of the two of us taken in the early 1980s. We gazed at it with surprised respect; “Weren’t we young!” said Betty. Actually, verging on middle age, but never mind – our reaction was in perfect accord: an acknowledgment of those other selves. Steve, next-door neighbor of my childhood, seems remote today from the six-year-old in my head, with whom I am still playing a messy game by the garden pond involving ships made of pieces of plank, but there is a resonance. He became a sculptor, and back then he was in charge of plank construction: talent will out. I go back thirty years and more with Ann and Anthony; they are layered in my head, saying and doing over time, a collective with a concertina effect that compresses to the known people of today. Several decades again with Joy, and it is sometimes a familiar younger self of hers who surfaces – a turn of phrase, a mannerism.
And others . . . The point of all this is a tribute to the way in which we are each of us the accretion of all that we have been. You see this in yourself; you see it in those you have long known. Nothing new here, no fresh perception, but something you appreciate to the full in old age. I am aware of invisible ballast, on all sides, the hidden body of the iceberg.
I cherish the company of my contemporaries, but I want – need – also to touch base elsewhere. Two of my closest friends today are considerably younger than I am, and I value that; the great stimulus over the last twenty years has been watching, and knowing, my grandchildren, four of them now grown up. To be corralled with one’s own age group must seem like some kind of malign exile, a banishment from the rich every-age confection of society. To walk along the street and see a toddler in a stroller, a bunch of teenagers, businesspeople on their cell phones, middle-aged women with their shopping, someone else elderly like me, is to feel a part of the natural progression of things, to be aware of continuity, replenishment. And it is, quite simply, of consuming interest; a novelist is anyway a people-watcher – an old novelist is still in the business but in less forensic style. There is a kind of benign observation now; the street scene mutates from season to season, year to year. New adornment; different style. How on earth does she get into those skin-tight jeans? Tattoos
all
over
both
arms – you may get tired of that, you know.
Three
matching pugs with matching collars and leashes?
We old are on the edge of things. Or are we? Yesterday was budget day, and the airwaves are full of outrage at the so-called “granny tax” – the phasing out of tax concessions for those over sixty-five. Unfair to penalize those who have worked and saved, is the cry, but there is also threatening mention of the “gray vote.” We might bite back. No doubt all this has been taken into consideration by those whose job it is to crunch the numbers, but the fact remains that there is an uneasy tension today between proper concern for the old, and a nervous apprehension about this exponential growth of a new demographic. We are many, and will be more; on the edge, perhaps, but unignorable.
The day belongs to the young, the younger. I feel overtaken, and that is fine. I don’t like finding myself usually the oldest person in the room, and I am afraid of being boring. The old carry around the potential to bore like a red warning light; I know, I have shied away from it myself. But I wouldn’t in the least want to reoccupy the center stage, which is I suppose that midlife period around forty, with youth still apparent and middle age at arm’s length. I don’t remember being any more appreciative of life then than I am now. More energy, yes, of course – vigor, capacity – but plenty of doubts and anxieties. Well, there still are those, but tempered somehow by experience; you don’t fret or waver less, but you have learned that time will sort it out, for better or for worse.
Experience. What is
And others . . . The point of all this is a tribute to the way in which we are each of us the accretion of all that we have been. You see this in yourself; you see it in those you have long known. Nothing new here, no fresh perception, but something you appreciate to the full in old age. I am aware of invisible ballast, on all sides, the hidden body of the iceberg.
I cherish the company of my contemporaries, but I want – need – also to touch base elsewhere. Two of my closest friends today are considerably younger than I am, and I value that; the great stimulus over the last twenty years has been watching, and knowing, my grandchildren, four of them now grown up. To be corralled with one’s own age group must seem like some kind of malign exile, a banishment from the rich every-age confection of society. To walk along the street and see a toddler in a stroller, a bunch of teenagers, businesspeople on their cell phones, middle-aged women with their shopping, someone else elderly like me, is to feel a part of the natural progression of things, to be aware of continuity, replenishment. And it is, quite simply, of consuming interest; a novelist is anyway a people-watcher – an old novelist is still in the business but in less forensic style. There is a kind of benign observation now; the street scene mutates from season to season, year to year. New adornment; different style. How on earth does she get into those skin-tight jeans? Tattoos
all
over
both
arms – you may get tired of that, you know.
Three
matching pugs with matching collars and leashes?
We old are on the edge of things. Or are we? Yesterday was budget day, and the airwaves are full of outrage at the so-called “granny tax” – the phasing out of tax concessions for those over sixty-five. Unfair to penalize those who have worked and saved, is the cry, but there is also threatening mention of the “gray vote.” We might bite back. No doubt all this has been taken into consideration by those whose job it is to crunch the numbers, but the fact remains that there is an uneasy tension today between proper concern for the old, and a nervous apprehension about this exponential growth of a new demographic. We are many, and will be more; on the edge, perhaps, but unignorable.
The day belongs to the young, the younger. I feel overtaken, and that is fine. I don’t like finding myself usually the oldest person in the room, and I am afraid of being boring. The old carry around the potential to bore like a red warning light; I know, I have shied away from it myself. But I wouldn’t in the least want to reoccupy the center stage, which is I suppose that midlife period around forty, with youth still apparent and middle age at arm’s length. I don’t remember being any more appreciative of life then than I am now. More energy, yes, of course – vigor, capacity – but plenty of doubts and anxieties. Well, there still are those, but tempered somehow by experience; you don’t fret or waver less, but you have learned that time will sort it out, for better or for worse.
Experience. What is
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