Woman of Age

While rushing through my emails I came to a halt at a post from Red Room, I think the writer is turning forty – oh that is so old! I continued to read a list of three books about old women that Red Room editors will give to bloggers that post on the topic of the week: “My favorite thing about getting older” I liked the list of books and thought I would post.

The first book “Breaking Out of Bedlam” a story of an eighty-two-year old women, Cora, living in a, I guess, nursing home. My heart went out for Cora but yoyoed right back. The book is great, from what I read, but I had hopped the  author would be a Cora. The next offering was “How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free” by a life coach and creativity consultant - very helpful I am sure but not writen by a woman of age, and I mean over fifty-five-ish (the new forty) 
I had about given up when I came to Rhoda Curtis's memoir, “Rhoda: Her First Ninety Years” and voila, there it was! A story written by a woman of age!

I didn’t post at Red Room, I am subscribed because I like the site, I decided instead to make a blog for us - women of age - to set loose, let go and revel in our past, cry, and get downright truthful – who really cares if our…family sees it!

There are so many of us with so much to write and don’t do it. Are we broken by our years? Are we imprisoned in places? Not just ‘baby boomers’ can brag to the edge and back, women of all ages and nationalities have overcome and survived a lot to age. So aging is good!

But where are we? Why aren’t we writing our life books? Are we still hiding in the shadows of compromise, looking good, not rocking the boat? What can others, including our kids, benefit from our experience and learn how it is to ride the years if we don’t tell them?

I learn a lot from a woman’s experience and could learn even more from a woman of age – not necessarily famous, or a mountain climber, or a professional, or star – but from just an everyday woman of age who dares to write unabashedly after the nest is empty: the what happened and how it is now.

So am I that woman? Am I the one who needs to step out and write her life out? Do I dare?

Here is the start, and if you are looking for looking good stop reading. I’m going to tell the truth, but this is not for award winning perfect writing and grammar. And, if I don’t reveal my true name, and others can do the same, no one has to know who we are lest we want them to and we will be less inhibited.

So here it is, the real me with a new name, I baptize me Kassandra Zavier. Don’t throw rocks when I tell you I could not pick a name and my husband, from a book of balanced names, picked Kassandra for me; you can call me Sand because I like the ocean. I looked up Kassandra, and it’s the name of an asteroid, a derivative from Cassandra who in Greek mythology is a woman who entangles men, and there is more.

Maybe very suitable, given that I was a dancer, have had a very ‘active life’, to put it mildly, and I am a mesh of nationalities. My great-grandparents, from my mother’s side were European. From my grandfather’s side my great-grandmamma was Jewish, most likely Middle-Eastern, his father, whom I don’t care too much for, was European. On my father’s side: my real last name is Armenian and his mother was most likely Hungarian.

No wonder I did all that I’ve done! Ma, it was the blood in my veins.

My grandparents met when their ancestors immigrated to America, most likely to avoid persecution or find their fortune. So Sand sounds like a mixture of all those things and of music.

I am just pounding this out from my gut because I have no intention on spending ten years editing and rewriting and writing it until it's ready - as I have with so many writings. I don’t lack ideas, or life experience, and could fill a good shelf of books half finished and some half edited. This is going out with a minimal once over; no other eyes will edit. To those who read this: If you find a mistake or how to say something better tell me, I surely would like your help. I just don’t want anyone to know I am the one writing this… get it? Or I am going to try… to look… good… and the ‘what will people say’ pest in my brain will freeze me up, judge me, edit me, and it will all be half measures.

Maybe I’ll get my own website and blog under my new name. If I do would you read me?

Does anyone out there think that we, women of age, need to write about ourselves? I do. Especially if we are not famous or if are we can do it incognito? We need to do it because it can be funny, uplifting, and good for our sanity. Pass the wisdom (not just the gas). How many of us think that our own mother’s are just milling around with nothing between their ears? See what I mean?
Yours truy,
Sand