can you see me?

Last year, I read a book called “Calling Invisible Women” by Jeanne Ray. The story resonated with me as the main character was a married mother of two in her early 50’s who wakes up one morning and realizes she is invisible. Her family does not notice any change in her but her friends notice right away. As a woman of a similar age, I often feel invisible to certain groups of people. When I say “invisible” I mean that middle aged women often feel irrelevant to people 35 or younger. This is not always true and there are benefits to being old enough not to care what others think but it is something you notice especially when you wander into settings where you used to be visible and now are definitely not (like concerts or bars). 

Luckily, I happened upon a place where being in my early 50’s made me VERY visible in a good way. I went to visit my parents at their remotely located 55+ adult active community. My parents reside in a neighborhood that is two and half hours from Phoenix, forty five minutes north of Tucson, features golf, tennis, pickleball and hundreds of clubs and activities. They have joined book clubs, swim teams, competitive ping pong, Spanish lessons and participated in a variety show. Previously LA natives, they have met tons of new friends from all over the country with various professional backgrounds. When they first moved there, I was a little jealous that it seemed like they were living the best parts of college – all the social life without the academic pressure.

Whenever I go to visit them at their senior living community, I feel an immediate increase in my self esteem. Each morning during my visit, I go with my aunt and uncle, who also live in the same community, to play pickleball. While at the courts, I feel tall, strong and like I have the best posture on the planet. I don’t win every match but I make an impression on my opponents with my ridiculous agility, fast hands and willingness to run down a lob. I feel like I have an acceptable amount of athleticism when I am home amongst my peers but in this setting I consider pursuing pickleball professionally.

Beyond the courts, I am able to shock and amaze my parents and some of their friends with my knowledge of technology and ability to get things done on my phone. On my most recent trip, we walked into a nearby Trader Joes (nearby meaning twenty or more minutes from their house) and I pulled up two recipes on my phone and purchased the ingredients for two dinners. The idea that I obtained these recipes between getting out of the car in the parking lot and grabbing a shopping cart was almost inconceivable to them. I know that they know how to use online recipes but taking it to the next step of choosing one or two while in the act of grocery shopping was next level. Their response to this and other small tech assisted efforts made me feel like I had been undervaluing my level of proficiency in everyday tasks.

That same evening as the Trader Joe’s inspired dinner was being prepared, I found out that my son’s presentation of his final engineering project was going to be live streamed. I informed my parents, aunt and uncle that we would get to see my son’s team present a product they created during the semester in real time. My uncle just could not believe this was happening. We were in Arizona and my son was in Boston! As my son spoke and we could see everything happening live, my uncle asked five or six times, “Is this really live??” I felt like a ringmaster at the circus bringing unbelievable, never-before-seen sights and sounds to this adult active community!

With my confidence soaring, I asked to take on the biggest technological problem in their household – no entertainment streaming of any kind. They believed they had a Netflix account but did not know the user name or password, had not heard of Hulu and were watching TV live as available on cable. At 10:15 pm, they would jump in fifteen minutes late to an old episode of a one-hour drama and were entirely satisfied being limited to live television. I needed to make their entertainment world sing with options! Sadly, though, I was in over my head. I had forgotten that older TV’s do not have the ability to add apps and the Tivo they had was somehow not connected to the internet. I chalked up this small failure to wiring and connectivity issues that were not under my control and continued to feel highly visible and overwhelmingly capable. 

I ended my visit in Arizona feeling like I should try to find other small pockets where I might get the same positive feelings beyond just feeling superior to women my age on “90 Day Fiance” who are pursuing relationships with men in foreign countries who are half their age. I think this may be a constant quandary of aging. How do you get older and wiser and still be learning and having interesting experiences? Or, how do middle-age people find ways to make themselves visible or interesting enough to convince younger people to pay attention to them and not write them off as “old”?