Getting Older, Staying Young

Sheri and Doss (right) on the Appalachian Trail

As older women go, my sister is fairly young. She turned 65 last month, and after pondering how to observe her birthday, she invited me and other women friends for a hike along a section of the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut.

We did the hike last weekend, a four-mile trek from Hoyt Road north to Bull’s Bridge. There were nine of us, ranging from 50-something to mid-70s. It was a great day for hiking: overcast and cool, but no rain. The muted sun made the emerging greenery more sumptuous, and we stopped for jack-in-the-pulpits, columbine and lavish displays of ferns.

Some of us faced challenges. My sister, Doss, has two artificial knees and is a breast cancer survivor. Our friend Susan has her own knees, but they don’t serve her well. Still, she gamely hiked to the top of Ten-Mile Hill and down again and discovered that her body did not let her down. Another friend, in her 60s, had never peed in the woods. This trip was her first time.

My big sister Doss has an old soul that stays young by looking for adventure (she’s been to the Ice Hotel in Sweden and followed Charles Darwin’s course in the Galapagos). But she also seeks out other points of view, listens to people’s stories, gives stuff away, finds new friends, and is willing to change her life when it’s necessary.

Not yet at the end of the trail

And whether you’re married to a younger man or not (she’s not), that willingness to reinvent is what draws people to you.

At the end of our hike, we ate lunch on a rock at the edge of the Housatonic River, near a covered bridge where George Washington had ridden. We celebrated with cupcakes. Then we asked a man to take a picture of all of us on the rock.  Prehistoric rock, historic bridge, not-so-old ladies.

When he had captured our smiles and went back to his wife and young children, we could hear his wife say this:  I hope I have that many friends to hike with when I’m that old. Indeed. 

Teeter Totter

An older woman married to a younger man will inevitably watch him ascend to the top of his career while she is on the downhill side.

We’re not there yet — but it’s closer than I like to think about.

Since 1992, when I quit my job as a reporter at The Hartford Courant and lit out for Montana, Michael and I have traded “turns” in our professional lives. He followed me to Montana, giving up a job he loved for adventure in a place he’d never been with a woman he’d known for less than a year.

Next it was his turn. Four years in Arkansas. Then mine. Back to Montana.

During all those moves, our professional lives felt in sync. It helped that we had begun our journalism careers at roughly the same time, despite our age difference. When one of us had a reason to move (job offer, grad school, whim), the other found work. We were journalists, we were teachers; we were two train cars coupled and rolling along the same career track at the same pace.

Then Michael moved from journalism to creative writing — first the doing and then the teaching. I cheered him on, knowing it was his turn to pick where we would live next so he could do a thing he loved more than journalism. Maryland beckoned.

He moved. I followed, but it took me five months. I worried about giving up the security of a teaching job where I was on the cusp of tenure. In other words, my see-saw was still on the way up, and I was afraid it would plummet with a thunk in Maryland, tossing me either into an early retirement or a netherworld of scraping by on freelance work and adjunct teaching.

Worried for naught. A job found me, or I it. Full time. Teaching. Fine pay. Rewarding work. So far, so good. See-saw back on the upswing.

Well, here’s the honest thing. I love knowing that Michael’s headed for good things over many productive years. But I hate knowing that my up-up-and-away will slow before his, and that our trajectories, synchronized for so long, will start moving at different speeds.

The Wonders of an Older Woman

I’ve about had it with the myth that older women are all of the following: Serene. Patient. Wise. Understanding. Mature.

What a lot of hooey.

I came across that Older-Woman-as-Super-Earth-Mother myth again recently on a Web site called “Third Age,” which markets products and advice to middle-aged men and women.

It came up in an advice column in which a 49-year-old woman asked if she should marry a 33-year-old guy. Here’s what the columnist told her about men:

Some men, like Peter Pan, never grow up. In life they look for a woman who will be both mother and wife so they never have to be a responsible adult. Other men know their own mind, appreciate the maturity of an older woman and make great husbands.

I’ll let the younger men with older women speak on that topic. Meanwhile, here’s what he said about older women:

The Wonders of an Older Woman
Some men who are comfortable with older women appreciate how understanding and tolerant they are. Older women often really understand and like men, creating a very pleasant experience for a man. Then too, some men like to be taken care of rather than do some of the difficult work of growing up and caring for others, like children or women their own age. An older woman usually knows how life works, how to keep a house, and is more forgiving of a young man's behavior or lack of ambition or diligence.

Tolerant? Ask Michael how tolerant I am, and he’ll tell you I don’t suffer fools gladly.

Understanding? I can’t claim to understand men any better now than I did 25 years ago when I was making bad choices about men. I chose better 18 years ago, but that was partly because I understood myself better.

Forgiving of a young man’s behavior? Frankly, when I was 43 and Michael was 26, I had a hard time with some of my young man’s behavior. Once, running in to him on the way to work when we were first dating, I was appalled that he was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt he got at a Grateful Dead concert. I told him so. He has since forgiven me.

Mature? For the first 10 years of our marriage, even though I complained he didn’t do enough in the kitchen, I didn’t really want him in “my” kitchen. He’s been the mature one, waiting me out and showing me just how smart a chef he is.

We are women with younger men. That doesn’t make us saints. Give us a break.

Yes We Can

An insistent Web ad got my attention last week. It was a photo of a handsome, gray-haired woman smiling broadly. Her calendar age, said the ad, is 60.2. But her biological age? 67.5! Yikes! That’s because she stresses about money, yaks on her cell phone in the car, eats red meat three times a week and DOES NOT TAKE A DAILY MULTIVITAMIN!

Others in the ad were smarter — and younger. A woman who was 32.6 by the calendar was really 28.4, because she walks her dog every day, eats lots of fruit and vegetables, has many friends.

I walk my dogs, eat breakfast daily, take my vitamins, quit smoking 18 years ago, recently lost 40 pounds and am crazy about my husband. I’ve often joked that I’m really 10 years younger than the calendar says. That joke comes in handy when you’re married to someone 17 years younger. So here was my chance to prove it.

Take the Test! Prepare to Be Shocked! says the RealAge ad. So I bit and clicked.

Good habits and great genes — all it bought me was four years. That still leaves me 13 years older than my husband, unless he takes the test and discovers he’s older than his real age. Not gonna happen.

So I’m not really as old as I am. But I’m not as young as I thought I’d be, either. And lately a series of accidents and ailments has rattled me, left me a little nervous, more careful about walking down the stairs.

It’s rattled Michael, too. He worries that our days of hiking and biking and dancing might be waning.

And there’s more entropy in our house. Every day, we watch Ozark, our 12-year-old Pyrenees mix, die by inches. We measure her decline by the swelling leg tumor, her slower progress from the back door to the lawn, the loss of her once massive bulk. In dog years, she’s older than I am.

So maybe I’m just thinking more about the inevitable failure of the body these days, and looking for ways to count backward.

Michael and I are both nervous about the coming years. But a long time ago I wrote down a piece of wisdom and have pinned it with a magnet to every one of my refrigerator doors since: LIVE YOUR LIFE AS IT COMES TO YOU.

So I’ll keep taking my vitamins, and I hope we'll be dancing for a long while. Yes, we can.

Not Enough Whiskey in the World

Younger Man: We worked at the same newspaper, and that’s how we met, but things really took off when we agreed to meet for drinks. She wore a short skirt and black hose, and she sat at a shiny metal bar in a dark room smoking a Merit Light and drinking a shot of Jameson. She terrified me.

Older Woman: We’d been playing on the paper’s volleyball team for a while, and sharing music and stories. So I asked Michael to go for a drink after work. At the bar, he said something about his editor. “He’s the same age I am, 26,” he said. 26????? I took a gulp of Jameson and thought hard.

YM: Thought about what?

OW: Thought I was way off thinking you were 32. Wondered if you knew how old I was. Wondered if you had laid down that “26” as a subtle way to get me to tell MY age.

YM: No. It wasn’t a hint. I thought you – I thought she, that is, Sheri – was about ten years older than I. She looked like she could be 36. This great mane of blond hair. Slim. Like Candace Bergen in her Murphy Brown days. But it was the cigarettes and whiskey that scared me. I hadn’t yet learned to drink hard liquor. I didn’t smoke.

OW: I was willing to play at the edges of conventional romance. Ten years I could handle. If you were 32 to my 43, well, we could see where that led. But a 26-year-old was a whole ‘nother country. Still, you had a certain sureness about yourself, and a calm approach to the world that I admired. Plus, you could really spike a volleyball so I knew you weren’t one of those plaid-shirted, courduroy-pantsed, bearded tea-drinkers from my past. And your kindness made me know you also weren’t one of the dangerous boys I’d often found.

YM: Edges? You were willing to dive into the gorge without a bungee. Seventeen years! When I was born you were a senior in high school. When I was a high school senior, you had been married and divorced. I like to imagine the colors and shapes that quivered before your eyes when you learned my mother is four years older than you. There’s not enough whiskey in the world.

OW: Yes, and I have nephews older than you, sisters older than your mother.

YM: These days, they’d call you a Cougar. Cougars are hip now. Older women and younger men – it’s all the rage. I saw a half-hour special on Entertainment Tonight.

OW: One of my best friends told me, “Just have a fling. If it doesn’t last, so what?” That was almost 18 years ago.

YM: A fling is easy. It’s what happens in the intervening years that’s most interesting. Right now Demi Moore is, what, 46? And Ashton Kutcher maybe 30. Now, imagine them at seventy and fifty-four. Where’s that Cougar roar? Now that you are 61, I couldn’t have imagined this life. You can retire soon. I’m still building a career.

OW: Now that you’re the same age I was when we met, I’ve watched you become the man I knew you’d be. Being with a younger man, one who’s still building a career, tricks me into thinking I’m at the same place in life. Besides, I can still swim a half-mile a lot faster than you can.

YM: Yes. That’s the interesting stuff. I trick you into feeling young. Sometimes, you trick me into feeling old. There’s so much I’ve learned about what it means to live with and love an older woman. There’s so much I still don’t understand. And there are some things waiting for us that scare me. That’s why it’s good to write about it now, to take on a shared blog, a shared book. We’ve got a past to figure out, and a future worthy of wonder.

OW: Oh my god. Joan Collins is married to someone who is 32 years younger.

YM: What are you doing?

OW: I googled older women-younger men.

YM: What did you find?