87 and Counting

Every year I get older. Every year is a gift.

On my real birthday, September 17. I look like I’m attacking that cake! Or giving it a lecture…

Yesterday was my birthday. So was the day before. I used to hate having two birthdays. Now I kind of love it.

September 17 is my actual birth date but because my birth certificate says the 18th—a fact the clerk at the SoS wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t foolishly told her with a laugh—after decades of my owning my birthday, that inadvertent confession required her to use the 18th as my official birth date on my driver’s license. And now it’s evermore. On all official documents, on anything requiring my DL as proof of who I am. But I get twice the birthday greetings now, on both days, depending on who knows which date applies. So it’s not all bad.

I’m not fishing here, folks, so don’t feel the need to gush over my birthday, but after years of ignoring or barely tolerating that day that comes but once a year to remind me that another year has passed, they’re becoming special again. It means that after having lived an astonishing number of years I’m lucky enough to be celebrating another one.

That’s huge!

So I’m officially old. I’m so old I can no longer buy life insurance. The cut-off age, it seems, is 85. I never worried about it when I was younger, and the truth is, aside from work policies, I’ve never bought life insurance on my own. But once I reached that cut-off date it seemed kind of insulting. Like the worst kind of rejection slip. What?? You’re telling me you don’t want me??

Which leads me to another kind of rejection. Something I’ve talked about before, but it’s back again. Ageism.

We went through it all when Joe Biden struggled to get through his campaign for the presidency and was roundly condemned for being sick and performing badly, messing up his words and hesitating and not slamming Donald Trump where it would hurt most.

It wasn’t that Joe was too sick or too cautious or too inept, it was that he was too old. His age has always been a sore point, even in 2020, when some of his friends and allies insisted he should only serve one term because of it, and he did, in fact, kind of say he’d probably only serve one term. And then he reneged. He saw it as leaving his post when he still had so much to do, so many plans, and, civil servant that he is, he felt the obligation to continue his service to his country.

In the end he did the right thing. He turned the quest for the presidency over to Kamala Harris in a move so smart there was no question Biden knew exactly what he was doing—and still does.

Yes, Joe is old. No, he’s not ready to be put out to pasture.

And neither am I.

Every call for his retirement because he was too old hit me like a brick. It became personal. I’m five years older than Joe and, while I could never qualify to become president (though I’d make a far better president than one Donald Trump), I’m not ready to be herded out into the grasslands, either.

And now with Donald Trump it’s his age: You know by now I’m totally against that man being anywhere near a microphone, let alone the presidency, but every time I see some reference to Trump’s age as a factor in his looniness, his ignorance, his mad quest for the ultimate dictatorship, every time I see his name spelled DonOLD, I flinch.

Our problem with him is not his age, it’s HIM. He’s a useless madman. He’s a dangerous narcissist, a known liar, a complete incompetent, a delusional dictator. Is he senile? How can you tell? He’s always been an idiot.

Using his age as a weapon against him diminishes all of the other flaws he has. His age is the least of it. There are a lot of people his age who would never behave as he does.

They aren’t qualified to be president, either, by the way.

So can we stop using age as the deciding factor whenever someone gets old enough? Of all the human traits, age may be the most arbitrary. Some people have aged at 60 and have gone as far as they will go. They spend their remaining years waiting to die. Others are still driving, still being productive well into their nineties—and show no signs of even noticing their age.

I take all of this personally because I’m one of them now. I’m among the aged. The elderly. I’m so far beyond a Senior Citizen there’s no nickname for me, but I’m still driving, still taking care of a house, still functioning as a member of society without burdening the system too much.

I’m still writing. I’m thinking of taking piano lessons. I may go back to learning Spanish. I’m really looking forward to finally using my first passport. I can’t think of the days ahead as my last. I think of them as opportunities.

I don’t want to be invisible or thought of as “done”. It’s exciting to be this age. I never dreamed I would live to be 87, let alone still be upright and sentient and loving my life. I wish everyone could live to a ripe old age. Then all of us would be celebrating each precious year instead of looking for symptoms that prove how awful getting old really is. For some of us it isn’t awful. We carry on as if these days are gifts. We make the most of them. We’re not victims and the calendar isn’t our enemy.

If you want to find fault with us, look beyond our years. Or behind our years. Any incapacitation could well have happened when we were younger, any flaw was probably always there, and maybe we’re just waiting for you to see us as whole human beings and not withered, aging shells of who we once were. We’ve grown, we’ve adapted, we’re magnificently ancient.

So I’ve come to the end of an entire piece about ageism, but I end up asking you to judge us on everything but age. Does that make sense?

To me it does. But then I’m, you know—up there. (wink, wink.)

The mug is one of my birthday gifts this year. Perfect! You have to know I love it! (Given to me by dear friends in DC who tell me I need to come there. And I will.)

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