Elderly?

Recently, we had a big snow storm in which a large, old pine tree fell over in our front yard. A few days later, I was speaking with the proprietor of a store in our neighborhood. She asked how we fared in the snow storm and I told her about the tree falling over. She replied, “Oh, another elderly woman just told me a similar story….” I was so taken aback -- that she referred to “another elderly woman” - since that implies that I also am an elderly woman and, even though I refer to myself as an “elder,” I never realized that being an elder makes one “elderly!’ But I suppose that makes sense.

When I called my blog “Ruminations of an Elder,” I thought of “elder” as being an honored position, implying wisdom and experience. But when I think of someone being “elderly,” I think of a much older person, perhaps infirm, certainly old. So how is it that I can think of myself as an elder, but not as elderly? It’s like the first time someone calls you “ma’am” instead of “miss.” That came as a shock at some point, probably around 30 years old. At some point, you become “an older person” and then you become “elderly.”

Becoming an elder certainly snuck up on me, as I think it does on everyone. I will soon be 69 years old, and I suppose I’ve gained some wisdom with age. But apparently I am elderly, which comes as another big surprise. I’m in good physical condition, I walk a lot, go to the gym, work in the yard. Yes, my hair is grey, but I don’t use a cane or a walker to get around (not that there’s anything wrong with that). And yet, I am in fact elderly. But I still feel way too young to be that! 

We have a large yard with several gardens and trees. I used to say that I would be out doing some yard work. But one day I decided that I would only call it “gardening” instead of “yard work,” even if I were pruning apple trees or mulching the flower beds. It made it sound more like a hobby and seemed less like work. I guess I need to re-think elderly in a similar manner. Elderly doesn’t mean old and infirm anymore; it simply means I am an elder.

And so I am.

   

In the words of my mom, who died at age 78, “Such is life.”

And so it is.

An outing with my mom

My mother liked to go into Baltimore City every spring to attend a big flower show. I can remember taking the bus from Baltimore County into the city with her. I was very young, maybe 5, 6, 7 years old. With few regulations regarding air pollution in those days, the bus fumes always made me feel sick to my stomach.

I don’t remember much about attending the flower show, but one scene sticks in my mind. I was thirsty and headed to use a water fountain we were passing by. My mother grabbed my arm and said, “No.” She led me to another fountain that we used. Then I saw a black person drinking from the first fountain and that’s when I noticed the “Colored” sign beside the first fountain and the “Whites Only” sign on the fountain we had used. It was my first awareness of racial discrimination. It didn’t seem right.

Little did I know at that time that my own father was racist. I suppose racism was engrained in my mother too, although she was less overt about it. It’s hard to understand why my parents were raised with racist attitudes since, according to them, they were never around black people growing up. As I got a bit older and started learning about the Civil Rights movement, it became clear that my father was on the side of the segregationists. He liked Barry Goldwater. He threw the “N-word” at the TV during the evening news broadcasts.

I can thank my brother, Bill, 7 years older than me, for showing me the light. As a young child, I yelled a racial slur at another kid. I didn’t realize how ugly it sounded; I was simply copying what I heard other kids say. But my brother took me aside and told me in no uncertain terms that we do NOT use that word. His advice really stuck with me. It made me think. As the youngest of three kids in our family, I was accustomed to being hit, yelled at and generally treated like a punching bag by my older brothers. Now here was my brother TEACHING me something. I got it. And I am very grateful for his wise guidance.

And so...

And so…

I was born in 1950, halfway through the century. I recall as a child wondering if I would see the turn of the century in year 2000, and so I did.

When I turned 60, someone told me I was entering “the youth of old age.” And that felt good, because it had the word “youth” in it. Now I will soon turn 69. If the sixties are the youth of old age, are the 70’s the middle age of old age? Will there be a midlife crisis associated with that?

Only time will tell.

Hard to believe that I grew up in a home without sewerage. We had an outhouse at our Baltimore County home. We had indoor bathrooms until I was 8, but my father bought a house that we moved to when I was 8 that was surrounded by woods and located along an arm of the Chesapeake Bay called Middle River. We could swim and water ski in the summer, ice skate in the winter, and play in the woods. But the trade-off was having an outhouse. Since my father had grown up in the hills of West Virginia, he did not see anything strange about living with an outhouse.

A big truck came along several times a year and pumped the contents out of the outhouse. The worst thing about it, to me, was the spiders that were inevitably hanging around there. The outhouse was located only about 10 or 12 steps from our door, but going out there in rain, in ice and snow, in the putrid heat of summer, was not pleasant. And so I grew up trying to drink as little liquid as possible so that I would not have to go any more than necessary. Not surprisingly, I was diagnosed as being dehydrated many years later. I think I was in my 40’s when the connection became clear to me. At that point in time, I finally started drinking more water. Luckily, I never suffered any serious health issues due to my dehydration. I started to have some serious head-spins that scared me into thinking that surely I had a brain tumor or something like that. But drinking more liquids quickly alleviated the problem.