v. 70 The Women Before Me: On losing the elders and slowly becoming one
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A strange realization occurred to me recently: I have no more familial living elders.
I have older brothers, but they are not elders in the elder sense.
You already know this, but my mother died when I was 43. My father died when I was 28. My last remaining aunt died last year, which means I've had decades of practice grieving people I love. And still, I'm not sure I was prepared for the particular realization that comes with being the person now standing at the front of the line.
Forty-eight feels too young to be the elder. And yet.
My mother was big and loud in the best possible way. She had loud opinions, a loud laugh, and an equally loud commitment to protecting her grown-ass children, whether we needed it or not. She made meals that required no recipe because she'd made them so many times her hands simply knew what to do.
She is the one person I would’ve called about all this perimenopause nonsense, about the particular type of craziness that's apparently just part of the deal now as a grown ass woman. Because I'm her only daughter and therefore genetically ‘obligated’ to believe I know everything, I probably wouldn't have called her right away. I would've spent months, maybe years, convincing myself I had it all under control before eventually realizing I knew absolutely nothing and reluctantly picking up the phone. She would've told me exactly what to do. She also would've given me several opinions I didn't ask for, and if history is any indication, I would've pretended not to appreciate them before following her advice anyway.
Instead, I have Google, a very helpful doctor, a handful of excellent girlfriends who are either going through it or have already survived it, and grief, which never misses an opportunity to remind me it's still hanging around. Uninvited, of course.
Me and the aunties🩷
Though I rarely talk about them, my aunts on my father’s side were their own kind of formidable. In 2019, Ira and I went to church with my aunt in North Carolina, and she proceeded to introduce us to everyone. "This is my niece Cyndie, you know, Press' daughter. Ain't she pretty? And smart, too. And this her husband Era, he came to visit me, too." Era, Ira, same thing when you're an elder. Though I am Jewish and identify as such, I’ve always felt more at home in a Black church that I do in a synagogue. But that’s a story for a different day.
Anyway.
My paternal aunts lived next door to each other in a small town in North Carolina, and at five in the morning one would walk to the other's house and they'd start cooking. They had this beautiful choreography that only exists after seven + decades in the kitchen together. My Aunt Sara wore rubber gloves the entire time, which I remember thinking was unnecessarily serious behavior for making lunch for the church. (I mean, come on, was that really necessary?!) Southern elders, however, are extremely serious about their kitchens, their food, and who exactly is allowed to be present while cooking is happening. So I stood where I was told and stayed out of the way until I was personally invited into the kitchen, even though I was standing approximately two feet away at the dining room the entire time.
Wouldn’t you just know it but recently I came across pictures of myself prepping food …also wearing rubber gloves. I don't think we get enough warning that adulthood is just becoming your people in a million tiny ways.
The way I have full conversations with our cats and used to relentlessly make fun of my mom for doing this same exact thing with her dog. I now use my mom’s bizarre phrases and sometimes have to stop myself when it becomes abundantly clear that I am now my mother, for better or worse.
But it's not just my mother. The older I get, the more I find pieces of all of them living within me. My father. My aunts. One of my siblings. People I loved enough to miss and miss enough to keep carrying around.
There's a sense of deep understanding that only comes from someone who has already survived what you're going through, someone who looks at you and says “I know exactly what this is, I've been here, you'll be fine” in a way that you actually believe because they're saying it from the other side of whatever ‘it’ is.
That's what elders do. That's what the women in my family did for each other for decades, before I was paying close enough attention to understand what I was bearing witness to.
Now whenever I visit my brothers or my nephews, I realize that I'm the one who's supposed to do that, which I still can't comprehend. I don’t want this job and quite frankly, I am not qualified for it. Truthfully, I still just want to be someone’s child who doesn’t really have to do much. I still want there to be a bigger adult in the room, someone who has already figured it out, someone I can call and ask whether this weird thing is normal or whether I'm overreacting or underreacting or hell, making a terrible decision altogether.
That’s a picture of me and my mama up there in the kitchen.🩷
I keep my mom’s picture on our kitchen wall and I kid you not, I look at when I’m cooking for affirmation that I’m doing it right. In lots of ways big and small, I'm often looking around the room for the actual adult.
But the older I get, the more I suspect that's exactly how they felt too. I imagine my aunts standing in their kitchen at five in the morning, cooking for church, one wearing rubber gloves that their niece judged them for, feeding people who needed feeding without waiting until they felt ready or qualified or wise enough for the role they'd somehow always had.
Maybe nobody ever feels ready to become the elder.
Maybe one day you just realize there isn't anyone left standing between you and the younger people in your family, and by the time you've noticed, you've already started doing the things the elders before you did. You're worrying about people. You're feeding them. You're giving advice nobody asked for. You're telling grown adults when they're being ridiculous.
Forty-eight still feels too young to be the elder, but apparently nobody asked me.
Every essay features a section called “One Fine Microjoy” – an experience, place, or thing that brings me joy, grace, and hope amidst life’s ups and downs. I hope it invites you to recognize and appreciate the delights that ground, inspire, and enrich our journey.
The random picture I received via text from a neighbor before realizing she brought me a treat.
This week’s microjoy: Five-ish years ago, a neighbor and I went to a local street fair. As a born New Jerseyan, I took the opportunity to passionately explain my deep and abiding love for zeppoles, those fresh fried confection sugary dough balls that appear at every street fair and Jersey Shore boardwalk worth its salt.
Last week, while I was out, a brown bag of warm sugar-covered zeppoles was delivered to Ira on my behalf. Five years later, she remembered.
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With love, wisdom [and small mercies] from Montclair. xx
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