When What's Old Is Relative

The following five letters to the editor appeared in the May 13 issue of the New York Times. They were written in response to an essay by Pamela Druckerman, “How to Survive Your 40s,” in the May 6 issue.

What I was struck by was the age range of the letter writers—from 42 to 87--with four of the five over 50. I’m guessing there were more letters on the topic—I mean, it’s about aging, after all—and would like to think that the following more or less represent the total submitted.

Here’s a link to the original essay:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/opinion/sunday/how-to-survive-your-40s.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fsunday&action=click&contentCollection=sunday&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront

To the Editor:

In “How to Survive Your 40s” (Sunday Review, May 6), Pamela Druckerman captures the essence of being 40 with humor, acceptance and a comic sense of loss. Ask her to promise that she will write again when she’s in her 80s.

Silence on the fun of being old is nearly total, and so I weigh in. When we lose the lives we have loved, it’s time to hold the memories but find something new. I’m living in the heart of a blooming arts district, still working as a weekly movie reviewer for papers in New Jersey and Vermont and writing a memoir.

When you arm yourself with new tools that don’t require physical action, life opens again. Writing, painting, music or memoir will do it. And the best: the gift of being able to blend the rhythms of your long life with the cultural voice of each decade.

I promise Ms. Druckerman that when she’s 87, people will be calling her by her first name again, and she will be loving the perspective that only decades can bring.

JOAN ELLIS, RED BANK, N.J.

To the Editor:

This is a brilliant article. I laughed and shed a tear reading it. I am turning 42 next month. I am a mom to a 9-year-old and sort of a “boss.”

I can relate to so many things Pamela Druckerman says. Visiting France is on my bucket list. I am sure that the French will call me “madame,” but I will be prepared to take it in stride :)

MARIANNA GURTOVNIK, HOUSTON

To the Editor:

If Pamela Druckerman thinks that it is disconcerting to be called “madame” in Paris at 40, imagine my reaction to being constantly addressed as “miss” at 87 in New Jersey.

For more than 50 years I was “ma’am,” and now everyone behaves as if he wants me to believe that he thinks that I’m 25.

The messages I’m getting are mixed: “How do you want your groceries packed, Miss? If I put more in this bag than the quart of milk and the two cans of chickpeas, it might be too heavy for you.”

I suspect that the reason these grocery store clerks behave this way is that they think that I am flattered with the “miss” title. I’m not.

So Ms. Druckerman’s defensive reaction against the recognition of her age bewilders me. A woman’s 40s can be the most satisfying decade of her life, and the title “madame” is to my mind a great compliment.

RITA BETTENBENDER

BLOOMFIELD, N.J.

To the Editor:

Do not despair, Madame. My earning power peaked at 44 until it crumbled from a corporate layoff that coincided with my having gone from being the youngest person in the room to being the oldest, like the aged-out “wunderkind” TV production company head whom Pamela Druckerman quotes in her fine eulogy for her mademoiselle years.

But after that middle-age reckoning, in my late 40s and now into my 50s, I’ve written my first book, written and directed my first film and begun teaching.

Certainly, as Ms. Druckerman notes, many of the milestones I’ve celebrated in this period have been those of my children, but I’ve also been inspired to understand how many more milestones are still possible for me to achieve.

JON REINER, NEW YORK

The writer is the author of “The Man Who Couldn’t Eat,” a memoir.

To the Editor:

How to survive your 40s is for me the absolutely wrong question. More important is how you survive your 70s.

A female friend once told me that after 50 you become invisible whether you are a man or a woman.

I tested that theory once in my 50s when I interrupted a little argument at a bar in the Hamptons between a twentysomething guy and a twentysomething gal. When she walked away from the argument, I chimed in and asked the guy, “Are you really gonna let that girl get away?”

He turned to me and said, “What’s it to you, Pops?”

I was instantly cured of any fantasy that I still lived in the same world as people under 40. It became painfully clear to me that my face had indeed far outpaced my mind.

PETER ALKALAY, SCARSDALE, N.Y.