The age factor

Years ago, I played in a tennis tournament outside Washington. My opponent was a younger, wiry, athletic-looking man who showed up with a bag of racquets, bananas and energy drinks, which he unloaded as he stretched before we played.

“Play here much?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “You?”

“I played recently with my mother,” he told me, patronizingly, I thought. “She’s 60! Still playing,” he remarked, as if that was miraculous.

I was livid. This character was not going to beat me.

He didn’t.

When we were done playing, he graciously complimented me.

“You play a heck of a game.”

“Thanks,” I answered. “Tell your mother if she ever wants to play she should call me … I’m 70.”

As our aging process changes due to better medical practices and longevity evolves actuarially, myths about aging require reexamination. Work productivity, sexuality, economics, just about everything needs to be “recalculated,” as my digital GPS lady regularly instructs.

{mosads}The New York Times Book Review recently applauded the work of 78-year-old short-story author Edith Pearlman, a commercial breakthrough for a crafty writer of 200 stories during the past 50 years, but relatively unknown out of refined literary circles. She is not the only Grandma Moses-like figure who has attained success late in her life.

Lewis Lapham interviewed some notable figures about this subject last year in The New York Times in his essay, “Old Masters.” The documentarian, Frederick Wiseman, 84, told Lapham that aging is “not something I dwell on. I like working. I work very intensely.” Businessman T. Boone Pickens, 86, said, as I’ve felt and heard contemporaries say, “I’m going to retire in a box carried out of my office.” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 81, said more profoundly, “One is to seek ever more the joys of being alive … you should enjoy and thrive on what you’re doing to the hilt.” Painter Carmen Herrara, 99, said about work: “I do it because I have to.” Actor Christopher Plummer, 84, commented: “The idea is that you’re doing what you love. It’s very important.” The illustrator and author, R.O. Blechman, 84, said “I’m the same guy I was 30, 40, 50 years ago. But I’m freer now. I think I’m better. It’s crazy. As it goes downhill, I’m going up.”

Lapham interviewed a notable group of stars who voiced similar views — naturalist Edward O. Wilson, 85; musician Roy Haynes, 89; long-distance runner Ginette Bedard, 91; singer Tony Bennett, 88, who is still recording, often in conjunction with young vocalists who are grateful to work with the veteran crooner; artist Ellswort Kelly, 91; humorist Carl Reiner, 92 (working to become the 2000-year-old man he and his cohort Mel Brooks made famous); architect Frank Gehry, busy at projects worldwide at 85; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), 81; and actress Betty White, thriving in her career at 92 and using her age as a new applauded persona.

All the people Lapham interviewed reflected his conclusion that “ceaseless labor is the freedom of play.” My experiences, at 81, are the same. My tennis game is as good as ever, maybe better. I review a few books a month, and I couldn’t have done them as well decades ago. My vitality may have been keener then, but the warp and woof of my life experiences were lesser by half at 40. I didn’t know as much, hadn’t read as much, experienced as much.

I think often about the quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw, that “it is a shame youth is wasted on the young.”

Don’t feel sorry for me; I have two books being published this spring — my first novel and my 13th nonfiction book. Get out of my way — I’m busy!

Goldfarb is an attorney, author and literary agent based in Washington, D.C., and Miami.