I'm an old man.

      Two of the 20th century's most famous feminist writers wrote books about being old. Simone de Beauvoir, France's gift to feminism wrote The Second Sex  about women's second class status. Then as she got old, this long time unmarried partner of Jean Paul Sartre, wrote another path breaking book called Old Age. When it appeared in North America it was titled'The Coming of Age.' which shows you how Americans and Canadians fear getting old.
      Betty Friedan was no slouch as an author either. The Peoria  Illinois born  Friedan went to Smith College in the l940's. Then in the early 1960's she wrote a book that literally changed the world. It was called 'The Feminine Mystique' and helped give birth to the second wave of feminism.  Friedan too wrote a book about being old. Hers was called 'The Fountain of Age'. (At least that's how I recall the title.)
      For De Beauvoir old age was a hell. For Friedan it was heaven. Who was right? I give the edge to De Beauvoir. But I'm an anxiety-ridden pessimist  who as one woman once told me, "always see the worst side of things." So de Beauvoir's view of old people as mostly poor, ugly useless things struck the right chord when    I read  'Old Age' way back in l974 or so.
         I  read both books again a few years ago. Friedan's book was a happy book. In some ways it was abreathless journey to some of the most high achieving old people I've ever heard of. "Where are the now retired cashiers, carpenters, middle school teachers?" I asked the woman who recommended the book to me. "All I see here are Nobel Prize winners and formerly high level scientists, doctors and company executives."
    But now I can give a definitive answer to my questions of the past, because now I'm an old man. And as de Beauvoir predicted my teeth are crumbling, the hair on the top of my head has long vanished, arthritis racks my arms and fingers and I'm gulping down at least five pills a day. Medical expenses are eating away my meagre savings and like most old people I spend too much time looking backward and not too much time looking forward. Because not too far ahead- say four or five years or less- lies the dreaded  spectre
of death. Okay maybe I've overdone it a bit but that's how I feel some days.
      But then there's days when I feel great. There's no more big struggles that lie ahead except extinction. I've got enough money for now which certainly wasn't true until I turned 40. The wonderful Internet has opened a whole new world to me and billions of others. Then too I'm a watercolorist and finally I've found a subject to paint, namely trees. "My work is competent," I tell anybody who asks about my paintings. "They're no more than that. " 
      But I do enjoy painting.It's added a whole new dimension to my life that gives me joy as I watch some of my friends pass away. So both de Beauvoir and Friedan, who are now dead, got part of the truth about old age. They were both great writers who helped changed the world for the better. And I'll remember them both, until dementia or Alzheimer's diseases overwhelms my mind.