How old is too old?
When I was born, my grandparents were all roughly the age I am now. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t think that they were all ancient. One of the earliest memories I have of my paternal grandmother is playing with the wattle under her chin.
When I started working professionally, I was always the youngest person in the room. I remember a conversation that I had with Jean Stapleton about this very thing when we worked on The Pinter Plays (The Birthday Party and Mountain Language) at CSC down on 13th Street back in 1989. She asked me how old I was, and I told her, and I think she was surprised. I had the presence of mind not to ask her how old she was, but she was an old woman to me. All in the Family, the television show, had gone off the air ten years before and she already seemed old to me in that.
In truth, in 1989, Jean was only about five years older than I am now. She would have turned 100 last year had she still been alive which meant there was roughly a forty-year difference in our ages. She was only a couple of months older than my father.
I spent a lot of time during Jersey Boys in rehearsal studios all over the world. Whatever else might be different about working in other countries, a rehearsal studio is a rehearsal studio no matter where you are. They are big open rooms with mirrors along one wall.
While I got older over the course of my time with the show, the casts all stayed the same age. Even though I felt the same as I did when we started, every so often I’d catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and think, “Good lord, who’s that old guy? How did he get in here?” Looking out of older eyes doesn’t feel any different than looking out of younger ones. Until you see yourself reflected you aren’t any age at all.
Joseph R. Biden is 81. He will turn 82 about two weeks after the Presidential election in November. If he wins, he will be 86 when he finishes his second term. His likely challenger is only four years younger than him. He’d be 82 at the end of his second term. If, of course, he let his second term end. If I thought people in their sixties were ancient, what can contemporary twenty-somethings be thinking about these guys?
We all look at people and friends we run into on the street and think, “Lord have mercy, they’ve gotten old.” The next thought is usually, “What must I look like to them?” So much of the problem with aging is perception. We all do it, so why is it so shocking when it happens?
Part of the problem is that we all age differently. Michael has an ongoing relationship with two people who are currently in some level of assisted living. One of them is in their mid-seventies and the other in their mid-nineties. The older one is in somewhat better physical condition than the younger one. Neither is truly able to care for themselves on their own. Neither wants to admit it.
The sweet spot, physically, for human beings, is probably during the two decades starting with the third one. Sure, it may start a few years before that, but too long before and it starts to get creepy. The few years after? Probably. Maybe. It depends on the person. That twenty-year stretch is when we are at the height of our physical prowess. Nearly all Olympian athletes fall into that age bracket. When they don’t, it becomes newsworthy.
Those two decades are also the ones where we have children. Our bodies are designed to turn out healthy, energetic kids during those years. Speaking for my sex only, during those years most of us are thinking about very little else. All. The. Time.
The two decades that follow, our fifth and sixth, mark a shift in what we focus on. Our incessant sexual drive begins to wane. A bit. Again, I am now talking about men, and, again, all of us are different. I am also talking in the most general terms possible. We have started figuring out the world and how to live in it. During our forties and fifties our attention shifts towards work. The fearless twenty-something Olympic athlete has now broken enough bones doing ridiculous things over the years that they now look at an impossible physical task and think, “No way I’m doing that.”
We become fearless about work, instead. “I can do that.” We still have the physical strength and stamina to put in long hours. We are still ambitious. We are on that ladder, and we are climbing it. My Jersey Boys years fell right smack in the middle of those two decades. I didn’t sleep for years. I was available 24/7. I went anywhere and everywhere all across the globe and fought for more. I was as productive as any human being could be.
Our seventh and eight decades and mind you I am right at the beginning of those, are maybe the most variable in terms of what we do and how we react to them. This is where the disparity in our physical abilities really sets it. Some of us age well and some of us don’t. Some of that is genetics and some of it is sheer dumb luck. Fitness freaks can drop dead of a heart attack at sixty-two and people who don’t exercise a day in their lives can live to be a hundred.
That’s part of the problem with looking at Biden and his likely opponent through the lens of age. How long are they going to be able to do the job?
When Barack Obama, who’s almost the same age I am, was serving his term as President, he went into it at the age of forty-eight. In many ways, it was the perfect age for somebody to hold that office. The only thing you could fault him for, age wise, was a possible lack of experience. He countered that, perfectly, by making Joe Biden, who at the time was sixty-seven, his running mate. Barack had the energy and Joe had the experience. They were photographed together all the time and appeared to be the best of friends.
Were they really? Who knows. It doesn’t matter. It was all about perception. This was a team in perfect balance.
The main problem Joseph R. Biden is facing now going into this next election is the nagging feeling among even his supporters that he is too old. It appears to me that he is refusing to acknowledge and deal with that. He is trying to stand by his record in office, which is truly impressive on many levels, but that’s not what anyone’s looking at. They are all looking at an old man and thinking, “Is he too old for this?”
Neither of the two people that Michael is helping adjust to life in their Assisted Living facilities are going gently into that good night. Both are strong people who have been independent for most of their lives. Facing up to the reality of their situations has not been easy for either of them.
The elder of the two has now been in the Actor’s Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey for a few years. While she may not ever say this aloud, she likes it. She’s made new friends. She has the freedom to write all day, (her passion), and she does not need to worry about food or her medications. A whole team of excellent people are looking out for her. She is as content as either Michael or I have ever seen her. We just threw her a ninety-fifth birthday party out there that she is still talking about.
The younger person Michael is helping is just beginning their journey into living with assistance. Watching the car being sold was wrenching. Forget that the car was crumbling to pieces, it represented freedom and independence. Every step of the way is a fight but maybe that’s necessary. Change is hard. Extremely hard. I sincerely hope that when my husband and I need help navigating through it that there is someone as patient as Michael to help us.
Joe Biden could greatly alleviate our collective anxieties by empowering his Vice-President. If he and his staff created the illusion that they were a powerful team, I think we’d all be fine. Kamala Harris, unfortunately, has an image problem. Nobody likes her. It seems clear that Biden doesn’t like her because they are never seen together. He throws her the occasional problem to solve but they seem designed to make her fail. The Border? That’s just not fair.
You could argue that the American public will never accept Kamala but come on. If the PR machine behind the Royal Family in Great Britain can make the roundly hated Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles so palatable to the British people that they now accept her as their Queen, then anything is possible. Queen Camilla? If you had said that a decade ago, everyone would have laughed in your face. Now, she’s on stamps.
If they rehabilitated Kamala Harris’s public image and made her Biden’s partner, we would stop worrying about his age. She’s fifty-nine years old. She is strong and forceful. Knowing that she was there to take over in an emergency would take all the pressure off Biden’s age. Right now, what we all worry about is that if he suddenly drops dead, we’d be left with a vacuum. For heaven’s sake, give her some agency. I couldn’t care less if you like her or not.
Joseph R. Biden needs to face up to the fact that we think he’s old. Is he too old? He seems to be doing fine. He’s gotten more done in his one term in office than most presidents in recent memory. I truly think we’d be fine with him continuing if we knew he was covered. He needs Assistance. At some point he’s going to have to give up the keys to the car.
God, what I wouldn’t give for my twenty-eight-year-old skin. I had terrible acne in my teens with some residual occurrences in my early twenties. By the end of that decade, though, it was great. I look in the mirror sometimes and try to remember it. I pull my loose skin back, but then I just look like I’ve had incredibly unfortunate plastic surgery. That skin is not coming back.
I need to exercise more. I need to eat better. I need to start doing both those things before it’s too late. I know that. And I will. Sigh.
Patti LuPone is in the process of putting together a new concert that we will debut in March. In April we’ll do it at Carnegie Hall. At seventy-four (I’m not telling tales, you can google it), Patti is in excellent voice. She works on it. She takes nothing for granted. One of the sounds in my life that I treasure the most, after that of my sainted husband gently snoring beside me, is the sound of Patti warming up in her dressing room. Once those “mnaaahhhs” start coming through her dressing room door, I know we are good to go.
We can’t ignore the fact that we age. If we are lucky enough, we will all do it. With it, though, comes some realities. You cannot tell a twenty-something what to do. They won’t listen no matter how rational an argument you make. They know everything. You also can’t tell an eighty-something what to do. They think they know everything too. The problem is that even though they really do know everything, they won’t admit to some of it.
Dear lord, I am going to be just as bad…
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
I’ll be 73 this month and Corey will be 44. 😳
(Sadly, Patrick will always be 19.) I live in a Sun City, an age 55+ community. Age awareness is omnipresent around here, yet it is the only place I know where I am considered “just a baby!”
Just as Time is relative, so is Age. We spend ALL of our lives being younger than we are now. There is a lot to reconcile now as the days tick by so quickly.
WOW, what a good and beautiful post!
You wrote, “Looking out of older eyes doesn’t feel any different than looking out of younger ones. Until you see yourself reflected, you aren’t any age at all.”
I would like to give you credit for this quote and share it on Facebook. Is that okay with you?