How We Are Aged

Growing up in my family we were taught to always respect our elders from grandma and grandpa, parents, police officers, teachers, anyone that was considered an adult or held authority. I was the last of six children with a fifteen year gap between me and my youngest sister. I basically grew up with my nieces and nephews, three of them being older than me. My mother and sister were both pregnant at the same time, which from some of the stories I’ve heard through the years, was cause for much laughter. My friends in school couldn’t believe my mom was in her fifties when I was in high school since she didn’t look or act like someone in their fifties.
I would have to say my earlier views and ideas about aging came from my family, friends, as well the media but especially my mother. From my earliest memories of her she was always active and had a zest for life which made her seem much younger than she was. It never really hit me until I was in high school that she was considered old by the standards of society at that time. Almost all of my friends’ parents were on average about fifteen years younger than my mom but they acted older. I’ll never forget when one of my friends asked how old my mom was and I said, “She’s fifty-five” the shock on her face somewhat surprised me. It wasn’t that they were shocked so much that she didn’t look her age but that she had a kid that was in high school at her age. That’s when I started really seeing the difference between my friends’ parents and my own. I also found myself doing the math; when I’m twenty-one, she’ll be sixty-one. I remember one instance when my brother in-law made a comment to my mother that had her hopping mad. He said, “Why don’t you sell your house and come live with us and you can watch the grandkids and become a “Rocking chair grandma”. At sixty-five she wasn’t about to be put in that role as a “rocking chair grandma” she loved her grandkids but she didn’t see a need to sell her house and move because my brother in-law felt that because of her age she should become the stereotype grandma.
My maternal grandmother on the other hand always seemed old to me. She was born in 1900 and grew up on a farm in Kansas. Grandma didn’t marry until she was twenty which by societies’ standards back then was quite old. Working on a farm is hard work and the work is never done. They didn’t work eight hour days five days a week; it was closer to sixteen hour days seven days a week. I think that lifestyle aged grandma before her time. When I was born grandma was sixty-three and when my daughter was born my mom was sixty-three. I can look back and see the huge differences between grandma at sixty-three and my mom at sixty-three. I have wonderful childhood memories of the time I was able to spend with grandma but she was the more stereotypical “rocking chair grandma”. We did things like stamp collecting, reading, and walking to the store occasionally. On the other hand my mom would take my daughter on trips to the zoo, walks, movies and shopping and many other adventures. Grandma was also frailer than mom at that age. She was partially blind in one eye and couldn’t get around very easily so that impacted her activity level, however my mom was still getting on her roof to clean out the gutters at eighty.
I asked my friend Michele, who is a few years older than me, what influenced her ideas on aging? She told me her mom and dad as well as her siblings had influenced her perceptions on aging. She was also taught that you respect your elders, and that old adage “children are seen not heard”. Since her sisters were older she was often told you can’t do this or that until you’re as old as your sister. She hated that her sisters got to stay up an hour later than she did on school nights! When she was a kid all of the adults over forty seemed old. That didn’t change for her until she was in high school and her grandma passed away at age 86. At that time she started looking at the other older adults in her life and her perceptions started to gradually change. She realized that even though her grandma lived until she was 86; her parents weren’t all that old in comparison. She laughed and said, “That was until my dad’s forty-eighth birthday and the volunteer fire department showed up to put out the candles on his birthday cake”!
Our perceptions change as we get older and I think we all have our own personal epiphany that impacts our views of what is considered old. For Michele and I that happened in high school and we realized that aging was a part of life but we were still naïve enough to think it didn’t really apply to us. I’m fifty-one and I’m constantly revising my views on what is old and I think we do this from the time we first recognize the concept of aging until we die. Environment and culture has a huge impact on how we look at others, and the standards set by society as well as the media, on how we should look and act when we become a certain age. I know that we age biologically and that has challenges of its own but I think the bigger issue is, how do we change society’s view of the elderly, as well as help the elderly through the diverse stages of aging. Aging is definitely not for the weak of sprit!