Author: graceiyer97

For my final project, I interviewed my grandmother and aunt. I wanted to learn more about what aging is like in a culture that has historically been more focused around multigenerational family relationships, as opposed to the Western structure of a nuclear family, in which a home consists of parents and their children. My dad participated in the interview to help translate a little for my grandmother and I–she is most comfortable speaking in Tamil and I don’t speak any–and to answer some of the questions about how his mom raised him and my aunt and how the way he supports her is changing. 

When I asked how they care for each other, my aunt’s first response was that they have the same mother/daughter relationship they’ve always had. She said that she considers my grandmother a “friend, philosopher, and guide” to her, that she provides my aunt with a source of strength, and that she offers guidance when my aunt has to make hard decisions. My aunt also said that she doesn’t yet feel my grandmother needs taking care of. I believed all of this was true, and I thought there was more to their relationship than my grandmother being caretaker and my aunt being taken care of. I also figured that when I asked about “care,” without specifying the different forms care can come in (physical, emotional, financial, and medical as just a few), they assumed I meant physical care–which my grandmother largely does not yet need. 

My dad added to this that, in his words, “our parents have always been our parents,” and at the same time, there has always been a deep respect for the opinions and wishes of everyone in the family, regardless of generation. He noted that even though he and my aunt were kids, their parents always asked them before making a big decision, and they always took their ideas into consideration. 

This statement drew the conversation towards forms of care that are more emotional and advice-oriented. I think context in regards to our family structure is important for understanding the way we emotionally support one another: My dad moved away from India to Illinois when he was in his early 20s, to go to grad school. My aunt stayed in India, married, and had two kids. For some time, my aunt and uncle and cousins lived on their own. When my cousins were eleven and five, my uncle passed away suddenly. My grandparents, without hesitation, moved into my aunt’s house. They offered her emotional support in a time during which she felt she was drowning, helped her make practical decisions about how to move forward as a single, working, parent, and took on roles as primary caretakers for my cousins. For years, my grandparents, my aunt, and my cousins all lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment in Delhi together. Over the last few years, the family has dispersed. My oldest cousin left to live at school when he was a teenager, and has lived in Bangalore for years now. His wife and daughter live there too. Several years ago my dad bought a flat in Bangalore and my grandparents moved into it–it’s down the hall from my cousin’s and his family’s flat. My dad and I stay there when we visit, and though my cousin and his family are close-by, since my grandfather passed away two years ago, my grandmother has largely been alone in that flat. My aunt and my other cousin stayed in Delhi until last May, when my cousin got married and also moved out of the house. That left my grandmother living by herself for the first time in her entire life, something that was deeply challenging for her in the brief time she stayed alone in Delhi. My aunt has since moved into my grandmother’s flat in Bangalore. I think this context tells the story of care effectively on its own: the family has lived multi-generationally for a long time, and no one is ever left alone for too long. 

One of my goals in this project was to explore what elder-care looks like in a culture whose collectivism I admire deeply, and in some ways still find myself resistant to. I think multigenerational communities are beyond valuable, and much more radical than any set of beliefs that values one age group over another. Throughout this course I thought a lot about how I’m going to cope with my parents’ aging and their needs for care. It is a sad truth, but a truth, that I don’t have the relationships with my parents that my cousins do with their mom or the relationship that my grandparents have with my dad and aunt and cousins. I can’t imagine living with them in a way that is healthy or enjoyable for any of us, and I am also thoroughly opposed to relocating either of them to an assisted living facility. I’m still working through imagining the option for elder care that is in line with my values, and then finding out if that option actually exists. This project allowed me to explore an option that, though not quite right for me, put me a few steps closer.

Here is the link to my final presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-6ux_qhvlEBIVtF6oUZz3Ko9UMcjz4D-zdlL1Gzuy3E/edit?usp=sharing

I so enjoyed Patricia’s visit to our class. I took a class with her last semester, a creative nonfiction class, and was so consistently compelled by the way she speaks and teaches. One of the first things I wrote in my notes from the visit is how the way she speaks is so patient, so thoughtful. I’m taking her class “Dreams, Visions, Rituals” next semester, and am looking forward to how some of the themes we discussed in her work are explored in that class. 

One of the first things that struck me in our conversation was the way in which the main character of the story spends so much time avoiding being like her mother, just to follow in her footsteps. I see this happen often, in real life and in stories–I know some of the seniors mentioned seeing this pattern in their own relationships with their mothers–and I see it partially in my relationship with my own mother. There are many ways in which I still resist the path my mother has taken in her life, and that resistance is in line with my values, and there are many ways in which my mother and I are the same, points of connection that I can only have with her. It has taken me a long time to be okay with sharing those parts of myself with my mother, and sometimes I still balk at it, so reading narratives like these in which people, women in particular, come to terms with what they share with their mothers are really helpful in providing a guide for what that process can look like. 

Another part of the conversation that I really appreciated was the conversation around “stagnancy” in the mother/daughter relationship, and the necessity of body- & healing-work to unblock stagnancy. I had chronic headaches for almost nine years and they only started to get better when I started seeing bodyworkers. A couple of them told me the same thing right away–my headaches were caused by stagnant energy. They then guided me through what needed to happen to unblock that stagnancy, to move my energy and my blood so it didn’t cause me harm. I think there is a similar quality to my relationship with my mother–I hold anger, fear, and sadness around my relationship with her and that hadn’t changed much until the last year. All those feelings have been stuck in the same parts of my body for years, and I think I can apply the same healing principles to those feelings that I did to my headaches. If I help those feelings move, and help my body release them, they don’t keep causing me pain. I am so consistently surprised by the way that talking to Patricia always helps me dig up and deal with something I didn’t even mean to look for, something I didn’t realize needed dealing with.

In this reading, I was particularly struck by Janna’s cognitive dissonance around caring for Mrs. Fowler. She consistently describes feeling both put off by Mrs. Fowler and being fascinated with her. I think this is a consistent conflict in how we talk about people who are aging–we claim to admire them for their wisdom, but also feel disgust around their physical states. 

This disgust is attached to smell in particular; Janna describes over and over again her aversion to the smells of Mrs. Fowler’s apartment. She notes the way the smell sticks to her: “I could feel the smelly air of Mrs. Fowler’s place on my skin and hair,” and then details the process of washing that smell off, in the luxury of her bathroom(21). There’s some clear guilt around the juxtaposition of her perfectly-designed, well-kempt bathroom and Mrs. Fowler’s dingy, dirty, damp flat: “I came out of the bath and stood in the doorway wrapped in my bath sheet and looked at the bathroom and thought about Mrs. Fowler. She has never had hot water. Has lived in that filthy hole, with cold water, since before the First World War”(22). Even in Janna’s attempts to wash herself clean of Mrs. Fowler’s aftereffects, she finds herself stuck thinking about her new companion. This train of thought continues, as Janna grapples with her simultaneous desires to leave Mrs. Fowler and to continue to care for her. She thinks, “I wish I had not responded to her, and I was wondering all evening how to escape. In the morning I woke up and it was as if I was facing some terrible fate. Because I knew I was going to look after Mrs. Fowler. To an extent, anyway”(22). After having come to this conclusion, Janna’s attitude towards the smell of Mrs. Fowler’s flat changes, too. She once again articulates her disgust at the smell, but then notes “a sharp sweet smell which [she] didn’t know”(23). I would argue that her initial revulsion is less so an honest reflection of how Janna feels about Mrs. Fowler, but an ingrained societal response to older people. Janna is supposed to be disgusted, so she is, but as she allows herself to actually see Mrs. Fowler in her entirety, beyond being an “infirm” older body(20) (as opposed to Janna’s own “solid firm” body(22)), some feeling of adoration creeps in. Like that “sharp sweet smell,” Janna struggles to name the adoration, but its presence is clear(23).  We first see Janna’s shame around her affection for Mrs. Fowler in her thought process while at a dinner with Joyce, after having first met Mrs. Fowler: “I was full of revulsion. The sour, dirty smell was in my clothes and hair…We had a good dinner at Alfredo’s and talked. I said nothing about Mrs. Fowler, of course, yet I was thinking of her all the time”(13). Janna knows that her world is structured so as to maintain the invisibility of older women, and so “of course” she would not make Mrs. Fowler, or her interest in Mrs. Fowler, visible to Joyce. I imagine there’s fear here–that if Janna is visibly attached to someone invisible, that she will also become invisible, or conversely, that if Mrs. Fowler is brought to visibility through her connection to Janna, Janna will be associated with the disgust that motivates us to hide older people. When she prompts Joyce to include older women in their Female Images issue of Lilith, Joyce’s reaction confirms Janna’s assumption that to bring Mrs. Fowler and other older women into visibility would bring judgment: “I said this to Joyce, and I watched a series of reactions in her: first, surprise. Then shock, small movements of head and eyes said she was alerting herself to danger. Then she, as it were, switched herself off, became vague, and her eyes turned away from me”(18-19). Joyce’s reaction shows that to bring older people into visibility is so taboo that it’s visceral–Joyce does not immediately jump to logic or to rationale to defend her point, but expresses a physical fear first. Janna, then, is suspended in between this visceral fear and avoidance of aging, reinforced by her interactions with people her age and younger, and her own visceral fascination with Mrs. Fowler, reinforced further by each of their interactions.

The passage I’d like to close read for this response is on page 21 in They May Not Mean Do. It reads: “‘You’re a saint,’ Daphne said. It was not a compliment. ‘One of those insane, self-destructive saints,’ Natalie added. The kind who wander around in masochistic determination until they contract an incurable disease or are roasted on a fire or skinned alive, they all agreed”(21). In this passage, Joy’s friends are addressing her caretaking of Aaron–as opposed to hiring a caretaker, or to putting Aaron in an assisted living facility. 

While it’s clear that this position of martyrdom is not enjoyable, Joy continues to cling to it through Aaron’s demise and death. She’s consistently reminded by the people around her and even by herself that this caretaking labor is as harmful to her (if not more so) than it is helpful to Aaron, and yet she refuses to change her behavior and ask for help from anyone other than her daughter, Molly. I think this attachment to martyrdom is deeply connected to Joy’s position as matriarch. In one instance, she vocalizes how tasking it is to be this martyr-matriarch: “‘I can’t take the disorder of cooking a Thanksgiving dinner, the crazy mess, the hot steam in the kitchen, the millions of dishes. It’s too much for me, Molly. But I don’t want to give up my place as the matriarch, I suppose. What foolishness. But it’s true’”(50). Just as in the conversation with her friends, Joy juggles a simultaneous knowledge that her position as martyr-matriarch is unconstructive, that she’s clinging to a role that is no longer useful for her or her family, and a desire to maintain that role nonetheless. As the oldest woman in their family, it’s always been her role in this group of people to caretake–it’s her identity, and to stop caretaking would mean cultivating a new identity. Doing so is challenging at any age, but I imagine even more so in the later years of one’s life, when that identity has had decades of reinforcement. 

Even after Aaron’s death, Joy continues this self-flagellating martyr-like behavior. In organizing Aaron’s funeral, she flips quickly: “‘Oh, I don’t care anyway. He’s gone. What does it matter?’ As soon as she said it, Joy knew it did matter, that it was all that mattered, there was nothing else. The funeral was Aaron’s funeral, the last thing she could do for him. She had to do it properly. Not just properly, but perfectly”(137). I think this continued attachment to her being the “perfect,” wholly capable caretaker for Aaron comes from a desire for control in a situation in which she actually has very little. Dying is an unpredictable, uncontrollable process, as is aging. There’s no satisfying, well-mapped blueprint for caring for someone who’s dying, nor is there a foolproof plan for grieving. 

Even less so is there a blueprint for being responsible for both someone else’s unreliable body as well as your own. In the moments before Joy’s friends note her martyr behavior, she almost falls: “The doctor said these dizzy spells were nothing to worry about as long as she didn’t fall. But what if she did fall? What was to stop her from falling? She could very easily have fallen just now…”(21). There seems to be a direct correlation between Joy’s lack of control over herself and her need to control Aaron’s wellbeing. Rather than deal further with the possibility that she might fall, or what she would do if she did fall, Joy pivots back to Aaron’s health. It doesn’t seem that she does so intentionally, but she puts her own health on the backburner to manage Aaron’s. When she returns home from this conversation with her friends, her first thoughts are “how gray Aaron looked, his hair, his beard, his face, and his hooded sweatshirt”(21). I think most people do this–when we lose control in one area of our lives we seek to supplement it by controlling something (or someone) else. This book is an interesting exploration into how that pattern applies specifically to aging. 

I’d like to look at two passages for this response: one in the beginning of the piece and one at the very end. 

“I never had time to paint that fence back then, neither. But it didn’t matter none, cause Gracie had it all covered up with her flowers. She used to sit right here on this swing at night, when a little breeze be blowing, and say she could tell all the different flowers apart, just by they smell. The wind pick up a scent, and Gracie say, ‘Smell that jasmine, Pearl?’ Then a breeze come up from another direction, and she turn her head like somebody calling her and say, ‘Now that’s my honeysuckle,now’”(139-140). 

“The storm is moved on. That fresh air feel good on my skin through the cotton nightshirt. Smell good, too, rising up outa the wet earth, and I can see the water sparkling in the leaves of the collards and kale, twinkling in the vines on the bean poles. The moon is riding high up over Thompson’s field, spilling moonlight all over the yard, and setting all them blossoms on the fence to shining pure white. There ain’t a leaf twitching and there ain’t a sound. I ain’t moving either. I’m just gonna stay right here on this back porch. And hold still. And listen close. Cause I know Gracie somewhere in this garden. And she waiting for me”(151-152). 

I think these passages, and the several other passages about the garden in this piece, outline the way we cling to certain physical objects or spaces that attach us to someone we’re grieving, even if it’s not something we would normally be interested in or attached to for ourselves. I also think there’s something particularly potent about the source of attachment being a garden–a place where life is cultivated. Where the main character is dancing around her grief about her partner’s death and her grief about her own impending death, fixating on the garden makes it possible to stay connected to new life, to lush life, and to life that supports other life (growing food, in particular, as directly supporting health and vitality in human bodies). 

The garden in this story, though, has started to become a space that doesn’t solely inhabit beautiful, lively things. The first introduction we get to the garden is through the “old weather-beaten fence [she] ought to painted this summer,” the fence that, in the past, “Grace had it all covered up with her flowers”(139). The comparison between the past and present aesthetic states of the fence is deeply revealing of the main character, Jinx, right away–she’s clearly struggling to maintain the house and garden in the same way that she and Grace did, and the lack of flowers is part of the deep grief she feels for Grace. She later states, “Gracie’s poor bedraggled garden is just struggling along on its last legs–kinda like me”(141). The garden holds many different kinds of grief. 

The garden then becomes a place where “sassy little scoundrels” steal peaches from her trees, it’s no longer a sanctuary of sorts for Jinx and Grace(143). This incident quickly leads to a deeper realization–as has been true throughout the story, grief about the garden is really indicative of a deeper grief about Grace and about herself. She comes to the realization that “it wasn’t even them two kids [she] was so mad at. [She] was mad at time. For playing tricks on [her] the way it done. So [she] don’t even remember that Grace Simmons has been dead now for the past thirteen years”(143). Here, the garden gives us insight into the way that anger and grief work together. 

In the final passage, whatever desire for action, for repair, that Jinx had is gone. There’s a contentedness in stillness, in stagnation. And while the garden is still a locale for grief and for death, there’s no resentment in it. It’s almost pleasant, calming.

“The thing was, he would do what I asked. I wouldn’t, in his place. I would rip it open, no matter what promises had been made. He’d obey. What a mix of rage and admiration I could feel, at  his being willing to do that. It went back through our whole life together” (254). 

I chose to look at this quote because I think promises are a consistent theme throughout this piece. We see some explicit references to promises regarding Dolly/Gwen, and some related references to commitment and dedication in relationships. 

The first time we see someone make a promise in this story is with Dolly (who we only know as Gwen at this point) making a promise to the narrator that she will drop off the lotion that will “restore [the narrator’s] youth” (239). This promise immediately struck me as shady–the idea that you would give your money to a complete stranger with the “promise” that they will return with what you have paid for seems absurd to me. Dolly, however, follows through on her promise, and the narrator is as surprised as I was reading this story. The narrator and Dolly cultivate a kind of bond here, with the narrator giving Dolly her copy of Wild Geese, and Dolly promising to read it, “no matter what” (240). Once again, the narrator gives Dolly, still almost a stranger, something she does not hope to get back, and Dolly promises to follow through in some way. Promises, between any two people, are deeply connecting–they hold an understanding of commitment, and an ability to see what is important to both people. 

Dolly precedes her promise to read Wild Geese by telling the narrator “she didn’t know when she had ever read a book through because of being so busy” (241). She uses this language of business similarly when talking about her relationship with Franklin, the narrator’s partner: “He might have written her a letter or two, but she was just too busy for letters” (243). This statement indicates a broken promise, a broken commitment, in which Franklin had the desire and time to write to Dolly, but Dolly’s business becomes a way out of the commitment. This statement creates a clear contrast between Dolly’s relationship to Franklin and her relationship to the narrator, where her business does not (yet, at least) excuse her out of the promise, but strengthens the promise. Dolly is not going to read the book if she has time for it, but is going to read it despite not having time for it, where she did not write back to Franklin despite not having time to do so. Franklin, though, had maintained a commitment to Dolly in writing her letters, even maintaining some dedication by writing poetry about her. Thus we have a tricky triangle of relationships between the three: the narrator and Franklin, who is not technically her husband but has been her partner for a long time and shares a promise (if unspoken) with her that they will continue to be partners until they die; the narrator and Dolly, who are oddly bonded by Dolly’s promises despite being practical strangers to one another; and Franklin and Dolly, who were estranged by Dolly’s inability (lack of desire?) to keep up with Franklin’s commitment to their relationship. It seems that the narrator holds more power in this triangle than she thinks she does, with Franklin having long held his promises to her, and Dolly showing a desire to be her friend. Franklin and Dolly, though affectionately excited to see one another, do not seem to waiver in their individual commitments to the narrator. 

The narrator is hurt at a perceived breaking of a promise by Franklin–she acknowledges herself that the “deception” that was “unbearable” to her was “perhaps…self-deception” (247). This imagined broken promise the narrator knows to be potentially non-existent. But because her promise to Franklin is still strong (“there could be no thought in my head of any man but Franklin, ever”), even the thought of a broken promise is enough to be hurt (249). 

This last passage is important, then, because the narrator reaffirms to herself that her fear of Franklin breaking promises is not in line with the reality of their relationship–Franklin keeps promises, especially to the narrator. 

“Auntie Mei felt doubtful, but her questioning silence did not stop him from admiring his own invention. Nothing, he said, is too difficult for a thinking man. When he put away his tools he lingered on, and she could see that there was no reason for him to hurry home. He had grown up in Vietnam, he told Auntie Mei, and had come to America thirty-seven years ago. He was widowed, with three grown children, and none of them had given him a grandchild, or the hope of one. His two sisters, both living in New York and both younger, had beaten him at becoming grandparents.”

I think that this passage simultaneously draws a parallel and a contrast between Auntie Mei and Paul–they are both isolated immigrants to America, both widowed. Our narrator articulates another similarity, though not one specific to Paul and Auntie Mei: “The same old story: they all had to come from somewhere, and they all accumulated people along the way.” Paul though, shows a vulnerability and desire that Auntie Mei stuffs. Paul then becomes a catalyst for an exploration of self Auntie Mei has long avoided. 

Paul has a desire to caretake, to share intimacy with children, that we see in this passage. Though it is not stated directly, there seems to be a grief in his lack of grandchildren. The language of being “beaten” by his younger sisters at the task of becoming a grandparent indicates a desire to have what they have. Auntie Mei plays into Paul’s desire, upon his leaving narrating for baby, “‘Say bye-bye to Grandpa Paul.’” In this way Auntie Mei gives Paul something he desires, something that she herself avoids. Auntie Mei would never give herself the honorary grandparent title for an infant she was looking after–“Auntie Mei…called every mother Baby’s Ma, and every infant Baby. It was simple that way, one set of clients easily replaced by the next.” Though it is not explicitly one of Auntie Mei’s rules, one can imagine that if Auntie Mei holds a rule for herself not to cultivate a personal relationship with any one infant, then to refer to Paul as Grandpa, thus calling in a personal relationship, even if only a joke, would constitute a broken rule for her. After breaking this rule, she starts to break more. She moves the baby’s crib into her room, and takes on the responsibility of grocery shopping, which she notably enlists Paul to help with. Once again, Paul becomes a vessel for Auntie Mei’s breaking of her own rules. 

The grocery shopping becomes another space in which Paul projects his desire onto the baby, asking Auntie Mei, “‘Do you suppose people will think we’re the grandparents of this baby?”’ This is not just a question, but a wish–Paul does not just want to be a grandfather, he wants to be seen as a grandfather. We see this again when Paul asks Auntie Mei to bring the baby to the park with them, articulating why he wants to be seen with them in front of his long-time enemy: “‘I want him to think I’ve done better than him.’” Paul’s claimed “knowing” of this person provokes a kind of vulnerability in Auntie Mei’s narration. Though clouded with a proposed indifference, what I think we actually see is an exploration of a fear of abandonment, a fear of knowing someone enough to care: “Being known, then, must not be far from being imprisoned by someone else’s thought. In that sense, her grandmother and her mother had been fortunate: no one could claim to have known them, not even Auntie Mei. When she was younger, she had seen no point in understanding them, as she had been told they were beyond apprehension. After their deaths, they had become abstract. Not knowing them, Auntie Mei, too, had the good fortune of not wanting to know anyone who came after: her husband; her coworkers at various Chinese restaurants during her yearlong migration from New York to San Francisco; the babies and the mothers she took care of, who had become only recorded names in her notebook.” The ending of this story follows this fear of knowing enough to care, but it is not just the fear of knowing other people: “She was getting older, more forgetful, yet she was also closer to comprehending the danger of being herself. She had, unlike her mother and her grandmother, talked herself into being a woman with an ordinary fate. When she moved on to the next place, she would leave no mystery or damage behind; no one in this world would be disturbed by having known her.” Auntie Mei externalizes her fear of knowing or being herself onto other people, as if she is preventing other people harm by avoiding herself, but it is clear that she is the one most scared of herself. 

A link to the powerpoint I made for this is here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VcPfdFAjZRlKTeDHdRyzA_4TN5UDVGOLNvxnV91tHIM/edit?usp=sharing

Once again, I really enjoyed this visit to the Senior Center. As with our last trip, there was a lot of joy and humor in our conversation, and also a lot of passion. That’s an interesting breakdown of a stereotype that I find applied to old women in particular–that they’re complacent or checked out, not present enough to have opinions, or to be excited or angry. 

Giselle noted this in their blog post–we were at the same table–we didn’t focus heavily on the book itself but it served as an entrance into a much broader conversation that delved into our personal and family lives. 

We discussed cultural values around aging people, which I was excited to talk about as it’s something I consider often. My dad is from India, and India being a culture deeply connected to family structures, it’s understood without discussion that it’s the responsibility of adult children and grandchildren to care for their aging parents. When my grandfather started to get sick and to need more help, my family helped my grandparents move to Bangalore, where my cousin and his wife live, so that they could ensure both of my grandparents had the support they needed. My grandfather has since passed, and as my grandmother is getting older, my dad is planning to bring her to California to live with him. There was no questioning this decision–culturally there’s no other option. 

My mom’s side of the family, on the other hand, handles aging very differently. My mom and her family are white Midwesterners and consistently as family members have aged they’ve been placed in nursing homes. At the senior center, we discussed this pattern as one that’s very American: because our culture is so individualistic, there’s a major reluctance to shift one’s own life to accommodate the needs of our elderly relatives. Where my dad’s side of the family will move, change jobs, find new schools for their children, etc., if that’s what’s required to support one another, my mom’s side prioritizes personal wellbeing over the wellbeing of the unit. 

I often feel torn between these two ideologies–knowing that community support and the wellbeing of the people around me is deeply important to me, and that I want to hold boundaries around taking care of myself before I try to take care of others. We had a long talk about the way that institutional structures in America make it almost impossible to do both of those things–we can hardly support ourselves, so we can’t support each other, and there’s no adequate system in place to properly support folks as they age. While that’s always a frustrating fact to remember, I found it validating to hear that other people are feeling the same frustration, and hopeful to know that there are people across generations who want to work to change that.

I really enjoyed this first visit to the senior center. Coming into it, I was definitely anxious, but tried to stay open and curious instead of writing off the experience before it even happened. I found that the seniors I engaged with came to it also seeming ready to write off young people, but quickly we found ourselves enjoying each other and defying whatever preconceptions we had held of one another. 

We spent a lot of time laughing, which I really appreciated. I think there’s an idea in most media that old people are stoic, so jaded that they can’t (or won’t) have fun anymore, and that was quickly disproved by the folks in my group. Within the first few minutes, we were talking about laughter as a necessity in life–that people who don’t have humor or joy deteriorate quicker than those who do. Laughter as medicine is such a cliché but we all agreed that it was the truth. I think there’s also a gendered divide in who’s allowed to enjoy themselves, to be frivolous and silly, and it was beautiful to be in a room with women and non-men being absolutely frivolous and silly. I see that in my family in particular–there’s a pattern in which, at the end of the day, the men will sit down, have a drink, and tell stories and jokes among one another. Because the women have taken on the roles of the practical caretaking (cooking, cleaning, childcare), when men are engaging in this end-of-the-day relaxation rituals, the women are still doing some form of work. This dynamic has followed all of my grandparents’ generation into their old age. It was a refreshing change to be in conversation with women who are not stuck in their caretaker roles, who are largely just responsible to themselves now, and who can thus be responsible to their own experience of joy. 

In that vein, I expected the senior center to be much more cold and sterile than it was. The building itself and the people in it had a warm and inviting energy–there weren’t undertones of depression or sickness the way there usually are when we think of places where old people gather. I think my conception of places where old people gather got stuck at hospitals and nursing homes, and so this was a welcome wake-up call that old people can and do continue to have healthy, rich experiences and social lives. 

We digressed far from the readings, but we did touch on the experiences of joy in “My Man Bovanne,” that the idea that old women would want to go out dancing is actually not at all far-fetched. Dancing brings a kind of joy that has never been limited to any particular generation. 

Outside of the literature, it’s really wonderful to have real-world interactions with real-world old women! It’s somehow simultaneously surprising and unsurprising that they defy so many of the expectations of old women.