Aging Up

As I approach 50, I find myself in that weird space where I still have a lot of the enthusiasm and interests that I’ve always had, but I am very much aware of time’s passing and my place in the world as one of The Olds.

I’ve never been overly concerned with getting old. I enjoyed the process of my beard greying in my 40s. I like surprising my kids' generation with some current cultural reference that I’m just enough aware of to not sound like I’m trying too hard. And though it’s been a slow process, I’ve appreciated the easing of anxieties about what others think of me. Of course, I’m not a fan of the physical issues that come with aging. I can deal with the creaky joints and longer recovery time after runs, but things that cause me to look at mortality a little more directly (like heart stuff) aren’t so welcome. But, welcome or not, they happen.

Overall, though, aging has been fine so far.

I can see that as years go on, it may be more difficult. Making new friends is, indeed, trickier in middle-age (especially as an introvert) and it can take more effort to be out there in the community.¹ The Atlantic’s recent podcast “How to Age Up Together” addressed this issue in a pretty interesting discussion.

While it felt a little weird hearing hosts that are a decade or two younger than me talking about aging, they had some good insights about the importance of co-generational living and socializing, something that used to be much more common than it is today.

The guest on the episode was Eunice Nichols, the co-CEO of CoGenerate, a non-profit focused on intergenerational partnerships. When Nichols started with CoGenerate, one of the programs she ran brought older adults into public schools to help kids with reading. This immediately made me think of my own experience in kindergarten.

At the time, I was reading well above grade level (how high above, I’m not sure, but my mom tells me that the other kids in my class would come up to her and ask her how I knew how to read books already).² Once a week at the end of the day, I would leave class and meet in a different room with a retired woman named Myra Woodruff. We would chat and read more complex books together. She gave me a copy of Stuart Little at the end of the year that I still have.³

Throughout my life, I’ve felt a connection with folks in their senior years. Some of my favorite relatives to hang out with have been great-aunts. Like the one who always felt like a grandmother (her sister, who was my actual grandmother, passed away well before I was born). Or the one who married into the family that I often chatted with about game shows. Or my grandfather’s sister whose sense of humor was beyond compare.

In a recent Tricycle podcast, writer Ocean Vuong said, “My whole life has been informed by intergenerational relationships. …  I noticed that in our culture, you know, the very young and the very old are kind of pushed toward the fringes of society. They’re no longer in the center. The young are deemed to not have enough experience to contribute, and the old seem defunct. And I think the relationship between that, the foundation between that, is an immense loneliness between those two poles of our society.”

The idea of co-generational communities at various levels is intriguing. They can be implemented in large or small ways and have an influence.

Imagining implementation at the neighborhood level, we could replace things like retirement villages or over-55 communities, creating an area where seniors and working age families live amongst each other. This would allow parents and adults in early or middle age to learn from seniors who have been through it all before while also helping those seniors to stay a vibrant part of a world that hasn’t forgotten them or devalued their contributions, where they’re not pushed to the side. Children would see future lives where getting older is embraced, knowing they won’t feel less vital.

The Atlantic podcast also mentioned multi-generational living situations in buildings in college towns, like near Drexel University in Philadelphia called the Second Story Collective. The group emphasizes “homesharing":

[Drexel] is located in a very urban area, and it borders a very African American neighborhood with a lot of elders who own homes. There was a program that was a creative-writing class, and students and elders in the community would come together for this class and just do creative writing together. And they got to know each other and these beautiful relationships that were built. But one day, one of the elders came in and, because of the gentrifying neighborhood, was going to be kicked out of her housing. And one of the students said, “Oh my goodness; what is the point of connecting and getting to know these wonderful elders in the neighborhood if, at the end of the day, all we’ve done is written creative stories together?” It did get the students and older adults having what became extensive conversations around different ways to live together because the students were themselves feeling pretty housing insecure.

College students and seniors bring different things to a shared living situation, and both groups benefit.

In addition to neighborhoods or buildings, the co-generation concept could be applied to social groups that are organized in communities to ensure ongoing communication, socialization, and community planning. This would encourage multi-generational representation in local activism and politics, fostering some really interesting conversations about how to move things forward without leaving others behind.⁴ 

I see a simple example of this every election day. When I started serving as an election official many years ago, I was in my late 20s and easily the youngest person there. Elections tended to be staffed by retirees. As time went on, though, I started to see more parents and younger folks still in the workforce taking time off to man the elections. These days, our local board even recruits high school students as volunteer pages, which results in a really diverse staff during elections, working together and sharing stories throughout the long day.

I’m glad there are groups working on these issues. It’s so easy to wall ourselves off–intentionally or not–into physical spaces that only represent our general age group. Giving ourselves opportunities to break out of our generational bubbles is well worth the effort.