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The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
July 21 - July 27, 2005 Edition
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Print: Mother-daughter authors explore life's changes July 21, 2005
As I staggered slightly from the couch and my post-lunch nap, I grumbled to my wife there was too much to do. I was on the way to my desk and a writing assignment. She hoped I would slow down and stop doing so much. “You're retired now, you know,” she said. The coincidence of her remark and my feelings at that moment catapulted me between the covers of the book I had laid down just before lunch. Reading Jane and Peggy Thayer's book, “Elderescence – The Gift of Longevity” may have sensitized me to such a moment. Mother and daughter have written a scholarly book which in the reading flows along as evenly as a boat's passage on a wide stream. Its passenger is reluctant to put ashore. The authors' effort began as an outgrowth of conversation between mother and daughter after Peggy's completion of doctoral studies entitled “The Experience of Being Creative as a Spiritual Practice.” Peg's mother Jane had recently retired from her private psychotherapy practice and moved to Martha's Vineyard. Peg “was intrigued to test her beliefs” in Dr. James Kidd's experiential method, which she had used in her dissertation. They wanted to study individual stories of people in retirement rather than to assemble a broad range of statistical norms. “Thus began an eight-year-long interplay of our thoughts and efforts to understand the experience of retirement and the discovery of a new stage in life.” They solicited spontaneous responses to the question, “Describe your experience of being retired,” among residents of Martha's Vineyard and others. Respondents were largely retired professionals, and their answers were gathered from correspondence, phone conversations, face-to-face interviews, and previously published work. From these they established core themes. As they researched a large literature related to retirement, their knowledge and insights grew. They were jarred by the realization that the percentage of people in the U.S. over 65 had increased from four percent in 1910 to thirteen percent in 2001. Until fairly late into the twentieth century most retirees bought into the notion of looking for ways to live with rest and relaxation, going to spas, moving to retirement communities, building a new home or remodeling an old one, moving to other areas of the country. Some were happy in mobile homes on the road, traveling across the country, meeting new friends. They sought freedom to live the life of contentment they had always fantasized while actively working. However, many lost their feeling of worth, their identity as contributing members of the community, their contact with the world of life. As the authors read the answers to their questionnaires, they came to believe that the term retirement was a euphemism. “We were dealing with the emergence of a new stage of life that included, for many, not only retirement from one's primary occupation but also a life extended 20 to 25 years beyond retirement. The increase in longevity had added a new rung on the ladder of human aging … a transition between adulthood and the stage of old-old-age, or senescence.” They called the new stage Elderescence. A fascinating historical review of the cultural roots of our understanding of elderescents is extensive and often surprising. I lived through the 1950s without realizing the impact of the mandatory retirement age that had become law for many sixty-five-year-olds. For many this meant relief from hard labor as they entered old age but also consignment to financial stress without a weekly pay check. In 1935, Franklin Roosevelt added an economic floor for most working people in the passage of Social Security; industry's commitment to retirement funds was becoming more universal. The motive in both instances appeared to be creating jobs for a younger population among newly arrived immigrants from abroad and eventually from our fast-deserted farmlands and large industry-displaced shops around America. Elderescents who had recovered from the early euphoria of freedom from daily work began to think of returning to useful occupations, even back to their original jobs part-time; others immersed themselves in volunteer work or mentoring young people. Those who remained active in some productive way seemed to weather the changes in their lives better than others who had not found for themselves a revitalized or new identity. Change was one of the constants in the information coming back to the authors. Change could be expectantly happy but provoke considerable anxiety. If the change threatened the elderescent with a serious risk to identity, it could provoke fear. The text is replete with citations and references from a wide variety of experts and authors: William Osler, Erik Erickson, Carl Jung, Robert Butler, Betty Freidan, Joan Rivers, Deepak Chopra, Rom Das, Bob Hope, Walter Cronkite, and others. A separate bibliography contains twelve pages. As the Thayers continued their work, they rang the bell on every page for themes of change, self-examination, a reckoning with the life lived, settling of unfinished business and conflicts when possible, and acceptance of one's own mortality. Some in their sixties had come to full acceptance of the fact of aging; “…some in their eighties were still competing with the young! Some remained fearful of death to the very end.” The experience of elderescents in their multitudinous explorations to achieve happiness and a sense of worth while becoming old are the heart of this book. Their stories are sometimes funny, often poignant, and always instructive for a reader sampling possibilities for the momentous change which comes with retirement. Collaborating on “Elderescence” must have been a rich adventure for a mother and daughter together. The persuasiveness and applicability of many of their observations and concepts described here for this reader seem to be universal. When I put the book down during my after-lunch nap, I carried it still in my head. To tell the truth, it is the first book I can remember planning to revisit for a second read. Meet Peg and Jane Thayer, July 23, 4–6 pm, Firehouse Gallery, Dukes County Avenue, Oak Bluffs; and July 28, 7:30 pm, Unitarian-Universalist Society, Main Street, Vineyard Haven. Russell Hoxsie, a retired family physician, is author of “Let’s Walk, Lilly,” and writes the Times column, “Off North Road.” |
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