Will You Still Read Me, When I'm 64?

Turning 64 brings some thoughts—a little bit of everything

When I consider being 64, of course I think of The Beatles and remember when I was about 7, listening to “When I'm 64” and thinking I wonder if Mom will ever be that old. My mom was thirty at the time, which, in the vernacular of the time was old, right? We youngsters were told to “never trust anybody over 30,” so 60 seemed ancient to me. Now of course, it seems young! Many of my friends, and my best friend Russel of course, think of 64 as young, so that helps my attitude.

I've always been pretty cheery about aging, never been one to try and trim years off my age. As an actress in my youth, age was always a sort of a strange thing. That's because, in Hollywood, you will be cast as young as anybody can believe that you are. I was not many years older than Anne Frank when I played her in “The Diary of Anne Frank” onstage. Same with Becky Gibbs and the Newsboy at the Old Globe. I was cast at around the age that I was supposed to be playing onstage until I was suddenly 21 or so and still getting sent for teenage roles.

I specifically remember being 21 in NYC and going to two different auditions and being told that I looked too old to play 18 and too young to play 19. On the same day. Probably the 18-year-old role was for TV and the 19-year-old role was for theatre; I don't remember, but I do remember saying, okay, I can only legitimately play 18 and 1/2? By then I’d grown out of being X years “and a half” old. Until 21—I got very excited about turning 21. I was working in a restaurant, but I was only 20 and wanted to go out to clubs. So yes, it was a big deal to turn 21 in California, and then I went to New York, where the drinking age was 19 and no one ever seemed to get carded.

Years before, I’d studied in England, North of London near Watford (those of you who are futbol fans will know where that is); I took college classes at a huge campus with massive old brick buildings; the Royal Masonic school for boys had been bought by United States International University and I went there for summer semester at 17 and it was great. Of course, my girlfriends and I were very excited to go into a pub and order a drink. I learned later that in England if you were tall enough to look over the bar you could order a drink then. Probably not true anymore. I doubted they’d serve me, so when the barman said “what’ll ya have?” I totally panicked and couldn't think of anything. I mean, I was 17. I’d drunk champagne, at a couple of cast parties and had some beer or wine at home. What do I order? I remembered my mom would order a gin and tonic which I thought seemed very sophisticated and so the three of us had G&Ts since I was the one that went up to the bar to order.

It was very exciting for a brief period of time but, like every forbidden thing when it is no longer forbidden, it wasn't that exciting. We—Roxanne, Elissa, and Yours Truly—loved going to pubs though, taking advantage of the opportunity to study British accents of all kinds in person. Our speech and diction teacher, the great Dennis Turner would take us somewhere where we would not be known, to a restaurant or a pub, and we would be assigned Cockney or Elevated English or an Irish brogue or whatever. And we would pretend to be a group of girlfriends. That would be our final test. Dennis had a very good ear. I'm not sure how many of people in the world have that good of an ear any more. Like Henry Higgins. His own diction was truly mid-Atlantic. Like the MGM stars in the 30s. Not quite British and not “rally” American either.

What is this got to do with birthdays? Absolutely nothing. Give me a break, I'm old. My mind wanders. But, seriously, I feel excellent. Took a long walk this morning to return to our rented pickup truck that we used to take stuff out of our storage unit and over to the boat. Every summer when we are back up here but while Russel still has class work (so we’re stuck near wifi) we go to the storage unit and take out our dinghy and sails and all of the things we'll need for going sailing. It’s very exciting and feels like you know, every time you do it, it's kind of the first time. We get to put the sails back up and the sail cover back on the boom (we remove all the canvas for the windy off-season). So for two weeks, it’ll be a chorus of “Now how did this attach to that?”

Other thoughts: My mother didn't live to see 80; she had dementia. My dad lived to be 91 and was sharp right up to the very end—within weeks of his passing we were still video chatting. And he was walking daily, and swimming until just a few months ago. Exercise is one of those things that seems to be advised, no matter what kind of doctor you ask. Having memory issues? Stay active. Depressed? Take a brisk walk. And of course, eat lots of fresh veggies, and eat some fish every week as we all know.

Apparently the act of writing, and maybe even reading, complex sentences—which are my favorite kind, as a writer and as an editor—is somehow correlated with avoiding dementia. Not just writing a shopping list. You have to actually write sentences, to give your brain a work out. And of course, I do a lot of editing sentences so I get a mental workout from that as well. And I am working daily on learning Spanish. Still trying to become fluent—or even conversational—in Spanish. Which is difficult when you don't speak it to real people. (I know that I can have AI conversations in Spanish. But that’s too weird for me.) I've gotten to a point where I can read pretty Spanish well and understand if somebody's talking very slowly—a speed that no one really talks at. I have a decent accent so that makes people think I understand a lot more than I do. Which results in a torrent of words and I’m lost.

Yes, so aging brings up a lot of subjects, doesn’t it? I'm joyful to see how excited I still am at each new adventure. Back when my brothers and I were little my brother Joe said he was going to live to be 126 and I said “Me too!” I still think it would be a gas to be a centenarian if you could stay fit and flexible and excited. You know, people have lived into their 100s for many years, why not us? Our generation has the advantage of the miracles of modern medicine. That's a huge help when it comes to longevity.

I am still working on the flexibility thing. I'm one of those people that could never sit cross-legged. I told a physical therapist last year (I was having an intensely painful attack of sciatica) that I had been doing certain exercises like hip openers and such but then I got frustrated and stopped because I wasn't getting any more flexible. “But you weren't getting less flexible,” he said, and it was like this light came on in my head. It's not about always getting better at something, it's about staying at a level of fitness and flexibility which keeps you from starting that slide down into I can't do that anymore, which is of course, unavoidable at same point, it is something that's going to happen to all of us, but I want to delay that happening for as long as possible.

I saw with my mom that once you stop walking, even a little bit, on a daily basis, it gets harder and harder to stand up and get up from chairs. So what I'm here to tell you is, do your squats. You don't have to go to the gym, just go out and walk. If you go by a playground on your walk and there's some bars, go and hang from them. Even if you can't swing from arm to arm on the parallel bars, just try hanging. And then once you've done that a few days then try to lift your weight up a little. It doesn’t take much.

We all know that physical health is not all there is to it—there’s also mental health, of course. I am lucky to have a circle of friends who answer when I call—and my three nieces do, too. My relationships with friends and family may not be as close as they would be if we saw each other in person more often. But it's a wonderful thing to be able to reach out. And to keep that conversation going—no matter how sporadic it may be, it's not just Christmas cards. It's not just the yearly couple of hours visit.

I'm happy for Instagram and Facebook and Threads and even Tiktok, all the ways that I stay in touch with my friends and family. Modern technology isn’t perfect but it beats not being in touch with people at all. And you get to choose what you want to see. So if you're seeing too many ads, take the time to close them and say you don’t want them; if you're seeing too many negative things, take the time to say I don't want to see this or snooze it for 30 days or do whatever it takes to get that out of your feed because you don’t need that.

This is what I’m thinking about, here “in the twilight of my youth,” as Russel would say. It's always fun to celebrate another trip around the Sun; and two days later, on the 27th we will celebrate 36 years of marriage. Thinking ahead a little bit more, this fall will mark 50 years since Russell and I met (in 1975, doing “Our Town” at the Old Globe Theater) so it's a big year. And of course, I'm entering my 65th year so that's pretty exciting. I will soon to be able to enroll in Medicare. That is, if it still exists.

I promised myself I wouldn’t post about politics again because I know we're all so tired of hearing about it but from the vantage point of my vast age I just want to share my belief that the world—including the United States of America—still has a great many good people who care about other human beings even when they don’t look or act like them. And I think there's more of us out there than the bad guys reckoned on. That's the one that keeps me going. Knowing that most people are good at heart.

Next week, we will be doing a little jaunting about on the boat. Trying to get ready for summer, we’ll take a little daysail on Memorial Day weekend—it will be so fun, and nerve-wracking, and exciting to be traveling on the water again. I’ll be sharing our travel log with you, plus I’ll be including some pretty summer pictures very soon.

In the meantime, be excellent to each other, as a great philosopher once said. Remember that relationships and interactions with other humans are truly all we have. They are what makes a life worth living. So smile often and laugh out loud. Be good to yourself. And tip your servers generously.

Hasta pronto!