My friend Alice is 92 years old. I think. Maybe she’s 93. I knew once but forgot, and I can’t quite bring myself to ask again—I don’t want her to feel like some sort of specimen. I have lunch with her every so often in the dining room that looks out over the ocean in the swanky retirement home where she lives now.
In the past several years I’ve become fascinated with how people age—it’s as if I am trying on different outfits of aging to see what they might feel like, trying to figure out what kind of old lady I want to be.
I find myself eyeing old ladies in my neighborhood, trying them on for size. “Not that one,” I say to myself when a heavily made-up woman of a certain age with a huge pouf of brassy hair checks out in front of me at Longs. “Not that one,” when I see a very large woman in dingy sweats and equally dingy, stringy gray hair shuffling behind a cart at Vons.
Other old-lady outfits seem a bit more to my liking. There’s the former Children’s Ministry Director at our church, a sporty, energetic and playfully joyful woman who believed that kids should have messy fun and who looked and acted a good 15 years younger than she was—I was stunned to learn she turned 80 a few years ago before she moved away to Washington.
There’s also my next-door neighbor, an impossibly kindhearted soul who encourages us to pick sacks of lemons from her tree and is always willing to support the local school kids in whatever they happen to be hawking. I often see her taking her exercise walking to Trader Joe’s or giving her grand-niece a stroll around the neighborhood.
And then there’s Alice. Gracious and self-effacing, with an enviably cohesive and elegant sense of style in dress and decor, she’s been a tireless volunteer for many organizations even into her 90s and is quick with an infectious laugh and a flash from her dry, subtle wit. She’s one of the most truly generous people I’ve ever met.
Alice is waiting for me outside the front door as I pull in to meet her for a lunch date. She greets me as I walk up to the office to get my parking pass (wouldn’t the beachgoers love one of those prime spots right next to La Jolla Cove) and I bend down to give her a hug. She looks so much better than the last time I saw her, on her birthday after she’d just gotten out of the hospital from having her pacemaker replaced (I didn’t have the nerve to ask her how old she was then, either). She looked frail and a bit disheveled then, but today she’s hearty and smiling, although I almost tip her over from the hug—I forget how much shorter than I she is.
She dresses like the professional woman she has been for the past 75 years. In the 18 years we’ve been acquainted, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in pants. Today she’s wearing a cream-colored wool skirt, lightweight mock turtleneck sweater of chocolate brown under a brown jacket with an unstructured houndstooth check collar, nylons and cream-colored low-heel pumps. Her jewelry is a string of square white beads looped several times around her neck so they drape in concentric ovals, and a brass brooch with dangling chain loops is pinned to the right side of her jacket. Her white hair is set, her skin clear and makeup-free and her eyes shine back at me through unpretentious silver-framed glasses.
We are joined at lunch by an acquaintance of hers and the three of us chat about the goings on at the Casa, as they call it, as well as their memories of places they’ve lived and things they’ve done. At one point the conversation turns to JFK’s assassination and how they remember where they were. Her friend said she was in college, so I ask, “Alice, were you in college too?” “Oh no,” she replies, “I was much older than that.” Obviously I am not doing the math in my head. Later I realize she was in her late 40s—older than I am now.
When getting ready for these lunch dates with Alice I sometimes used to imagine that we’d have deep philosophical discussions about life, religion, disappointments and joys, how to live without regret and the secrets to long life and happiness. I mean, she’s 92 (or 93)—she’s got to know, right?
But the more time I spend with her, the more I realize that there’s no secret formula I’m going to learn from Alice about how to age gracefully, and I doubt she’d feel comfortable expounding on any sort of personal philosophy—she’s much too modest for that. She just is who she is, a person who’s evolved through a myriad of incremental choices over a span of 93 years, some conscious and others unconscious. Realizing this helps me to let go of what she represents and just appreciate her for who she is.
As I get my things ready to go, Alice tells me I am welcome to come down any time. When I broach the subject of possibly interviewing her for a story, her first instinct is to start thinking of other interesting people living at the Casa that I might want to talk to. But of course I am welcome to interview her, she says. “My time is yours.”
I wend my way through La Jolla to get back on the freeway and wait at the stoplight at the base of Torrey Pines road. A middle-aged woman with a pale complexion and a ponytail of sandy blonde hair is standing in the median holding a cardboard sign. I look at her. She’s in nondescript jeans, a sweatshirt and a beige jacket. The sign reads, “Single Mom—Need Help Paying for Hotel Room.” While the light is still red I reach into my wallet, then roll down my window and raise a creased $5 bill between my index and middle finger. I catch her eye and she makes her way over to me.
“Thank you so much,” she says to me as I hand her the bill. “Sure,” I say. “A friend bought me lunch.”
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