Let's Row Together
Aging, as an older woman, in a time of political crisis. Like the flow of a well-rowed crew shell, life flows under us when we live it with gratitude and joy, meaning and purpose.
I’m old. An older woman, to be precise.
When I acknowledge this fact aloud, I see people around me cringing, as if saying who I am is wrong to do in our culture that celebrates youth.
But I embrace my age. No tucks, anywhere, yet. No body parts replaced, yet. I wear no make-up, which is a lifetime habit I can’t break, through there are times I should. My hair is its natural color – white, I guess – a decision I made about a decade ago when I could no longer bear the cost of highlighting it or the loss of my time in sitting in a salon looking like an antenna with my hair folded in Reynolds Wrap.
At 73, I’m three years shy of the age my father was when he died. A malignant brain tumor took him after he never taken one sick day in his half-century of teaching. And who knows how many years I am short of the age when my mom’s Alzheimer’s silently started to steal her mind before the disease announced itself loudly in her mid-80s. Because she gave her brain to a medical school to study after her death – a decision she reached when my father donated his brain, which was before her Alzheimer’s set in– I know she also suffered with Lewy Body dementia and Parkinson’s.
Ah, what awaits me?
I don’t devote even one second of my life to wondering.
In old age, time rushes by so quickly that every moment is too precious to waste on worrying about what I can’t know – or change.
In a few weeks, I will return to my hometown of Amherst, MA, for our 55th high school reunion. Our name tags will include photos from our high school yearbook. When a childhood friend shared this photo in anticipation of our early August gathering, it tested me in putting names with faces from our youth group at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House. (I am not in the photo, but these “kids” were my childhood friends.)
Still in this tenuous time when the aging of one man, in particular, weighs heavily on our minds, it’s impossible not to ponder our own aging - and that of our family members – and pull from these thoughts feelings we have for our current political situation.
For me, my response to aging is to row.
Three, sometimes four times each week, pressing my legs firmly into the boat’s footplates, I push my rolling seat back with all of the force I can muster at the moment when my oar blade first cuts the water. I then pull with my arms aiming for a strong, fluid stroke, not a snatch and jerk tug. I repeat this motion again and again and again like a metronome, 30 times each minute as we drive our crew shell forward.
With each stroke, followed by a momentary recovery as I slide forward to row again, we let the boat flow under us, meeting it where it’s taken us with our next stroke.
Let the boat flow under us. Then, row again.
When my young rowing coaches tell us this, they cannot know how pointedly their words speak to me as an older person, often the oldest rower in our boat.
In my older years, life flows under me in ways it didn’t when I was younger. Now, joy and gratitude are with me when I awaken granted with another day of good health, knowing I’m loved and valued, and with the opportunity - no, make that the obligation of demonstrating empathy for and care of others whose lives aren’t as fortunate as mine.
I treasure my elder years by living them daily with the immediacy of purpose. It’s not at all like the angst of my youthful years in which the allure of future possibilities clouded out what matters most to me now.
Rowing in my 70s treats me to a different kind of joy than it did in my younger years. Then, it was one of my many daily opportunities to achieve – and yes, I was fortunate to have all of them. But like so much else about those years, my achievements seemed unanchored to a show of gratitude or a feeling of joy.
I didn’t relish them as I do now moments of far less consequence. Today I don’t think of what I do in terms of achievement, but as another moment lived with purpose.
After last night’s crew race, when I stepped onto the dock I was drenched in sweat and depleted by the high heat and humidity coupled with my exertion in the bow seat. My joy was not an outburst of exultation but my private, quiet acknowledgement of the gratitude I felt for again being able to do what I’d done.
That feeling echoed one I’d had earlier in the week at the gym. My palms touched as I held them still a few inches from my chest. My fingers pointed upward, as my head bowed. My barre instructor led us in a whispered chant of gratitude. That wasn’t hard to do after stretching our bodies and our minds.
I was grateful.
Earlier this week I read Anne Lamott’s essay, “Gentle is the joy that comes with age,” in the Washington Post. In its digital iteration, its opening visual shows a minute hand racing around a clock’s face while a woman sits at ease at a breakfast table. “It turns out the point of life is gratitude. And gratitude is joy,” the subhead reads.
While I commend a full reading of her words, these spoke to me:
“To a great degree, in older age, ambition falls away. Such a relief. Appreciation and surprise bloom many mornings: Yay — I like it here. We more easily accept the world as is, even as we doggedly keep trying to save it. … Younger joy means endorphins. Older joy feels more like contentment.”
Online, commenters nodded as they shared moments from their aging lives. One of them left these words behind:
“Joy for a senior woman is realizing that it is no longer necessary to remain quiet in the face of bigotry or misogyny. Woo hoo.”
Knowing Lamott’s was a contemplation of a woman’s life, I turned to my friend Roger Angell’s memorable essay, “This Old Man.” He wrote it when he was 93, then eight years shy of his death. His words were raw, tinged with the dark emotions of loss that he felt after the recent deaths of his wife, daughter and his companion dog.
Roger and I visiting on the porch of his summer home in Brooklin, Maine, when he was in his nineties. In my years covering Major League Baseball, Roger and I were often press box seat mates, and he taught me some awesome hints about scoring games so as to capture details that routine scoring would not capture.
In his essay, Angell chronicled at length his numerous physical ailments, as he wrote as well about the invisibility he experienced among friends whose conversation now bypassed him.
“We’re finishing the wine and in serious converse about global warming in Nyack or Virginia Woolf the cross-dresser. There’s a pause, and I chime in with a couple of sentences. The others look at me politely, then resume the talk exactly at the point where they’ve just left it. What? Hello? Didn’t I just say something? Have I left the room?”
He admitted to his mind’s frequent hesitancies with words he’d once spoken with ease.
“My conversation may be full of holes and pauses, but I’ve learned to dispatch a private Apache scout ahead into the next sentence, the one coming up, to see if there are any vacant names or verbs in the landscape up there. If he sends back a warning, I’ll pause meaningfully, duh, until something else comes to mind.”
Yet, like Lamont, he also touched on the happiness he’d found in being old.
“… a majority of us people over seventy-five keep surprising ourselves with happiness. Put me on that list. Our children are adults now and mostly gone off, and let’s hope full of their own lives. We’ve outgrown our ambitions. If our wives or husbands are still with us, we sense a trickle of contentment flowing from the reliable springs of routine, affection in long silences, calm within the light boredom of well-worn friends, retold stories, and mossy opinions.”
On the Road, Soon
There came a day, I can’t remember exactly which day, when I suddenly realized that Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside, will soon be in the hands of readers. This is the book I thought about writing for many years, then began to research in 2012. After writing one book, I threw it away when even I was bored by the story I'd told. After a while, I discovered a new way to tell my story with the integrity I was seeking. In editing my book dozens of times, at least, I grew more comfortable with sharing incredibly personal moments from my life during the time of my court case. These words that once flowed through my fingers onto the keyboard exist on printed pages of my book.
What I know, and readers will discover, is how several enormously painful moments from my 20-something life merge with moments of professional success and failure, and all of these stories are poised to move into the public sphere.
And they – and I – will be judged. Critiqued, if my book is reviewed.
It’s a scary time for me, a time when I am determined to be in the company of dear friends. This is why I set up my book journey as I did, with friends in every port of call. And a friend will be the moderator at each book talk I do. I’ll be with friends if stormy winds blow me back. And I’ll be with friends if joy is called for.
And JOY is what we’ll experience together at my home city launch of Locker Room Talk at Porter Square Books in Cambridge on Thursday, September 5 at 7:00. If you live nearby, please RSVP for my book talk with Tara Sullivan, the only woman sports columnist at the Boston Globe as moderator. Share this invitation with friends!
Please note: Fire laws cap bookstore attendance, so RSVP early and show up if you say you are coming! No maybes. (Read my Substack from two weeks ago for my view on maybe.) Yes or No.
For my list of book talks, go here. Powell’s bookstore in Portland, Oregon was added this week with my dear friend Elizabeth Mehren, author of “I Lived to Tell the World” moderating this talk. After that talk, we’re heading to the Sports Bra, Portland’s first-in-the-nation bar dedicated to women’s sports. The idea caught on and bars like this one now exist in several cities, with more to be created.
More book talk events likely to be added soon. Stay tuned.
To preorder Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle To Get Inside, with a 30% discount and free shipping, go here and enter this code, RUSA30
Melissa you live every day to the fullest. So whatever lies ahead, I know you will make the most of every nook and cranny of this world you illuminate so well for us.
I can’t wait to help you celebrate this story with JOY in Gloucester!!