Comments on: When I Grow Up, I Want To Be An Old Woman

By: Caitlin Kelly

Caitlin Kelly — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:47:12 +0000

I hope we both are! I think feisty old broad is a good goal to aim for.

By: Suzanna Stracener

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:35:23 +0000

I love all those old dames! The Betty Whites, Cloris Leachmans, and Judy Denches (who really is a Dame!) of the world, every last one of them gives me a smile and something to look up and forward to. I can only hope to be half as vibrant and wonderful as these women are when I’m their age. I’m sure you will be too ;)

By: Caitlin Kelly

Caitlin Kelly — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:57:13 +0000

Thanks so much for this story. One of the things I think essential to growing old(er) happily, whether male or female, is just seeing — like all life skills — how it’s (well) done.

I think North American Caucasian culture (perhaps different for some Hispanics or Asians?) sneers at the old and elderly, dismissing them, when, if we are lucky enough to have health, $ and friends, we really need to have some roadmaps!

I have learned a tremendous amount from my older neighbors and, perhaps not surprisingly, they have shown great compassion for my orthopedic travails — knees, shoulder and now hip. I lost both my grannies the year I was 18 and never met my grandparents, so they have become my role models.

Here is the essay I wrote about it in 2008:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/18Rgen.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=caitlin%20kelly%20and%20neighbors&st=cse

By: john

john — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:04:25 +0000

While I don’t share your desire to grow up to be an old woman, I am very much aligned with the spirit of this post. My grandfather died early leaving my grandmother to live the last 34 years of her life alone until she died at 94. While technically living alone, she was never really alone at all, as she was always out and about, or at church with friends. I once asked her why she never remarried and she said she never needed to. And it always seemed to me that her first and only marriage wasn’t a good match at all, and of couse back in the day one could easily say marriage was not that beneficial for woman of her generation in the first place.

Anyway, her name was Mary, and for me she was one of the first examples of what a liberated woman was. She was kind and happy in her life no matter where it took her.