Reflections: Aging
Years ago, columnist Allan Winkler's daughter informed him that he was middle-aged. Since then, he's embraced the relentless process of getting older.
Some years ago, when our daughter Jenny was still in college, she came to me and asked if she could interview me about being middle-aged. “You don’t want to talk to me,” I said. “Talk to Grandpa.”
“You don’t get it,” she replied. “You’re middle-aged. Grandpa’s old!”
I had to think about that, but I wasn’t happy about it.
Nonetheless, it recently gave me satisfaction to tell my daughter, now 52, “You’re middle-aged,” without carrying the comparison any further. For if she is middle-aged, what does that make me?
But all this made me think about the relentless process of going older, and how it plays out.
I’m reminded of a series of conversations I had about 20 years ago, when I was leading a group of 25 college students up Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I was about 60 at the time, in pretty good shape, but clearly not as spry as my students.
As we started up the mountain, the guides called me “Mwalimu,” which means “Teacher” in Swahili. I took that as a compliment.
Midway up the mountain, perhaps surprised that I was still climbing, they began to call me “Mzee,” which means “Respected Elder” in Swahili. I was even more pleased.
As we reached the 19,330 foot summit, I was so exhausted, I had to hold on to one of the guides to be able to walk down. Now they began to call me “Babu,” which means “Grandpa” in Swahili. I couldn’t complain.
Growing old is probably easier here in the United States than it was a hundred years ago, but it hasn’t always been that way. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, when one quarter of all workers were unemployed and another quarter were underemployed, only the wealthy had the resources for retirement.
In 1935, thanks to the work of Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a Cabinet position in the government, the U.S. established a Social Security system. It was a monumental step forward, one that provided pensions for workers and others who didn’t have assets of their own. Never mind that the system began taking out contributions from paychecks in 1935, but didn’t begin paying pensions until 1942. This was still a major achievement, and one we hope will survive the current federal budget negotiations.
Thirty years later, before Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society crumbled thanks to his prosecution of the Vietnam War, the nation established a Medicare program to provide much-needed medical care for the aged. After decades of responding to the medical profession’s assertion that any such program would be socialized medicine, old folks finally got assistance that made a huge difference. That program, too, is under threat these days, and we can only hope it will survive.
I am now a proud member of AARP — the American Association of Retired People. I am also happy to hold a card that gives me lifetime entrance into our national parks.
Today, as my cohort meanders through our 80s, or at least our 70s, we are more cognizant than ever before of the need for good medical care for all of our ailments. We’re doing the best we can, but as my father used to say, as he navigated his way through his 90s, “Getting old isn’t for sissies.”
Allan Winkler is a University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Miami University, where he taught for three decades. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Oxford Free Press.
