Let me say right up front that I am exhausted by women over-reaching.
OK, for the 60% of you who are still reading, let me be clear, all those women DESERVE to over-reach. But still, it exhausts me.
OK, for the 25% of you who are still reading, let me assert that I wear like a badge the fact that one of my friends, a woman who was my boss and now is my dear, close friend, and who is one of the three smartest people I’ve ever met, once called me “her favorite feminist.”
Now, as I get into this, I do not wish to imply that old women are in any way better than old men. Aw hell, who am I kidding? OF COURSE old women are better than old men. While I have a hippie’s aversion to judging groups of people, I say with just about no fear of contradiction (and if you contradict me, so the hell what?), that men tend to get curmudgeonly when they get old, and women get wise. Plus they can still drive a car, deeper into their dotage.
So, with all that outta the way, let me tell you what drives me to write this. Today I had the happy chore of watering our fall garden. Kale, carrots, spinach, radishes, peppers left over from the summer, bunch of other stuff. (Sidebar: DO NOT keep track of how much a home garden costs you. Those home-grown tomatoes are MAGNIFICENT! Are they $5-apiece magnificent? Maybe.) Anyway, among my watering targets is this flowering plant in a planter on our patio. It is a plant that my wife, Cheryl’s, friend Susan gave her before Susan moved off to Boise. Susan was a generation, or maybe half-a-generation older than we, and she and Cheryl had been buds since singing together in the church choir 40 years ago. Cheryl would go to visit her once a year, in Boise. Then Susan died. It has been important to Cheryl that we keep this plant from Susan alive. We once thought it had died – when we spent a month away and our neighbor didn’t water it enough, or watered it too much, or we forgot to ask her to water it, or whatever. Cheryl shed no tears, but she was sad. And I hate for her to be sad, especially in these covid days. But somehow the plant came back to life, and now it is going gang-busters! Today I watered it carefully.
Anyway, Cheryl has a long history of honoring and sitting at the knee of older women. She had two grandmothers, both of whom I knew. One was nutty as a fruitcake, and I am confident there is no one alive today, and likely no one ever (except for Nams, herself) who would bristle at my characterization of her. Cheryl’s other grandmother, Grandmother Berry, was perhaps the warmest, loveliest, wisest person either of us has ever known. Grandmother Berry lived to be 99. She experienced sadnesses that you would thank me for not mentioning. And yet she retained this calm, this otherworldly bliss. We would receive these hand-written letters extolling the beauty of the small trapezoid of foliage she could see from the window of her north Georgia nursing home bedroom. When we went to visit her there one time, and realized that though she was likely the oldest person in the facility she was certainly the sharpest, one of my sons and I excused ourselves and busted down to the Walmart to get a TV for her room, so she could watch alone if she chose not to go down to the cacaphonic community room. Anyway, Grandmother Berry was amazing, and influences our behavior to this day.
I knew one of my grandmothers, and she was the only person in my life who gave me unconditional love. (Oh, my mother – who didn’t get to become an “old woman” — loved me plenty good. But I think there were conditions. At least I learned to live my life as though that were the case.) “Nana” lived to 82, and for my money she had only two faults. No matter how many pancakes I said I wanted, she would always give me one or two more. And when I would ask her if I looked good, before I went out, as a high schooler, she would answer “Oh yes,” before she looked at me. But she was a generous and life-worn woman who had taught Latin in her high school the year after she graduated from that school, had been a social worker in deep Appalachia, had moved with us from West Virginia to Florida being a good sport throughout it all, made me “doughballs” for bait when I went fishing, and made a big deal of it when I brought home my first bream and we watched as it swam in our kitchen sink. I still cannot believe that she saw fit to tell me the story of the time some “mountain woman” came into town to file for welfare, and on the form where it asked for “marital status” she answered “about two times a week.” Nana made that up, right?
Cheryl’s mother, my mother-in-law, “Mrs. B.” to me ‘til the day she died, was also an amazing woman. Widowed in her mid 40s, up to that point she had never written a check. (Pause, to let that sink in.) She later found work, and continued the job of being mother to her two daughters, and, for the purposes of this essay, mother-in-law to me. Mrs. B. and I had a great relationship. We were both night owls, and in Cheryl’s and my early married years, and even when we were just engaged, when we would visit at Cheryl’s girlhood house Cheryl would, as was and is her wont, go to bed at about 9:30, then Mrs. B. and I would stay up late, in her bedroom, watching TV and talking and smoking. (Hey, lighten up. It was the early 70s. Even Johnny was smoking, on TV!) Mrs. B. taught me how to mow the lawn, how to grill out, and basically just helped me become the man that she would have serve her baby well. I hope I have not disappointed her.
So Cheryl has spent a lovely lifetime honoring and learning from her older women family and friends. But now, Susan and Grandmother Berry and Mrs. B. are gone. “Martha” is almost blind. “Anne” doesn’t get out much anymore. There are a few in this amazing cadre Cheryl has cultivated who are still regular phone or Zoom buddies, but, and here is the deal, at 69 my amazing wife is getting close to being the “old woman.” OK, she is not. But close.
And the younger moths are attracted to her flame. A daughter-in-law who has her own mother for her primary model, but watches Cheryl carefully, as she realizes how wise she must’ve been to raise the son whom she (the D-i-L) married. A 40-year-old friend who recognizes and haltingly seeks Cheryl’s nonjudgmental wisdom. Susan’s own daughter, who watched how Susan served Cheryl and now subtly sidles up to Cheryl to continue the flow of wisdom down the generations.
I am tired. And I am grumpy. I used to be an extrovert, but I am oh-so-happy with my solitude. To say I was a “bon vivant” would be a gross egotistical exaggeration, but there are a bunch of folks who would say that isn’t too far off. But now I don’t much like people. I can barely stand you. But Cheryl. As she starts to become an old woman. Watch and learn! She has spent a lifetime of concerted, intentional study and development of her spirituality. Three-year diploma from the University of the South in Education for Ministry. A lifetime of 6:00 a.m. bible and daily devotional reading. Various classes at our church on spiritual growth. TEACHING classes on forgiveness. (I understand the concept, in theory.)
As Cheryl and I will do, we were talking the other day about the legacy we might leave for our sons. We have worried about money. I have worried about reputation. We both worry (hey Malcolm Gladwell, I gotcher “10,000 hours”!!) about how we might serve them now, when they are well-functioning adult citizens. But the other day Cheryl said she thought her legacy might be to TRY to demonstrate how to grow old gracefully.
So, people came for the Randolph, but they stay for the Cheryl. Old women. They are wise. Just watch!
Photo by Brett Jordan from Pexels
