ARE OLD LADIES CUTE?

by Linda Lange



I’ve been thinking about something my friend Pam said.  We were planning our annual trip back to our hometown of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and I e-mailed her to say the Packers autograph session we’d wanted to attend was sold out. Pam replied, “We could crash it and be on the front page of the Press-Gazette!  We are so old that people will say, ‘Aw, aren't they cute?'"

I know Pam was kidding.  And I don’t think we’re quite old enough to pull that off.  But her response got me thinking:  Are old ladies inherently cute?  

 

 

 

Old enough to be cute?

At sixty-six, I’m into what some people call The Second Adulthood or The Third Stage of Life, so maybe I should decide whether I want to be cute.  I’ve reinvented myself at numerous stages throughout my life.  Is “cute” my ultimate persona?

 

I admit that one of the cutest things I ever saw was a pair of elderly ladies in San Francisco, sometime around 1985.  They had to be twins and were probably past eighty.  Their carefully coiffed wigs and cats-eye glasses reminded me of my grandmother’s twenty years before. 

 The twins looked like miniatures of my grandmother.

 

They were tiny, barely more than four-and-a-half feet, and dressed exactly alike.  Their veritable sameness, their outdated look, and their diminutive size (ooh, the tiny feet!) made them undeniably … cute.  I wanted to take a photo, but thought it rude to ask.

Alternatively, I find the bumbling crones portrayed on so many greeting cards frightening, rather than cute. (“Isn’t it windy?” “No, it’s Thursday.” “Sure, let's have a drink.”) This portrayal demeans me, somehow.  I hope this isn’t my future.

No, no, I’m not ready to be cute.  When I think of iconic women around my age, I don’t find them cute.  Meryl Streep is not cute.  Cher is not cute.  Hillary Rodham Clinton is Definitely.  Not.  Cute.

But take Betty White.  At 91, she's pretty cute.  So maybe I'm just not old enough ... 

I’m not sure I was cute even when I was a kid.  My classmates were cute in their frilly party dresses.  My parents, for the most part, eschewed the frills and dressed me up in miniature, tailored suits with pleated skirts.  I hated those suits, but now it occurs to me that my folks might have been sending me a message.  Don’t try to be cute.  Try for … what?  Dignified?  Classy?  When I was six, my skinned knees tended to spoil the image, but now maybe I could pull it off.

Or I could take my cue from a woman I’ve met through volunteer work.  She so resembles a different greeting-card heroine, in both looks and personality, that I’m hard pressed to call her Doris rather than Maxine.  Salty … that’s a good word for her.  I have a black sense of humor and (unlike Doris) a bit of a potty mouth.  Maybe I can be salty.  It’s got to be easier than dignified.

Cute?  Dignified?  Salty?  None of the above?  Which personality would you choose for your Third Stage of Life?

 

*****

 

 

 

 

Linda Lange has never forgotten what it was like to be a teenager living in Green Bay, WI, during the Sixties when Vince Lombardi coached the Packers.  She shared her memories in Incomplete Passes:  Reflections on Life, Love, and Football. The memoir, Linda’s first book, was a finalist in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
 

When Linda is not writing or watching football, she volunteers at Save the Animals Foundation, a no-kill shelter for dogs and cats.  She is currently working on a novel with a shelter setting.  Follow Linda's personal blog at http://lindalange.authorsxpress.com.

 

When your little girls have gone

I was on the road that day, somewhere in Iowa, on my way to a five day intensive writing workshop with Margie Lawson, having a "deluxe continental breakfast." Not really sure what continent it might be from, but the coffee is fabulous.
But the topic of conversation on the TODAY show overhead was whether mothers and daughters can be best friends. They interview a set who are, at the same time the experts are horrified and gasping "no! No!"

This is a subject I've been thinking about for awhile. Not about being best friends with my daughters, but my relationship with them. As I've said before, most of my girls packed up and bailed for parts unknown. M picked the Navy, traveled the world, met The One, has a lovely family now living in Florida and soon to take off for foreign parts, if she has her way. B lives 2500 miles away in Nevada. K moved to North Carolina. (D is still in town, but she's so busy we hardly see each other!) It's hard to stay close from that distance.  They have their own lives. Mother isn't part of it.
I asked M recently if she'd done it on purpose, moved away to exclude me. She laughed and called me a "silly mom" and assured me it wasn't like that.
So many people I know in our small town live here forever. As do their parents. Children. Brothers. Sisters. Cousins. Even the ones once removed. Big family parties, cookouts, so on.  I see B doing this with her new family, and I'm glad she has the support.
So am I wishing they were too frightened of the "big world outside" to leave to stay home near me? Of course not. Maybe I've just done my job and sent them out, free and secure, to fly on their own, like any good mother bird.
At the same time, I resent only seeing them once every year or two. I wish they were close so we could do things together, so I wouldn't worry when they had hard times, so I could pop over with a pot roast when I knew they needed it.
Mary Quigley quotes Jonas Salk like this:
Good parents give their children roots and wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them. — Jonas Salk
She makes some good points in her piece on adult children. It's certainly not my intention to become a helicopter parent. I hate flying, for one. But I have grandchildren I hardly know, and all three of these girls are just slipping away in the passage of time. None of us knows how much time might be allotted to us. We might say, "Oh, someday we'll..." but we don't know whether we'll ever get that chance.
Meantime, I suppose, I should be grateful they're flying so successfully. If they don't need me then I've done my job, right? It makes sense. But sometimes it just doesn't satisfy my heart.

FUDDY-DUDDIES UNITE--IT'S GOOD FOR YOU

                       

                     

 

                        FUDDY-DUDDYS UNITE – IT’S GOOD FOR YOU!       

 

Are you “set in your ways?” Do you have rituals you just have to perform at certain times of the day? 

A novelist wrote of a character that “she sought the consolation of underwear.”  As for me, I find my consolation in pink flannel pajamas with hearts printed all over them..

I cherish the cozy feel of the soft fabric, but getting into them is just one of several steps in a bedtime ritual I choreograph as carefully as I used to for my children.

MY PJs.

My back exercises.

Two minutes of tooth brushing.

Popping into bed (that delicious moment). Pillow under knees, just so.

Radio tuned to my cheerful local station. 

My crossword (with a certain pencil).

My book.

No wonder going to bed leaves me totally exhausted!

                         What are the things that you just have to do in a certain way?

When you are not only quirky but quirky alone, you can act as oddly as you want (at least within the walls of your own house).   I love to talk to myself. 

When I used to goof up around the house (trip over a rug because I’m reading a book, pour the orange juice in the coffee mug) I would chide myself – “You idiot! What a klutz!”  Nowadays, I have knocked that yammering self-critic off my shoulder and  reassure myself: “That’s what I love about you — you are so funny!”   When life deals another random blow I say  “There, there, sweetheart, of course you are upset; let’s sit down and talk it over.”

Sometimes I conduct whole conversations. 

“I’m so embarrassed.”

“If I were you, I’d be embarrassed too”

“But you are me.”

I stick to rules for these things. When a snatch of song comes to my head, I have to sing it out loud, as much  as I can remember.  This works well with short ditties, like

                                Delicious

                                Nutritious

                                Makes you feel ambitious!

                                A giant of a cereal

Is Quaker Oats.

It gets stickier when it’s a ballad with lots of verses, like “The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night,” leaving me frustrated when I can’t remember it all the way to “and the little ones chewed on the bones, O!”

               

     Poet Marie Howe says that the rituals of ordinary time, like the water glass you’ve just rinsed and held up to the light, are to be cherished.  “Life is so daily,” Virginia Woolf once exclaimed.  I find myself clinging more and more to the particulars of daily life.  My pink pajamas, my bedtime quirks, my need to stand under the flowering crabapple tree to gaze and gaze, are ways of slowing things down as life streams by, faster and faster. Our fuddy duddy habits seem so solid when, after all, we are passengers on the Titantic in dire need of something to cling to as the deck tilts under our feet. 

Fuddy-duddies, unite!  Send me some of your habits.

Although she grew up in New York City, Annis Pratt makes her home in the Midwest, where she taught English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for many years.  In 1990 she threw her full professorship out the window to move to Michigan, where she is engaged in community activism and novel writing

    Passionate about the environment and an enthusiastic sailor, canoeist and kayaker, she chose a genre where she could create compelling fiction about ecological degradation.

At 75 years old, she feels like she is in the second out of her ninth inning, having published the first volume of her historical fantasy trilogy when she was 73.

Blub: The Marshlanders and Fly Out of the Darkness are the first two volumes of The Marshlanders Trilogy, historical fantasies about the conflict between self-sustaining Marshland communities and Merchant Adventurers trying to drain their lands. These are page-turners about the conflict between people who respect their environment and developers who see it as a source of income.

links www.marshlanders.com , www.marshlanders.blogspot.com, and a humorous blog:

www.litteoldladyblog.blogspot.com

Novels may be purchased at www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com

                                                             

Two Ways to Feel Young Again

I had another one of those dreams last night. You know the kind—something falls off or falls out at the worst moment.

          In this case, I was to preside over a funeral in my hometown. Folks I’d grown up with would be attending, folks I hadn’t seen since we attended high school.

          I stood in a public restroom to run a comb through my hair just one more time. One stroke later I looked like SethGodin.

          I read this stat in AARP’s November magazine issue: “51% of Americans think they look younger than their age.” I’m not one of them. My wife Ellen should be but isn’t.

          The I’m-older-than-I-look delusion died four years ago when I ordered coffee and got the senior discount without asking. I told the cashier, “I’m 54.”

          She shrugged and gave me my change.

          Despite aging’s obvious advances, I’ve discovered some things that help me live a more youthful life.

          Losing weight. For over two decades, my driver’s license lied. It said, “Weight 175 pounds.”

          Until two years ago, I weighed closer to 200 pounds. Then I got serious about losing the extra weight. I tracked my exercise and calories on Loseit.com and experienced the amazing benefits of a lighter me.

          I slept better—no acid reflux.

          My wife slept better—no more snoring husband.

          My cholesterol went down. My energy went up.

          Just this week, someone who hadn’t seen me for a while asked, “Have you lost weight?”

          I may still look old, but I sure feel younger.

          Laugh. Children laugh about a million times a day (the exact figure may vary from child to child). We adults top out at about three chuckles (in a good week).

          You don’t need a “laugh out loud” movie, the funny papers, or a hilarious read to experience the benefits of laughter. Just laugh.

          While driving, I’ve forced myself to laugh. While home alone (well, the dog doesn’t count), I’ve forced myself to laugh. On one occasion, I forced myself to laugh with my wife listening in another room. She said, “You sound demented.”

          Demented or not, a funny thing happens when you fake laughter. Eventually it becomes genuine. Real or fake, laughter elevates your mood and benefits your body in positive ways.

          By the way, my family and I flew in a jam-packed, smoking-in-the-back Aeroflot flight to the Russian Far East. My sister-in-law gave me The Last Days of Summer to read on the plane. I laughed until I cried. Ellen sat in another row and acted as if she didn’t know me.

          I’m curious. What are some things that have helped you remain youthful? Any hilarious books or movies you’d recommend?

ABOUT T. NEAL TARVER

T. Neal Tarver, a native Texan living in Wisconsin, has served churches in Texas and Wisconsin. He, his wife Ellen, and son Daniel lived and worked for three years as missionaries in the Russian Far East. Tom speaks enough Russian to both converse and confuse.

In 2011, Tom was selected as a semi-finalist in the American Christian Fiction Writers’ Genesis contest. He’s also been a two-time winner of MBT’s “Make Every Word Count Flash Fiction” contest. His debut novel, Dark Eyes, Deep Eyes, is available through WestBow Press, Amazon, BARNES & NOBLE, and other retail outlets.

He currently writes from his home in Richland Center, Wisconsin, or from wherever his travels take him. He posts articles weekly at A Curious Band of Others.

Tom has spoken in churches across America, and in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East