Fridays with my Folks

by Amal Awad

  Croning appears to stem from Celtic tradition, but Stacey says there are a lot of pagan cultures that celebrate ‘the wise time’ – that is, being an elder. Native Americans have medicine men and women, elders who sit on a council. ‘So every one of them does it very differently. But if we look at the Celtic model or the witchcraft model … cronings [were] a rite of passage. Men, too – a lot of theirs is around the transfer of strength.’

  Think of the father running with his son, faster than his child, but who will one day be overtaken. But rather than express sorrow at being surpassed, it will signal a time of celebration. The son will be given a gift.

  Men as warriors and protectors is a similar idea. ‘The fact that men are losing what they see as their strength or their ability to protect, that’s a big deal in our society.’

  Indeed, for many of my interviewees dealing with a father who is ageing and unwell, a response of mute shame is not uncommon.

  ‘My father right now hates being weak,’ says Melanie*. ‘He sees himself as being weak. It’s only yesterday that he has accepted a walking stick.’ Her father’s condition she describes as the ‘classic bad knees, which led to him not doing so much exercise, which led to him becoming overweight, which led to him being diabetic, having kidney problems’.

  A kind of trickle-on effect.

  ‘It’s what my husband calls “the cascade” – one thing goes wrong, then everything goes wrong.’

  Melanie’s mother, however, hasn’t allowed anything to stop her physically. Balance issues are addressed by going to a dance class – and if she falls against the wall, who cares? ‘It’s a completely different headspace.’

  Her mother has also maintained her commitments to volunteer work and a social life. Perhaps it’s as my mother suggested: some women are more resilient for all they have endured and managed – a life-long balancing act, less free and wild than those of so many husbands and breadwinners of a certain generation, who may love their families but do not always have the same everyday presence within them. Old age, and the illness bundled with it, renders them less independent, free and strong. For Melanie, it also goes back to the masculine desire to be a protector. Keeping him engaged. She does the same with her mother, who has strong knitting skills. Her mother complains if Melanie requests her help knitting, but a few days later will ask whether she has the wool.

  ‘Is your dad sad or angry?’ Melanie asks me.

  I tell her it’s more sadness. Anger requires too much energy. And what’s the pay-off? You can get angry, but it won’t change the problem.

  ‘My dad’s angry,’ says Melanie definitively.

  He wasn’t always angry, though. She describes him as someone who has always been ‘the calm one’. Playful even. And now her mother is dealing with a different man.

  A map of experiences

  Throughout my research, it became clear that few men were willing to share stories, whether as carers, or as people ageing and perhaps experiencing a decline in health. I lack empirical evidence as to why, but perhaps something can be gleaned from the willingness of women to share their stories. Because when I interviewed certain women, another important realisation struck me: not only were they more willing to express their fears, vulnerabilities and strengths as their mortality stretched out before them, but many women age capably alone.

  Certainly, I have read harrowing reports on the rise of homelessness and grave poverty among ageing women in Australia. Indeed, among the women I spoke to, some were comfortable but others relied on inheritances, government support, access to cheap services and affordable rent. Some were in debt. Others expressed worry about how their circumstances would change once their savings were diminished, particularly if they were supporting a partner in a nursing home, or how their wellbeing would suffer if they were fated to reside in one themselves.

  Yet in my many conversations, women appeared to me as resilient and determined as my mother thinks they tend to be. And none had any intention of one day being fully dependent, whether it be on a family member, or in the care of a faceless nursing home. Many also indicated a new breath of life that was peaceful, self-accepting and authentic. They were not troubled by societal pressure to be youthful, beautiful and ageless.

  It’s an important point. In my search for books on ageing, the section that houses the topic in a large bookstore in the city is paltry, easily eclipsed by the bulging cancer section. Most of the titles aren’t about the realities of ageing, they are guides on how to prolong youth and stave off the decay of your body, the loss of your vitality. The loss of you. Ageing isn’t ‘sexy’, many tell me, health professionals included. People wish to deny it, as though ignoring its signs can stop it in its tracks.

  I detected two primary trails of thought on preserving youth and beauty. On one hand were the women who, mid-life, were teetering between that youth and a future that held no certainty but the potential for more wrinkles and saggy skin. (There’s an elasticity test to determine your ageing process. Pull up your skin into a tent, somewhere around your wrist, and watch how quickly it springs back into place. The quicker it does, the younger you are – or the ‘better’ you’re ageing.)

  Yet other women talked about the relief of age – they no longer worry about how they look, and, more importantly, they feel free to be themselves, to speak their truths, to do away with the nonsensical need to please. One woman spoke of her fears of getting old and losing her looks: having had a gnarled relationship with them throughout her life, she was only now coming to a place of appreciation for her natural beauty. Another woman expressed regret for the years she lost as a young woman in a headscarf. She still wears one, but she’s taken other measures to celebrate her womanhood. She had a big females-only bash for her birthday. She does botox regularly, and she also had a boob job.

  For my part, I’m taking my cue from Isabel Allende. Now in her seventies, the renowned author declared her intention before a TED audience to ‘live passionately’, no matter her age. ‘You know, for a vain female like myself, it’s very hard to age in this culture. Inside, I feel good, I feel charming, seductive, sexy. Nobody else sees that,’ she says to laughter. ‘I’m invisible. I want to be the centre of attention. I hate to be invisible.’

  But Allende also asserts her freedom in older age. She doesn’t have to prove anything anymore, isn’t stuck in an idea of who she was, or wanted to be, or what others expected her to be. She says her body might be falling apart, but her brain is still first-rate. She observes how great it is to let go: ‘I should have started sooner.’ Nor is she scared of being vulnerable, saying that no longer does she see it as weakness. Allende admits that now ‘death is next door, or in my house’, but this knowledge simply means she tries to be present in the moment. She makes me smile when she says, ‘The Dalai Lama is someone who has aged beautifully, but who wants to be vegetarian and celibate?’

  ‘I’ve been through the wringer’

  ‘When my older friends and I get together, we have what is called the “organ recital”. It’s like, “Let’s get our health out of the way, and then we’ll get on to ideas and thoughts and philosophy,”’ says Lindel, an author, tea-leaf reader and astrologer. The humour helps. ‘It does because all of us are cracking up in different ways.’

  Cracking up, falling to bits. Having a sense of humour is important among friends who are all dealing with the challenges of old age. And having friends, period, is core to a good quality of life.

  Lindel is in her late sixties and lives alone but for a faithful cat, who has proven useful more than once when it comes to monitoring Lindel’s blood sugar, frantically prodding her awake when her eyes closed and she began to slump in her seat. Lindel has chronic illness, and her eyesight has suffered. She’s an example of someone who is determined to live the best life she can without being dependent on anyone.

  Limitations, like not being able to drive at night, have prompted her to be vigilant about her social life. ‘Just making sure that I have lunch with
friends or having regular contact, and I have a couple of friends that I ring regularly, really old friends.’ It eases her loneliness and anxiety. ‘I’ve made that a priority.’

  Following the organ recital, Lindel and her companions discuss children and grandchildren. Lindel doesn’t have any of her own but she has beloved nieces and nephews, and has watched children of friends grow up. She’s invested in their lives and wellbeing, and counts long-term friends among her group. ‘What I think is that all of us are highly intelligent, educated women. We saw our mothers, what happened with our mothers. My mum, she had the church. I don’t have the church.’

  Rather, as a tea-leaf reader and astrologer, Lindel finds community among like-minded people. ‘Whenever I get together with tea friends, we always have a little peek [in our tea cups], and people from the past ring me and ask me to do a reading. I don’t actively seek it but it’s always nice, and it’s lovely to see people I’ve read for before.’

  And on her dedication to astrology: ‘I’ve made a really academic study of this stuff as well, but also my own chart continues to reveal itself. I do charts for people if they ask me, and I have good astrology friends – we discuss world events mainly.’

  Meanwhile, social media is also significant to her wellbeing. ‘A lot of people say, “I don’t need Facebook.” They don’t live alone and it’s a way I can see what you’re doing. I might not be able to get up and out because sometimes, in this year, I’ve had quite a few months where I haven’t been able to get up off the bed.’

  ‘You’ve been through the wringer?’

  ‘I’ve been through the wringer.’

  Lindel’s ill health began when she was a baby, suffering multiple pneumonias – three times before she was eighteen months old. ‘That basically ripped my lungs. I have severe lung disease,’ she tells me. She would get bronchitis as a kid and spend at least three months each year at home. ‘I never really went to school in winter.’

  She grew up in Tasmania, a place notorious for its unforgiving weather. The house was freezing, the air cold, a poor setting for someone with damaged lungs. Lindel was always a bit weaker than other people. ‘I couldn’t run, but I did swim and that helped me as a young person to keep my lung function up. We grew up on the beach, and I was a great walker and I used to go horse riding. Because I was born blind in one eye … I couldn’t see ball games. You can imagine, I was always the last little girl to be picked on the softball team and to play tennis. Everybody would stand around and laugh because I could throw the ball up but I couldn’t see it to hit it.’

  Lindel only came to understand her condition when she was around fourteen.

  ‘I have bumped into things all my life; I run sideways. It’s just been awful.’

  At least, however, she can decipher images in a tea cup. Lindel has a great love affair with tea. She divines information from the leaves she pours from pretty pots. She shares images of beautiful tea cups and saucers on Facebook.

  ‘I see very well with my right eye and I do believe that I have second sight.’

  Lindel was a teacher before she found her new path. First, symbols began to fascinate her. Second, she was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes at forty-three. ‘It’s not usual to get it at that age, [Type 1 is] the childhood one. The doctors said to me that I had a predisposition to it and lucky I didn’t get it as a kid.’

  The treatments for her two conditions – the lung condition (an adult form of cystic fibrosis, ‘bronchiectasis’) and diabetes – fight each other and cause further problems.

  ‘It’s got worse over the last few years. I have had many pneumonias,’ says Lindel. ‘My doctor reckons I’m her most complex patient, but it’s just because [my conditions are] not very usual things. I have a thing called autoimmune hepatitis, which is a sister disease of Type-1 diabetes.’

  It impacts her interactions in the world. ‘I only have to go to the movies and I get pneumonia, what they call community-acquired pneumonia. I can’t go out into public places; I can’t go where there are lots of people,’ Lindel explains. ‘I cannot be near anyone who has a cold … Most of my friends know that [but], some people don’t get it. It’s not like I get a cold for a week; I’m sick for eight weeks.’

  But Lindel is a pragmatist. If her eyesight is poor, she can still enjoy audiobooks through the Vision Australia Library. After suffering nerve damage to her hands she underwent a hand operation, and then installed new taps. ‘I’m a problem solver and I’m quite proactive. I had a fall earlier this year, so I went to a fall prevention clinic for a six-week course.’

  She relies on an inheritance from an old friend, whom she looked after in her dying years. ‘She said to me, “This money is for your health.”’ Lindel was in her fifties at the time. ‘I didn’t live with her but I was her main supporter. It was a real privilege, actually. I lived far from my mum, and my sister did the caring for my mum, and I felt because my friend … didn’t have any children; I could support her. She was a fascinating person.’

  When her friend had to move into care, Lindel would visit her at least twice a week, in addition to long phone conversations, sometimes several a day. ‘I remember going into the hospital, and when she was sick they put a tube in her stomach. I was there, but she couldn’t speak to me or anything. I was rubbing her feet gently, massaging her arms, putting oils and creams around her face. The nurse came and she said, “Is this your mother?” I said, “No, this is my friend.” She said, “I hope I have other friends like you when I’m at end stage.”’

  While her friend was very sick by that point, almost semi-conscious, a bit confused, she knew who Lindel was to the end.

  ‘Do you find comfort in your astrology, in your tea-leaf reading?’ I ask her.

  ‘I do. I don’t read the tea leaves for myself, but I find great comfort in astrology.’

  ‘What does it give you?’

  ‘Well, it gives me a framework to understand the world … It’s like a religion, but I rejected religion very young. It’s a way of understanding the world, it’s so ancient.’

  Lindel has written a book on goddess myths, a guide to tea-leaf reading, and a book on tarot. She also invented an astrology game and, more recently, a tea-leaf-reading app.

  ‘I’m a highly creative person, so I love that. What I feel really sad about with ageing and illness is that I haven’t been able to type because of my right hand. I’m working on a novel. I’ve been working on this novel for years and I just can’t physically do it. I’ve been thinking about voice and then I try to edit after I’ve spoken it into a recorder.’

  You get the feeling that if anyone can persevere and find a way, it will be Lindel.

  ‘It’s almost like you aged young,’ I tell her.

  ‘I aged very young and that’s written in my chart. I turned grey when I got diabetes. My hair went grey, it was such a shock.’

  ‘What does the chart say about someone ageing young? What does it look like?’

  ‘It’s usually a certain strong Saturn aspect. In astrology Saturn rules ageing, so that’s what it was.’

  ‘When you look at your life now – and you live alone, you’re independent still – do you have concerns about the day you can’t be independent? Do you get care at all right now?’

  ‘Yes, I have home care … I have one hour a week, and then every second week I have another hour because I can’t do ordinary things – like I can’t clean windows because of my hands. They clean one week, and then the second week they’ll do whatever I ask, and they always do the floors because of the dust. They’ll clean the bathroom every two weeks, but it’s not as much as I would like.’

  Lindel observes that such help has been privatised. But she believes that ageing, ill people will have greater choice once the NDIS is rolled out. ‘I think this is important,’ she says. ‘And as a going-blind person, I will have more access.’

  She’s very concerned about what happens when she can no longer drive. ‘You hate to ask for help, even though people ar
e so kind, but it’s those little things you need and think of. I’ve been in touch with the community bus, but it’s difficult. They leave you waiting there for hours and if you can’t afford a cab …’

  Luckily, Lindel can afford to take care of her health through the inheritance. When her hand went numb, she purchased an automatic bottle opener. ‘I have a jar opener, so I don’t have to ask. I’ve got a tipping kettle because I couldn’t pick the kettle up. Can you imagine? I couldn’t make tea.’

  As we finish, Lindel say, ‘I know it sounds crazy, but I’m happy. I’m happy with who I am, who I’ve become through these challenges. That’s the truth of it. You come to a distilled version of yourself.’

  ‘If there’s something there, I’m not interested in it’

  Ruth, aged seventy-six, a retired nurse with thirty years’ experience in infectious diseases, and drug and alcohol detox, describes her life as very peaceful. But she harbours gripes about the past – growing up female in a world that favoured males, for example. She gets emotional when she begins talking about her father, whose worldview was limited: in his opinion, women got married and had children. This attitude has influenced her life trajectory. This is why, at the age of fourteen, she decided to be a nurse. But Ruth’s father didn’t encourage her. ‘He just said no because I wasn’t a boy.’

  All of this floats to the surface early in our conversation. We’re in Ruth’s apartment, one in a large block of low-rent flats run by a religious organisation, in a leafy, quiet suburb of Sydney close to public transport. Rent is about to go up, she tells me, so she’s readying herself to move out. She has issues with religious organisations profiting from people in need.