S3:E6 A better age // 11.18.21

Episode description: What if the best age is one we haven’t gotten to yet? Earlier this season we looked at the ups and downs of aging from the decades we’re in: the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. Today we hear from family members in the decades ahead of us: 50’s through 90’s. Their reflections had a surprising amount in common.   

Show notes:

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Laura: Every morning when the sun comes up, Cadillac Mountain is the first place in the U.S. where light hits the land. Twenty years ago when we were first dating, my husband Nate described in detail climbing to the top of the mountain in the dark . . . watching the panorama of islands glittering gold. I’ve wanted to see it ever since.

Last May, I finally got the chance. If you’ve been listening, then you know that season 2 of Shelter in Place was a pandemic Odyssey that took my family and me from our home in Oakland, California, across the country to Massachusetts, and a year later brought us back again. 

Cadillac Mountain sits in Acadia National Park in Maine, and it’s about a five-hour drive from where we were living near my in-laws in Massachusetts. I’d never been to Acadia or even Maine, and so when we made our trek across the country to seek support from extended family, I secretly hoped that I’d finally get to see this place I’d heard so much about. But for most of the year, Maine was closed to visitors, and we weren’t traveling anyway. Our travel was limited to the seven-minute drive to my in-laws’ house to drop off and pick up the kids each weekday morning and evening. 

But by late May, we’d gotten our vaccines and things were opening up at last. With only two weeks left in Massachusetts before we’d head back home, we decided to make the drive north to Maine at last. For three days, we packed in as much hiking and exploring as we could manage. We ate lobster and had a bonfire on the beach. Maine was just as beautiful as I’d imagined, but every night we’d check the weather and the forecast for the next day was clouds.

Our last morning in Maine, the skies were finally clear. We went to bed early, set our alarm clocks for 4 a.m. and decided to finish our trip with that sunrise I’d been waiting twenty years to see. 

The next morning we loaded into the car with Nate’s mom and brother with our thermoses of coffee and sweaters and jackets. While my father-in-law and the kids slept in, we made the 20-minute drive up the mountain. Sunrise was at 4:57 a.m., but when we pulled into the parking lot on the mountaintop at 4:30 a.m., hundreds of people were already standing around waiting. The lot was full, so Nate dropped us off and headed off down the road to find a spot to park. 


We’d worn every layer we had, but as soon as we stepped outside, we knew we were underprepared. Even though it was mid-May, the wind off the ocean felt like winter, and we still had thirty minutes to go. 

The mountaintop was a wide, rough rock that sloped upward just enough so that even in a crowd, we were able to find a spot where we weren’t blocking anyone’s view. I did jumping jacks while Nate speed-walked the path that snaked through the rocks, and Nate’s brother set up his tripod to catch the first rays of dawn.

As the wind whipped my cheeks, I tried to conjure up gratitude. The sky turned from lavender to pink, and I reminded myself that I was finally here, doing this thing that had been on my bucket list for twenty years. When my fingers went numb in my pockets, I tried to remember that this was special. But my chattering teeth were making it tough to relax and enjoy the moment.

At last the sun emerged, glittering on the islands just like Nate had described. After all of that waiting, the sun ascended into the sky with astonishing speed. The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds. 

And it was beautiful. But as the crowds beelined for the parking lot, I found myself thinking, “Wait—that’s it?” 

Maybe it was fatigue, or the sun-slanted light, or the fact that I was shivering uncontrollably, but as I stepped back onto the path behind me, my foot caught on something. I tumbled down what should have been an easy two-foot drop, pain shot through the back of my skull, and my vision went dark. 

“I’m okay,” I said reflexively, but as I tried to stand I crumpled back onto the ground. My palms stung from where I’d tried to catch myself and I felt like I might throw up.

“Whoa, what just happened there?” Nate said. 

“I’m fine,” I said again, but my face was hot and my vision was swimming. “I tried to step onto the path but I tripped,” I said from the ground where I was huddled up, my hands clasped on the back of my head. “I hit my head on the rock.”

Nate peeled my fingers away from my hair and checked to see if I was bleeding. I wasn’t, but when he tried to walk me to the car, I could only make it a few steps before I had to sit down again. 

Nate’s mom and brother had wandered off to take pictures and were nowhere in sight, so Nate left me sitting on the curb of the parking lot with my head between my legs while he ran down the street to get the car. I could feel people walking beside me, looking at me with puzzled concern, but every time I tried to look up, my vision went black.

Somehow I made the drive down the mountain without throwing up, but instead of packing up the car and heading back to Massachusetts like we’d planned, I climbed into bed and slept harder than I had in years.

We did eventually make the drive back, but I spent most of the drive with my eyes closed under an eye mask. Thanks to telehealth, I was able to see a doctor quickly. The doctor asked me to stand on one leg and answer a bunch of questions and eventually assured me that I hadn’t done permanent damage and would recover. For the next few days, I followed his advice: I stayed off screens, kept the lights low, and tried to keep my noisy kids quiet. I rested when I got tired, which was often, and several people in my life who had suffered concussions cautioned me to take it easier than I thought I needed to. It took a few weeks, but eventually I did feel like myself again, and the incident was filed away with the other dramatic stories of non-fatal injuries that my kids occasionally beg me to tell. 

If my 99-year-old grandmother is any indication of my genetics, chances are good that my life will be long, even with the occasional hard knocks along the way. But that fall reminded me that even though I don’t feel old at 42, I am getting older. It’s been a long time since I felt invincible the way I used to in my twenties.

Last week, we shared an episode that we created back in May, just a few weeks before that fall on Cadillac Mountain. That episode, which we called “A Good Age,” was the first in a larger project where we took a long hard look at aging from the decades we know well. Alana Herlands talked about being dismissed for being young as a 20-something in the workplace. Michele O’Brien found that she’s making different decisions in her thirties than she thought she would. And Nate talked about running  his fastest marathon in his forties—only to retire his running shoes after getting injured.

One of the most interesting things we encountered was Professor David Blanchflower’s research on happiness and aging, what he calls the Happiness Curve. When you chart age and happiness, with age on one axis and happiness on the other, the resulting graph is a U-shaped curve that looks like a cockeyed smile.

Happiness is high in childhood, but then it decreases steadily through your 20’s and 30’s, and bottoms out in the late 40’s. 

All downhill once you’re over the hill, right? 

But as it turns out, the opposite is true. Beginning in your fifties, you start to get happier. And it doesn’t stop there. Each decade beyond that is happier than the last one—and that trend continues even into your 80’s and beyond! The Happiness Curve isn’t just an American thing; it holds up in cultures all over the world, and even in different socioeconomic brackets.

This fascinated us, that our youth-obsessed society has blinded us to better days ahead. It also felt too good to be true . . . maybe because all of us working on that episode were in the midst of those decades of declining happiness. It’s hard to imagine that life will get better even as our bodies get slower and less capable. 

When we first aired that episode back in May of 2021, we asked listeners to share their own stories of what it feels like to be the ages they are right now. We wanted to know why people got happier as they got older. We wanted to test the Happiness Curve in real life, with people who are contending with their aging bodies right now. 


So in this episode, we’re seeking wisdom from people in the decades that are still ahead of us. To kick us off, Samantha Skinner, one of Kasama Collective graduates, took us to Texas.


Joe: I’m Joe Allen Skinner. I'm 59 years old. 


Samantha: That was my dad. He’s a lifelong Texan, and he’s led a pretty interesting life. When he was in high school, his family moved to Guam because his dad was an air traffic controller. 

Joe: I was running around that Island and seeing things and hiking up and down trails and jumping off of waterfalls and swimming out over the reef in the deep ocean, I was doing crazy stuff that not, not everybody gets to do.

 That was just a couple of years of my life, but it had such a profound effect to this day. And that's  40 years ago and I'm still in touch with some of those people. That's truly remarkable. It's like,  a richness and  a wealth you just realize how wonderful this place can be and how wonderful it is. If we just care to open our eyes and see it that way. 

Samantha: When my dad was 18, he moved back to Texas and made his way to Austin for school. He eventually started working as a security guard at a local events and concert venue called the Erwin Center. It was there that he befriended one of the ushers, a Korean girl who would eventually become my mom. They were friends for seven years before they finally got married, and a lot of that time my mom had a crush on my dad, but was too shy to tell him. 

When my parents got married, it was a big deal. I won’t go into much detail, but a mixed race marriage wasn’t exactly what my mom’s parents were hoping for.

They did come around by the time my parents had me, and they love my dad today. But even today, the joining of my parents’ very different cultures--Korea and the American South--can be a recipe for tense family dynamics. Growing up I learned to recognize early the looks strangers would give our family when they saw us together, and my sister and I didn’t really have any Asian or mixed race friends.

Somehow my dad managed to take all of that scrutiny in stride. 

I have a drive and ambition.

You know,  if there's something you care about or something really matters to you, it's effortless. You just glide right through it.

And maybe that’s what my mom liked so much about him, that he knew who he was and what he wanted, and he didn’t mind not fitting the mold.

Joe: I get away with wearing shorts and t-shirts, which I have loved my whole life and some tennis shoes,  I don't have to wear a coat and tie or anything. Thank goodness. Pretty carefree. I feel young.  I still have that childlike exuberance, don't ever want to give that up. 

Sammy: My dad says that he still feels young, even though he recently had to have knee replacement surgery. 

So I know I'm 59  and it's funny, these young kids, they say I'm an old man, but then I encountered nurses at the hospital and they were like, " you're so young," 

Well it's all relative. Age is just a number.  I don't feel that old; I've never felt old.  I mean, inside,  you feel like a youngster. I still remember being a little boy running around. I have  energy that  I'll just  be doing circles around people. a lot of young guys   they have trouble keeping up   I think it's more willpower than anything else.

 Sammy: That willpower and ambition is a force I’ve felt all my life. When I’m working on something I care about, it’s exciting. It feels easy to work hard. And after having this conversation, I see that I got some of that from my dad. 

Something else my dad and I share is that we’re both pretty stubborn and strong-willed. We have a really sweet relationship now, but it wasn’t always that way. When I was a teenager, we rarely saw eye to eye. At one point we got so mad at each other that we didn’t speak for an entire year. 

Our fights weren’t about work, but it was often a point of tension. My dad has been at the same job for 30 years, managing a local sandwich shop. He’s poured so much of himself into that job, and often during our fights he would say in exasperation, “I’m hustling everyday to provide for you! Don’t I keep this roof over your head?”


Those fights are far in the rearview mirror, but when my dad and I sat down for this conversation, for the first time I saw those old struggles from a new perspective. He’s still running his business, managing his employees, taking care of his family–all of the same things he did in his twenties and thirties and forties.  I can see that his love for his work and his love for me weren’t two separate things, but just different expressions of who he was. We don’t live our lives in neatly divided categories. Whether we’re talking about work or family or friendships, we bring all of ourselves to that experience. 


I can see now how his love for our family has given him energy and purpose. It kept him feeling young. 


In marriage and work and life, my dad figured out early what worked for him and stuck to it. I didn’t appreciate until our conversation just how impressive that was, that he knew himself so well at a young age. Maybe that’s because he spent a lot of time with people who were older than him, so getting older never scared him. In fact, he embraced it. 


Joe: Well, when I was a little boy and when I was living with my grandparents, I was like the happiest dude in the world. Oh, early on even when I was a young man, like a teenager, I hung around with older people a lot.  I remember  thinking, Oh yeah,  I'm wise, man. I even had people tell me that. Wise beyond a years. I don't know if they were doing me a favor or not though, because I had to realize I still had a lot of things to learn.


Sammy: I’ve always had close relationships with my grandparents and aunts and uncles. I love talking with them and hearing their stories. Respecting and honoring my elders is a value on both sides of my family. My dad says he thinks it’s too bad that our culture is so obsessed with youth, that we’re missing a chance to learn from the people who can teach us the most.


Joe: What did they say? If you correct A fool they'll hate you. And if you correct the wise person they'll thank you.  I know young people, they want to figure it out themselves.   And some kids, they're open and willing to listen, but a lot of kids these days, not that easy, 


And I hear them talking about extending the life times, reducing or arresting the aging process. I'm like, come on Y'all, I don't know if that's a good idea. It's not that scary. I've said goodbye to so many people at this point, and I've found a way to appreciate and celebrate and be grateful . 


Sammy: My dad’s perspective on aging reminded me of something Jonathan Rauch writes about in his book The Happiness Curve. He says that we could learn a lot about how to approach midlife from how we approach the teenage years. He writes,


“In a world where adolescence is an accepted fact, teens are enfolded in all kinds of institutions and norms that guide them to maturity . . . we have a narrative for adolescence: that the challenges and difficulties of the teenage years are part of a normal transition. Generally, we encourage teens to reach out if they feel confusion or turmoil, and, if they do reach out, most of us have the good sense not to mock them.”


In other words, we expect that dip in happiness during our teenage years, so we can take steps to seek support when it does. And thanks to David Blanchflower’s research on the happiness curve, we now know there’s a dip in mid-life too. 


Jonathan Rauch writes, “the happiness dip at midlife is developmentally predictable, and can be aggravated by isolation, confusion, and self-defeating thought patterns. Like adolescence, it can lead to crisis, but it is not, in and of itself, a crisis.” 


In the same way that teenagers will fare better when they’re met with compassion and support, people will do better in midlife with that support and understanding, too. And maybe this is why my dad hasn’t seen aging as a crisis, because he’s had people around him to give him that perspective.


Joe: Well, no one likes to fail, I've had some challenging episodes in my life, but I've often wondered if I didn't have a family. Would I be able to come up with the same drive and determination? If you have  loved ones and family, it really does make it easier. When I'm hanging out with family? That's the best


Samantha: I know my dad loves our family, but hearing him say that hanging out with us the best thing for him suddenly struck me as kind of incredible, because from the very beginning family has meant struggle--first with acceptance from my mom’s family, and later with me. Those clashes often felt pretty terrible in the moment, but I can see now how they taught us to accept people who saw things differently--people who lived differently. We learned how to work through conflict, how to love each other even when we didn’t understand each other. Those experiences were hard, but they ultimately made us closer. 


But through this mixing of cultures, we were also given the ability to understand people who are different from us, we were given a portal to experience different worlds. These kinds of experiences bond you deeply. And with my mom’s extended family far away, with my sister and I not seeing others who look like us around, our little family became our home. Maybe this sense of belonging helps my dad to embrace change instead of fearing it. He says that really the only thing that scares him right now are the things outside of himself.


Joe: I haven't found too much to be scary now. The way we treat the planet. Or the way we treat each other in this world, that's a little scary. That's a little unnerving. We've got to rethink the way we treat this planet. There could be much more unity.  It would do as well in this world. 


Sammy: My dad says that even though he feels young, he knows it won’t always be that way. But he’s not letting that stop him. 


Joe Skinner: I suppose maybe one day I'll slow down. Maybe I'll get tired, but not at 59. I've never given up my childlike exuberance. And I really don't know that I should or need to, or have to, for that matter.  I believe it might be a good idea to hang onto that forever.


Jim: My name is Jim O'Brien. I am 61. Somebody sent me something in an email earlier today where they mentioned, Oh, you're 60 years old. And I said, in response, that number looks very big when you see it written down. 


Michele: This is Michele O’Brien, and that was my dad. Dad was born in Ireland, moved here for his PhD, and was a professor for years before building a career as a financial software developer. 


Jim: I still feel the same way I felt when I got up in the morning in college to go to class. I kind of remember a little bit about the environment I inhabited at the time, I suppose. What it was like to be, to be in high school, what it was like to be in college. Listening to the music, the soundtrack of my teen years, the seventies the sounds, the ambiance of the thing transports you in a way. I think nothing else can, it's all about the music. It just sort of puts me in touch with sort of that vibe and kind of reminds me that not only do I sort of feel the same way I did then, maybe I am the same in some strange way.


Michele: I should’ve known he’d say that. Riding shotgun in Dad’s car always means taking a spin through the pop charts of the 1970s: Billy Joel, Elton John, The Moody Blues, Three Dog Night. I’ve seen first hand how his face lights up as he boogies from the drivers’ seat to his college favorites. But that’s not the only thing that has kept my dad feeling young.


Jim: So when I was a kid, I had a passion for hot air ballooning of all things. By pure chance, in my early forties, I happened upon some friends who were into that . And I'm so delighted that I did that because that has added a great deal of color, of warmth, of enjoyment and achievement  to the middle third  of my life that I've been able to share with family also.


Michele: In the book Sammy mentioned, The Happiness Curve, Jonathan Rauch writes that while adolescence and midlife are not at all the same biologically, emotionally, or socially “ . . . both transitions are commonplace and nonpathological. But one of them has a supportive social environment, whereas the other has . . . red sports cars.”


Sometimes Dad jokes that hot air ballooning is his version of that red sports car. But he’s always been most excited when he has a problem to solve, or a game to figure out. And ballooning, where pilots have to monitor the wind speed and direction, not to mention the terrain, to navigate their aircraft to a safe landing spot, has given him a series of puzzles and a group of friends all built into one activity. 


Jim: It's funny, there's almost a sense that the word old is a pejorative of some kind. 


There are certain things that make me feel older. The recognition that so many of the movers and shakers in the world are so much younger than I am now. The recognition that my oldest child had just turned 30. That to me was a moment. And again, these are numbers. They don't really matter.  But seeing the reality of that on a birthday card, on a piece of paper, Cemented this notion once and for all that, if you have offspring that are themselves  beyond the twenties, you are surely not a youngster anymore. 


Perhaps the most unsettling thing is, and it's related to the passage of time. But it's more aspirational. It's  "will I have done and experienced all the things I want to? Have I done a good enough job of doing that?"   


It's the same as the feeling you get when you walk into a magnificent library and you look around and do the quick calculation and say, how long would it take me to read all this? And you go, darn it. I've never had enough time. And now there is this realization that time is finite. I have to say I've done the mental calculation a few times that says, let's see: if I treat myself well and statistics are, as they ought to be, I'm in the final, third of a typical life. So if there's anything that would make one feel old, it's that sort of proximity to the end of it all.    

Michele: if not for this episode, I probably never would have asked my dad these questions. And I saw a lot of myself in his answers. I’ve also had that wistful feeling he described, of looking around and realizing that I’ll never be able to read or experience everything that’s out there. It’s sobering, and disconcerting, if you allow it to be. But of course, dwelling on what you can’t change has never made anybody happier. And despite the fact that one human life can’t encompass all that breadth, there’s still an opportunity to relish depth in one crucial area. What makes my dad the happiest?


Jim: Family . And I say that even in the knowledge that some of those times in the past have not been and in future probably will not be the quietest or least fraught.  But that's wonderful. 

There was a time when I would have said, like the dumb 30 something I was, that it was all about doing the best with your career, doing well professionally, making something of a life outside of just people. 

You get to a certain point and you realize that  the most important thing you can have done for yourself, your partner, the world is having a healthy functioning family.

I think of myself, in many ways, as "dad," more than as anything else. I have four wonderful children. My wife and I often sort of sit around and say, look, if we did nothing else with our lives, Wow. Look at this.  It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Robin Davis: I don't know what it feels like to be old. I know what it feels like for me to be 72.

I think I act what a 72 year old Robin Davis would act like.  I think in terms of my mind being active and learning and growing, that is where I haven't settled into a rut yet. 

Nate: My mom is one of the most energetic people I know. She’s the force of nature that has shaped our family. She’s the reason that I’m open to new experiences and adventures. As a quiet, bookish kid, I sometimes found my mom’s blazing incandescence tiring to keep up with — but today, I can see how she’s the source of many of my best qualities (and my siblings would say the same). 

This past year, she was also the sponsor of our Pandemic Odyssey (which you can hear about in season two). Our family had reached a breaking point six months into Covid, and my mom offered to teach and care for our three kids five days a week. She dusted off the skills she’d used thirty years ago when she homeschooled my siblings and me, and transformed Gabe into an avid reader who felt confident in school.

Robin: I used to have boundless energy even till late at night. I am not at that point now, whether it's because I'm exhausted from homeschooling the precious children or whether it's aging stuff. 

I don't quite have as much energy, but once I get going, I feel fine. A little stiffness and that sort of thing. Arthritis in my fingers, gray in my hair . . . I rarely think about my age. When birthdays roll around, like, Whoa, that's a number that I associate with my mother, not with me. And it's somewhat shocking that I feel maybe about 39 but you know, I'm 72.  

Nate: Thanks to my mum, my siblings and I have learned Spanish and Korean, Uighur and Mandarin, Tagalog and Arabic, French and Japanese. We’ve all lived, worked, or studied overseas. We’ve gone five different directions professionally — podcasting, ministry, national defense, real estate, and wine — but we’re united by the zest for life we learned first from her.

My mom was the oldest of five, the first to go off to college at Wellesley, where she was a year behind Hillary Clinton. She didn’t grow up going to church, but she was so intellectually curious that when she began exploring the Christian faith in college, she pursued it all the way to seminary, where she met my dad. During the years when my dad was a new professor teaching theology and ethics at Gordan-Conwell seminary in Massachusetts, my mom homeschooled five kids, created an English manor-level garden in her yard, hosted countless dinner guests, volunteered at her church, and charmed even the crabby next door neighbor lady with her relentless kindness. The search for home is one of our over-arching themes here for season three — and it was my mum who showed me that one of the most important things that makes a home is inviting other people into it. 

Since she could take classes at the seminary where my dad worked for free, over the years she studied Hebrew and Greek for fun. More recently, she got a Doctor of Ministry degree, because why not? 

My mom is the most extraverted person I’ve ever known: some people collect snow globes. Some people collect wacky t-shirts. Some people collect rare sneakers. My mum collects relationships. Mum’s “new best friend” is our family joke because it reflects the commitment and energy she will offer without hesitation to anyone who crosses her path — or whom she might detour off her path to meet — from convenience stores to museum exhibits to motel lobbies. For the rest of us who sometimes wanted to just walk through a parking lot without stopping for a conversation, my mum’s endless appetite for the human smorgasbord could be . . . a bit tiring — but I can see now that her attitude is one of life’s great lessons for any writer: inside everyone you meet is a story waiting to be discovered. 

I’ve watched her disarm people in grocery store checkout lines who open up in the warmth of her interest, and who are woven into the shining network of possibility and meaning that is my mum’s worldview. For example, she chatted up another family on the trail in Acadia National Park in Maine, and discovered that their kids played polo in the little North Shore town where my parents live. And that is another of my mom’s great life lessons, and great gifts to those around her. In fact, it’s the hope that Shelter in Place — and all art — are based upon: the belief that we can all connect, if only we are open to it. 

I got my sense of adventure from her, too. Even at 72, she got up at 4 am so we could see that sunrise on Cadillac Mountain. One of the perks of my dad’s job as a seminary professor was that he got a six-month sabbatical to study and write every three years, so my mum would pack seven people (and five kids school books!) for semester-long stays everywhere from Minnesota to California to England to Israel. I learned from my mom that food and languages were windows into culture, that there was no place or people that didn’t have something to teach me. She showed us how a simple “Hola” or “Shalom” or “Marhaba” and a smile would open doors and relationships wherever we went. She gave us the world.

When I was younger, there was a lot about my mom that I couldn’t understand. Now that I’m in my forties with three kids of my own, mostly what I feel is gratitude, but also a sense of awe. Because my mom is one of the most positive people I know—but it’s not because her life has always been easy. 

Robin: I had two brothers. I lost the first brother at two months old. I lost my second brother when he was 46. And here I am 72. If this life were all that there is, then I might be really sad that I hadn't traveled to X, Y, or Z place. I hadn't had X, Y, or Z experience. 

So I see all of these extra years that I have had that these two brothers didn't have as a real gift.

Nate: my mum was about the age I am now when my Uncle Doug died, in a tragic case that was never solved. And that was only seven years after my grandpa committed suicide (after years of alcohol and gambling problems), on New Year’s Day. A decade ago my mom lost her best friend in a tragic car accident. 

Nate: When people meet my mom, they wouldn’t guess that she’s lost so much. Or the extra weight of caregiving for her younger siblings that fell on her because of my grandparents’ issues. Even I sometimes forget all that she’s been through. I’ve run six marathons, but my mum’s endurance is exceptional. I asked her what has gotten her through:

Robin: I would say three words: faith, family, and friends.  

I have not generally gone through life worrying about what might happen because the worst things that have happened in my life, I could never have anticipated the day before they happened. I don't want to be a burden to my family.  I hope I don't experience significant cognitive decline before my body goes. So I hope that's not my lot. And I hope God spares me and  my family from that. But again, I trust God for whatever he has in mind for me. 

Nate: I’m 45 years old, and have been a parent for almost a decade, but I feel like I’m just beginning to understand her. It’s taken me this long to see my mom not as the outside force that shaped me, but as a fellow parent who is still learning and growing just like me. My mom has given me so much support over the years, that she’s spared me from a lot of the things she went through. (In case you missed it, check out November 4’s episode, As You Wish, for another great story about what moms do for their kids.)

I’ve told my mum that all of this—the podcast, our family pulling together instead of falling apart, the training program, our kids going from languishing to thriving—would never have happened without her; I tell her she’s the godmother of Shelter in Place. This hard season of life has been cushioned by her care for us, and we will forever be indebted to her. But it took sitting down with her for this episode to realize that she’s cared for me that way all my life.

Robin: You were two weeks old, my first child, and it was the first time that I had left you. And I got in our little Volkswagen bug and I was going to do some shopping.  I left you at home with dad and I was driving down the highway to the mall and it hit me that there was this little person in my life now who was totally dependent on me for life, that I was no longer my own master.

And I realized that I had entered a new phase of life. Marriage is one phase, but becoming a parent was a bigger deal in terms of responsibility, at least as I expected.

And it was the first time I'd left you.  But I didn't leave you,  I couldn't, I still haven't left you — you're forever changed. You know, they're always there.

Nate: My mom just turned 73 (happy birthday mum!), so for her birthday, in addition to a handmade card, I wanted to give her the public recognition of all she’s given us — the belief in stories, the hope of connection, the love of learning. She gave my siblings and me the world. This past year she gave that to Gabe, Grace, and Mattea. She’s always used her energy to light up those around her — and I hope that when I’m 73, I can be “a better age” just like her. 


Robin: I don't color my hair. I've got a lot of gray hair. I don't do Botox or anything like that. I try not to look frumpy. I try not to be overweight. I try to stay active. But I haven't made the choice to try and hold my age as if I were 20, 30 years younger.

But old? I do not consider 72 old. Statistically, a 72-year-old woman alive now has 15 more years of life. So I would consider maybe mid-80’s or late 80’s as old. I think old is always, like, 15 years older than we are right now. 

Alana: That’s a nice transition to my grandpa, Marty Weissman, who at 86, is 14 years older than Nate’s mom.

Marty: Grandma always says, “you know, you are an old man.” I said, “no, I never feel old.” By Amy Jomo old 86 is old, but I definitely don't feel by my actions or my mental attitude or anything that goes along with age.  

Alana: I’m Alana Herlands, a producer and former apprentice here at Shelter in Place. Like me, my grandpa is a born-and-bred New Yorker. That vibrant personality and gravelly Brooklyn accent almost got him a part on the show the Sopranos — yes, really.

Marty: Well, most people my age are half bald or completely bald. I have a full head of hair and I'm meticulous with my hair, my grooming, and my weight. I'm critical about that all the time. And that's what I watch to make me, I guess, look younger, or in good shape, or both. 

I don't think I act my age. I'm 86 and most people that age are slow in movement. Are not that active are slow and speech and mental attitude. And I think that to the contrary of all those attributes, I have a malls still, even at this age, 86. I don't feel that I'm old, but I do I look old. But I don't feel that way.  

Alana: My grandpa’s vigor and determination have always impressed me. So I was surprised to learn that he wasn’t always that way.

Marty: I had gone to NYU when I had Juris graduated high school, and I really wasn't that into school. And I cut a lot of classes. So my parents says to me, “hey, you're not even attending school at all—or you are, but you're not paying attention. Go into the army.”

I went in and I was away from home for about two years. I was about 18 or 19 years old, when I first went into the army. Being put into that situation—that's what made me feel like I was now an adult. I got drafted for two years, but when I was in about 18 months I knew when I got out, I wanted to go to college.

So I wrote a letter to NYU, and that was a famous letter. I wrote a letter and I said, “when I first attended NYU, I was a kid and I didn't know what I wanted. But when I went away to the army, I grew up, and now that I learned about life, I want to attend college, and I would like you to reconsider letting me back into NYU.” And I sent the letter off, and lo and behold, I got a letter back saying “you're accepted.” They let me back in and I graduated. 

Alana: I’d never heard this story before, but it didn’t surprise me. My grandpa has always had this incredible ability to put his mind to something and just make it happen. He’s stubborn—in a good way—usually. I like to think that a little of that persistence has rubbed off on me. 

Here’s an example of what I mean: when my grandpa was 21, he went home to Queens for the weekend. He was just one month away from getting discharged from the army to go back to NYU. His friend Harvey heard that he was around and invited him to Banner Lodge in Connecticut, where he and a few friends were going to hang out for the weekend. My grandpa said that back in the 50’s, places like Banner Lodge were hugely popular. They were places where young people could meet, a little bit of the outdoors to escape the New York summer heat. My grandpa didn’t have a hotel room at the lodge, but Harvey assured him that they could sneak my grandpa into the room they’d already paid for. 

This plan was working out okay until one night when my grandpa was sitting with his friends in the dining room and a waiter approached him to ask him if he was a guest. My grandpa tried to talk his way out of the situation, but the waiter just shook his head. “You’re outta here.” 

My grandfather managed to stay put in the hotel room the rest of the weekend as his friends snuck him food, bringing it up to their room, for the rest of their stay, which thankfully wasn’t much longer.


On Sunday, when they were ready to head back to Queens, Harvey said “I met two girls and they said they needed a ride back to Brooklyn, and I said I’d give them a ride.” My grandpa protested, saying that he didn’t want to go all the way down to Brooklyn, but Harvey had already promised them the ride, so he obliged.

My grandpa was sitting shotgun next to his friend when the girls got in. He turned around to greet them as they drove out of town. They climbed in the back seat and expressed their thanks for the ride back to the city. As they merged onto Route 95, headed back to New York City, my grandpa looked out at the road, then looked back at the girls again, and calmly told his friend to pull over. Harvey said “Whaddya tawkin’ about? We’re already on the highway, Marty” But I guess he must have been used to this kind of thing from my grandpa, because he swiftly pulled over and drove the rest of the way with my grandpa in the backseat next to one of the girls. That girl, Hariette, would become my grandmother. They got married and three years later had their first child—all while my grandpa took night courses at NYU.

I know that times were different back in the 50’s, that it was normal for folks to get married and have children in their early twenties, but I’m 25 and cannot imagine having little ones running around my apartment!


Marty: When you reach a certain age like ours, you go back in time and reminisce about the kids being born and how we took care of them. And the grandkids when they were born. Life goes by when you get to our age very quickly. It doesn't seem that way as you're growing up and going through the various stages of adolescence, and then marrying or whatever you're doing and growing up and having a job. And then all of a sudden, you're at the tail end of life. It seems to go very, very quickly. 

Alana: By the time my grandpa was my age, he’d done so much; he’d been in the army, gotten married, and had three kids. I haven’t done any of the things that made him feel like an adult. I still feel young. I am still young. But there is one thing that reminds me that I am not invincible: I have recurring back pain. It’s the one thing about aging that scares me. And my grandpa says that even though he still feels younger than he is, it scares him, too. 

Marty:  Well, what feels scary to me? I'll tell you anything that has to do with health now.

a lot of people at my age come down with a lot of different illnesses. Or if anything happens with grandma Like she fell on her back a number of months ago. That's scary to me. I feel my happiest when my wife, is feeling good and is enjoying life. She's very nervous person and will choose happy. I'm happy. And when all my kids and grandkids are happy and things are going well, that's what makes me happy.


Alana: When I was a little girl, my grandpa and I would play a game where I’d stand on his toes, clutch his hands in mine, and he’d walk me around the house crying out, “ow, ow, ow!” while I belly laughed in delight. We outgrew that game many years ago, and of course I know that my grandpa is older, but he still feels young to me. He still knows how to make me laugh. So I asked him what his secret was.

Marty: What makes me feel young?  How do you know I feel young? I do get tired in the afternoon (at) about two, three o'clock in the afternoon and I always take a nap. But I've been taking a power nap since I'm 20 years old. Like clockwork. I always did it and I still do it. So I dunno if that makes me feel old  because I did it my whole life, but I do get tired.

That's part of life at night, you got to go with the flow and you got to do certain things in your life to try to keep yourself at a peak in health so that you can go through all these stages of life and go to a ripe brighter old age and not to die prematurely.

Well, the biggest thing that makes me feel, you know, the thing that makes me feel young is my routine in the morning,  I put on my sneakers. And I go out about seven, seven 30 in the morning and I go three miles outside. Now I used to do it all running, but not anymore. And then I used to do it half running and half walking, but since I had my hip surgery I now do it all walking and I go two to three miles every day, every day.  I constantly say this, do some kind of exercise during the day to  keep your body moving,

The key thing is walk, walk, walk, don't stop. And That's my mantra. 

Alana: This is something I’ve done a lot of, especially during the pandemic. Long walks and runs in my neighborhood kept me going, and long walks outside are still one of my favorite things to do with those I love. Most days I work out in the morning, but since our team at Shelter in Place has communicated a lot using a voice memo app called Voxer, I also do a lot of walking while I listen to those messages or leave messages for the team. Every weekend, my boyfriend and I will go for an 11 or 12-mile walk through the city, or if we can, we’ll get out of the city and go hiking. And my grandpa is right. All that walking makes a big difference, both physically and emotionally. 

Marie: I guess as long as I could keep moving, putting one foot in front of the other, I never felt old. 

Laura: That's my grandmother, Marie Farr. She turned 99 years this September, and on my list of reasons to feel hopeful about aging, she’s close to the top. 

Marie: My mind is good. I don't dwell on age as long as I can think and as long as I can dress myself, bathe myself and feed myself, I feel like I'm doing okay. 

Laura: My grandmother was born in 1922 in Shreveport, Louisiana, and she spent the bulk of her life in MacAllen, Texas, just a few miles from the Mexican border. I have fond memories of the times our family visited our Texas relatives, and there was a brief season in childhood when I saw my cousins frequently enough to feel close to them.

But only in the last few years, when I’ve finally gotten to sit down with her and ask her about her life, that I’ve began to understand just how much my grandmother has lived through. The Great Depression was the backdrop of most of her childhood. She was 17 when she married my grandaddy, and their marriage had barely started before he was off serving in the navy during World War 2.

My Grandaddy was a photographer whose work was often too inconsistent to count on, so while she was raising my mom and my two uncles, she was also working at Sears to support her family. Even before my Grandmother had my mom and my uncles, she’d already experienced the loss of a child.


Marie: One thing I don't want to do is outlive my children. At first, when we lost our first child at birth. Felt like my husband and I, neither one were old enough. We were ignorant and didn't know anything about raising one. And I think God in his wisdom took that song.


Now that I have kids of my own, it’s hard for me to even imagine the amount of loss my grandmother has lived through. Years after she lost that first child, she watched her son slowly lose the strength he’d once had after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She was there to support that same son when he lost his daughter to a car accident. In the final years before my Grandaddy died, my grandmother took care of him faithfully while dementia paired down his memory. 


I know that part of getting older means that you’ll inevitably lose some of the people you love. But somehow my grandmother has taken even these losses in stride—not ignoring them, but not letting them sink her either.

 

Marie: I really don't know a lot of times how I feel about things.  They just happen and I just accept them, and I'm not a comedian. I just don't like people that are negative in their thinking and to have too many things to be thankful for. 


After my Grandaddy died in 2005, my grandmother lived alone in MacAllen for another five years before she moved into a trailer home next to my uncle’s house in New Caney, Texas, roughly thirty miles from Houston. 


Marie: I don't think I've ever felt really old except when I had to give up certain things that I always did. I mowed my own lawn until I was 87. I've had the newest give up driving. I told myself, I would always know when and got up. Let me know when I gave it up, but I sure did hate it. Oh, it was 96. 


My thing that asks me is when I can no longer doing the things that I used to do and I have to admit to aging more, but I don't feel old. 


Laura: In 2019, my grandmother had to be rushed to the hospital for congestive heart failure. My mom immediately flew to Texas to be with her mom while she recovered in the hospital, and my grandmother finally agreed that it was time to move in with my parents, who had recently relocated to Wisconsin after more than thirty years in Minnesota. 


The place where my grandmother lives now is beautiful: lots of rolling hills of farmland and an apple orchard down the street. She has her own room and bathroom in the basement of my parents’ 2-bedroom house, and she enjoys having coffee and breakfast with my parents every morning and taking her daily walks on their long driveway. Most evenings she takes her walker and travels the 100 feet or so to my brother’s house, where she eats dinner with four generations of family. But she misses Texas. She’s grateful for the life she has now—but it isn’t home.


I asked my grandmother about this again last summer, when we stopped in Wisconsin on our way back from Massachusetts to California. I asked her what she missed most about Texas, and how she was feeling about this 99th year of her life. 


She said she missed her independence, being able to get up and go to bed whatever time she wanted, not having to think about anyone else’s schedule. She misses the chorizo and eggs my uncle would make her on her birthday. 

It’s not that she hasn’t had those things in her life in Wisconsin. My mom is one of the best cooks I know, and she’s tried to recreate so many of those comforts from my grandmother’s life in Texas. But some things in life you can’t duplicate. You just have to accept that they belonged to a certain season. You have to find the things that are good about the season you’re in now. They’re always there if you look for them. 


Marie: The thing that feels most important  to me is my family.  And staying on my feet. Isn't the important thing. 


Marie: Main thing I want to do is finish this. I've a whale and want to get out of here the way I should.  I would like to be a positive influence and all the people in my life, not a negative influence. That's my desire.


Well, I wish I had done a better job all the way around, which I could've been more buzzed about a lot of things.  I guess I have made a little mark and then teaching Sunday school class and the Navy immune class. I don't dwell on those things because those are in the past and I try to look forward to the future, whatever it is.

My grandmother says that every now and then she gets a coffee from the Quik Trip gas station, and it’s out of this world. There’s an assisted living nurse lady named Terri who comes to help her out a few days a week, and every now and then she makes my grandmother biscuits and gravy from scratch, just the way she likes it. She loves the shows she watches on TV, and she reads books all the time. The gets a lot of joy out of those little things that make her days better. 

I have a very lovely lady who does my hair once a week and keeps it in some kind of order. And I do put on makeup because I look washed out on the out of that and I do it mainly just to look as good as I can with what I have. And I just like to be neat and well put together. That's the only reason I do it.


When I'm in included in a group conversation or  I feel like people care about me. I feel happiest when I'm not ignored or at least I feel I'm ignored or not. 

 

I don't know what you do and your age . I just live from one day to the next twice and God to see me to the next one.


The World Health Organization defines ageism as stereotypes, prejudice, and descrimination based on age. In other words, how we think, feel, and act negatively toward others and ourselves based on age.

Before we did this episode, I’d only thought about ageism as it applied to older people like my grandmother. But hearing Alana’s story of not being taken seriously in work settings in our previous episode, “A Good Age,” reminded me that ageism can go the other way too. The World Health Organization says that even kids as young as 4 years old become aware of their culture’s age stereotypes, and from that age on up they internalize and use these stereotypes to guide their feelings and behaviors toward people of different ages—including themselves. Ageism isn’t just prejudices against others; it’s part of why we have such a hard time being gracious with ourselves as we age. On their website, WHO writes:

“Ageism is everywhere: from our institutions and relationships to ourselves. Ageism is in policies that support healthcare rationing by age, practices that limit younger people’s opportunities to contribute to decision-making in the workplace, patronizing behavior used in interactions with older and younger people, and in self-limiting behavior, which can stem from internalized stereotypes about what a person of a given age can be or do.

Ageism can change how we view ourselves, can erode solidarity between generations, can devalue or limit our ability to benefit from what younger and older populations can contribute, and can impact our health, longevity and well-being while also having far-reaching economic consequences. 


In her New York Times story, “Your Brain is Not For Thinking,” neuroscientist and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett says that contrary to popular belief, our brains’ primary purpose isn’t to think, but to keep the systems of our body running so we can stay alive. She says that when it comes to brainpower, it helps to think in financial terms, what she calls “the body budget.” Your brain has a certain amount of capacity each day, a finite amount of energy it can devote to your body’s needs—and that’s not just true for our physical needs, but our emotional ones, too. She writes, 


“Every thought you have, every feeling of happiness or anger or awe you experience, every kindness you extend and every insult you bear or sling is part of your brain’s calculations as it anticipates and budgets your metabolic needs.”


She says that we often think about our body’s mental and physical needs as separate categories, but that’s not actually how it works. She writes, “In body-budgeting terms, this distinction between mental and physical is not meaningful . . . there is no such thing as a purely mental cause, because every mental experience has roots in the physical budgeting of your body. This is one reason physical actions like taking a deep breath, or getting more sleep, can be surprisingly helpful in addressing problems we traditionally view as psychological.”


When I hit my head and was recovering from my concussion, I experienced a vivid awareness of my own body budget. For the first couple of days, the normal buzz of conversation, or rays of sunlight through the window left me feeling exhausted and needing to lie down. After the doctor I saw told me I could start looking at screens again as long as I took breaks and my symptoms didn’t return, I enthusiastically got back on my computer to tackle some of the work I’d had to ignore after my injury. But within thirty minutes a wave of nausea forced me to step away from my screen to lie down and rest until I felt better. My body budget was a small one, and I was limited in how much I could dole out for simple tasks that used to not feel like a big deal. My body budget was disrupted. I had to recalculate to find the balance that used to feel easy.


Lisa Feldman Barrett says that with the pandemic came a lot of challenging, changing situations that disrupted many of our body budgets. She writes, “If you feel weary from the pandemic and you’re battling a lack of motivation, consider your situation from a body-budgeting perspective. Your burden may feel lighter if you understand your discomfort as something physical.” She says to approach mental and physical challenges alike from a physiological perspective. Are we getting enough sleep? Drinking enough water? Do we need to get outside or call a friend to replenish our resources?

I spent so many years of my life wishing I were a different age than the one I was in. It’s still hard for me to accept the wrinkles on my face and the changes in my body as I age. But talking with my grandmother reminds me that maybe the way to feel at peace with my age is to remember that no matter what age I am, I have a choice about whether this age will be better or worse than the ones I’ve already lived through. This doesn’t mean life will get richer or happier or healthier as I get older; often it’s the opposite. But learning to appreciate the good things around me, to really savor what I do have, can go a long way to feeling better about the age I’m in. It might be as simple as going for a walk every day, or listening to music I love, or feeling grateful for a good cup of coffee. The age I’m in isn’t perfect. I can make a very long list of complaints if I choose to look at my life through that lens. But it’s a list I’m no longer interested in making. I’d rather make a different list, one that counts all of the reasons I have to be grateful. I’m thinking less these days about how to be a better age, and more about how to age better.


Last week, we shared an episode that we aired first in May of 2021 called “A Good Age.” Today, we’re sharing a special two-part episode that is the follow up to that one. We sat down with the people in our life who were showing us how to live in the decades ahead of us: the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80s, and 90’s. In each of these decades, you’ll hear from the people we interviewed, and also our Kasama Collective graduates who had personal ties to these people. 

This is a special two-part episode where we look at aging through the decades, and try to learn from those who are ahead of us how to age well. 

In the previous episode . . . 

Coming up in the next episode . . 

Tune into part 2 of this episode to hear the conclusion of this story.

If you missed part 1 of this episode, make sure you go back and give it a listen.

Nate Davis was the lead writer and was joined by Associate Producers Alana Herlands, Michele O’Brien, Samantha Skinner, who are among our season 2 Kasama Collective graduates. 

I’ll be right back, right after this short break.

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