A. I am standing outside the rest room near the children’s section on the ground floor of the main Brooklyn Public Library, a sumptuously renovated palace of soaring ceilings and gold inlays. Sumptuously renovated, that is, in every respect but one: the restroom is tiny, jammed, totally unequipped to accommodate the constant flow of visitors.
I am waiting outside while my daughter in law attempts to attend to my grandchildren, one of them a newly trained two year old whose bathroom requests are ignored at one’s peril. I’d love to help, but there is no way I can fit in the room. Clearly the woman my age standing a few feet away is in a similar situation. We fall instantly into one of those senior women exchanges that need no introduction, no explanation, involving head shakes, eye rolls and perfect connection. Is this nuts? Wouldn’t you think—??? They go to all this trouble and then this is the best—??? Can you believe it? It just goes to show…
B. I am walking down a street in Washington DC when I come upon a crowd of young people, standing, sitting, congregating. An air of sharp expectancy is in the air; for a second I am shot back to the protest movements of my youth. Then I realize: this is no protest. They are simply waiting for an Apple store to open so they can buy the newest technological toy. I back up, and find myself standing next to a woman my age whose expression reflects my own almost exactly; we immediately start talking. This, this is what brings them out these days? After all the civil rights marches, the anti-war demonstrations, this is the sort of event that galvanizes them? We shake our heads, in perfect harmony.
C. I am riding on the subway when two young teenage boys burst into the car, bristling with energy, laughing, swearing, thrilled at the possibility they could be seen as threatening. A woman my age is seated directly across from me; our eyes meet. We exchange no words whatsoever, instead conduct an entire conversation with minimal movements of mouth, eyes, brows. Great, now we have to deal with these idiots. Isn’t there anyone around to read these two the riot act? These kids today get worse and worse. The mutual understanding is complete.
In each case, the lines of connection are forged in an instant; the exchanges are brief, comforting, satisfying. I am white; the other women are black. This fact makes no difference at all.
As a young woman, I knew and worked with a number of black women; some I became close to; one, my late friend Johnnie, was a friend for years. But in no case was the connection forged with the same direct ease, the same immediacy as the situations above. With Johnnie and me it took years before we were able to peel away the various barnacles and crustifications and get down to simple, one on one friendship.
But in the situations above, our age—our mutual, senior age—seems to melt away all the extraneous, socio-economic-whatever-generated racial crap that so often stands between people with different shades of skin. In some ways it feels like a return to my early childhood, when I lived in a scruffy DC neighborhood and had as many black friends as white. Women my age have gone through so many similar experiences that by this point, similarities far outweigh differences.
We’ve had marriages and divorces, raised sons and daughters, have grandchildren and daughters and sons in law. We’ve had aches, pains, disappointments. We’ve worked; we’ve kept house; cooked, cleaned, handled family holidays; we’ve cared for ailing relatives; battled our own health problems. We’ve seen a lot, and know things young people don’t know yet, know too that most of them don’t feel like hearing them, either…much of the time don’t, in fact, even tend to see us. Not really. We fit into too many easy slots—babysitter, grandmother, matriarch, crone—to be seen as individuals.
But we, the older women? We DO see each other. Black or white, it makes no difference. We know where we come from. We respect the journey we’ve each been on for so many years. And we respect each other for having made it this far, having reached this point.
What possible effect could something as minor as a difference in skin color have, set up against all that?
Is it the same for men? I doubt it. This is a grandma thing—I feel it in my bones. People tend to think senior women are invisible, and maybe we are. Only not to each other.
We have an automatic bond. White, black, brown and gray, we share the kind of sisterhood that only comes with age. That much is clear, not just from the incidents cited above, but from innumerable moments, in check-out lines, on busses and trains, in streets, parks, restaurants, elevators.
The conclusion is unavoidable: for women, at least, age trumps race. Every time.
From December, 2012