Older and Louder – by Teague Hartford

(August 24 -2020) Back in the day, my grandmothers, who weren’t nearly as ancient as I imagined at the time, got to focus their energies on things like visiting their grown children and beating the crap out of their grandchildren at Chinese checkers. I grew up when old folks still hung out in rocking chairs on their porches for real, not just in the movies, and they were to be respected regardless of their behavior. There was something respectful just about making it past 70 back then. I’ll be over 70 in the foreseeable future and I don’t know about the rest of you boomers out there, but I never really had the time to consider what this era of my life would look like. I guess I joked with friends about it when I was much younger. We’d talk about getting old and hanging out, smoking pipes and snoozing in our rockers on a front porch somewhere, but I think that was if we made it past 90. We never expected to make it this far, so it was just idle conversation. But now here I am. And there’s no rocking chair in sight.

On Friday mornings I sometimes get to hang out with some other women, all of us over 60. Hardly the coffee clutch of me mum’s era, we primarily discuss the current political scene as well as what actions we are taking to try to alleviate some of the injustice, illness, and hatred running rampant these days. We talk about how much we love our nation, and how sad we are watching it fall into such disarray. But we don’t just complain and walk away. We bring new perspectives and information to the table and educate ourselves and each other. We’re there to learn and grow and recommit ourselves to our individual efforts. We discuss what we can do to help specifically, what efforts are we making? What’s working? What else may be needed?

I call myself an old lady much to the annoyance of friends older than myself who don’t want to think of themselves as old, or elderly. But it’s just emotional semantics. When I ask around about what it means to get older in this day and age, I don’t hear much about rocking chairs and porches, unless someone is building one. Getting old ain’t what it used to be. Look at Jimmy and Roslyn Carter for example. Or Jane Goodall, David Attenborough, Jane Fonda, and on and on. John Lewis marched until his dying day, literally. Many folks in our generation never ditched protest signs or stopped their intentional work, just put them aside now and again to raise youngins or work on another project. But their efforts continued, and when there is something going on in the world or nation that needs attention in the form of letter writing, calling officials, rounding folks up for a march or a sit in, there they are standing out front to be arrested first.

The perspective shared by so many in regard to getting older and reveling in the golden years may not fit very well for most Americans, or at least most of the ones I know. Many of us didn’t necessarily invest in the dream, so to speak. We didn’t get an education and have a career with a single employer for enough years to warrant a pension or any kind of retirement. Most of the folks I know, myself included, will be working for the rest of our lives because we worked for love, rather than money or security. And as we all know, though we may have paid into social security all our lives, it certainly ain’t enough to live on anymore. Though the media hype may tout more time and money and options as the rightful accomplishments of us older folks, many of us will die with our boots on without ever realizing those credits. But then there is the fact that many of us are also still committed to whatever work we’ve been doing throughout life; we look for every avenue to somehow share what we have learned and discovered along the way. We work to support other, younger folks who are finding their way. Why on earth would we stop?

Teague Hartford Aug. 24-2020