Opinion

A superpower of older age:

Powerlessness
Anne Lamott

February 14, 2024

I woke up yesterday without too much going on except a cold and

cough I’ve had for two weeks, and of course the whole world coming apart
like a two-dollar watch. Also, beauty everywhere: clouds descended from
the ridge into folds in the hills like puffs and swoops of light gray smoke. I
went to wash my face with my glasses still on, and felt like I was in a
carwash. For a minute, I believed I had a detached retina — I’ve had a
floater for two years, and my ophthalmologist has told me to be on the
lookout for changes in vision. I got things sorted and took my morning
meds, but then five minutes later was not positive that I had indeed taken
them or just meant to.
I caught up on all the ghastly news and then as a counterpoint sat
down on the floor to play with the cat. Quiet joy and peace. Then, ring
ring ring.
It was a great old friend from childhood calling to say he was hurt by
something I’d done. He insisted I had dissed him to an unnamed friend. I
expressed how terrible I felt that this had hurt him, and that it was a
dumb misunderstanding, and how much I loved him, and asked if we
could get together to talk it through, but he said no, he wasn’t ready.
I was stunned. I sat there awhile, partly to think about how to win him
back and get him to forgive me but also because to get up from being
seated on the floor, I need either a hand or some furniture to lean on, and
found neither. I started to do a sowbug, roly-poly move that I’ve
developed, where I roll to my side and push up off the ground, but instead
I lay there, sad aged old misunderstood sowbug me.
My reflex was to mount a defense. My Jesuit friend Tom Weston once
said that he never noticed he was angry, just that he was right, and I
acknowledged to my husband that I was both. He shrugged, smiling: Yep.
Then I looked at my part in it and, yes, I could see why my friend felt as
he did, and shame flickered. But I hadn’t wronged him.
Any loved one’s anger at me feels life-threatening at first. I waited for
him to call and straighten things out, but he didn’t. After a while, I rolled
awkwardly to my feet like a ton of bricks, went to the kitchen and was
eating my body weight in cheese when something suddenly came to me.
It was a dawning realization that this problem was, with a little time,
going to sort itself out. I almost smote my forehead. Yo! That had not
occurred to me. It was going to be okay. I actually smiled. This is one
superpower of being old: You know that things are probably going to work
out without your tense, controlling input. Maybe you won’t get your way,
which I hate, but the roiled ponds of misunderstanding and hurt will
settle.
Older age gives us the knowledge of how powerless we are — not
helpless so much but with little control over life’s results. I don’t love this.
You come to forks in the road where you think, I can’t bear this, I can’t do
this, I can’t fix this; I see no reason for hope. Plus, what if Iran gets
involved, and what if there’s a nuclear exchange, and what if this is the
end?
But then, if you are old, you remember countless other falling-outs,
other miserable patches with people you love, where peace was restored.
I believe in the resiliency of relationships, even if I struggle not to be
initially devastated every time I disappoint someone.
This is the main advice I give younger people who get troubled and
stuck. I say, “Yes, it sounds really awful. Just do one good thing, and then
another, and breathe. You’re going to be okay.” I tell them what John
Lennon said: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not
the end.”
So I got on with the day, trusting again that, as my husband says, life
tilts towards the good.
Rain clouds were gathering, stage left, and a wind began to blow, so I
pulled on a thick turtleneck sweater, forgetting to first take off my
glasses, which caught in the fabric, trapped me and stabbed me in the
eye. (Come to think of it, maybe I am fine and the glasses are the
problem.)
I have a number of close friends in their 80s whom I see regularly,
some of them quite infirm. On bad days, they say angrily that old age
sucks. This is part of the package. We stick together. Ram Dass said that
ultimately we are all just walking each other home.
It began to pour, and the branches of the bigger trees whipped and
bowed and the more delicate ones moved their arms gently, port de bras.
I waited some more for the friend who’d called to come crawling back
to me in a phone call or text. I grew increasingly uptight. Grappling with
big life stuff can be too much, so I looked around at my little plot where
heart and soul live, and tended to that: tea and clean sheets on the bed.
After decades of the bashing, crashing, moaning and groaning, one gets
too tired to keep doing this. I was tired.
I released my friend to his own process. When you’re young and
vigorous, convinced you are powerful, you have the energy to try to self-
will your problems into submission, and it usually makes them worse. By
60 or so, you’ve had enough of participating in the Punch and Judy show
of trying to get things to turn out the way you’re positive they should.
You’ve learned to surrender. Otherwise, you’ll always be pissed off and
exhausted, and that’s no way to live out whatever years you have left.
By dusk, I was less pissed off and exhausted. The rain had stopped.
There has been no word from my friend, but I assume there will be, in the
fullness of time. But what were the options? I sat back down on the floor
with the cat, my home-care nurse. The milky sky was pulling itself down
over the ridge like a theatrical scrim, a play of cloud and hillside
intermingling. There was a feeling of stasis in the weather — enough with
the rain, it seemed to say; let’s all stay quiet and steady, which reflected
exactly how I felt. Projection perhaps but, at any rate, I sowbugged my
way with a certain goofy grace to a standing position, then all but raised
my arms in triumph, a gymnast after a decent landing.

Opinion Age makes the miracles

easier to see
Anne Lamott

January 17, 2024

 Every so often, even in heartbreaking times, the soul hears something
so true out of the corner of its ear that it perks up, looking around like a
meerkat for the source. Mine did this when, decades ago, I read a quote
of Albert Einstein’s: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if
nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
There are the obvious miracles all around us — love, nature, music,
art. We drunks who somehow got sober call this the central miracle of our
lives. Some of you have children you were told you couldn’t have. Some of
you were sent home to die, years ago. And have you ever seen a grain of
sand under a high-powered microscope? It looks like a jewelry store.
But what do we do with the seemingly unmiraculous? For instance,
former president Donald Trump is a bit of a stretch for me. How do we see
the miracle in the madness of the months since Jan. 6, 2021? Well, we
saw that democracy held. It might have gone either way. We here in the
colonies rejoiced, in our quiet and fretful ways.
My spirits are regularly flattened by the hardships of the world, of our
country and of the people I love, so I find myself turning to the saints:
Molly Ivins, for example. Decades ago, she said, “Freedom fighters don’t
always win, but they are always right.” When I heard her say this at a
benefit for the ACLU, my soul leaped up off its chair.
I spend a lot of time looking out the window. Age has given me this
time and intention. I didn’t have so much of either when I was younger.
My brain went much faster. There was so much to do, so much need and
striving, and I had my trusty clipboard. Now I study the coral-colored
abutilon buds right outside our window, little cups that hold the rainwater.
Hummingbirds swing by all day to drink, and so it is a treat both for the
eyes and for the spirit, for the bird and for the flower.
One of the blessings of age is that most of us get along with ourselves
better than when we were young. It is stunning to accept yourself: I am
always going to have a womanly butt and now I appreciate it: It’s a nice
seat cushion. When my son was young, I hired a teenage girl to help
around the house and one day she was folding laundry. She held up a pair
of the nice roomy underwear I prefer and said, with wonder, “Do they
even make bigger underwear?” That was 25 years and 10 pounds ago —
and yes, honey, they do. I’ll show you where to buy them someday.
It’s a miracle that Earth exists at all, let alone is populated by humans
who came up with antibiotics and Oreos, let alone Scandinavian detective
shows. I love this joint a lot of the time. Even our modest local mountain
looks majestic to me. Just today I saw beautiful slants of ground near the
base that appeared lighter than the main portion, below the fog. They
looked as if an artist chiseled them out of the rock, like doors. They said,
“Come on over. We will let you in.” That is how I got sober in 1986:
People said, “Come on over. We will let you in.” Today the moist sky
looked like the inside of an abalone shell.
That we are no one else but our very own selves is a miracle. About
one hundred million sperm were released each time your parents made
love, and one dogged little guy made you into exactly you, the exact
being who woke up again today. Our eyes open, our ears open and, if
they don’t work that well, we have devices to help them hear better. Our
hearts are beating. Our lungs are bellowing in and out, our diaphragms
rising. The muscles release and contract and get us up again. Sometimes
we need others to help us. Both are amazing, the strength to rise or the
loving help.
One of the hardest aspects of getting old is that time races by like a
slot car. I guess everything speeds up when it’s going downhill but still,
it’s unnerving. On my grandson’s ninth birthday, I said jovially, “I thought
you were six or something.” He said, “I live here! How can you think I’m
six?” Then he rolled his eyes and patted me gently. Poor darling Nana.
Age has helped most of us care less about our outsides. Of course, I
wish we had known about sunscreen in the ’60s out here underneath the
California sun. My inside person is of no particular age and finds the
person in the mirror confusing, a computerized version of what young
adorable me will look like as an older person.
So twice a year I go to Sephora and announce that I’d like to buy a
miracle, and wonderfully, they always have the exact right thing. I use it
for a month, and then I put it in the bottom drawer with the other
miracles.
The miracle brain pills are in a different drawer, with the kerchiefs.
Friends swear they work, but nope, a month later my mind is still
perforated like a pie crust poked with a fork and memory slowly leaks out.
So into the drawer they go while I walk around the house trying to
remember what I was trying to remember.
I like to think that they have organized a nice book club for the
kerchiefs and the other bottles of brain pills.
I can still walk the flatter trails of our mountain, where the streams
have begun to fill with rainwater, though not enough to actually flow yet.
The peace of nature wears down the fear and hatred that arise in me on
bad days, until I remember at some point that all we can do is the next
right thing. I often remind myself of something the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. said that helps me focus: “Don’t let them get you to hate them.”
When they do, I lose me, I lose my center and my goodness, which will be
needed for the hard work ahead of being older and saving democracy.
There’s an incredible reflective herringbone design in the stream of rock
and shadow and rock and shadow. I breathe in the cool air. My soul
settles.

Opinion

It’s good to remember: We are all

on borrowed time
Anne Lamott
Anne Lamott is an American novelist and nonfiction writer. Her latest
book, “Somehow: Thoughts on Love,” will be published in April 2024.

October 30, 2023

Getting older is almost like changing species, from cute middle-aged,

white-tailed deer, to yak. We are both grass eaters, but that’s about the
only similarity. At the Safeway sushi bar during lunchtime, I look at the
teenage girls in their crop tops with their stupid flat tummies and I feel
bad about what lies beneath my big, forgiving shirts but — and this is one
of the blessings of aging — not for long. Aging has brought a modicum of
self-compassion, and acceptance of what my husband and I call “the
Sitch”: the bodily and cognitive decline that we all face sooner or later.
Still, at Safeway, I can’t help but avert my eyes. Why push my luck?
Twenty years ago, when I turned 50, I showed the dark age spots on
my arms and the backs of my hands to my wonderful dermatologist.
“They used to call these liver spots,” I said, laughing.
There was silence. “They still call them liver spots,” he replied.
My mother died of Alzheimer’s disease when I was 50; my father had
died of brain cancer 25 years before, so I have always been a bit more
tense than the average bear about increasing holes in my memory, and
more egregious moments of dither. I thought of my 50s as late middle
age.
At 60, I tried to get this same dermatologist to authorize surgery to
remove the pile of skin of my upper eyelid that gathered like a broken
Roman shade at the eyelash line. “Look,” I said, “the eyelid has consumed
my eyeball. I will not be able to see soon.”
I pulled out an inch of skin to demonstrate my infirmity.
He pulled out three inches of his own. “Ticktock,” he said. And he was
right. All things skin had gone to hell, from the crepe of my forearms to
lots of new precancerous lesions that he routinely froze off or biopsied,
once making me use a horrible burning cream all over my face that turned
me into Peeling Tomato Girl.
So many indignities are involved in aging, and yet so many graces,
too. The perfectionism that had run me ragged and has kept me scared
and wired my whole life has abated. The idea of perfectionism at 60 is
comical when, like me, you’ve worn non-matching black flats out on
stage. In my experience, most of us age away from brain and ambition
toward heart and soul, and we bathe in relief that things are not worse.
When I was younger, I was fixated on looking good and impressing people
and being so big in the world. By 60, I didn’t care nearly as much what
people thought of me, mostly.
And anyway, you know by 60 that people are rarely thinking of you.
They are thinking about their own finances, family problems and upper
arms.
I have no idea of the process that released some of that clench and
self-consciousness, except that by a certain age some people beloved to
me had died. And then you seriously get real about how short and
precious life is. You have bigger fish to fry than your saggy butt. Also,
what more can you lose, and what more can people do to you that age
has not already done? You thought you could physically do this or that —
i.e., lift the dog into the back seat — but two weeks later your back is still
complaining. You thought that your mind was thrilling to others, but it
turns out that not everyone noticed, and now they’re just worried because
your shoes don’t match.
Anyway, as my dermatologist hinted, the tock did tick, and one day he
was gone. He retired. Then last year, I heard he died.

Which brings us to death, deathly old death. At a few months shy of

70, with eyeballs squinting through the folds, I now face the possibility
that I might die someday. My dad said after his cancer diagnosis that we
are all on borrowed time, and it is good to be reminded of this now and
again. It’s a great line, and the third-most-popular conversation we oldies
have with each other, after the decline of our bodies and the latest senior
moments: how many memorial services we go to these days.
Some weeks, it feels as though there is a sniper in the trees, picking
off people we have loved for years. It breaks your heart, but as Carly
Simon sang, there is more room in a broken heart. My heart is the
roomiest it has ever been.
I do live in my heart more, which is hard in its own ways, but the
blessing is that the yammer in my head is quieter, the endless
questioning: What am I supposed to be doing? Is this the right thing?
What do you think of that? What does he think of that?
My parents and the culture told me that I would be happier if I did a
certain thing, or stopped doing that, or tried harder and did better. But as
my great friend Father Terry Richey said, it’s not about trying harder; it’s
about resisting less. This is right up aging’s alley. Some days are sweet,
some are just too long.
A lot of us thought when we were younger that we might want to
stretch ourselves into other areas, master new realms. Now, I know
better. I’m happy with the little nesty areas that are mine. For some
reason, I love my softer, welcoming tummy. I laugh gently more often at
darling confused me’s spaced-outed ness, although I’m often glad no one
was around to witness my lapses.
Especially my son, who frequently and jovially brings
up APlaceForMom.com. He’ll say, “I found you a really nice place nearby,
where they’ll let you have a little dog!” Recently, I was graciously driving
him and his teenage son somewhere and made a tiny driving mistake
hardly worth mentioning — I did not hit anyone, nor did I leave the filling
station with the nozzle still in the gas tank — and he said to his boy just
loud enough so that I could hear, “I’m glad we live so close to town, so it
won’t be as hard for her when we have to take away her keys.”
 I roared with laughter, and with love, and with an ache in my heart for
something I can’t name.