Aging is An Inside Job

I received a message from the host of the house we are renting here in Lagos, Portugal, “Please be careful not to get your towels dirty with foundation, mascara and self-tanner, as they will then have to be replaced with new ones.” I am not using any of these products I assured him, so the towels were safe! “Ha, ha,” he responded, “in the summer with the younger guests it is terrible and I replace so many towels!”

What made him think I was not younger? We have not met, I am only a name on a rental agreement. Does he assume that because I am not using these products, I must be old? I still use these products, just not while I am enjoying some down time in a beach town.

Yesterday my husband and I walked the 3-kilometre boardwalk along the beach, almost abandoned in November. Yet the warm weather had drawn some sunbathers - families, couples, and older women. Almost every woman was wearing a thong bikini, regardless of age. I have always been reluctant to put on a bathing suit, a body image issue that I can’t seem to shed. I admired these older women who felt comfortable in bikinis, but to be honest, I also judged them - weren’t they a bit old to be wearing bikinis?

Yes, I am also guilty of ageism. Stereotypes have been pounded into my head all my life, and while I have been able to shed many of them, some persist.

I don’t think of my age in years, and from what you’ve shared, many of you feel the same. I am aware of the societal milestones that come with age - getting a driver’s licence, drinking legally, eligibility for an old age pension - but I don’t equate my health, appearance, and abilities with the number of years I have lived.

Dorthe Nors writes about the invisibility of women who are identified by their roles. If no roles exist - wife, mother, career - they are on the brink of disappearing. In a Literary Hub article she wrote about her great aunt Barbara.

“When I was a little girl, my parents took me to visit my great aunt Barbara. She was an old woman who lived in a little red brick house in a small village in Western Jutland. I was told two strange things about this woman:

1) She never married and had no children.

2) She had been running the biggest farm in the parish.

On the walls of her house were pictures of her extended family and of my aunt herself: tall, strong, rustic. If she had been Spanish there’s no doubt she would have been a flamenco dancer: Duende! Oh, yes, she had soul. I remember sitting on the stairs in front of her little house. There were blossoms everywhere and I was puzzled by the fact that this woman—unlike my artistically talented mother—had lived a life without husband and children. It felt as if I was being given an important lesson: A woman can be in the world on her own and it doesn’t necessarily make her invisible. It just might add a different kind of visibility to her. The aunt was in need of nothing, and because nobody was claiming her attention all the time (which I had already noticed was to be my creative mother’s destiny), she had time to just be in the world. My favourite story of my great aunt Barbara is that she went to America to visit her older sister who had emigrated in the early 1930s. Aunt Barbara was 75 years old when she got on a plane for the first time in her life. Never asked herself whether or not she could do it. Never asked anyone if she could or should do it. She just did it.”

While many see us as invisible, these days I feel like we have never been more visible. I don’t think we are being intentional, or defiant, or asking for permission. Instead, we are living the lives we want to live and doing the things we want to do, irregardless of our age.

Yes, there are days that I think, “I can’t do the things I used to, because I’m old!” But that thought is mine alone, not some external bias. Ageing is an inside job and I’ll decide how I’m feeling and what I’m capable of!

I thought I would leave you with a small gift. A friend mentioned the other day that she hated reading books with older, female characters because they are weak, boring, and old. I haven’t been seeking out books with older characters but many of the books I have read lately have featured wonderful, older women. Here are a few you might enjoy:

Books with older female characters you may like

A Recipe for a Good Life by Lesley Crewe

Kitty is a mystery author with writer's block from 1950s Montreal who escapes to rural Cape Breton, in search of much more than her next big story. You will also meet Bertha, the centre of a large, loving family, and Edith, who listens in on everyone's party line calls and never keeps good gossip to herself.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland

The story of a young girl who has to learn the hard way that she can break the patterns of the past, live on her own terms and find her own strength. She is taken in by her estranged grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. I loved the character of June in the book, but not so much in the mini-series. Check them both out and see what you think!

Snow Road Station by Elizabeth Hay

Hay, one of my favourite authors, introduces us to Lulu Blake, an actor in her sixties, a sexy, seemingly unfooled woman well-versed in taking risks. One winter evening she blanks on her lines. Fleeing the theatre, she beats a retreat into her past and arrives at Snow Road Station, a barely discernible dot on the map of Ontario. A novel about thwarted ambition, unrealized dreams, the enduring bonds of female friendship, and love’s capacity to surprise us at any age.

River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer

Rachel runs away from a Providence plantation in Barbados and begins a desperate search to find her five children who survived birth and were sold. She is driven by the certainty that a mother cannot be truly free without knowing what has become of her children, even if the answer is more than she can bear.

Have you read any books with strong older female characters you would recommend?