Golden, But Proud Even If A Sharpee Reference Bites

After posting my blog about us “golden girls,” my email box filled with impassioned responses from other such goldens. One wrote, “I still feel young inside...And in my dreams I' m always mid-20's. There's a sense of dislocation sometimes when I see myself through others' eyes (old, fat, non-sexual come to mind)” *See writer’s note. Another woman of gold wrote, “I always thought the same about my own mother whenever I would hear her voice on the phone. It was the same voice I had heard at 3 and at 18 and at 40…It’s the sound that carries the timelessness, no matter how we’ve changed externally. It speaks our truth.”

And I promise after this blog, I’ll walk away (for just a bit) from this aging thing. Meanwhile, my aging generation took to the streets to protest a war gone wrong, sacrificed many of our best and brightest in that war, cracked glass ceilings that made it easier for our daughters to become lawyers and high-end chefs, questioned authority, and welcomed diversity.

“It speaks our truth,” rang true on May 1, 2007. Yesterday’s figurative May Pole was wrapped in bright and dreary ribbons of May Day demonstrators around the world; MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan blamed the VA Tech murders on an immigrant “invasion;” U.S. lawmakers vs. commander-in-chief battling over another war; a Kent State University survivor of the May 4, 1970 student killings who claimed the cause was a direct command; Joan Baez ixnayed from performing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center; and the four-year anniversary of the infamous Mission Accomplished performance.

If I took 1967 and placed it squarely on 2007, I would find the same players, the same schemes and same plume of darkness that eagerly wishes to snuff out whatever candles of light shine through.

One big exception to this moment--I’m not today’s youth. I dwell well within the golden zone and while I think my compatriots remain the beauties of our youth, one of them did quip, “Get us naked and you might think that you are in a room of sharpees.” Ouch!

* Writer’s note: The golden who referred to ‘fat’ from others eyes…Wrong. She’s no longer a size 4, but fat??? Hardly!