100 Portraits

I love this project by Belgian photographer Edouard Janssens, who photographed 100 men and 100 women between the ages of 1-100, and made a slide show of the results.

The thing is, they all look so beautiful - not model-beautiful, but real life-beautiful.

And I loved watching the slide show and thinking, as the decades slid by, "Yes, those are the twenties - the thirties . . . " and so on. I think we can usually identify people's ages by decade, even if there are those folks now and then who look a decade older or younger than their real age.

I didn't watch the slide shows with the music on yet, but I want to watch these again, and next time I'll turn on the speakers.

Thank you, Monsieur Janssens!

Man, I sure hope I get to use this line some day.

Talking to a friend at work today - her 93-year-old aunt is dying, but is still alert and cheerful. She said to her family recently, "I can't complain. The first 90 years were a piece of cake."

Growing old

I am going to become an old person at the end of 2011.

I don't mean that I will retire, or that my spine will begin to curve, or that I will develop deep wrinkles all over my face (and yes, I know that these are stereotypes and that these things never happen to many old people). But at the end of 2011 I will celebrate my 60th birthday (God willing), and that is the official beginning of old age according to many experts.

However, I will be among the youngest of the "young old" for quite a while. The young old are people in their sixties and seventies, most of whom enjoy fairly good health. Then, assuming I'm still here, I will join the ranks of the "old old," people in their eighties and nineties, who increasingly become debilitated by such common ailments as arthritis, Parkinson's, senile dementia, etc. That sounds scary.

The last time I remember being so clearly aware of joining a distinctly new age cohort was on my 13th birthday. Becoming a teen-ager sounded so exciting! The year was 1964, the year the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show; it seemed like the perfect time to become a teen.

I am not so excited to join the ranks of the elderly.

Jill LePore has an interesting article on the life of G. Stanley Hall, the founder of gerontology, in the March 14, 2011 issue of The New Yorker.

This portion struck me:

"Old age takes everyone by surprise, and no one really ever comes to terms with it. Hall thought that this was because old age is the only stage of life we never grow out of, and can never look back on, not on this earth, anyway. "

Well, I suppose many people are able to look back on being young old, if they make it to old old. But the fact that it is the only stage of life we never grow out of is a bit unsettling.

The near approach of old age does keep taking me by surprise. You would think I had had plenty of time to get used to the idea, but apparently one never has enough time. Is it true that "no one really ever comes to terms with it"? Surely many people have done so, although just as surely that depends on one's definition of "coming to terms."

A friend on Facebook posted that he was teen in the sixties, and will be in his sixties in the teens. There are many of us in this group -- by 2030 (I'll be 79 if I'm still here), it is predicted that people over 65 will be more than 30% of the US population.

The article by LePore also says that old people are valued when they are rare, and not valued when they are common - not a hopeful sign for those of us who will be old in 2030. Actually, I don't remember a time when it seemed to me that old people were particularly respected or valued. And I have been guilty of that attitude myself. Sigh.