Photo by Joshua Kessler
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Being 70: The View From Up Here
By Barbara Holland, May & June 2006
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My first boyfriend and I made a solemn suicide pact: when we got to be 60, all withered
and useless, we would slash our wrists and die together, since what would be the sense of dragging on any longer?
A long time later I got to be 60 and looked around. I was renting a dear little house in an alley in Philadelphia, I had a cluster of longtime friends, and every day I walked 30 blocks to and from a splendidly entertaining job. In spite of my primitive parenting, my children had grown up cheerful and responsible.
I decided not to slash my wrists just yet. I don't know what the boyfriend decided.
On the other hand, was this the end of the story? Does it end here? I'd read that everything exciting in a person's life happens between ages 20 and 35. This seemed unfair. But it's what made me impulsively, maybe stupidly, decide to move on. I quit my nice job, said goodbye to my friends, and moved to a cabin my mother had built as a summer house on a remote mountaintop in northern Virginia. Nothing like a whole new world and perspective to refresh the spirits.
As people march toward their 70s, the idea of stopping work comes into focus. Those who have hated working look forward to playing, to golf and building miniature villages out of matchsticks, and to e-mailing everyone pictures of their grandchildren. Those who loved their work are alarmed by the huge chunk of their very selves about to fall away. Sometimes they can find something similar to do, even if they do for free what they used to get paid for. Sometimes working can do more for the spirit than playing.
The flesh is another matter. At 70, the flesh announces its limits. My 70th birthday didn't feel as breezy as my 60th, not half as cocky and capable. Face it, 70 is old. For a woman, the only plus side is that we can stop worrying about how we look: we look old, and suddenly there's not much use spending time, money, and energy on our looks. Just try to make sure our clothes are buttoned and zipped and our hair is combed before we go out. Forget all those creams and colorings. It's a relief, in a way.
We accept limits. Limits are always nasty, but we hold our noses and swallow them anyway. On my mountain, in winter, the car must be dug out of snowdrifts and a path shoveled to the bird feeder. The power goes out often and stays out. I can't just flee or the pipes will freeze and burst, so I haul in the firewood and stoke the wood stove day and night, sometimes setting a can of soup on it to warm, and trim the wicks of the oil lamp, dribbling oil in my lap, and flush the toilet with buckets of melted snow.
One of these springs, the wild rhododendrons will bloom and I won't see them. It's annoying.
Meeting challenges is said to be good for us, but how often must we meet the same challenges, overcome the same obstacles, feed the same wood stove? How often do we have to climb Everest? Is it time to look for someplace easier to live? Admit limits?
All of us, waking up in the morning, forget for a moment where we are and decide to paint the living room ceiling or go pony trekking in Iceland. By the time we've brushed our teeth we remember that we'll have to be content with ceilings already painted and treks already taken.
They make good musing. I know we aren't supposed to dawdle around in the past; they tell us it's healthier to live for the moment, to look to the future. But the future shrinks: how will our great-grandchildren turn out, what will happen with global warming? We'll never know. One of these springs, and then for many more springs, the wild rhododendrons by the chimney will bloom and I won't see them. It's annoying.
The past, though, expands, and what we've already done improves the view. It lifts us up a bit higher every year. Great granite building blocks under us, all those people and places, summers and winters, everything we've learned and the songs we remember, all solid to climb up and stand on for a grand view of our world. Our personal, handmade world.
All happy people have self-protective memories, but if we'd rather be miserable, we can choose to haul along with us the tears and betrayals, missed chances, and lost loves. We can remember not the happy trip to Mexico with a friend and the margaritas we drank, but only that the friend is now dead and margaritas now give us heartburn.
We can do what we like with our past. It's ours, and we've earned it. We can stand on top of it, taller than most, and admire our view.
Barbara Holland is the author of many books, most recently When All the World Was Young (Bloomsbury, 2005) and Gentlemen's Blood (Bloomsbury, 2003). She still lives in her mother's summer house in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.
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