When Gloria Steinem famously proclaimed “This is what forty” – and then fifty, sixty, and now seventy – “looks like!” I totally endorsed her message: if each of us stops trying to hide our years, we will liberate each benchmark for all of us. And in all my writing about women’s Second Adulthood I have passionately put forward the conviction that for many women, myself included, the years after fifty are the most dynamic, authentic, and fun of all. In fact, I have just signed a contract to write a new book called Fifty Is The New Fifty, which will elaborate on the notion that we don’t want our fifties to be the “new thirty” or our sixties to be the “new forty.” I truly believe that if we are healthy, we like moving through this new stage of life just fine – without disguising it as any other stage of life. But I have just been jolted by the realization that volunteering certain milestones does seem to get harder with age.
For my birthday this month my husband and a dear friend orchestrated the evening I really wanted – even though they would have preferred doing something a bit more elaborate. At my request, each of the ten guests brought a dish they had cooked, and I basked in the intimacy of the group. Here were my two darling children, now both in their twenties and able to understand what we have all been through as a family (like any family). And my husband, with whom I have finally achieved a kind of wonderful equilibrium; when I told someone that recently, he asked me how long it had taken. “About 37 years,” I replied. There were also a very few chosen friends, of twenty or more years. But also there was one new – or prospective – friend, someone I have a strong feeling is very special and want to get to know better. A few others I wished could be there were away – on adventures of their own, as it should be.
A few days later, I spent a week with my 90-year-old mother – who doesn’t look a day over 70 (the age at which she began studying for her Ph.D., which she completed in her early 80s, while holding a fulltime job). She is “losing it” now but is still eager to go places and do things. In fact the loss of short term memory seems to make the world that much more full of surprises and wonder for her. Not a bad model for longevity.
I am looking forward to getting started on the new book, on enjoying my revitalized marriage, watching my children “turn out” and to sharing what comes to my friends.
So why don’t I want to tell you my age? Not because of what the number means to me, but because of what I think it means to you.
I’m especially thinking of the readers of MORE Magazine, where I am a proud to be a contributing editor, who may be reading this. The magazine is for “women over 40” which we all accept as a way of saying “older” but not “old old” – the age my mother is. But where is the cross-over point? I am afraid that when you find out what birthday I have just celebrated, you will dismiss my ideas and my enthusiasm for this new stage of life, that by telling you my age I will become “other” in your mind.
That is why I have held off telling you what birthday I celebrated. I wanted you to get to know something about my life and my state of mind first, to enter into conversation with me as you read – “Yes, I know what she means” or “for me it is this way…” I wanted you to see me for who I am before you jumped to any conclusions about me.
Of course that is precisely why I should admit my age – to help demystify the arbitrary cut-off established by the Social Security Administration that I too used to see as separating one group off from the rest of society. I love where I am in my life – all sixty-five years of it so far!