“It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty years to learn to keep quiet.” – Ernest Hemingway
“It is a kind of love, is it not? How the cup holds the tea…I’ve been thinking about the patience of ordinary things. How clothes wait respectfully in closets, and soap dries quietly in the dish, and towels drink the wet…and what is more generous than a window.” – Pat Scheider
“A low inward thrum seemed to pass through the garden, as though the place itself had drawn breadth and held it. The roses knew first. A faint tremor went through their stems; their leaves turned ever so slightly as if in listening…The roses said nothing. They had long ago mastered patience. But in the folded centres of their blooms they kept their knowledge.” – Thackray of England
We don’t always get to say a proper goodbye, to intentionally take our leave of one another, to say the words that will hold meaning and then pass into memory. As my 60th birthday looms and my year of writing as a little old lady… in waiting draws to a close, I raise a “parting glass” in gratitude for your readership and your always thoughtful and thought-provoking feedback. A special thank you to the “12” wise women who gave me their trust, and opened their homes and there histories to share their earned wisdom. A curated circle, chosen for their considerable and varied life experience, they dug deep for their gold and help out their best bits so I could take a closer look, reviewing over 600 years of collective learning. These conversations proved a deeply nourishing, uniquely rich, and stimulating experience.
The Little old Lady …in waiting blog which began as a bid to slow down time as I transitioned to a life beyond the corseted years of paid employment and the heavy-lifting decades of parenting, was developed as a space to inventory and explore the bittersweet privilege of growing older; the good, the bad and the not so pretty.
As a writing workshop the blog proved a perfect tool for exploring and consolidating my thoughts on topics like retirement and the mother choice, death and diet, loss and heartache, the importance of rest and transformative power of travel, creative engagement, the beauty and majesty of the Crone, the everyday therapy of walking, the art of happiness, the meaning of life, and even the possibility of an afterlife. I smile a slow inscrutable smile imagining my children, one day opening these essays, perhaps in their 50’s, and hopefully wearing similar smiles, reading my thoughts on subjects they are only now beginning to consider. I will have my say!
I have learned a great deal in this last year of writing. I learned, most importantly, that when we distill our life stories down to the essentials: education, work, love of place and people, it is always a story of family, the backbone of our lives, that sustains us, those who came before us and those who will still be here after we are gone.
Often the quality heralded as the “best thing” about getting older is a certain imperviousness to the opinions of others, while the “worst thing” about getting older, referenced most frequently, is pain, the emotional pain of losing those we love, as well as physical pain, or the breaking down of the body. It seems while our inner women may still feel twenty-something, the body keeps its own count of the passing years.
Important life lessons that resonated with me include the deceptively simple truth that “happiness is an inside job,” the importance of “being in the moment,” the gift of “forgiveness… of ourselves and others, the profoundly freeing understanding “that control is an illusion” and the everyday magic of “leading with kindness.”
Favourite quotes …an impossible task to be sure, but a few stand-outs for me include:
“Well behaved women seldom make history.”
“Would it help?” (a question to ask when tempted to plummet into a worry spiral)
“If this isn’t nice, then I don’t know what is.” (An intentional acknowledgement of everyday moments that bring joy)
“Life is not difficult for those who prefer everything” (Excellent advice to accept the universe as it unfolds)
I loved the experience of collecting favourite words, arguably my most telling interview question. Honorable mention must go to the expletives and the made-up words. “Kretzimah (soft or enjoyable, a gentle person…it describes everything delightful” and “Snigg,” an accidental emoticon. (Originally a typo denoting an emotional reaction, passed down in family correspondence, evolving to an intergenerational sentiment inspiring familial love and affection).
Components of perfect days recounted invariably involve agendaless afternoons and time with family. Chapter headings chosen to reflect this part of our life stories were most often some variation of living intentionally, in wisdom and in grace or a kind of renaissance, or revival. Experiences that spark joy include meaningful conversation, time with close friends and family and engaging work. Guilty pleasures were for the most part verboten, discarded vestiges of younger versions of ourselves. Most everyone interviewed was open to the notion of an afterlife but most were unsure what it might look like. Some hoped to we might fly, many wished to spend time with lost loved ones, but ultimately the afterlife proved impossible to imagine in any tangible way, one friend insistent on “a place of perdition if you’ve been just an absolute arsehole.” Never mess with a little old lady…in waiting.
As to tea with real or imagined guests, many chose to invite personal heroes, and family members no longer living, with one thoughtful LOLIW choosing to come back some years hence and have tea with her grown grandchildren. What a great privilege that would be.
As for eulogy, most women I spoke to wished to be remembered as kind, passionately engaged with their lives, a good friend, or as someone who leaves the world a bit better than when they arrived. My favourite eulogies were the succinct ones, “….and curtain“, ” I came, I was…I went, and the brilliantly comic, “That ass though…”
I answered these questions for myself in a journal entry dated almost one calendar year ago to the day, and will attach them below as a gesture of respect and gratitude for the 12 extraordinary women who agreed to embrace social media and go public with their answers (I can be brave too), and as a legacy letter for my own children who may one day wish to know my answers. I encourage all my fellow cronies to do the same as a legacy project, as a writing exercise to distill personal meaning, and as a love letter to yourself, a guide to light your way in these last and hopefully most meaningful years of your journey.
It was a great privilege to engage with you, my readers, in this year of writing as a Little old lady…in waiting and a real surprise to discover readers in places as far away as South Africa and Switzerland, Japan and Ireland, Greece and Australia, over 40 countries in total. I am deeply grateful for your readership and correspondence. My wish for little old ladies in waiting everywhere, is that we savour these last, unpromised chapters of our story, and if, as I have suggested many times, that “the end is where we start from,” it seems right to close where I began this journey, with Homer’s insightful invitation to mind your life in these last, most precious years.
“Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.“
I raise a parting glass to you, in gratitude,
A Little Old Lady…in Waiting
In Conversation with Sylvie Fitzgerald
Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less.
I was born on the first day of Summer and was originally to be called “Summer”. My dad decided on Sylvie instead, a French name that he found in a novel by Louis Lamour. I had the great good fortune to be born into a family where I grew up feeling deeply loved, with two older brothers, one a protector, the other a soulmate…I was the only girl, and the baby so I grew up feeling like a princess.
I’m a very high functioning introvert, happiest at home, reading, writing and, to a lesser extent, discussing, so I spent half of my 20s at university, managing to come out without any working papers, so I decided on a teaching degree first, and much later a nursing degree. No work has ever made me as happy as the work of reading, researching, ruminating, and writing. Along the way I met a lovely man named Jeff and we’ve been together now for more than 30 years… he’s probably the best decision I ever made, he and our two beautiful twenty-something children.
Closing in on 60, I have a growing awareness that my time is finite and I would like to spend it well, cultivating, to the exclusion of all else, engagement, joy, and kindness. I’m trying to live well so that I can reconnect with people I’ve lost, people who have gone ahead of me and that I miss very much.
What is the best thing about getting older?
The best thing about getting older is laying down the mantle of responsibilities we assume over the course of our lives … work …, parenting, what to make for dinner, worrying about all the things beyond our control. I love the quote. “Don’t worry, nothing is in our control.” I guess for me the best thing is reclaiming my freedom, deciding how best to spend my life every day, every moment.
What is the worst thing about getting older?
The worst thing about getting older is losing the people you love, the people who matter most to you, people so much a part of you, you’re really not sure what’s left of you after they leave….and the aftermath of that experience…learning to live with that kind of profound loss.
What would you title this chapter of your life?
Beauty Everywhere.
If you could retain or retrieve one quality from your youth, what would it be?
I’ve let go of many things that no longer serve me…a certain arrogance that my answers are the right answers, an analytic way of thinking that is quick to classify and critique and judge, an egocentricism that casts me as the star of the story instead of a single small light on a tree set with millions of twinkling stars, or the idea that we must set goals and achieve them, that the mountain is there to be climbed instead of simply seen. I’ve let go of a lot from my youth, none of which i would wish to reclaim… maybe taut skin and a waist.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far?
That kindness trumps cleverness, every time. I used to think that the pursuit of knowledge was the most laudable goal and now I know that kindness is, unequivocally, and that the best training in kindness begins with kindness to yourself.
Do you have a favourite quote?
“With our thoughts we make the world.” (Buddha) It was the first big secret I discovered and it remains a central tenet of my philosophy that I return to again and again. That we, each of us, have our own unique lens on the world, a filter that colours our perceptions. Two people can read the same book or watch the same play or experience the same family dinner and one can come away, marvelling at a moment of great beauty while another is conflicted about the experience, a witness to discord or even tragedy. We create our own reality; we see what we expect to see. Physicists even claim that when we observe a thing, we actually change its composition on a molecular level. We give form to things. If we cultivate beauty within, then we see beauty in others. If we are hard on ourselves then we have a tendency to be hard on others, if we are ourselves injured, we will sometimes choose to injure others in anger. Anais Nin says it beautifully as well, “ We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Closely related is a quote by Rumi, “Out there beyond the idea of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” In reality there is nothing that is good or ill, its only our thoughts that colour in context and assign meaning.
Do you have a favourite word?
I love words so it’s almost impossible to choose only one. I’ll curtail myself to a few. I’ll start with “Sonder” a recent acquisition and new favourite, discovered in a book by Joe Koenig “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.” It’s the realization that everyone you pass by is living a life as intricate and complex and real as your own, complete with their own dreams, troubles and foibles, a similar hero’s journey that evolves, unknown around you, like an anthill sprawling deep underground with passages to countless other lives that you will never truly know, but may still appear in for a moment, like a photobomber, perhaps only once, sipping a latte in the background, or a blurry passerby in a dimly lit window at dusk. I love the notion of interconnectedness “sonder” conjures.
“Copacetic” is another favourite. I like to say the word, the sound of it, and I like it’s meaning, that all is well. It also invites a posture of “equanimity” for me, a quality I have been in pursuit of most of my adult life, and another favourite word inspired in part by its illusiveness. Lastly, I must include, “Egad“ an old-fashioned exclamation that my father was fond of using. It helps me remember everything I hold dear about him, his humor and his love of language.
Describe your perfect day.
My perfect day starts early, maybe 6 AM, a quiet morning …coffee… it’s raining outside. I can hear the tapping of the rain on the window. panes. I love the rain because I don’t have to feel guilty about staying in on rainy days. I take my time, I write some morning pages and enjoy a second coffee with my husband, perhaps a fire, a lazy morning. Afterwards there is some physical component to the day maybe a long walk with my dog by the sea, or a swim in summer. After lunch I fall in to the pages of a perfect story, perhaps a woman in her 60’s, maybe a sonnet writer, surrounded by colourful characters that distract and delight. Later in the day my family gathers, there is slow atmospheric music playing, possibly jazz…maybe The Mercury Songbook. The lighting is orangey gold, Rembrandt tinted, I can smell seafood being prepared for dinner. Someone else is cooking, hopefully my husband, a glass of wine appears, as if by magic, just one. My kids are there and we sit down to a dinner together. We talk about our day, things that made us think or wonder, little beauties our eyes captured. There is dessert of course, because life can always be a little sweeter. Later another good story, for there can never be enough, perhaps a British mystery and then a blissful sleep.
If you could have tea with anyone, real or fictional, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you talk about?
I would want to sit down with my mum and dad and brother, all of whom have passed away. I would also invite my living brother, so I guess my origin family. I’d have questions, but mostly I would just want to sit in their presence, to feel their embrace in a physical way, to hold hands, to hug them and be held by them in turn for as long as I could. I’d ask where they are. I’d ask how I might find them when it was my turn to follow them, and I’d ask how we might talk sometimes now, how I might best listen for them.
Tell me three things that bring you joy.
My family, reading, and meaningful discussion, the kind that changes you in small important ways, that butts against your confirmation bias, the kind where you can feel your heart beating and know for sure that you’ve discovered something true.
Name a guilty pleasure.
I love a good period romance, think Downton Abbey, Jane Eyre, The Austen novels. You know the story, always a dark, brooding hero. Just a little healthy escapism but never before dinner. Every little old lady in waiting knows that we rescue ourselves, that we are the architects of our own fortunes, that we craft our own happy endings, but sometimes it’s fun to make believe.
Do you believe in life after death? What does it look like?
Yes, I do. I choose to believe in life after death, in the absence of any definitive proof one way or another. I am not so arrogant as to discount what I cannot conceptualize or understand. I don’t believe that there is an end to what we truly are, our essence. I know that our physical bodies die, but not our true or higher ourselves, the part of ourselves that has no name, that listens deep within us. Death, I believe is only a small speed bump between this world and the next, a door opening and closing. Blake wrote ” If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
What does it look like? I hope it’s like a book I once read, What Dreams May Come. I hope it’s a place where we flow in a stream of consciousness with our thoughts and desires. If I think of my mother, then I am suddenly there with her in her kitchen watching her make molasses cookies, or I float down to the seaside for a stroll with my dad and a long overdue chat. Later a trip to the library, where I find my way to the poetry section for a cuppa with my brother where we cast away with our latest literary finds. In the afterlife of my imagining there is no fear, no scarcity, no expiration, no worry…only engagement, adventure and love.
What would you like your eulogy to say?
I hope it will say that she was kind, that she loved well, that she honoured her gifts, and that she left this world a slightly better place for having been here. I’d like someone I have loved well to read the poem, “Kindness.” by Naomi Shihab Nai and perhaps Ulysses by Tennyson or maybe the Desiderata or almost anything by Rilke or Rumi. I hope I get to hear your words, and carry them home with me, carefully, to keep until I see you again.
Kindness
1952 –
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Little Old Lady … in Waiting 