older women being beyond our expiration date for achievement and sanity has received a well-deserved shakedown as women have obtained late-in-life success. After all, the rings on a trunk make for the most majestic of trees. An important idea to keep in mind—and yes, we still have one—is that the golden years can be rewarding creatively, emotionally, and romantically.
Maggie Kuhn, an octogenarian who proved frail bodies can mask iron spirits, called herself a little old woman. She celebrated her forced retirement—a gesture of out with the old and in with the new—by founding the Gray Panthers, a name derived from the radical Black Panthers. In 1972, she told the New York Times, “I have gray hair, many wrinkles, and arthritis in both hands. And I celebrate my freedom from bureaucratic restraints that once held me.” Kuhn refused to be defined by the year on her birth certificate.
Another kidney-punch to time was Sue Ellen Cooper’s Red Hat Society that proved girls just wanna have fun. Her organization is a nod to matrons who have earned their stripes, a.k.a. wrinkles and bags. The red hats are a variation of a Purple Heart: proof positive they have survived all life has dished out.
In China, the elderly members of the family are venerated patriarchs, while in Western cultures, senior citizen homes proliferate. Perhaps the finger of blame should be pointed at the German siblings Wilhelm and Johann Grimm. In their classic fairy tales, the villain was the ancient crone. She was the one whose version of hospitality was to shove Hansel and Gretel into the oven, to imprison Rapunzel in a tower, to turn into a hag to trick Snow White into eating the poisoned apple. The reason why Snow White’s stepmother replaced maternal nurturing with malice is that she was no longer the fairest in the land. Grimm indeed.
Fortunately, the world has made strides and is more accepting of its seniors. Anna Mary Robertson, forever known as Grandma Moses, was in her late seventies when arthritis made her beloved embroidery a hobby of the past, and her sister suggested she switch to painting. Her folksy canvases of the quieter, gentler New England of her childhood sold for thousands of dollars—a princely sum in the 1930s. Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy lauded the little lady, and a 1950 documentary about her life received an Oscar nod. Despite the accolades, she retained her modesty. She wrote in her autobiography, “I look back on my life like a good day’s work. It was done, and I feel satisfied with it.”
Born in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, Laura Ingalls Wilder taught in a one-room prairie schoolhouse, and she felt that was to serve as her legacy until, at age sixty-five, her daughter convinced her to pen her memories of growing up with Pa, Ma, and her sisters on the American frontier. The Little House on the Prairie led to a nine-book series that’s never been out of print, and though she could never have imagined it, an iconic television series replete with Hollywood stars.
Is everything you cook devoid of taste? Do not despair. Julia Child was thirty-seven before she enrolled in culinary school and forty-nine when she published her classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She gained further acclaim at age fifty-one as the host of The French Chef, where she signed off each segment with “Bon appétit!”
Ageism coupled with misogyny came into play when the sixty-eight-year-old Hillary Clinton made a play for the Oval Office, although the mindset of many was that a lady of a certain age is generally rendered invisible. Maybe a wise grandfather made sense, but a grandma? Ruling the roost of the White House? Did. Not. Sit. Well. One voter described her to The Washington Post as “an angry, crotchety old hag.” The election proved that America is not a country for old women. The gender stereotype is alive and kicking because, although we worship youthful femininity and idolize good ole’ Mom, we fall short when women do not fit into either of these roles. Being forced into silence is as palpable as a physical blow, but that has happened to marginalized seniors. What about all their wisdom, experience, and insights? Females—along with killer whales, the only other species to go through menopause—have passed through the rite of reproduction and have come to a time in their lives when they should be able to shepherd the younger generation. Thankfully, there exists what stayed in Pandora’s box: hope. At age eighty-five, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is so respected that she received a street name: Notorious R. B. G. The former head of the Federal Reserve, Chairman Janet L. Yellen, seventy-one, and the International Monetary Fund Chief, Christine Lagarde, sixty-two, prove ladies know more about money than how to spend it. The time to shed the garment of invisibility has arrived. Lives well-lived help shatter the mindset that older gals either are off their rocker or belong on one.
It may be an eye-opener to learn that one who praised older women was Benjamin Franklin; the Founding Father was actually into the Founding Mothers. When he wasn’t busy wiping his bifocals (which he invented) or flying a kite in a rainstorm, our nation’s first Postmaster wrote a letter to a young friend, advising, “In all your Amours you should prefer old women to young ones.” In the letter, never mailed though likely shared in ye olde locker-room, Ben suggests it’s best to wed and bed matrons rather than virgins, “Because when women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. Because there is no hazard of children. Because they are so grateful.”
Rather than viewing wrinkles as a mark of shame, ladies of a certain age should embrace their lines—testimony to laughter, love, and life. They should not stress if they did not merit a mention in Forbes’s Under-Thirty list or see their names on the best-seller lists. Hope must spring eternal: There is still time to pursue dormant dreams and to wallow in the joy of proving the naysayers wrong. Keeping this thought in my mind, Great Second Acts: In Praise of Older Women is my seventh book. While I am in my sixth decade, I still harbor hope that one day I will publish a novel—my dream-the-impossible-dream. My philosophy, engraved on my necklace by jewelry designer Emily Rosenfeld, reads, “Make room for what is yet to be imagined.”
The lives of the ladies profiled remind anyone who shrugs off the idea of great second acts of the mantra “never say never,” that the silver-haired can actualize their aspirations in their golden years. In the words of Robert Browning, “Grow old with me/ The best is yet to be/ The last of life, for which the first was made…”
Whether Ms. Moses found the sobriquet “Grandma” a term of endearment or an unwelcome reminder of the onslaught of time is a matter of conjecture, but in either contingency, she was inextricably bound with the name. Her life, one supposed to be exempt from Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame, was as fanciful as her canvases. Her biography serves as a testament that one can receive a late-night knock at the door from the hand of fate.
Anna Mary was born in Greenwich, New York, to a frugal farming family. One of five daughters and five sons of Russell King Robertson and Margaret nee Shanahan, Anna took immense pride that one of her great-grandfathers fought in the American Revolution and had left a powder horn with the inscription, “Hezekiah King. Ticonderoga. Feb. 24th 1777 Steal not this horn for fear of shame / For on it is the owner’s name.” As a child, she discovered the beauty of nature when her father took his children for walks, an activity he felt brought them closer to God than services at the Methodist church. What little formal education she received was from a teacher in a one-room country school. She recalled that girls did not often go to school in winter, due to the cold and inadequate clothing, and consequently, many only progressed through the “Sixth Reader.” Her favorite pastime was to color paper dolls with a tint she made from the juice of grapes and lemons. Her first experience with actual paint was when her father refurbished their farmhouse and shared the leftover paint. The precious product enabled her to create what she mispronounced as “lamb-scapes.” Mr. Robertson was encouraging, but her mother thought she should spend her time in other ways. Those other ways involved household chores such as making candles, soaps, and dresses—skills she would need in a job as a hired girl.
At age twelve, her parents sent her to work as a maid at a larger farm where she met, and fifteen years later married, her employer’s hired hand, Thomas Salmon Moses. She said her husband was “a wonderful man, much better than I am.” With $600 in savings, the young couple rented a farm in the Shenandoah