The Invisible Woman Revealed

I confess; I was starting to get annoyed. As I stood patiently at the reception desk, waiting for assistance, other hotel guests approached the desk and received attention immediately. I was still waiting. A pretty, young blond woman was working behind the desk at the upscale Gatwick area hotel where I was staying with my co-worker, Trish. In frustration, I turned to Trish and said in a loud, exaggerated voice: “I can see you, can you see me? I don’t think this young woman can see us. We may be invisible.” Trish, momentarily stunned by my outburst, started to laugh.

“Can I help you?” the young woman sheepishly asked.

“Well, yes! Why else do you think we’d be standing here at your desk?” I snarled. After she politely answered our questions, Trish and I left the hotel lobby to find a restaurant for dinner.

“I've never seen you angry,” Trish stated. “That was hysterical!”

“All of a sudden I felt invisible and it made me furious,” I replied. “More and more often I feel like people don’t see me anymore.”

Last winter my husband and I, along with another couple, attended the Armed Services Bowl in Ft. Worth. Security there was heavy. Entering the football stadium just ahead of my attractive, youthful friend, Marlyn, I heard the young security guard's request: “May I look inside your bags?” I turned and said quickly, “of course.” He checked Marlyn’s bag for prohibited items and then turned to the next woman in line, totally ignoring me with my gaping tote bag exposing four pint-sized water bottles.

“Wow,” Marlyn exclaimed. “How come he didn’t check your bag? And you had your own drinks in there.”

“Each year after 50 you get more and more invisible,” I joked. She laughed. “You wait,” I thought.

Years ago, a much older friend told me that when we get old, we start to get invisible. “People stop noticing you,” she had explained. “You get ignored. It’s not meanness; it just happens.”

“I’m five feet nine inches tall. I can’t believe people won’t notice me,” I had countered.

“You wait,” was her reply.

I’m only 60 years old, but I think I’ve been fading for about ten years. If this keeps up I’ll be a shadow by 70, and totally invisible by my 80th birthday. The truth is I don’t want to be invisible. I don’t want to be ignored. Neither do most of my contemporaries, fellow retirees, and friends. I’m not willing to go quietly and submissively into obscurity and beyond.

I checked out the Internet to see if there are any web sites that specifically address the issue of invisibility in older people. Google provided me with 583,000 results. Of course they didn’t all answer my questions, but apparently the world is full of invisible old people. Several web sites addressed the issue of better marketing toward the “invisible elderly.” Well, market to me, baby!

When I was young, my parents taught me to be courteous toward older people and promised me that one day, when I’m old, young people will be courteous toward me. I have two questions. How old do I have to get before I notice this courtesy? And is it possible that people aren’t really becoming less courteous; that it’s just a visibility problem, like in a winter whiteout? If that’s the case, it’s no wonder that man entering the post office ahead of me let the door slam in my face. He probably couldn’t see me.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man believed there are some advantages to a state of invisibility. Sure, I can go to the supermarket in my bedroom slippers or forget to zip up my pants after a trip to the bathroom, (both unintentionally), but these little gains do not improve the quality of life for the aging, and they hardly offset the difficulty in finding a new doctor who will accept Medicare patients.

The other day I was enjoying lunch at a popular Southlake restaurant with four of my fellow retirees. We were seated at the bar, talking about health, money, food and friends, and laughing a lot, as usual. A woman, probably in her thirties, was seated close by. She approached us on her way out and announced: “You ladies are so cute. I’ve really enjoyed listening to your conversations. You seem to have a lot of fun.” Afterward, as we walked to our cars to head for home, I told my friend Judy: “I’m not ready to be a ‘cute’ little old lady.” I suppose, now that I think about it, being cute is a whole lot better than being invisible.

Will Someone Please Turn Down the Music?

My son believes he’s the only twenty-one year old in America who has to ask his mother not to play her music so loudly. I know that can’t possibly be true. There must be plenty of other slightly past middle-aged moms who still love loud rock and roll. And it wouldn’t matter that my hearing is not what it used to be. It’s the music itself that makes me play it loud. To quote a friend, another old rocker from many years ago: “It was made loud to be played loud.” He played the stereo system in his apartment so loudly that whenever we were there I expected his door to explode open at any moment, exposing a crazed neighbor brandishing a loaded sawed-off shotgun.

In the 1950’s I remember watching the Ed Sullivan Show and seeing Elvis shake, rattle, and roll across our tiny little black and white TV screen. My parents, in their twenties at the time, heckled, jeered, and predicted an early death to rock and roll. “It’s not music! It’s just loud noise! How can you listen to that crap?” Over the years, “turn it down!” became their battle cry. Mother and Dad, both born in 1928, were professional musicians and had performed everything from classical to ragtime. Naturally this made them feel highly qualified to preach about this new “racket” we youngsters were calling music. A few years ago, I had the smug pleasure of telling my dad that while he was right about a lot of things, he had been dead wrong about the life expectancy of rock and roll.

Fast forward to the 60’s and 70’s when I vacillated between devotion to Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin. I lived in Chicago and saw Chicago Transit Authority, Jefferson Airplane, and Blood, Sweat and Tears—live and loud at the clubs on Rush Street and State Street. Like countless other aging baby boomers currently test-driving or already the proud owners of hearing aids, back then we stood for hours in front of booming, blasting amps taller than ourselves. The word “tinnitus” was not yet in our vocabularies.

Every now and then I have a flashback to the 60’s or 70’s and I can no longer exist without buying a CD with music by Joe Cocker, Chicago, or Janis Joplin, to name a few. Right now my favorite album is a compilation of hits by Chicago. I play “Feeling Stronger Every Day” so loud that I’m sure the people in the car next to me at a stop light can hear it, even with their windows and mine fully closed and a motor cycle roaring behind us. I’m hoping—no, praying—that if I have an accident and I’m rendered unconscious, there will be a Good Samaritan who will turn the volume down on my car stereo. I would die of humiliation if the police and paramedics arrived only to hear the words, “you know I’m all right now” blasting in the wreckage.

Change

Today is the day we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the day before our nation inaugurates Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of the United States. Though I’m a registered Republican, I consider myself a Moderate. I voted for Mr. Obama, first in the Texas primary and again in the national election. So why would I feel a little blue today?

For the first time since learning that I was a baby boomer, and about the corresponding political and economic clout associated with that demographic, I feel “over the hill.” On Morning Joe today, Tom Brokaw, Pat Buchanan, Peggy Noonan and others discussed the idea that Mr. Obama’s election heralded the end of the baby boomer’s time of power in politics. They talked about what we baby boomers have experienced and how that has shaped our political views. And they said we’ve turned a page and things will be different from now on.

Barack Obama, born August 4, 1961, was a young boy during the race riots and war protests that helped shape my generation’s thinking and beliefs. He didn’t have to go to Vietnam or send his brother, father, or son there. Our last two presidents, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, are baby boomers. I voted for each of them. Consider the acrimony and divisiveness in our nation’s politics for the past 16 years while our country was guided by these two very different leaders.

Hearing that my generation’s political influence may be waning makes me feel the world is spinning too fast for me. If, like me, you’ve been around awhile, you’ve already experienced incredible changes and most likely some overwhelming losses in your life. At age 60, rapid change makes me feel like time is running short and fast. Just when I’m not quite so rapidly adaptable anymore, the next generation is starting to pick up speed.

Just like with the Internet, email, cell phones, and texting, I’ll be scrambling to catch on and keep up. And just as these innovations have made our lives better, hopefully the new politics will bring good changes and a better world.

“For the times they are a-changin’”. . . Bob Dylan

Donna