In the Autumn of our Years; Women of a Certain Age

 

Women of a Certain Age; Autumn

 

“You’re ageless, timeless, lace and fineness/ you’re beauty and elegance.”

                                    Rod Stewart, “You’re in my Heart”

I’ve always loved fall best out of all the seasons, but it isn’t lost on me that it’s full of contradictions.  One day it’s boiling hot, the next, frost covers everything.  Sometimes there are roses and violets everywhere, yet pumpkins are sparse and few.

 

As beautiful as the leaves are, it’s hard to remember that they are dying, that Persephone left for Hades in autumn, and that winter was close behind. 

 

So, too women in their autumn years are full of contradictions.  We didn’t create them, we just have them.  We are old enough to be grandparents, yet young enough to raise our grandchildren if we have to. 

 

We can no longer have our own children, but our husbands can procreate seemingly forever. 

 

As women, we still need our mothers and fathers, yet we end up in a parental role for them, or worse, we lose them.  At a certain age, a woman first experiences true loneliness; she watches her family die around her, even some of her friends, till no one is left.

 

We remember real rock and its legends, but many of them, if alive, are even older than we are, and they walk with canes if at all.  Sometimes their voices are strong, and when we hear them sing, we can close are eyes and be fourteen again.

 

The same things hurt us, but we aren’t supposed to let them bother us.  Often the same things please us, or we wouldn’t be married to the same person for so long.  We think as we always think, some of us get sharper, not duller.  We still work, and we still have the time to learn.  Yet, no matter how good we look, the world makes certain assumptions.  People speak to us more slowly and more loudly.  Bank clerks and nurses feel the need to “guide” us and remind us of bleak financial futures, Medicare, and brittle bones. 

 

We wonder if more time is gone then left; some of us used to escape on long trips and cruises, often on group tours.  There is safety in numbers.   Some of us find solace in our pets, in our cats and dogs especially.  We indulge in our hobbies, we join clubs. 

 

We’d like to work, but employers do the math; experience plus maturity equals to them old age, a definite no-no in a corporate world made of mutton, but dressed as lamb.

 

No one dresses as her grandmother did; it’s hard to tell how old we are.  Our hands betray us sometimes; crippled with arthritis, fingers twisted, no longer pointing straight.  Here and there, age spots erupt, but concealer covers them up. If we wear nice gloves or have elaborate manicures, we can explain away our old hands.

Barbara Pym celebrated us, and made our lives worthwhile to study, yet she's almost out of print, again.

So, here we are, deemed too young for some things, yet still to old to die.  What’s a girl to do?

Pym, Paternity, and Plastic Bags

  

This cold, blustery November day is the third anniversary of my Dad’s death.  I remember everything about him, including how neat and precise he was in organizing his things.  His desk was perfection, and we called it Miss Pym’s desk, since he was the one who edited my book and dissertation about Pym, The Subversion of Romance in the Novels of Barbara Pym.

 

He folded papers and plastic bags neatly, and even sorted and arranged our garbage.  He was way ahead of the recycling movement.  He could have been Marcia’s sibling from Pym’s Quartet in Autumn.  As Susan Pearce noted in The Collector’s Voice, Modern Voices,  Marcia was a discerning and organized collector.  She sorted milk bottles, leaving behind those that did not “fit”, and carefully folded and recycled her plastic bags. I have a friend who does this, too, particularly with the plastic bags that encase rolls of paper towels.  Both Marcia and my friend creased them perfectly, and kept them in special places.  I have tried to be that neat, and tried to crease carefully the bags I repurpose and recycle, but I just can’t do it.

 

Here’s to Dad, and to Pym and Marcia.  We could take a lesson from them about recycling, organization, and life.