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| An Excerpt From Gail Sheehy’s Newest Book: "Sex and the Seasoned Woman" |
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| Written by Gail Sheehy | |||||
Page 3 of 3 Counting BackwardJust how old is a seasoned woman? I define it very much the way Auntie Mame’s friend Vera did when asked, “How old are you, anyway?” “Somewhere between forty and death.” It’s not over at 45 or 50, “it” being sex, intimacy, discovery of a new identity and a new passion in life. On the contrary, it begins all over again. Today, 50 is the start of a whole new cycle. You may have already lived an entire adulthood, but now you are at the beginning of another one—a portion of the life span that I identified in 1995 as our Second Adulthood. Women’s lives are long and have many seasons. As contemporary women, if we’re healthy, we will likely be around longer than our mothers were. As I first reported in New Passages, epidemiologists say that a woman who reaches the age of 50 free of cancer and heart disease can expect to see her ninety-second birthday. In our First Adulthood, we are consumed with just getting from A to B to C: pulling up roots from our parents, testing and proving ourselves as provisional adults, developing the capacity for intimacy, gaining the skills and credentials to support ourselves, and putting down our own roots. Given the prolonged American postadolescence—which for many middle-class women and men now stretches to the end of the Tryout Twenties—the First Adulthood today runs roughly from the age of 30 to 50. The years from 50 to 80 or 90 represent an even longer span. What to do with all the time left? People who try to hang on for dear life to what they had in their First Adulthood—the same dewy looks, the same high-energy job, the same steamy sex—may become their own worst enemies. A positive anticipation of our Second Adulthood allows for much less anxiety and greater flexibility. A seasoned woman is not defined merely by her chronological age. Her inner image, including the ability to shed many of the roles that defined and confined her in earlier life, is equally important.  By the time you are 50, you have probably come to know yourself pretty well. You are better at separating possibilities from illusions. It’s possible to learn to fly or start medical school or launch a cable TV show—we’ll read about women who did—but illusory to assume that you can keep winning air shows or delivering babies or looking as foxy on TV as younger competitors. At some point you will probably want to change the emphasis of your work and take on the additional role of teacher, mentor, or guru.Time is perceived differently after 50. People begin counting backward, thinking in terms of years left to live. But that may be forty years or more, and we can elect to make something magnificent of it. This is a huge cultural shift, making possible what I call the Pursuit of the Passionate Life. When you stop to think about it, you probably know a seasoned woman who has embarked on a new life. Maybe it’s an old college friend. Or perhaps it’s your own mother and you’re having a “Mom’s run wild!” reverse-roles reaction. I’ve interviewed enough women whom I describe as WMDs—Women Married, Dammit!—to know that many wrestle with a rhetorical question almost as vexing as Hamlet’s dilemma: to leap or not to leap? Is it nobler for a woman to stick with a stultifying marriage or better to step off into the unknown? Or perhaps you’re widowed or divorced but not really “out there”—and wondering what it’s like for women who do take the leap. The Wild-Haired Years The widow who first came to my mind was Peggy, a professor of political science at a prestigious college, whose story I told in New Passages. A flaming redhead with an infectious laugh, Peggy waged five years of a gallant battle with her husband, Chuck, against his prostate cancer. Once widowed, Peggy was forced to learn to be alone. Her first solo vacation she spent in the After passing her sixty-fifth birthday, Peggy met an interesting man at a political rally. They saw each other a few times for dinner and conversation, though “having another romance was the furthest thing from my mind,” she told me. “But one day the fun-loving Peggy in me picked up the phone on the spur of the moment and invited this man to go to When Jack pulled up at her house in his dashing black Lexus, Peggy was in jeans at her sink doing dishes. At the last moment, hearing her mother’s censorious voice in her ears, she couldn’t step over the line. She kept her hands plunged into hot soapy water and mumbled, “I can’t do this, I’m sorry.” Jack suggested that it would be just a relaxing getaway weekend. Peggy demurred: “I know, but we both know where this is going.” Jack kept gently filibustering. She asked him to wait in the car. “In a wild-haired moment, I grabbed the first thing I could find—a big black garbage bag—and stuffed some clothes inside before I could change my mind again.” When Peggy emerged from her kitchen, Jack wondered, No suitcase? Had she chickened out after all? He just hadn’t noticed what she was dragging behind her. Jack laughed. He caught her spirit of spontaneity, and on their arrival at the exclusive waterfront inn, he handed the garbage bag to the doorman with a flourish. He watched with a sexy gleam in his eye as Peggy swept into the lobby with the light-footed grandeur of a duchess. Less than a year later Peggy agreed to marry Jack, provided they both accepted an agreement: she would continue teaching, and each of them would keep their own home and sense of community. Peggy shifted her emphasis into creating reentry programs at local colleges for women who have been divorced, abandoned, or widowed and have to start over again, as she had. In their eight years together, she and her adoring new husband have traveled just about every continent and shared adventures. Most recently, they sailed the Croatian coast with Jack skippering and Peggy and her children as the crew. The most indelible change has been in Peggy herself: she hasn’t lost her wild hair again, not for a moment. Excerpted from Sex and the Seasoned Woman by Gail Sheehy Copyright © 2006 by Gail Sheehy. Photography by Burt Glinn Magnum Photos. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. To discuss this topic or related topic with others, checkour Bulletin Board forums. Click here |
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 01 December 2006 ) | |||||
