The Birthday Girl
Birthdays, when you’re quite young, are joyous occasions and when asked your age, you might have replied, chest thrust forward, something like, “I’m 8 and a half.” Always trying, during those tender years, to be somehow older, bigger and more worldly than you were.
As the years flew by and you reached that perilous age just prior to 30, you were much more cautious about providing information on your actual age. Often, you’d skirt the question with some cute remark or distract the person entirely by responding with another question. It may have worked, but not always and 30 seemed like such a dreaded age that you began to feel that life, for you and your career, were coming to a close. Not hardly, my friend, not hardly.
Biologists tell us that you’d be short-changing yourself if you thought that the prime of your intellectual life was over — it had just begun. The
wonderful bit of us which we call affectionately our brain, doesn’t reach full maturity until sometime after 21, depending on myriad factors. So, you are only beginning to pull on all that new-found horsepower of intelligence and experience and you have a far way to go before it wanes. Good news for everyone, so rejoice.
Psychologists, too, have had to come to terms with their theories about aging and what happens. Perhaps it’s the residue of Western bias, but we’ve never really looked at our older citizens as having much to contribute and we glibly toss them off to live out their “golden years” (ha!) in step-down residences leading to the inevitable nursing home and the undertaker. What an incredible waste of people and their robust potential.
Again, science offers some hope. The oldest age now thought possible is 125. Reaching that age is dependent on advances in medicine and medical care as well as our working to keep ourselves healthy and active.
The room for this birthday party was filled with people well into their 80s and 90s because the birthday girl was officially honoring her own 85th birthday. Each of us received a purple t-shirt with a photo on it and “85” printed on the back. One woman said, “I got an x-large because I’ll wear it to bed.” Let’s not go there, my dear.
Sharp minds were everywhere as the talk went from work as chemistry professors, in medical research and all areas of education. It was a time to remember the early days, too, when neighborhoods were places of togetherness and ease-of-access to purchase everyday items.
One neighborhood fixture, a hardware store, is painfully apparent in its absence from the gentrified cities being cleaved into cold towers of steel and glass. Tell me, where in tony downtown Manhattan can you find the good old hardware store where the proprietor, just like in Cheers, knew your name and what you
really needed. Is there such a place? One of our’s was owned by Mr. Murphy who also sold fishing tackle and archery supplies for those who took advantage of the bay and fields nearby. But it was only one of the three on the block and each had its own flair for offering you something different. Christmas time was when each of them tried to outdo each other with train displays, chemistry sets and paint supplies in the window.
How about the pharmacy where any kid could go to have a scrape or a cut treated by the neighborhood pharmacist? Our’s was Dr. Himelfarb. No, he wasn’t a physician, but we called him “Dr.” just the same and he never charged a nickel for his ministrations. In the good
doctor’s crammed showcases I got my first glimpse of beauty products for dark-skinned women, something not seen in other neighborhood pharmacies. Why? Because his shop was on the dividing line between the fairly white neighborhood and the all-black one.
The shop was a melding point for all of us and there wasn’t any concern when we went down the hill for a quick Mission soda or a band-aid. Next door was a small store-front church where we’d occasionally peak in the window and watch the people at their exuberant religious services. No problem. No one ever questioned us and it was entirely, again, safe. Two blocks away were the projects.
One person, on the edge of the birthday group, asked, “What about a kosher deli?” Ah, that brought discussions of how the Carnegie Deli was about to close
and along with it a lot of favorite dishes would go into the wind. Will it really close? Who knows. Does the woman who has run it since the 1970s own the building and will she sell to someone? She’s already received an offer of $4M and that’s a lot of pastrami.
What about Russ & Daughters on the lower East Side? Still there and still serving the hoards who return to their grandparents’ roots to buy the incredible lox and other delectable dishes they savor. Now, of course, even they have bowed to the newer generation and opened a smart new additional store that serves coffee, Danish and other small edibles. As they sing in “Fiddler on the Roof,” it’s tradition.
Social scientists should attend these birthday parties because they might just find out that there’s more to living longer than medicine and medical care or even genes. One thing that was enormously apparent to me was the continued involvement of the people there. They teach, volunteer, engage in hobbies, take educational trips, learn new things and keep as active as they can but the only thing they can’t control is the thinning of their ranks. Fondly they remember all of it and everyone in it prior to the many loses. The smiles come as quickly as the memories.
The mysteries are there, but that wasn’t the topic of the day. It was a time to celebrate, eat and hope you’d win a small prize in the raffle to be held. I got a report card I can fill out for myself and I don’t even have to have it signed and return it to my teacher. Ah, such relief.
