This is 62: Writer Jane Ratcliffe Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
This is 62: Writer Jane Ratcliffe Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"I live two ages simultaneously."
From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”
Here, writer and newsletter-er responds. -Sari Botton
Jane Ratcliffe’s work has appeared in The Sun Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, Narratively, Longreads, among others, and has received Notables Mentions in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and has taught writing at Rutgers, The New School, and private workshops. On her bestseller Substack newsletter Beyond she explores how to bring light into the dark corners of this world. Plus, writing advice! She’s interviewed Elizabeth Gilbert, George Saunders, Cheryl Strayed, Ross Gay, Andrea Gibson, Dani Shapiro, Alexander Chee, Esmé Weijun Wang, Brandon Taylor, Maggie Smith and many more. She shares a home with Delilah, a wildly curious mutt, and Rudy Lu, a surfer-boy kitty. She publishes the newsletter .
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How old are you?
62
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
Mid-30s. I was in my mid-30s when the rope snapped on a huge tabletop mounted on a wall in a furniture showroom and fell on my head, resulting in head and brain injury. This was in the days before the football players and soldiers were all over the news and very little was known about head and brain injury, so it was many years before I received proper care. By then, so many of the challenges I still struggle today were entrenched.
It's said that addicts are mentally and emotionally locked into the age at which they started using and I think something similar happened to me. My mid-30s were the last time I felt truly well and some part of me is still there. In certain ways, that is the clearest sense of myself that I carry, before my brain changed. And before my physical health became so compromised and complicated.
Even now, so many of my friends are in their 30s. I feel at home hanging out with people that age. All these decades later, I still believe I can make a full recovery from the injury. If that does happen, I wonder if I will suddenly feel my chronological age!
It's said that addicts are mentally and emotionally locked into the age at which they started using and I think something similar happened to me. My mid-30s were the last time I felt truly well and some part of me is still there. In certain ways, that is the clearest sense of myself that I carry, before my brain changed. And before my physical health became so compromised and complicated.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
This is difficult for me to gauge for the reason noted above. I am well aware I’m 62. Part of me adores being this age. It’s very freeing. Many of the things that used to weigh on me have seemingly vanished — though I suppose it’s that I don’t put my focus there anymore. So much of life is where we put our focus. I don’t spin on things the way I used to. I don’t need twenty-seven opinions before making a decision. I don’t spend hours dissecting everything I said at a gathering. I don’t worry so much about how I compare to those around me. I don’t fret as much in general.
And yet there is that part still prancing around in my 30s and enjoying being there. It’s safe, in the sense that I’m healthy. I’m boxing and writing hours and hours a day and dining out with friends every evening. I’m travelling and dating and saving up money and dashing here and darting there and flirting and making plans for my future.
I haven’t yet faced all that’s to come. I haven’t yet been stripped of so many of my identifiers. I haven’t yet been forced into isolation and fear and staggering medical expenses and so much pain and vertigo and memory loss and a bevy of other ailments, some of which are with me still all these decades later. I get why I linger there and am drawn to that energy in others. I live two ages simultaneously.
What do you like about being your age?
I like myself. I love myself. Most of the time, I enjoy being me. This was not happening in my younger years. Each day, I say, “I love you, Jane” at least nine or ten times. Often many more! The voice rises on its own; it’s not of my making. Sometimes I catch myself in the mirror and am so happy to see myself and I’ll say it then. Other times, it’s when I’m thinking something lousy about myself or remembering behaviour I’m not proud of. Before I get too wrapped up in denigrating myself, I’ll say, “I love you, Jane. I love you, Jane,” over and again and the demeaning voice vanishes. Poof! And yet other times, it’s not connected to anything. I’m just walking down the stairs in the morning or feeding the birds or pulling weeds or stirring the oatmeal, et cetera, and the voice saturates me in love.
This didn’t grow from affirmations or any sort of intentional practice. In the throes of a very dark health time, a time I wasn’t sure I would survive, I woke up one morning repeating that phrase. It’s been with me ever since.
This isn’t to say I don’t struggle being me. I struggle, indeed! But the I-love-you-Jane voice swoops in more quickly and effortlessly with each passing month and reminds me even through any unkindness that I am loved.
I’ve also become more verbal and active in my love for others. I do my best to slather those I love in love. It’s glorious to love someone! I’ve always been a loving person but I was much more contained. Now I often feel like a love bomb. Why not saturate those we love with kindness and care and tenderness? This world can be hard. Let’s help each other through! And help as many animals as possible, as well.
I also like knowing how strong I am — mentally and physically. How capable. My friends have always described me as scrappy. One called me a scrappy junkyard dog. Another said I’m the person she’d most want in a dark alley by her side. I was intrigued these descriptions of myself, I love warriors (Buffy is my North Star!), but I couldn’t line them up with me. But now I can! And it feels good.
I’ve become more verbal and active in my love for others. I do my best to slather those I love in love. It’s glorious to love someone! I’ve always been a loving person but I was much more contained. Now I often feel like a love bomb. Why not saturate those we love with kindness and care and tenderness? This world can be hard. Let’s help each other through!
What is difficult about being your age?
Well, lip wrinkles! My mom and auntie both had them — and they both smoked. It never crossed my mind that I, a life-long-non-smoker, would get them. I’m otherwise okay with all my wrinkles and various shifts in my body. Putting aside the head and brain injury, I’m quite healthy! I walk Delilah and Cookie for miles each day. I’ve started boxing again, though we have to be careful not to agitate the vertigo or the pain. I garden. I’m active. Each day is riddled with health challenges. But I could be 24 with this injury and have these same challenges. So it’s the injury, more than the age. Yet they are entwined to such a degree that answering your beautiful questions I’m realizing I can’t separate them! Part of me feels as if I should withdraw from responding. But another part believes there are probably thousands of others for whom the same issues have become intertwined, so it’s my hope responding honestly will be of help.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
My parents were born and raised in London during the War and came to America in the ‘50s. I was born here and until I was 18, never visited England. I didn’t meet any of my grandparents, so I didn’t have aging modeled for me in the way many people do.
But I did have one blood auntie here and my family of ex-pats, my parents’ best friends, my aunties and uncles, who all came to America together in their 20s and stayed friends their entire lives. They all lived into their 80s and 90s and remained active and engaged until their dying day.
The same is true of my mom, who was gardening and cooking elaborate meals and baking the world’s best pumpkin bread until she was diagnosed with terminal cancer in her late 80s. My dad is 97 and still volunteering at church every Saturday and cutting the grass once a week and until last year making yearly trips to England. One of my English aunties lived to be 98: she had a boyfriend, gardened, played a regular game of mahjong, and walked up the hill every week with her basket of groceries from town.
So my expectations were that age doesn’t slow you down.
I did have the expectation of being financially sound by the time I reached this age and due to ongoing medical bills that hasn’t happened for me. Thank goodness I love what I do because I most likely will never be able to retire!
I really admired Tony Bennett. I interviewed him once: what a kind, thoughtful, wise, playful man. He’d been living through an extended period of insomnia. Rather than panicking, he’d taken up painting. If he woke in the middle of the night, he’d simply go downstairs and paint until he was tired again. Eventually, he ended up having a show of his work. I was moved by how he didn’t fight his life, but rather found ways to flow with it.
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
Age has given me so much more wisdom, self-love, clarity, humor, joy, compassion, silliness and a knack for not feeling guilty when I stand up for myself, which is something I have to do more than I’d like.
It’s taken away the ridiculous expectations I had of the world. I exhausted myself trying to meet them while scolding others (sometimes in my head, sometimes aloud) for not meeting them either. What a relief to be free of that nonsense. It’s also taken away the obligation I felt to be the perfect daughter. That one isn’t completely gone, but it’s loosened quite a bit.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
I feel comfortable, even delighted, to be my age. I find myself announcing it a fair amount. My dad is 97 and grows frustrated with me when I share his age. But to me it’s beautiful. I’m so much less focused on all the hipster things the world has to offer and more on chatting with the squirrels who share my back garden.
What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
My life has been so wrapped up in healing and not getting worse and surviving the ups and downs of chronic health challenges that my milestones have all revolved around that. I’ve lost track of cultural or age-related milestones. I most likely missed a bunch! But I also achieved many personal ones and am hopeful I can achieve more.
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
40. I was so sure of myself that year. I felt beautiful and sexy and confident. I was boxing five mornings a week—and my coach said to me if I wasn’t 40 with a head injury, he’d be training me for the Golden Gloves. I’d just started grad school at Columbia for Creative Writing. And I’d gotten a book deal with Henry Holt. I was writing about music for Interview and VH-1 and interviewing Sinéad O’Connor and Radiohead and so many musicians I admired. I can still remember walking around the Lower East Side, where I lived, and feeling happy to be Jane. And 40 was the magic number with younger guys, whom I had a thing for then. They all wanted to get with a 40-year-old woman. So that was fun, too.
Would I go back? Yes, in that my health was better and so many things were easier!! And no, in that despite really enjoying myself, I didn’t have the deep love and like for myself that I have now. And that has changed everything.
My other favorite age is now, due to the aforementioned deep like and love!
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
Helen Mirren. Meryl Strep. Dolly Parton. Jane Goodall. All spring to mind. We’re so dang lucky to have them. Clearly, I don’t know any of them (I wish it were otherwise!) but they strike me as four women who like, love, and even admire themselves. They seem comfortable being who they are. Not that they don’t face challenges but accept those challenges as part of themselves to be nurtured and tended. And they look out for those coming up behind them. They’re all also wicked smart, funny, gifted, kind, and curious. And they seem to have fun!
I also really admired Tony Bennett. I interviewed him once: what a kind, thoughtful, wise, playful man. He’d been living through an extended period of insomnia. Rather than panicking, he’d taken up painting. If he woke in the middle of the night, he’d simply go downstairs and paint until he was tired again. Eventually, he ended up having a show of his work. I was moved by how he didn’t fight his life, but rather found ways to flow with it.
At 40 I felt beautiful and sexy and confident. I was boxing five mornings a week—and my coach said to me if I wasn’t 40 with a head injury, he’d be training me for the Golden Gloves…I can still remember walking around the Lower East Side, where I lived, and feeling happy to be Jane. And 40 was the magic number with younger guys, whom I had a thing for then. They all wanted to get with a 40-year-old woman. So that was fun, too.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
Dry skin! I’ve inherited my mother’s thin, pale, English skin. It’s like paper. No amount of oil, shea butter, aloe, or anything else fully replenishes it. I remember how much it plagued my mom and how certain I was my skin would never thin like that. As with the lip wrinkles, which I was also certain I would never get, I was wrong!
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
Stopping adventuring, traveling alone, if I feel so inclined, long walks with Delilah wherever we’re pulled, boxing. Despite the health challenges, I am fiercely independent and I don’t plan on making any adjustments around that.
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
Growing up and all through my twenty-five years in NYC, I always celebrated my birthday with a big party. I’m pretty shy, so the parties overwhelmed me…but I loved them! Where I live now, I don’t have much of a community of friends nearby so I tend to go to dinner with a friend or if I’m lucky two. Some years, I haven’t done anything. But in my heart, I’m always at my big birthday party — utterly overwhelmed and having a blast!
Yes, a splendid read! I had a serious brain injury at 57, right in the middle of a later-in-life MFA program. I had to withdraw, of course. And work very hard on recovering enough to go back and finish the degree five years later. Your experience of the physical and emotional challenges of navigating life with a changed brain and chronic pain/illness, and the sort of miraculous self-love that has come to the fore—these so echo my own journey through brain injury and aging. We always think no one knows what this particular thing we’re coping with feels like but when you share your experience, echoes and resonances and points of connection appear. Thank you, Jane, for talking about your brain injury (and loving yourself!) and thank you, Sari, for this forum for sharing how we experience growing older.
Thank you Jane and Sari! Such a gorgeous mix of strength and vulnerability, fierceness and compassion. I hope I'm like Jane when I'm in my 60s ❤️