast of Boqueron, Puerto Rico, and head our dingy to the dock of this small fishing village where a nice-looking middle-aged man signals he’ll help with the lines.
He offers his hand as I step onto the dock and said, “You are beautiful. I love you.” I hadn’t had a haircut in 3 months. I looked like hell. It was sweet.
In this strange new life I have now, no one is giving me a second look. I couldn’t get a catcall if I tried. I hear “yes ma’am” a lot from fifty-year-old window installers. Truthfully, I remember fondly being mistaken as the sister of my daughter, one-night stands, and flirting.
The human condition is mysterious. We tell ourselves all sorts of things that are not true like we have all the time in the world, and we will never be old. Or the one about we are in the middle of life when we are not.
But you know what? Everyone else may know what we don’t want to know.
In a conversation about my upcoming birthday, Lucy (6) and Liam (7) announce with much sincerity, “GG you are old.” I deny it. “Not really, not yet, but I am getting there.”
“No, GG, you are old,” states Liam.
Lucy Mei gets her shot in as we share a shower after a beach afternoon.
“GG, Your boobies down. I like up.”
“Who do you know that has boobies up?”
“Mommy has boobies up.”
“Well, good for Mommy.”
I am not pretentious enough to suggest you leave your middle age. I am not trying to inspire you to brand yourself old. No one can tell you when it’s time to do this. Realistically, some of us will never do it. Some may want to, but hate good-bye’s.
As my daughter and I pushed back from the dock early one morning, we found a section of fire hose in the cockpit. This parting gift - good for keeping dock lines from chafing- was from a retired fireman now a full-time cruiser who had shared stories and meals with us. He didn’t like good-bye’s. He preferred, “See you down the road.”
Rounding the end of the dock, he was there with a cup of coffee and a sad smile. “See you down the road,” he said in the quiet of that morning.
Maybe you don’t like the finality of saying farewell to years gone by. His phrase won’t work for you though. Because you’re not going to see your youth or middle age down the road.
Taking It On
In her book, A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong makes the point that every time humans take a step forward, they revise and update their understanding of the world. My saying I am old is not a massive reorientation. No dreams are shattered; no confidence punctured.
But it is a moment - a moment to me from me - to readjust my personal narrative. Life is the story we tell ourselves and I will tell mine now from the vantage of having lived over 70 years (25,550 days.)
Good-bye middle years. Farewell middle age. Saying good-bye feels like mastering a plot twist.
I am old. Shall we get on with it?
In the future when the kiddos say, “GG you are old.” I will not deny the truth.
Yes, you sweet children, I am old.
Lucky me.
… then the winds of the old days blow through my silver hair.
Thank you for taking your time to read and support my work. Special thanks to all of you who continue to forward posts. I appreciate that! I invite you to join the conversation. Love to hear what you are thinking. - Barbara
All Photos except youthful Marvin by B.Pagano