This is 90: Paul Zolbrod Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

"In step with my peers? I have only two long-standing friends in their 90s, and we all three keep pace with one-another as best we can."

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, author and retired academic Paul Zolbrod responds.-Sari Botton

---

Zolbrod, right, in 2019 at 87, with his granddaughter Lilli, left.

Paul Zolbrod's books include Diné Bahane': The Navajo Creation Story; Weaving a World: Textiles and the Navajo Way of Seeing, and Battle Songs: A Story of the Korean War in Four Movements. He is a professor emeritus of Allegheny College and Diné College. 

How old are you?  

I turned 90 months ago.

Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?

When it comes to aging, I focus on just that: I am as old as I am. Since first becoming aware of advancing in years, I’ve remained proud of my age, year by year. I don’t know when that started. The first such age milestone I can recall was turning 10, when I declared to my father that I was now old enough to have my own pen knife. That’s when, my big brother told me, I could begin to play mumblety-peg with the older neighborhood boys. You couldn’t do that without a knife of your own, and now I was ready.

Since first becoming aware of advancing in years, I’ve remained proud of my age, year by year. I don’t know when that started. The first such age milestone I can recall was turning 10, when I declared to my father that I was now old enough to have my own pen knife.

Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?

I feel just about right for my age. Always have, never wishing I were a year older or a year younger. Folks keep telling me I look younger than I am. I’ve grown accustomed to that, although now I think they do that to flatter me. My caregivers at the V.A. hospital, where I get my health care, tell me I’m in good health. But now with declining mobility thanks to arthritis, an enlarged prostate, and feeling unsteady on my feet, I reply, “I’ll take your word for it.” In step with my peers? I have only two long-standing friends in their 90s, and we all three keep pace with one-another as best we can. I’m still writing, though. Just recently I sent a final draft of a book to a waiting editor with a contract ready: Paradise Revisited: Lines From John Milton’s Great Epic and the Navajo Creation Story, to be published by Pleiades Books.

Left, Zolbrod in 2014. Right, Zolbrod, right, with his colleague Glen Doyle at Allegheny College, in the 80s. They taught an interdisciplinary course called Images of Creation in Science and Poetry.

What do you like about being your age?

As my short term memory falters and my long term memory kicks in, I love harkening back. Just now, as I mentioned my 10 birthday, I found myself back on my haunches in our Pittsburgh neighborhood with my brother Leon, Tommy MacDowell, and Paul O’Dell flicking the blade of my new penknife off my index finger into soft spring topsoil. 

Because I’ve had a great life and feel burdened with few regrets, I acknowledge growing up happily, having outlived most youthful sorrows. I’m even glad my parents struggled economically, because once I began raising my own family on a modest income (I was a college teacher), I considered myself rich with a steady income, a full refrigerator, food on the table, no unpaid bills, enough money to buy the kids sneakers so they could play little league baseball and peewee soccer, and with something left over to go on vacation. How my immigrant parents would have enjoyed saying that throughout their years of nurturing four kids on an unskilled freight-yard worker’s salary. Now I can think back on those years happily anyhow, recalling downtown trolley rides, buying penny Tootsie Rolls, and on special occasions Clark Bars for a nickel. That treat came on Sundays at Rosen’s, our neighborhood grocery in pre-supermarket times, where we accompanied dad in allowing himself twenty-five cents for two Marsh-Wheeling stogies. and for each of us a penny for the candy—or every once-in-a-while a nickel for the Clark Bar.

What is difficult about being your age?

The loss of independence. I have trouble adjusting to needing help with routine things like putting on a shirt or fetching my own cup of morning coffee, slicing strawberries and a banana into my bowl of cheerios. My gracious, uncomplaining wife tells me that’s my problem, not hers. Before my disabilities mounted, I could open a clogged kitchen sink, clean out my garage wood-shop now and then, do yard work, and tighten the hinges on a loose kitchen cabinet door instead of asking someone else to do it. No more! Besides, life’s little trials can turn up at any time with a sudden ligament sprain, a washing machine quitting halfway through a cycle, or: a malfunctioning catheter, and I have to ask for help.

I’m even glad my parents struggled economically, because once I began raising my own family on a modest income (I was a college teacher), I considered myself rich with a steady income, a full refrigerator, food on the table, no unpaid bills, enough money to buy the kids sneakers so they could play little league baseball and peewee soccer, and with something left over to go on vacation.

What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?

Nothing much, although I remember my mother-in-law repeating, “Old age is not for sissies.” I feel blessed because both my in-laws lived into their nineties. Having

watched the two of them slow down, I now realize they became role models, so struggling with a walker and a cane to get to and into the car was at least familiar to me, as I like to repeat to my wife, who’s ten years younger. What’s taken me by surprise just the same? Struggling to button a shirt or tie a shoelace with numbing fingers. So that old age can still leave me feeling ambushed.

Zolbrod around 40, with his daughter.

What has aging given you? Taken away from you?

Best of all, it has given me that great gift of summoning memories, especially little things, like twisting a skate key, my first taste of Squirt; or watching an Ida Lupino movie from the balcony of Pittsburgh’s South Hill Theater on a Friday night with fellow high schoolers. Yes, old age robs me of fully mobile independence, and It leaves me with little future to ponder. But aging seals the value of little recollections along with the big ones. My memories become my most treasured possessions—more treasured than my Boise Radio, or my 2001 Rav-4, which I gave to my grandson. “Make sure you accumulate good ones,” I like to tell younger folks, “And avoid regrets along the way.” As I now see it, such as it may or not be in the next world, heaven in this growing-old one is already here with a flush, good-memory feed.

Before my disabilities mounted, I could open a clogged kitchen sink, clean out my garage wood-shop now and then, do yard work, and tighten the hinges on a loose kitchen cabinet door instead of asking someone else to do it. No more!

How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?

I take satisfaction in having lived a useful, fulfilling life, and I’m happy with the person I am. My Identity as a dad, a joyful teacher, and a modestly published writer deepens my life’s dimension, even though I realize that the world is no longer mine to shape as I once tried to do. I’m not even sure I feel comfortable with its frantic digital outpour of rapid change. Teaching, writing, community participation, family life, and customary standards of civil behavior made me feel more relevant back then than I now feel. I grew up absorbing my values having read Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alfred Lord Tennyson; and living among books no longer mentioned with a bygone frequency; or sitting around the Sunday dining room table hearing the grown-ups talk without even saying much, but listening now to recalled voices of parents, aunts, and uncles. Not too long ago I reread (and enjoyed) James Whitcomb Riley’s Out to Old Aunt Mary’s. And when I mentioned it to a well-informed younger group, I got dumb stares as I tried explaining why I identified with it rather than now watching Game of Thrones, or Better Call Saul.

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?  

I consider raising my children my greatest accomplishment, and the most intimately fulfilling. As for milestones, I can no longer see my life that way. Instead I look at it as a trajectory cast forward by cultural momentum. I am grateful to my parents for not imposing any specific expectations I had to meet. I now consider their not being able to send me to college a blessing, making it through on my own as a Korean War era veteran. Same with learning after graduating from high school to get to work on time and doing my job; getting through basic training after being drafted, earning a Ph.D. as a capstone to a G.I. Bill financed education. Other choices and things I accomplished on my own momentum shaped my ultimate destiny. If there’s a driving arc in bringing it to a final landing, it might be this. During my military deployment I felt so stifled at a sleepy Alabama post, that I bribed three fellow personnel clerks to doctor my record, allowing me to be reassigned overseas, even if that meant deployment in Korea. Instead I wound up in Tokyo, which reshaped my perspective enough to continue my formal education. And which now makes me feel like there’s nothing I’ve actually “missed.”

Zolbrod, during a sabbatical year in Flagstaff, Arizonia, at around 45 years old, with his son Aaron, his daughter Lisa (now Zoe) and his first wife, Joan.

What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?

Aches and pains notwithstanding, I’m content with my present age, although I enjoy speculating on what my best year was—likely the year I spent deployed in Japan, where my adult life began with discovering the world’s bigness and that I could make a place in it for myself.

Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?

I have two older friends, both of whose lives were shaped by military service the way mine has been. Staying in touch with them as I do is inspiration enough because of how their various life experiences interface with my own.

Yes, old age robs me of fully mobile independence, and It leaves me with little future to ponder. But aging seals the value of little recollections along with the big ones. My memories become my most treasured possessions—more treasured than my Boise Radio, or my 2001 Rav-4, which I gave to my grandson.

What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?

With aging’s progress, it’s more a matter of gradual change than stop-and-go adjustments, as how walking normally becomes gimping along with a cane, then shouldering around the house on a walker. Meanwhile social life morphs from attending symphony concerts, house visits and meeting folks for dinner out to at-home texting, phone calls, and exchanging posts on Facebook. Clothing style becomes more irrelevant than wearing the same favorite shirts and jeans at home, without worrying about how I’m dressed for now-routine visits to the local V.A. health center, which is my social hub these days.

Zolbrod at 15, to the right of the column toward the left here. At Sunday school in Pittsburgh, PA. His mother, Caroline Engler Zolbrod, is one row down, to the right. 

What’s an aging-related adjustment do you refuse to make, and why?

I’m not sure I have many choices, other than keeping as busy as I can to stay relevant and remaining upbeat that way. I’m fortunate that along with my memories, my love of reading and my ability to write fortify me against nursing-home television’s end-of-life wasteland.

Aches and pains notwithstanding, I’m content with my present age, although I enjoy speculating on what my best year was—likely the year I spent deployed in Japan, where my adult life began with discovering the world’s bigness and that I could make a place in it for myself.

What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?

Simple. Embrace each coming year with as much family participation as possible, enjoy a good dessert, and keep savoring memories. And from there, take it month by month, week by week, day by day, minute by minute. And keep thinking of Shakespeare’s 73rd sonnet:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.