On savoring old age, writing, and sex at 82
A Q&A with Ann Richardson on the pleasures of more confidence and the annoyance of less energy.
“Somewhere in the middle of my seventies, I realised that I liked being old… I am now 82 and I haven't changed my mind. A few things get harder but a surprising lot of things get easier.“ -
A special welcome to this week’s new subscribers. I am so happy you’re here!
Given the response and interest from a number of old(er) women writers and readers (including
) I have created a space for [B]old Women. If that’s you, please introduce yourself! My hope is that we can turn an informal discussion into a community for support and sharing for women writers in their 60s, 70s, 80s. There is no age qualification to participate but I believe that older women share similar concerns (and delights) about old age. Women who are in their 40s and 50s or who are interested are also very welcome. Join in here. - DebbieQ&A with [b]old woman Ann Richardson
Today I’m bringing you another Q&A with a [b]old woman writer. I met
on a post by , as we replied to one another in the comments1 ; one of several such “meet-cute” encounters I’ve had on Substack, and one of the things I love most about this platform. I was intrigued with Ann’s forthright statement about old age. She wrote, “I do genuinely like being old (I turn 82 in three days) for the confidence it has brought me and a lot of other things… “ It’s a bit unusual for someone to say they truly “like” old age in our youth-obsessed societies. What were the “other things,” I wondered? (I’ve reflected myself on the topic of adventures in old age, but Ann is a decade ahead of me and I hoped she’d have some revealing answers, or at least food for thought.) Luckily, she agreed to sit down and answer questions about her life as a writer, as a woman who has been married for 60 years, about her upbringing in the U.S. and her now permanent home in the UK with her British husband, and about her experience as The Granny Who Stands on her Head2, the name of her Substack and also the title of her most recent book3. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed the back-and-forth emails with Ann for our Q&A. And I hope you’ll meet me in the comments at the end, with your own questions for Ann or about old age.DW: You say in the description of your Substack that you’re writing about “living and dying.” What are your thoughts about death and dying?
AR: I first became interested in dying when I met a gay man, age 30 or so, living with AIDS back in the late 1980s, when AIDS was incurable. As we were becoming good friends, I wondered how I should treat someone with so little time left. After some thought, I concluded that I should treat him in the same way I treated anyone else. I spent a lot of time with him, including on the day he died. We had some good times together – he was smart and very deep.
He and I ended up writing a book together about people with AIDS, called Wise Before their Time4. Published in 1992 after he died, it still sells but not hugely. Ian McKellen5 wrote a Foreword, in which he said that it was “as powerful as any classic of fiction”. Needless to say, I liked that.
After my friend died, still interested in death, I volunteered in a hospice for four years. I loved doing it and was fascinated by how the nurses and others managed to go to work every day to help dying people. I ended up writing another book, Life in a Hospice, based on interviews with the staff in two hospices (nurses, doctors, managers and even a very reflective cook). I still find it fascinating. So, I have had a lot of experience of death and dying through these activities, but it still remains as much of a mystery for me as for everyone else. On Substack, I have written about how people who are dying can often wait for some key event, how I would want to approach dying, whether we would like to know when we are going to die, and, recently, being present when a fellow choir member had a heart attack.
The deaths I think about most, of course, are those of myself (age 82) and my husband (age 83), because we are in the years where death could happen any time. We both sort-of guess that he will die first, both because that’s what statistics tell us and he has more health problems, but of course you never know. Being left to fend on our own, without the support of the other, is a huge fear for both of us, as well as living any period of time with serious disability, particularly dementia. I once described our situation – the same for all old people – as walking around with a block of concrete over your head6, never knowing when it would fall. But there’s nothing much we can do but live enjoyable lives until we can’t.
DW: You’ve said that you like being old. That’s a somewhat unusual statement in our youth-obsessed societies. Tell us three things that you are enjoying or even savoring about old age.
AR: Yes, indeed, I have spent a lot of time thinking – and writing – about being an older woman and I am very certain that it is the best time of life, as long as you are healthy. This is what my book, The Granny Who Stands on Her Head, is all about. Yes, your looks are not what they were, your memory is atrocious and you lack energy but these are more than compensated for. First, the older you are, the more confidence you tend to have and this is worth everything. Having confidence means that you are comfortable with yourself and feel free to be yourself. Whatever worries you used to be beset by, from physical looks (is my bum too big?) to capacities to achieve (will I do well enough? will I be found out?) just disappear. All those years in your life have shown you what is important. You can just be you. It is a terrific sense of freedom.
“Whatever worries you used to be beset by, from physical looks (is my bum too big?) to capacities to achieve (will I do well enough? will I be found out?) just disappear. All those years in your life have shown you what is important. You can just be you. It is a terrific sense of freedom.”
Second, although I have written about it less, it is a time in your life when you can take a whole new direction and explore new avenues of yourself. I know a lot of people worry about the changes implied by retirement or the empty nest as the children leave home. But these can be seen in a positive light. Iif you use the time well, it is a period when you are not generally driven by financial needs (I appreciate that some people are) and can try out different activities. It can be, in short, a time for expansion rather than reduction.
And third, if you are lucky, there are grandchildren in your life. The grandparent-grandchild relationship – whether the latter is a baby or a teenager – is one of the best relationships in the whole world. It is driven by love and delight and nothing else. Dealing with grandchildren is so much easier than dealing with your children7, when you worried constantly about whether you were doing the right thing. Many people say that it is the fact that you can hand grandchildren back at the end of the day that is so great. While that isn’t negligible, much more important is the nature of your relationship with them.
DW: Has your writing life (the process, the topics) changed as you’ve moved into [b]old age?
AR: Prior to my Substack newsletter, which I started a year ago, I was writing regular posts for an online magazine for older women, SixtyandMe. Initially, I was keen to do this writing, as I thought it would be a good way to publicise the book I had just written, Celebrating Grandmothers8, based on passages from interviews with grandmothers. What I found was that it did not sell many books but, much to my surprise, I really liked writing short posts on all sorts of subjects. I still write for them. When I set up my Substack newsletter, I found that I could write on a much broader range of topics, so in some ways my focus has become broader in the last year. I don’t think my writing style has changed much, but I would like to think that it has improved over time.
DW: What is your morning routine?
AR: I don’t think my morning routine is all that interesting, but I am responding because I am an obedient person. I used to wake up wide awake and ready to write – indeed, I used to do some of my best writing between 5 am and 7 am, when no one was around to bother me. Now, I find it very hard to wake up and there is a long period between sleeping and waking when I just feel incredibly sluggish. Eventually, often 9 am, I climb out of bed, tend to look at my computer for five minutes or so, eat breakfast with my husband, do one or two sudokus to wake up my brain and get on with my day. If I plan to write, I start right away.
I have never liked clothes much and love being in my pyjamas, so I often don’t shower and dress until close to lunchtime. I always do so before eating lunch – I am not a complete slob!
DW: What is your writing routine? (Do you journal? Do you write every day? Do you have a ritual for getting started?)
AR: No, I don’t journal and never have. Nor do I write every day. I thought I would have difficulty in thinking of things to write about, but that has never been a problem and, indeed, I have a list of topics to pursue at some point. Usually, I have an idea about the next one, reflect on it in the shower until it gets so pressing that I just sit down at the computer and write it.
I never have trouble getting started. I am quite good at thinking up a first sentence and once I have that, I am away. But I rarely know where I will be going with it. I know when it is a good subject, start writing and other thoughts just come. I tend to think that they come from my computer and it is my job to coax them out. Forty years ago, I had the same view about my typewriter. If I am writing a post (c 800 words), I often write it in half an hour to an hour and it is virtually done. Then, I always sleep on it and look at it the following day, when I tweak the odd word or add a wrinkle. So, writing isn’t very time-consuming or difficult, but it is tiring – especially now – so a lot of time is taken in recovering from the process.
DW: Are you still practicing yoga? Still standing on your head? Any advice for the rest of us about maintaining balance and flexibility? I’m ten years behind you and quite active but find both those things challenging these days. Are you noticing a difference between your 70s and your 80s?
AR: I started Iyengar yoga thirty years ago, at the suggestion of an osteopath to strengthen my muscles and thereby reduce backaches, and I just never stopped. I do still stand on my head9 and it is one of my favourite poses (watch a two-minute video10 where I demonstrate). I think all exercise becomes more difficult as we age. For years, I could see slow improvements in my yoga poses, whereas now, I struggle to remain at the same level.
DW: You’ve mentioned in several of your emails that you get “tired.” What do you mean by that exactly? Loss of physical energy? Mental fatigue? Tell us what “tired” feels like at age 82 — for someone like you who is relatively active and in good health.
AR: Tired can mean different things, but essentially it means I need to stop what I am doing and rest. It’s not the same as sleepy, but you just know that you can’t keep going. If it’s mostly mental, your brain aches (if that makes sense) and your eyes ache. I think it is not so different from what you felt when you were taking a lot of exams at the end of the school year (my 17-year-old grandson is doing this and he complains that it is tiring). Sometimes, it is mainly physical and your body begins to ache and you just want to lie down.
What I have discovered is that simply lying down for awhile, either doing nothing or listening to a podcast, is incredibly refreshing in both circumstances, so you are ready to get up and start again. Some people nap for this reason, but I have trouble sleeping if I nap, so I avoid that solution. Getting tired is extremely annoying as it essentially means that you can’t do what you want to do. You have to listen to your body and stop. My guess is that we reach this problem at different ages (unsure why), but it catches up with most people at some point. I have a good friend, age 99, who was always very active (even sailing in her early 80s), but she now says the smallest activity makes her tired, so she can’t do much in a day. And she finds it incredibly irritating. It’s like a barrier comes down and says “Stop!”. Who wants to be dictated to by such a barrier?
DW: May I ask you about “senior sex”? It’s an icky thing for most people to talk about. What would you like to tell readers about sex in your 80s? Does the definition of what qualifies as “having sex” change?
AR: Sex is never ‘icky’ for me. It is private, exciting, intimate, playful, many other things besides and one of the things that makes life worthwhile, but ‘icky’? – no! I don’t really want to know about what other people do in bed and don’t want to talk about what I do, but when you get down to it, it is probably very much the same. In any case, it is not what we do that is important but what we feel.
Because I don’t discuss sex with many friends, I really have no idea how it is for other older people. I read somewhere that “sex for seniors tends to involve simply kissing and stroking.” And a movie not long ago showed an old married couple, clearly out of the habit, fumbling like adolescents. But I can assure readers that if you like and value sex and have a partner who does as well, none of this is true. It’s a heck of a lot more fun – and more meaningful – than that. Sex is like all the other things we have done throughout our lives. If you want to, you can continue to do it.
Two facts actually make sex between older people much easier than for younger people. First, there is much more time. Couples can choose the time of day with no problem and can take as long as they wish without worrying about the children or other obligations. That is worth a lot. Second, there are no worries about contraception. In fact, all that palaver is such a thing of the past that I nearly forgot to mention it. And let me extend your time frame. I first realised that sex does not necessarily stop with age when my father, aged 90, told me he had started an affair (“and it’s not just kissing and cuddling”) with an 83-year-old woman living in the same retirement community. My mother had dementia, he had spent years looking after her, and I would never have dreamed of criticising him for seeking a little solace. Indeed, I was thrilled for him. And, as I said in a post on the subject, he would be delighted for everyone to know.
Of course, many couples choose – for a whole lot of reasons – to stop having sex long before they are in their 80s. As long as everyone is happy, that is absolutely fine. My very simple point is that they don’t have to.
Thank you
for these thoughtful answers. I loved our back-and-forth emails as we both kept thinking of more things to ask or answer. - DebbieQuestions for readers
What do you find most hopeful or surprising about Ann's answers?
If you fear getting old - what is your biggest concern?
Here is my Q&A with [b]old woman :
Ann’s comment on David Roberts’ Sparks From Culture
The Granny Who Stands on Her Head on Substack
The Granny Who Stands on Her Head (Amazon, 2021)
Wise Before Their Time (updated on Amazon, 2017)
More about Ian McKellen
That Metaphorical Block of Concrete was published on Sixty+Me
Celebrating Grandmothers (Kindle edition on Amazon, 2017)
YouTube video of Ann standing on her head.
For some reason, I read this whole interview, foolishly thinking that Ann Richardson was Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, and being amazed she was living in the UK. She is actually no longer with us, and I amaze myself at how silly I am sometimes. I really like Ann Richardson.
Some of us past 80 may have a different perspective than the younger crowd. In the words of J.K. Simmons in that insurance ad, "We know a lot of things because we have seen a lot of things." Looking at finishing up year 87 in June, (no guarantees) I count each day a gift and a blessing. My recent post here "Life, Death and In Between" is very much in the same arena.