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Over the Hill: Knocking on the Door of Seventy-four

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I’ll be seventy-four soon. Which means I turned forty . . . well, a long time ago. Forty is the over-the-hill birthday, right? Decorations are black, balloons have dire messages, life is pretty much over. As I approached that birthday, though, I felt like life was beginning. Maybe I would finally feel like an adult, an imposter up until then. I was about to complete a master’s degree, and (I thought) begin a career after being a stay-at-home mom—an occupation that was dying even then. There was hard stuff on the horizon—a big hill, unrelated to age—but I felt alive and ready for the world. “No over-the-hill napkins,” I told my family, who were planning a party. Nothing was going to hijack my thunder.

     Life goes on after forty, and no one mentions that phrase again. Until elderhood, the third act. Author Abigail Thomas—who is eighty-five, which makes me feel youthful—wrote on the topic a few months ago. I quote her brief Substack post in its entirety:

 

“Over the hill“ is a weirdly dismissive way to say one has grown old. Which hill, I want to know. All of us old people have climbed more than one, some of us negotiated the first in our teens, long before we made it to old age. Some hills we had to climb two or three times before we could get to the top and slide down the other side, only to be greeted with another even steeper hill. But we climbed that one too. Maybe luck was part of it, but there is always more to learn. Life is complicated and hard. Old at last, we may know how to keep still now, to look around, to listen, to lend a hand. As you will be too, one day, if your luck holds. A little respect, please. We deserve red ribbons and lots of flowers, and maybe a cake or two.”

 

I left home at twenty-four, and moved across the country. It felt like a small hill then, albeit adventurous. It wasn’t until decades later that I’ve realized how it changed the trajectory of my life. Seven years later, we moved to Mississippi—a friggin’ mountain I didn’t get over the top of for four years, when we  finally left. Forty was no hill on its own, but two years later, I became unmarried and I came out—huge elevation change, many obstacles. “Where is the evidence you won’t get through this?” a therapist asked, when I was sure it was a hill I would literally fall off of, long before reaching the top. Guess what? I survived. At sixty, with another cross-country move, I began the never-ending switchbacks of six years of mother care.

     At the turn of the decade, the whole world climbed, topped, and slid down the hill of the pandemic, in ways both solitary and communal. Now the world is climbing another hill. (Over the hill? Please, bring it.)

     As Thomas says, we olders have climbed, conquered, come off of many hills. We absolutely deserve ribbons, flowers, cake! And respect, thank you. There will be more, for sure, but we have much experience to draw on. I hate to burst your black balloon, youngers, but “over the hill,” as it relates to olders, is a sentiment that needs to be retired.

     Seminary Hill, my current and my childhood home, is not the hill I want to die on. And to leave will require navigation skills—which I have, thanks to experience. But for when I’m over my very last hill, I have signed a contract with Earth Funeral, to compost my meager earthly remains. I hope someone plants them on some hill. There’s no view if you stay on the plain.

 

I would love to hear from you! How do you feel about hills, literal and metaphorical? Leave a comment below.

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Over the Hill

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A few weeks ago, visiting my two young grandsons and their moms, I emerged from my bedroom for an outing wearing makeup, including tinted lip moisturizer. I rarely wear makeup, and it didn’t go unnoticed. “Why are you wearing lipstick, Gigi?” the nine-year-old asked. “Um, I guess so you won’t think I’m old,” I floundered. “You are old,” he replied.

I knew my grandsons—and anyone under the age of thirty (at least)—see me as old, with or without make-up. They accept that and would not have said so had I not appeared looking different. My mother always wore bright red lipstick (there are still several tubes in the bathroom cabinet), that was how I knew her and she looked odd without it. And when I caught a rare glimpse of her without her glasses in my young years, she didn’t look like herself. In the end, she wore neither lipstick nor glasses, giving in to her face being old and her vision unimprovable with corrective lens. Is that giving up or acceptance of what is? Is there a difference?

So why do I sometimes wear makeup? All I can come up with is that when  I look in the mirror, I don’t want to look old to my own eyes. I don’t feel old. I feel like forty or fifty, decades both difficult and empowering when I was learning to live my own life and truths. Now I want to look my inner age, at least to myself. Looking “old” scares me a bit, truth be told, especially after watching my mother’s transformation. It’s about fear, not vanity. It’s my own inner ageism.

I’m in the last third of life, there is no denying that and I am determined to live it mindfully. I’ve started reading The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul, by Connie Zweig, PhD, which addresses the issue of how we see ourselves as we age. 

I’m also reading Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life, by Louise Aronson, which is more about how society views elderhood. The author tells of a med school professor who asked his class to quickly, without filtering, write down the words that come to mind when they hear the word “old.” And then to do the same when they hear the word “elder.” Try it! She continues in later chapters to talk about how medical professionals discount and disrespect elders. I think I’ve found a new passion.

Words like “over the hill” reinforce our inner stereotypes about aging. I recall telling my family, planning my fortieth birthday celebration, “no black, no ‘over the hill’ references.” Even then I knew my mind about that. Forty sounds so young at 70! Thirty years ago, I never gave a thought to being 70. But thirty years from now, if I’m still here, I will be the age my mother was when she died. And I think about it a lot.

But for now, I tell people I’m “restoryed,” not retired, which sounds too much like “done.” I’m not done by a long shot. I’m preparing for an epic road trip in October through California, planning to hike in eight of the state’s nine national parks. “Are you going by yourself?” I’ve been asked with incredulity. “Yes, yes I am.”