Editorial
A Season to Celebrate

Kate Holbrook
Volume 23, No. 4

I harbor a romantic view of women over fifty. I like to think the majority of such women have overcome most of the petty cares that plague me – they know who they are, they have learned how to dress, and most of their major purchases have been made. In any case, I hope that by fifty many of the questions with which I privately wrestle will, for better or worse, be decided. I either will or will not be a mother; I will or will not enjoy a gratifying career; I will or will not have spent my pre-fifty years abroad. 

  Lettie Critchlow Bickmore, age zero

Women in their prime have a knowing look. They have learned from living the consequences of their early choices, and the living has taught them who they are. They also know something about me that I don't know, about the situations and feelings that I still try to decipher. 

  Lettie Critchlow Bickmore, age thirty-one

They don't know it all – and I am offended when they think they do – but they know more than I do. They have already wrestled with demons that I'm just learning about. When they look at me with understanding – not the understanding of one who has been exactly where I am but of someone who has faced fear or fought oppression – I see what empathy means. 

  Lettie Critchlow Bickmore, age one hundred

Although the specifics of these impressions may not all hold true, the underlying principle does. Every woman's life is wonderfully sui generis and, therefore, women grow in different ways at different times. For example, my mother, a woman comfortably past fifty, is just now arranging her house the way she wants it. She spent the last twenty-three years living with my Grandma, who died in February. Out of love, she allowed their house to belong aesthetically to Grandma. But now my mom is experimenting with arrangements and throw pillows in ways more often done by women my age. 

Nonetheless, my mom's wisdom is much deeper than mine. Her possession of a rich past makes it easier for her, I think, to make decisions about the present. She has both done and felt a lot and now knows how, when, and what to gracefully accept or reject. I, on the other hand, continually accept responsibilities that may not be in my best interest, spend my time in activities that do not always renew, and still don't know what colors I want in my living room (although I'm leaning toward green and red). 

Besides the life wisdom possessed by women over fifty, I envy their beauty. Most of my elders," who are not yet elderly, have one or ten drooping parts. In all honesty, I prefer bodies and faces that tell stories to the bland sticks that rule the fashion pages. Kate Moss – expressionless, without fault or foible – fails utterly to appeal to me. On the other hand are women with laugh lines, stretch marks, dappled hair. When I see an upper arm that hangs, I think of the multitudes embraced by my Grandma, whose arms had a little extra. Silver hair and generous bosoms also remind me of my Grandma and her love, in which I basked for twenty-eight years. 

Then there is the matter of my mother and her square toes. Shopping for shoes with anyone other than my mother is beyond tiresome because it lacks the intrigue of finding shoes that won’t torture square toes. My mom has taught grade school for more than thirty years on her square toes. The sight of them fills me with a fondness that I could never know looking at an ad for which impeccably formed feet are displayed. I adore Mom's few facial lines well-placed by nature to enliven and enhance. Not to mention her freckles. 

In the following pages of this issue of Exponent II, we explore this season of a woman's life that I so admire. Exponent women share with us the challenges, questions, and victories that come as they move into roles of grandparent and retiree. They talk about their attitudes toward physical changes, their feelings as children leave the nest and as they face widowhood, and the quandary of what to relinquish and when to acquire. The words on these following pages remind me of the wisdom, empathy, and beauty women in this prime have achieved.

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