What I Wonder About Aging

I recently read actor Bill Pullman’s comment about his new movie, “The Ballad of Lefty Brown”: that it was his “coming-of-age-at-63” role. Meaning, I think, that not only does he play an older character, but that he is doing so at age 63.

Kind of fun, that phrase, and it put me in mind of what’s been written lately about the current (vs. traditional) aging process: that there are different stages, tasks, and opportunities within it.

One of the authors who considers this is Michael Gurian. In his book, “The Wonder of Aging,” he suggest three developmental aging stages:

--the Age of Transformation: approximately 50 to approximately 65;

--the Age of Distinction: approximately 65 to the late 70’s;

--the Age of Completion, approximately 80 – 100 and beyond.

I quite like Gurian’s use of the word “approximately,” as we know that no one person ages the same as another. In fact, though age-wise I’m tucked comfortably in the Age of Distinction, I may not quite reach it by my late 70’s. Some of us—as my father remarked when I completed my master’s degree at 45—are clearly late bloomers.

Which means I could be transforming, distincting, and completing all at the same time, assuming I live as long as my father did, until age 95.

What I mostly wonder about the wonders of aging is whether we should use “coming of age” to describe it. After all, that term typically refers to our moving from our teen-age years into adulthood, when, as the Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines it, we attain “prominence, respectability, recognition, or maturity.”

But then isn’t it true that each developmental stage in our too brief lives has its own “coming of age” markers? Childhood, adolescence, adulthood? And so why not old age? Or what psychologist Erik Erickson called Late Adulthood, his 8^th stage of development?

  

So it would seem that we agers need to figure out how to move into and through our Late Adulthood. And decide what we want to attain while there. Each of Gurian's three-part aging process offers its own distinct tasks and opportunities, which might give us some useful ideas.

To learn what those elements are, you can read Gurian’s book, "The Wonder of Aging." Click here to see more info about it:

https://www.amazon.com/Wonder-Aging-Approach-Embracing-After-ebook/dp/B00A28145A

Aging With Purpose

When I was growing up in the ‘50s, the idea of there being a purpose to aging would have seemed ludicrous. Purpose to getting old? Aside from hoping to retire before you died—so you might squeeze in a little traveling, more golf, and special time with the grandkids—what other purpose was there?

But then the Boomers came along, some 77 million of them starting in 1946, and changed the whole experience of aging, in part because those that turned 65 in 2011, a mere six years ago, can expect to live, on average, to 83. Some even longer.

But beyond the sheer length of their lives, Boomers by some accounts will age in better health. And not only because of the wonders of modern medicine. Many took up healthier lifestyles as adults, including quitting smoking and regularly exercising.

And even though I’m not a Boomer, having been born a little over two years before they arrived on the scene, I find that living both longer and healthier has trickled down to some members of my own "war babies" generation. (For instance, in my late 30's, I finally quit smoking, and also took up serious walking, a habit my rescue dog helped me develop.)

And so, in some weird way, for many of us getting old has become a bit of an adventure, urging us to think about what we want to do with those extra, unanticipated years. As a writer and teacher, I’m keen not only to explore my own options, but also help others consider theirs.

Hence my newest journal writing workshop: The Purpose of Aging, Aging with Purpose. It’s inspired by much of what I’ve been reading about aging for the past several years, including Reinventing Aging: Harvard School of Public Health—MetLife Foundation Initiative on Retirement & Civic Engagement (2006). 

Here's an excerpt from the Initiative, one that I'm interested in because of its focus on civic engagement. After all, might not our collective life experiences benefit those communities we choose to engage with? And, in the end, isn't that a win-win for all involved?

“When psychologist Erik Erikson delineated his concept of the life cycle, he saw the final stage, commencing in one’s 60s, as a retrospective undertaking toward the end of life. Erikson later revisited his earlier work to take into account the new demographics, and warned against “an initial retirement holiday followed by a dangling and unproductive aging of many years’ duration.” Erikson and colleagues urged those in their 50s to develop plans to meet the challenge “squarely,” advocating “‘clear insight’ into how the elders in our present society can become more integral coworkers in community life.” An organized effort could help boomers envision, and plan for, a life that achieves meaning in their later years by connecting in new ways to the larger community around them.”

 For more information about my workshop, scheduled in Rogers Park on Thursday, February 15, 2018, from 6-8 pm, please email me at madmoon55@hotmail.com.

Family Stories: A Holiday Tradition

Stories I wish I knew about my family

Were any of my Irish relatives trapped in steerage as the Titanic sank?

Was one side of my mother’s family really related to the Lloyd’s of London?

How did my parents—my Catholic father and Lutheran mother—convince their parents that it was OK for them to marry. Especially in 1934, when marrying outside of one’s faith was not only rare, but often marginally accepted.

How did my upper middle-class maternal grandparents get on with my working class paternal ones?

What about my aunts and uncles and their stories? My parents moved from Philadelphia to Chicago before I was born, so I grew up seeing those relatives only once a year, twice if there was some special occasion.

And what about all those great-uncles on my father’s maternal side—the Sullivan boys? I knew only one of them—Vincent. He’d remained a grieving bachelor his entire life—his fiancé dying young of TB—and ended up living with my widowed grandmother until she died.

At her funeral, my father invited Uncle Vince—now somewhere in his 70’s—to come live with us in Hillside, Illinois. Now I was only 14 or 15 at the time, and he seemed to me more stranger than kin, someone I didn’t warm to, let alone want to know much about.

Of course, now that I myself am his age, I so wish I knew his stories. Because he was my kin, my father’s uncle, my grandmother’s brother. What could I have learned from him? Not only about my grands and greats, but about the times he grew up in? And the places?

Somewhere in Uncle Vince’s story I believe there is a part of my own. And around the holidays, I find myself especially missing his.

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If you have stories you’d like to pass along to your family, consider coming to my workshop Writing Family Stories: The Holiday Version. It takes place at the Rogers Park Library, 6907 N. Clark St., on Monday, December 18, 2-4 pm.

Here's the link to the Library's website, including a description of the workshop and how to register. There is no charge for attending.

https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/events/search/fq=branch_location_id:(61)/event/5a1f2dfea7da1e2f00e154fa

Any questions about the workshop, please feel free to email me directly at madmoon55@hotmail.com.

Friends With Benefits: The SuperAger Version

Well, I’m not yet a SuperAger—though I hope to be—but this latest aging study confirms what we might kinda, sorta already know: strong social ties are good for us, can even make us healthier.

As reporter Kate Thayer writes in “Being social and sharp,” (Chicago Tribune, 9 November 2017):

“Such strong friendships [as those of 103 year-old Edith Smith] may contribute to higher cognitive functioning and sharper memory in adults as they age, according to a new study by researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. The latest findings are part of Northwestern’s study of so-called SuperAgers — adults 80 or older with the cognitive abilities of those in their 50s or 60s.”

Now I’ve not studied the science that looks at the social, even tribal, relationships among human beings, but I’d guess they have, from the git-go, allowed us to survive, especially in hostile environments.

And not only physically.

There are surely emotional and psychological reasons for bonding with others, joining forces with them, creating group names and secret handshakes. And it turns out, spoiler alert, that the need for these bonds never goes away: more than simply persisting, our social ties may allow us to persist.

I marked several passages in Thayer’s article, but was heartened to learn from Emily Rogalski, senior author of the Northwestern study that it was “the first to go beyond biological factors of SuperAgers.”

Yes, we are more than our biology, our physical selves, something SuperAgers have likely learned along their long journey.

To read more, and especially to make the acquaintance of Edith Smith, champion SuperAger, click here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-friendships-help-memory-study-20171106-story.html

RIP: Miss Pirman

I didn’t even want to go to Nazareth Academy, at the time an all-girls Catholic high school in LaGrange. My older brother had gone to Immaculate Conception in Elmhurst, still Catholic, but co-ed. Why couldn’t I go there?

My Catholic father wouldn’t budge, believing that the nuns and lay teachers at Nazareth would be stricter, keep me more in line, and so less likely to get into the kind of trouble my brother did regularly at IC.

Well, yes and no. I mean, if one is prone to that kind of thing, the setting doesn’t really matter. Which is why when I get together with my fellow Naz grads—those eight “girls” who still live in the area—we have many funny stories to share of how we daily tested those nuns and teachers.

But I must add that in addition to our shenanigans, we were also fairly decent students, the lessons pouring in spite of ourselves.

For me, some of the most important lessons came from my high school English teacher, Miss Pirman. In fact, it’s probably not an understatement to say that had it not been for her, I would never have become a writer, and never 51 years after being her student, become an author.

It was my pleasure to show my gratitude to Miss Pirman in my book, Finding Your Voice, Telling Your Stories. In Chapter 3, “Telling Stories About People,” I describe her generosity and her influence, something I wish I could’ve done in person, long before she died last Tuesday at age 81, just one day after my 74^th birthday.

Miss Pirman is not the first of my high school teachers to die, but her death resonates more than the others. The following excerpt from my book—“People from High School”—might help explain why:

People from High School

High school is a critical time for most of us, so it is no wonder that many of our important, even dramatic, stories originate there: stories of classmates, best friends, and hated enemies; of dances, sports events, and talent shows; coming-of-age stories about first loves, finding our place among peers, finding even our life’s work.  For some there are dark stories as well, of troubles at home or at school.  And of course there are stories about the adults from that time: those teachers, coaches, and counselors who inspired us, saved us, or whom we barely survived.

            In my writing workshops, I regularly invoke the spirit of my freshman English teacher, Miss Pirman.  I’d arrived in her class ill prepared in the basics of English grammar and so she’d volunteered to tutor me on her own time after school, to help me catch up with the others.  I can still see us sitting there in that empty classroom, the thin autumn light coming through the windows, me hunched over at my desk, her next to me, that quiet, encouraging voice leading me through the monotonous grammar drills. 

            It was in that tedious process that Miss Pirman unwittingly instilled in me an enduring love of words, which she then recognized by publishing my first poem in our class anthology.  It was a bouncy little paen to a St. Bernard dog that I can recite to this day.

And if there is a heaven--the "Paradise" that Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, imagined "will be a kind of library”--then I imagine I’ll be seeing Miss Pirman again.