The Day I Embraced My Eldership

I don’t look my age. However, yesterday I discovered that I do look like a grandmother.

I don’t plan to go gently into that good night. My heroine is Peace Pilgrim who, when asked her age, replied, “I have reached sufficient years to do what I want.” I often quote Satchel Page who answered, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”

Like many of us, I don’t feel my age. Aches and pains are small prices to pay for being alive and able to be active.

I’m vain. I wear makeup and have trendy haircuts and clothes. I’ve had minimally invasive plastic surgery. Enough to help me look on the outside the way I feel on the inside. Not enough to look like a mummy.

All of this description to say, I don’t look my age, but I do look like a grandmother and an elder. I had the proof of that yesterday.

Currently, I’m in Santa Fe looking for a home to buy. I timed the trip to coincide with Indian Market and Santa Fe’s Fiesta Week. The events draw international crowds. Walking through the Plaza downtown I hear many Native American languages. Navaho, Dené, Hopi. I hear Asian languages, Spanish of course, English, French, etc. The babble is entrancing.

There are singles like me, couples, and families of varying sizes and ages. I smile at them all and they smile back. I say hello and they respond. Santa Fe is a friendly place in general.

I carried on a long conversation with a Navaho man who was in town to help his daughter with her Indian fry bread concession stand.

He mentioned that many on the res, or reservation, hate white people, which is understandable. We stole their land.

I always acknowledge my ancestral whiteness. I often long to be of another culture. One that doesn’t have a history of conquering others. One that honors their elders.

Native Americans traditionally honor their elders.

“Elders are the heartbeat of their Tribes. Their age and wisdom allow them to perceive clearly from a cultural perspective and understand deep truths about God and nature. It is of utmost importance that Elders be treated with respect and reverence. Oftentimes in Native communities, one will see the younger generation getting Elders their food at community gatherings, or acquiring comfortable seats for them.”

On the first day of Fiesta, I’m in the plaza watching Hispanic dancers performing on stage. People in conquistador outfits wander the crowd. Santa Fe honors and acts out its total history during Fiesta, including the Spanish conquerors.

As I cross the street to go back to my car, a family crosses in front of me. I noticed them earlier, as their daughters are so enthusiastic. They make me think of Kamala and Maya Harris as they must have been as children. I had smiled at them earlier.

This time, as they cross in front of me, I smile again and say hello. The children don’t hear me, but their mother does. Her accent and what she says reveals she is from some part of the African continent.

She says to her children, “Say hello to grandmother.”

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The sweet children turn, look at me and say “Hello.” They know which “grandmother” their mother means.

I have tears in my eyes as I write this. Children have always flocked to me. I worked as a school counselor while raising my son. My home was always filled with his friends.

I’m a pied piper for toddlers.

Once, while walking down a beach, I smiled into the eyes of a toddler, and he smiled back, happy to be seen and recognized. As I walked on a yard or so, I looked back and he was toddling after me, away from his family. I stopped until they reached us to take him back.

While those experiences were joyful and touching, this one with the young girls in Santa Fe and their mother touches me the most. The experience marks a transition for me. One from femme fatale and ingenue, one from sharp-minded businesswoman — who some called a b*tch —

one from, as one male friend described me, “A cute little blonde with a stiletto up her sleeve”,

to Grandmother. Elder. Wise Woman.

I accept the titles. Even though I am not a grandmother in the way we Americans think of them. As someone dispensable, someone who is good for babysitting, but who has little to no honor outside the family, and sometimes little to no honor within the family.

My son is unsure if he will ever have children. I had him late in life and am older than most grandmothers I know.

Grandmother I am, though, in the cultures whose people honor their elders. I feel honored after this experience. I feel seen. I feel the power of love, freely given and received. I feel blessed to be considered by those in other cultures as wise.

Two young children and their mother from Africa changed my view of aging. As a result of this interaction suspended in time, I accept my role as grandmother to all. Wise, loving, nurturing, guiding, instructing. In every language.

I am honored and grateful to be known as Abuela, Gogo, Awa, Yaya, Bubbi, So’oh, Gigi, and grandmother. I will answer to all.

Carol Lennox is a writer and psychotherapist in private practice for over twenty-five years. Incongruently, she writes a lot of humor. Subscribe to her email list to experience the intersectionality of her writing.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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