Coming of Age

by Madeleine May Kunin

  COMING OF AGE

  My Journey to the Eighties

  OTHER BOOKS BY MADELEINE MAY KUNIN

  The Big Green Book

  Living a Political Life

  Pearls, Politics and Power

  The New Feminist Agenda, Defining the Next

  Revolution for Women, Work and Family

  COMING OF AGE

  My Journey to the Eighties

  A MEMOIR

  MADELEINE MAY KUNIN

  Copyright © 2018 by Madeleine May Kunin

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Green Writers Press is a Vermont-based publisher whose mission is to spread a message of hope and renewal through the words and images we publish. Throughout we will adhere to our commitment to preserving and protecting the natural resources of the earth. To that end, a percentage of our proceeds will be donated to Emerge Vermont and the Institute for Sustainable Communities. Green Writers Press gratefully acknowledges support from Cabot Creamery Coop, individual donors, friends, and readers to help support the environment and our publishing initiative.

  Giving Voice to Writers & Artists Who Will Make the World a Better Place

  Green Writers Press | Brattleboro, Vermont

  www.greenwriterspress.com

  ISBN: 978-0-9994995-9-7

  COVER: PHOTO BY TODD LOCKWOOD

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  To John W. Hennessey Jr.

  1925-2018

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MY HUSBAND, JOHN, was my first reader—and he is the hero of this book. I thank Martha Kaplan, my agent, who believed in me, and Dede Cummings, my publisher, whose enthusiasm was inspirational. I am grateful to my editor, Rose Alexandre-Leach, and to Lali Cobb, who was my first editor. I thank the University of Vermont for naming me a Marsh Professor-at-large and giving me a place to work. I thank UVM staff members, including Kelly O’Malley, who came to my rescue when I had computer problems. I appreciate the Wake Robin community, who applauded my poetry readings. I thank several good friends who read parts of the manuscript and gave me valuable feedback. I am grateful to Liz Bankowski, who convinced me that there is an audience for a book on aging from a woman’s perspective.

  In a dream you are never eighty.

  —ANNE SEXTON

  CONTENTS

  Eighty-Four Years

  Foreword

  No Longer

  1. The Year I Turned Eighty

  The Bed

  2. I Am Not Old

  When I Was Sick

  3. Attraction

  Can There be More to Say

  4. The Cane, the Walker, the Wheelchair

  Chrysalis

  5. Late in Life Love

  I Loved You When You did the Dishes

  6. Fat Backs

  Hands

  7. The Manicure, My Mother

  December 21, 2016

  8. Downsizing

  Photo Section

  I am Multiples

  9. Finding a Seat

  Teeth

  10. Alone

  Autumn

  11. Independence

  Ants

  12. Searching for the Past

  Christmas Cookies

  13. My Brother’s Death

  Planets

  14. My Fleeting Senses

  New Year’s Eve at Wake Robin

  15. How Will I Die?

  Last Spring

  16. The Lake

  A Love Poem

  Afterword

  About the Author

  COMING OF AGE

  My Journey to the Eighties

  EIGHTY-FOUR YEARS

  Eighty-four years.

  My birthday, big

  as a stop sign

  red, blazing.

  The number blinks

  and calls me

  forward: this is

  who you are.

  I stop at the curb,

  waiting for the

  light to change,

  to let me move on

  like I always did

  when I was forty-four

  and green.

  FOREWORD

  AS I ADJUST TO OLD AGE, I feel like Janus, looking in two directions at once, surveying my lengthy past and examining my foreshortened future. Death’s black raven perches on my shoulder from time to time. Even when he flies away, I know he is in the neighborhood.

  I wrote this memoir for the same reasons that all memoirs are written: to fulfill a need for self-definition, and because I wish to make sense of what is happening to me. I find that as I grow older I am more apt to take time to think about life and death. I have more time to turn inward. I am more avid for beauty. I spend time admiring trees (I have a favorite white boned sycamore). I watch the blue sky bloom sunset pink. I am not afraid of silence or stillness.

  The coming-of-age memoir documents the rapid change from adolescence to adulthood; this coming-into-old-age memoir describes a slower and more subtle process. For my entire life, eighty has stood in the far distance, literally at the end of the road. I could barely see it or even think about it. Now it is here—a huge, looming number. My memoir takes the scattered events and thoughts of my life and sorts them within the covers of a book. It creates the happy illusion that life is an organized whole.

  At this stage of my life I have accumulated enough titles to prompt the question, “What should I call you?” Titles do not grant immortality, but they provide a firm prop to keep my back straight. I have accumulated a few: wife, mother, state legislator, lieutenant governor, governor, US deputy secretary of education, ambassador to Switzerland, professor, poet, and writer. Two titles stick to me for life: governor and ambassador. They are preceded, however, by the word “former,” which draws some of the air out. No matter what form of address precedes my name, I am, in my mid-eighties, indisputably, an old woman.

  IN MIDLIFE, my day was propelled largely by outside forces. My schedule when I was governor was often divided into fifteen- and thirty-minute segments. I had to respond quickly to calls from reporters and demands from constituents—while juggling my family and career. My life was fragmented. Now, in my old age (these are still difficult words to put on paper), I am not in stasis, but I do have more time and desire to analyze and to write. Knowing that I have embarked on the last years of my life adds intensity to my days. The search for meaning that has often accompanied me in the past is now my frequent companion because the “end” is closer. Will I be around in five years, or ten years from now? I answer myself, I do not know.

  What I do know is that I do not wish to live a long life, per se. I want to live a reasonably good life that allows me to cope with some expected losses of my senses but does not leave me totally blind, deaf, or immobile. My greatest fear is the loss of independence and the deterioration of my most vital organ: my mind.

  It is impossible to imagine my future without me in it. So, I live in two different dimensions. One is like it always was: I greet the day with healthy anticipation; I do not dwell on limitations. The other radiates a sense of foreboding. When will I be unable to take care of myself? When will I die? How will I die? These questions do not frequently announce themselves, but they hover in the air.

  When I was in my seventies, I attended a man’s eightieth birthday party. I went because his wife was my friend and I t
hought he would not live much longer, and in fact he died within a year. That would never be me. Even when I looked at myself closely in the mirror and searched for evidence of age damage on my skin, it was as if I were scanning a white tablecloth for gravy spots. I could not see myself as the age I had become. How old was I? Fifty, or sixty, or perhaps seventy at most? Now, my wrinkles appear or disappear depending on the light. The photo on the cover of this book shows all my wrinkles. I seem proud of them, though I confess I don’t always look or feel that way. I am not that accepting.

  It is said that your life comes into focus on your deathbed, as it did for Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich. I suggest that such questions begin to arrive much earlier. Now that I have passed eighty, I feel an urgency to describe my aging self before I reach my deathbed. I am focused on how it feels to be old. My knees creak when I get up from a deep chair, I feel my breath accelerate when I walk up a hill, and I feel a tremor in my hands when I sign my name.

  Old age is often portrayed as a disease that can be prevented, or even cured, in a number of ways: anti-aging skin creams, vigorous exercise, plastic surgery, or even a pill. Youth and beauty are one in our society, and old age is the opposite. The adjectives “crone” and “hag” come to mind. Whistler’s mother and Rembrandt’s mother resemble one another: silent women, dressed in black. The desire to glorify youth and conquer aging is not new. Witness the sixteenth-century Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León and his quest for the Fountain of Youth. The tourists who line up to see the site in St. Augustine, Florida, remind us that, five centuries later, we’re still searching for the same. But the images in the media do not tell the real story of what it is to be old today. Old people are either portrayed as so fit and happy that they belong in Viagra advertisements, or they are shown suffering from excruciating pain in advertisements for arthritis medication.

  This book does neither. I acknowledge the transformation that I am experiencing—physical, mental, and emotional. I regret my losses, but I do not linger there because the present pulls me in. I want to live in the here and now. I am greedy. The more life, the better. Still, I do not glorify old age. I see aging as a new stage of development during which I experience loss, but also continue to grow, learn, change, and find joy, even love. I am fortunate to have children, grandchildren, and a husband to hug; their love warms my life.

  WHEN I WAS YOUNG, the future was large. l wanted to grow into the next year quickly, to become an adult. Weeks were short because I had so much to do and not enough time. The future seemed infinite. Now I want time to slow down to a crawl, because I want more. In old age, my future has shrunk like a sweater steeped in hot water. It feels tight.

  My priorities remain similar to what they were at a younger age, but now they take a different form. Instead of running for office myself, I pass the torch to a new generation of women. Five years ago, I founded Emerge Vermont, which recruits and trains women who want to run for public office. I want to help women discover their confidence and hone their skills. I have been urging women to enter public life ever since I was elected to the Vermont legislature in 1972; I think that being a mentor and role model may be my most important accomplishment. Women continue to feel they need accreditation before they dive into public life. Or they assume that a woman like me must be rich or have family connections. That has not been my story. My mother became a widow at an early age and my family had no political connections. Possibly it was idealism mixed with grit that pushed me to the podium.

  I also find that I can write differently now than when I was involved in politics. Now my skin has become more translucent. I can be more personal. I don’t wear the same shrink wrap I once sealed myself in. I can be more reckless about being judged. I no longer have to filter my words through a fine-meshed screen, leaving out phrases that might not please, or worse, offend and get me into trouble. My existence, when I was in public life, depended on public approval. I belonged to my audience. Out of public office, I belong more to myself. I can fling my arms wide when I want to, or I can keep them positioned at my side.

  When old, old age arrives, I will want to be an over-achiever. I want to score high on vitality, on curiosity. I remain curious about the new person, the new idea, the new day. I want to be around to see what happens next. When a resident at Wake Robin retirement community stops for a full fifteen seconds to hold the door for me, I thank him effusively. “Never mind,” he replies. “I’m retired. I have nowhere else to go.”

  I think, But I do, I do.

  NO LONGER

  No longer will we make love

  before breakfast.

  No longer will I dream

  of seeing New Zealand

  or the Cape of Good Hope.

  Or bears in the wild.

  No longer will I say

  “Yes” more than “No.”

  No longer will danger sparkle

  and safety look dull.

  No longer will I look

  at my body

  without comparison

  between who I was,

  and who I have become,

  blaming the light for

  the difference.

  No longer can I toss my hair

  over my face,

  and count one hundred strokes.

  No longer can I do without

  Night Cream and Day Cream,

  slathering on, ounce after ounce.

  No longer can I be comfortable

  sitting in my chair, reading for hours

  without getting up

  to stretch my arms and legs.

  No longer can I walk without

  looking down at my feet

  to avoid mean cracks and

  malicious bumps.

  No longer can I skip down

  stairs like a girl, flying,

  without feeling a thing.

  No longer can I approach

  the precipice without

  swaying against my will.

  No longer do I think ahead

  of where I will be in ten years,

  or twenty or more;

  now I think in ones or twos or threes,

  long enough to still hunger

  for the food of life.

  No longer do I wish for

  the next day, or the next year,

  to come quickly,

  like I did the year

  I turned ten.

  I want the days to saunter,

  like a leisurely

  museum stroller who stops

  now and then to gaze;

  and get closer to the canvas

  to see the brush strokes,

  and then steps back

  for the long view,

  before moving on.

  1

  The Year I Turned Eighty

  THE YEAR I TURNED EIGHTY, the color red invaded my palette. I bought a new red Prius, thinking it might be my last car. “Last car” sounds like “last breath,” and I wanted to go out in a blast. If I hadn’t worried about the wind further destroying my hair, my ears, and my eyes, I would have gone for a convertible.

  I had owned my old Prius for nine years. It was beige, and it blended silently in with the other cars in the parking lot. Sometimes it took me several panicked minutes (it has to be here somewhere) to find it in the rows of vehicles. As I pushed my cumbersome shopping cart, I hoped no one would notice that I was lost, or rather, that my car was lost. My red car would be different—on the alert, happily signaling to me, even from a distance.

  My new Prius was the color of the year: Barcelona Red. The marketing people had gotten it right. Not only did the name feel beautiful on the tongue, but Barcelona Red also evoked sunlit images of the time my second husband, John, and I visited Spain. The deep, vibrant red sparkled on the car lot. It was a young color. It had a touch of daring to it. I once had read that red cars are picked up more often for speeding than other colors. I was ready to take the risk. I wanted to defy the dark expectations of my age. Once I took it on the road, the
rear view mirror showed me the standard gray interior, but when I looked at the side mirrors, I saw exactly what I wanted to see: a color that vibrates with life.

  Red tempted me again as I decided on the colors of the walls and furniture fabrics of Wake Robin, a continuing care retirement community near Burlington, Vermont. The perfect cottage had become available, and my husband said that the time had come to make the move. I was less ready than he was to move to our final living space, but the fun of redecorating the cottage’s four rooms eased the transition.

  I had always thought white walls were perfect. That had been the color of the walls wherever I had lived—neutral, calm, and easy to live with. But now I wanted something bright, something that would bring the sun in and keep the gloom away. Yellow—that would be the color of every room except the kitchen, for which I chose a Tuscan red that was both calm and lively. That is what I had wanted: a kitchen different from the other kitchens at Wake Robin. But soon after it was painted, I saw the same color in several restaurants in Burlington and on the baseboards of the skilled nursing wing at Wake Robin. How original had I been?

  The move to Wake Robin was a promising time in our lives. My husband had recently come out of a prolonged depression and had recovered from a bout of insomnia. We both agreed that the decision to move to Wake Robin had sparked his recovery. We had a plan for our old age. Our children would not be burdened when we reached that dreaded stage of dependence. If one of us died first, the other would not have to cope alone. The cottage was the most attractive one on campus. Tall trees framed it on two sides, and I could see the sunset through their silhouettes. There were lots of birds. But when I told a friend that we were moving to Wake Robin, she scoffed, “Oh, the old folks’ home.” I didn’t think she was funny.

  In preparation for the move, with my son Daniel’s help, I bought some secondhand Danish modern in Montreal. I surprised myself by choosing the same style of furniture I had when I was married to Arthur, my former husband. When John and I married, we intermingled our possessions; he had a dark walnut table from his grandparents, and I had a spindly hand-painted Biedermeier writing desk and matching chairs from my Aunt Berthe. Our big joint investment would be two comfortable chairs. Money appeared to be no object, thanks to the stock market’s recent surge and John’s ebullient mood. He spotted the big, comfortable leather chair first, sat in it, and declared we should buy two for the study. I didn’t think the study was large enough for two chairs with matching ottomans and suggested the living room instead. We didn’t argue.