Confronting My Inner Ageist: OFL Week 4

Here's my Operation Fear Liberation (OFL) snapshot for the fourth week of January. Once again, I've forced myself to do something new. 

Week 4: Visit a life-care retirement community to attend a talk/conversation on ageism.

Why it’s on my list: My 70-year-old friend CD, who I met through a friendship-match program for isolated elders and people with disabilities called Elder Friends, asked me if I would like to go with her to this conversation café. Led by author Wendy Lustbader, the planned conversation topic for the evening was "Changing the Culture of Aging in the 21st Century."  C was clearly eager to attend this event, and since C has had several TBIs and is unable to drive, I knew she wouldn’t be able to do so without my help. Friends help each other out.

Since I’m in my mid-30s, I haven’t had many invites or reasons to attend a talk directed at a senior community. However, both of my parents qualified for full Social Security benefits last year and are by America’s standards officially senior citizens. When I consider of how very capable, active, and healthy my parents still are (in my view, anyway), this topic holds more intrigue for me than before. 

And I also have witnessed ageism in action on several occasions when I've been out on the town with C, or my 94-year-old grandmother, or my 80-something landlady, GK.  All three ladies are still more than sharp in the brains department, yet the moment salespeople see C's cane, Grandma's walker, or GK's white hair, there is a notable shift in their demeanor; they assume an ignorance on the part of my elder companion, a comprehension level on par with a kindergartener.  Often, while their speech becomes louder and slower (which, honestly, is helpful for both Grandma and GK), the salespeople's faces and gestures subtly convey increasing impatience and irritation.  C has made no secret of how much this condescension bothers her, and I can tell it frustrates my grandmother and GK too.  I don't like seeing any of my friends or family members have their feelings hurt, so I totally support changing the way this culture perceives our elders.

Plus, I am sure that I have unwittingly committed acts of ageism many, many times.  I don't want to be an ageist, so I thought this talk might enlighten me as to ways that I can avoid such ageist behavior in the future.

Hang Ups: I get really nervous about going into situations or places where I suspect I will stand out. (Who doesn’t?)  In such situations, I feel like everyone is looking at me and wondering what the heck I’m doing there. For this particular event, I suspected that, aside from staff, I would be the only person under the age of 50 there. I was sure I would be hopelessly uneducated about senior issues and inexperienced in life compared to the other attendees, and that I would accidentally say something insensitive or clumsy, thus offending everyone there and revealing my subconscious ageist tendencies. 

Basically, the population that I anticipated to be in attendance represents the big scary unfamiliar. However, since we don’t live in a world of carbon copies and clones, we all must step outside the comfort zone of the similar into the more nerve-wracking zone of the unfamiliar from time to time.

Conquered: January 24, 2012 

Where: Skyline at First Hill

How: After spending 1.5 hours stuck in gridlock on I-5, C and I finally arrived at the Skyline building. A super nice young woman ushered us to an elevator and we were whisked up to the 24th floor. Since we were at least a half hour late, we missed most of Ms. Lustbader's talk, but we arrived in time for the conversation portion of the event. Ms. Lustbader instructed us to break into groups of 4 or 5 and asked us to discuss times and places where we've witnessed or experienced ageism and feelings about that.  C and I joined three women--V, a professionally-dressed woman of ~70; her daughter (~40, I'd guess); and L, a rather stunning 82-year-old French Swiss woman. 

The view from Skyline of First Hill's 24th floor

The Experience:  First, the room where the talk was being held had an incredible view of the city and was full of attractive plush sofas and armchairs rather than cheap folding chairs. Actually, every space I saw in the building had very attractive decor. On top of the nice setting, the event featured a fantastic food spread (no cheap submarine sandwiches here--grilled vegetables, endive/basil/mozzarella/tomato appetizers, brie, and fresh fruit) and a gentleman was pouring complimentary wine at a small bar.  Sweet!  If this is what retirement community events are like these days, then sign me up.

I also was totally wrong about the age make-up of the audience members. Of the roughly 40 people in the audience, I was not the youngest one there. In fact, there were at least five other people in their 20s and 30s in attendance, and several more who I'd place in their 40s.  If I had to guess, the average age was probably 55. So my fears of feeling totally out of place were unfounded.

Still, I did feel some awkwardness and ignorance in conversation, as the youngest member of my group.  In response to the initial question about experiences of ageism, V's daughter told a story about a driving scare in which she'd flung an arm across her mother in the passenger seat, noting the switch in the role of protector.  That reminded me of when I studied abroad in Europe as a college sophomore, and my then-50-year-old mother met me in Rome for a few weeks of travel: I was terrified that she'd get run over by the crazy Italian drivers, so I kept yanking her out of streets. V said that she found such protective gestures to be "condescending."  Because, of course, my mother was completely capable of figuring out for herself that Romans are fast and crazy drivers who require complete vigilance from pedestrians. I felt ashamed for presuming otherwise, in spite of the dozen-plus years that have passed since Mom and I were in Rome together. 

Then Ms. Lustbader asked the groups to share some of the revelations they'd had in discussion, and she ran around from person to person with her microphone like Oprah. Here are a few of the thoughts and comments I jotted down from audience members and Ms. Lustbader: 

• No one wants to be part of a group called "the elderly."  But referring to someone as an "elder" implies respect and wisdom.  
• Older people are often accused of "being stuck in their ways" or "living in the past." But as we age, our past becomes one of our greatest assets.
• We become more and more ourselves as we get older.  We age into our individuality.
• There was some discussion about older people that make fun of themselves as a way to soften the edge of ageism (much like members of different minority populations often refer to themselves by the same derogatory slurs that others have historically used to demean that minority group). One man expressed most eloquently that while this self-mockery might take the power away from the mocking of others, it also may reinforce the incorrect perception that he or she is inferior.
• I liked this acronym, TABs: Temporarily Able Bodies.
• We need to fix nursing homes in this nation so that they are places we would be proud to work in and proud to live in.

To close the event, Lustbader then instructed us to regroup to discuss what each of us could do to change the perception of aging in America. L spoke of how her 80-year-old sister sits at home watching soap operas all day and being depressed about how all of her friends are dying, "which is true, of course, but that's no reason to waste the rest of your life away." L, meanwhile, has been busy traveling abroad, volunteering at a soup kitchen, teaching private French lessons, folk dancing, and serving on a board or two, as well as a couple of planning committees in her retirement community home.  She's fighting ageism by being a living example of how much a person can still do at the "ripe old age" of 82.

For my part, I can try to avoid making assumptions about what a person can and cannot do based on their age.  I feel hopeful when I see people like L, V, C, G, and my grandmother living lives that more than rival mine in terms of fullness.  It's such a waste of energy for me to freak out about not having done X or Y at age 30-something when the rest of my life holds such incredible potential.

The Verdict: In addition to worrying about my inner ageist rearing its head at this event, I think I also expected there to be ageism from the elders against so-called youngsters like myself.  I don't think I was absolutely wrong about that expectation, but everyone there, including myself, seemed to own their ageist tendencies and expressed a desire to get past them.  The discussion was honest and proactive.  It was a positive experience, and if C, or anyone else, asks me to go to a similar event for elders, I won't shy away.