May is Older Americans Month. The pandemic has certainly put a spotlight on the experiences of older people and the continuing tropes of ageism. I regularly hear and read about the “elderly,” the “silver tsunami,” and “going off the demographic cliff.” In a more recent ugly iteration, some people have even questioned the resources needed to support the medical needs of elders with COVID-19. Let’s move away from “senior,” “senior citizen,” and “elderly” with their connotations of weak, vulnerable, doddering, physically frail, and mentally confused. Let’s ban ever addressing an older person as “young lady” or “young man.” How infantilizing! Language is always evolving and responding to changing attitudes and can even push some of those changes. Most frequently now, I see the use of “older people,” “olders,” and as a sign of respect in many communities, “elders.” The theme for this year’s celebration of Older Americans Month is Communities of Strength. What fun to turn to fiction and nonfiction to find characters and individuals full of resiliency as they age and who defy those ageist tropes.
I’d personally like to roam Manhattan with Lillian in Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, who circles from her apartment in Murray Hill down to Delmonico’s in lower Manhattan and back up the West Side to Macy’s on 34th Street one New Year’s Eve. Lillian is 85 years-old and engages fully with other night-on-the-town denizens. During her perambulation, she reminiscences about the important moments of her fifty years in Manhattan and her job as a high-ranking advertising executive at Macy’s department store. In an author note, Kathleen Rooney writes that she was inspired by the life of poet and ad woman Margaret Fishback, the highest-paid female advertising copywriter during the 1930s.
Moving west, you’ll meet Addie Moore and Louis Waters in Kent Haruf’s Our Souls at Night. Haruf returns to the fictional world of Holt, Colorado, the location of his previous novels including his award-winning Plainsong. His characters live unassuming lives. One day, Addie proposes to her long-standing neighbor Louis that they spend their nights together “to talk” to allay their loneliness after the deaths of their spouses. They ignore the gossip in the insular town and courageously try to create new lives together.
Moving across the Atlantic, you’ll encounter Barry – Barrington Jedidiah Walker in Bernadine Evaristo’s Mr. Loverman. An immigrant from Antigua, he lives in London with his Pentacostalist wife of fifty years. But Barry has lived a double life for years and wrangles with asking Carmel for a divorce so that he can live openly with his lover Morris. Can Barry start over and, as he says, “jump into the great abyss of social alienation.”
If you’d like to read about ageism, a great starting place is Ashton Applewhite’s This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto against Ageism. With a no holds barred style, she debunks the myths and asks us to think of older adults as “people with age.” You’ll want to join her crusade to resist the insidious and rampant cultural messages about looking younger. Applewhite also authors the “Yo – Is This Ageist” blog, and to see her in action, watch her 2017 TED Talk.
Current research is now suggesting that people are happiest in the younger and older parts of their lives.
See other suggestions for finding those resilient elders in our new Next Chapter: Older Americans Month: Stories of Resiliency book list.
~ posted by Nancy S.
Leave a Comment