On this hot, exceedingly blustery summer day, I'll take a moment to muse about fragility. A few short years ago, I assumed that all my previous challenges would evaporate, and my sixties would be the apex of my own life and the lives of my female friends. I assumed that reaching the high points of careers, retirement, and power would put most of us in good places. Yet the reality is that many of us are either in extremely fragile places, or flirting with fragility in a way I don't remember in my mother's generation. My personal fragility is, as always, the transitional nature of my housing and a wavering sense of being able to fulfill my unique place and purpose. But my fall in England made me feel exceptionally fragile too, in a physical way. It cracked more than my wrist.
Friends in their sixties and early seventies are dealing with all manner of personal illnesses, challenges within their larger families, downsizing, disappointments. And of course so many of us are "freaking out" on some level about the direction our country seems to be taking. It is like there are storms blowing (more tsunamis?) and some of us, try as we might, are cracking, or breaking outright. Many of us are single, too, and as I've mentioned before, this brings up unique issues. If we aren't in close contact with birth family, who are our proverbial "loved ones"? And it's not like society at large loves its older single women. There's no, "Bravo, you! You've lived an unconventional life, you've contributed in unique ways (large and small) to our society, and we are proud that you are in our midst. Let's make the tallest and most elegant building in town its housing for wise older women"! (Hand to ear...still listening! No, I have never, ever heard words to that effect!)
My backbone right now, my counteraction to fragility, is writing my book. I am writing a blue streak, with index cards being filled up at an alarming rate. The "bringing cards to the library and typing" piece is going rather more slowly, but I'm not too worried. The book, in its early form at least, will be done by Labor Day, as I promised myself. Every word I write is empowering me, and I hope the ripple effect will subtly empower my personal friends and other women as well. I don't think it is possible to be empowered and fragile at the same time.
