This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
(Me, hoping to get more outrageous as time passes!)
Yes, I am beginning to admit to that label. I bought myself a tee shirt from the National Organization of Women and a button with the same words. I also admit to retaining a little bit of resistance, though I am determined to age gracefully and in an adventurous manner for the duration of my existence.
Still, it is difficult to completely throw off the shackles of societal attitudes and this is so much a culture of youth. I happen to derive pleasure from watching the startled facial expressions of many people I meet when I tell them my age and they exclaim that they thought I was much, much younger. I now enjoy assertively claiming my senior discount from business establishments. It took me a long time to relax and enjoy this benefit. Most of my friends absolutely refused to do this when they first qualified as official senior citizens and some even look away with some embarrassment, if they are in my company when I do it. I have pretty much decided that since we have no choice about chronologically advancing age, we might as well cash in on whatever concrete benefits we can find, and saving a little money here and there is fine with me.
In fact, the other day I was “carded” at Duncan Donuts by a teenager who insisted I could not be that old. I felt the need to set him straight and to produce my driver’s license, which he said was unnecessary (as he gestured at the growing line of coffee drinkers dangerously approaching a state of caffeine and high fat withdrawal ). He glanced at my ID and shrugged, said, “No problem”, and rang up my drink. I felt a bit of a high after claiming my due in Fast Food Land. This incident charged up my feeling good battery that whole day, as I periodically thought about it and felt a smile involuntarily creeping over my (mostly unwrinkled) visage. It hardly seems like very long ago that I complained to everyone I knew about how I used to get carded at restaurants and bars till age 35 or so, which was around the time I was widowed, and I remember how indignant I was and how I needed to announce my age.
In spite of my vanity getting in the way occasionally, I have vowed to look for as many positives as possible in the fact that I am now an aging Baby Boomer and not a hot young chick with long braids and a mini-skirt up to my belly button, as my mother used to say (The Yiddish expression, “up to my pupick” sounds funnier). I truly want to be an Outrageous Older Woman, though as I write this I can visualize in my head the rolling of collective eyes among my four adult children. I have managed to come up with a few thoughts and observations on the topic.
When I was a kid, relatives used to tell me that “time speeds up” when one gets older. So how come if time speeds up, we slow down? Is slowing down such a bad thing? I think not. Maybe we don’t like it when our bodies can’t always keep up with our memories or compete with the slender young thing next to us on the elliptical machine at the gym
On the other hand, in US society nowadays, and unfortunately in other places that are picking up our lifestyle more and more, we rush through our lives at breakneck speed. Some of us race to work, skipping breakfast, charge through lists of errands and chores during our lunch hours and on weekends, zoom around with our cars full of kids, ferrying them from one activity to another, eat a lot of tasteless and unhealthy fast food, maybe squeeze in a hurried, perfunctory sexual encounter with our significant others when we are able to keep from falling asleep. Then we start the routine again the next morning.
What would happen, if we just took some cues from the fact that our bodies are slowing down a bit (Not mine, mind you! LOL) and we decided to stop and breathe, to inhale deeply of the wonderful world around us. What if we committed to taking the time to really listen to the people we encounter? It seems to me we do too much striving and too little connecting. What if we let ourselves lazily stare up at the clouds and visualize their fluffy shapes coming to life? What would it be like if we permitted ourselves to laugh more? Imagine if we said no, once in a while to the kids’ activities and to the never-ending errands, or to the requests and obligations that crowd out time for relaxation and self care? What if we just spent part of a Saturday reading, lounging around in our pj’s or nightgowns? What if we played a board game with our kids or grandkids and forgot about the clock, maybe forgot about rushing to cook a meal or to grab a pizza, and instead, ate popcorn and drank cocoa, sitting on the front porch or by an open window, just watching the rest of the world careen by?
After age forty or so, our vision can deteriorate a bit, often requiring us to wear bifocals. So how is it that as our vision becomes more blurry, experience often helps us see with greater clarity than ever before? A little wisdom is a wonderful thing! As we get up there in years, some people’s hearing gets less sharp. Some of us, on the other hand, continue to have excellent hearing, but we hear only what we wish to. Maybe dimimished hearing is Nature’s way of causing us to pay attention and to focus extra carefully on everyone and everything around us?
It is a fact that as we leave our youth, we lose some of our tastebuds? Certain dishes we remember from childhood often just don’t seem as good when we sample them in adulthood. This may be our message to take the time to chew, to savor, to experience our food with every sense we possess so that the enjoyment is enhanced for us, even with fewer tastebuds, and with fewer years left to be on this earth.
Speaking of slowing down and savoring, remember that earlier reference above to the hurried sexual encounters when we are immersed in the workaday world and/or raising young families? Nature sends strong messages to people as they age, that in order to continue being sexual creatures as long as possible, (Forever?) they may have to exhibit some adaptive behavior. Slowing down and really enjoying the journey makes a lot of sense, as people’s bodies change, physical issues or illness may become part of the picture, hormones diminish and performance challenges may be present for some couples.
Joan Price is the author of “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty” (Seal Press, 2006), a very candid and personal story about Joan and her great sex life with the then-68 year old man who became her husband. It includes interviews with other mature and seasoned women about their own experiences.
“ We’re as turned on by each other as a couple of teenagers, but with the juicy addition of decades of life experience, self-knowledge, communication skills and a sense of humor. We’re also willing to experiment and stretch our boundaries.” Price adds that “we overcome the physical challenges by being inventive and resourceful. We take advantage of the lessened urgency by slowing things down, taking more time.”
As I continue to grapple with my vanity, since I am who I am because of and in spite of the culture in which I grew up, I am increasingly working on valuing my mature perspective. I like using my life experience and the unique perspectives derived from it to make my own life more satisfying and productive . I love being able to apply what I have learned in my many trials by fire to help others grow if they reach out to me. I am, for the most part, looking forward to certain kinds of slowing down. In fact, I am pleased to note that slowing down has actually become a movement to which people are committing worldwide.