Good News & Gratitude #10

Shoutout to Elders! And to Being An Elder! Special Shoutout to my Auntie Marge!

Hi Beyonders,

My beloved Auntie Marge died on Sunday. She was ninety-eight. I loved her beyond measure. As my niece said, she was a force. And as her grandson said, she was woke before there was a word for it. I wrote a lot about her to share with you. She was feisty and funny and loved animals the way I do; and she was my mom’s sister and they grew up in London during WWII, so there are stories.

But I realize the main thing I want to share is: She adored me. That sentence delights me to write because it means she loved me up so big and so fully that every cell in my body felt it. She always had my back. There was never a doubt.

I hope the people in my life that I love can write a similar sentence about me. That means I’ve been loving them up properly. And that they feel it.

Being an elder is something I think a fair amount about in recent years because at almost sixty-two, it would appear I am one.

When I interviewed the gigantically-hearted Victoria Redel she said: “One thing is I feel I should be bolder now. I've been thinking about my age in relation to the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. I'm an elder. It's time for me to take more risks in helping others.”

And when I interviewed the equally gigantically-hearted Lidia Yuknavitch she said: “People younger than us, people under twenty, are born into this story where everything's dying, or born into the story where there's tremendous loss. But the other side of that story, that's where all beginnings happen. So they're here, and they're doing it and either we're going notice and help them forge the path, or we're going to keep getting in the way.”

And now that I think about it, the also gigantically-hearted Kiese Laymon had this to say: “I do think it’s okay to let the younger people lead. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to do. It might mean we have more work to do. But we might have to be collaborative and ask them how we can be of service. Because, yes, they are riddled with anxiety, depression, and all of that, but also, writ large, their ideas for a more just world are better than ours. And ours were better than our parents’. The younger generation of people now are presenting a lot of ideas that are out of the box, but a lot of them much more just oriented. So, I’m saying we can let them lead. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to also be out there working.”

Dang. I feel all of this and more in my bones.

My parents were both born in London. After the war, they came to America and my Auntie Marge followed. One of my mom’s brothers moved to Australia and started a large family there. I have more aunties and uncles and cousins and second cousins and cousins once removed than I can count, but until recently, I didn’t really know any of them.

So outside of my parents, Auntie Marge was my only blood elder.

Luckily, I also had my chosen family. My dad’s two best friends from his rugby team and their wives came to America together. A Brit ex-pat community grew over the years, the established families taking in the new arrivals until they were settled. These became my aunties and uncles. I was probably in my early teens before I truly understood we weren’t blood. And by then it was too late: we were.

All of these aunties and uncles were my elders. Their love for me was fierce and it filled me with a confidence that I didn’t recognize until, well, possibly until writing this. They would have gone to the mattresses for me. I carry this feeling with me everywhere.

There were also the McIntyres from church who came into my life when I was five: my Aunt Natalie quickly became my second mom. She loved the hell out of me and treated me like one of her daughters, in both the doting and scolding. And the mothers of my friends during junior high and high school who welcomed me into their homes and loved me up and eldered me whilst I was there. And the fathers, too, though in my generation, they weren’t around as much or as active as they are now. But when they were there, they eldered me, as well.

Everywhere I went growing up, there were elders. They taught me how to drive and drink whiskey (not at the same time!) and stand up for myself, and attempted to teach me how to cook and knit. They shared stories about growing up in a country at war and the importance of community. They tended to me. Modeled grace and kindness and strength. And also showed me their flaws. I was given abundant freedom, but also disciplined by the closest elder when needed. They encouraged my often insatiable curiosity (the root of my interviews!), nurtured my compassion, allowed my anger and my gentleness. Like my Auntie Marge, they adored me. And I felt it. Still do.

This is the village that we hear so much about. Yes, all generations are needed for a thriving village. But the elders are often the guides. And I lucked out.

Now that I’m an elder myself, it’s something I take quite seriously. It manifests for me in myriad ways, though I’ve lost one avenue that meant a tremendous amount to me: teaching. I taught writing for decades at Rutgers and The New School and here in Michigan at Washtenaw Community College.

I felt honored to be a teacher. But last year, I needed to take a semester off. In part, because of the guns. The college where I was teaching had fantastic safety protocols in place that also served as constant reminders of what you were being protected from. And, in part, because whilst over the years the students became more open-hearted, open-minded, more gentle toward themselves, more accepting of one another in ways that profoundly touched my heart and gave me hope, they were also dealing with skyrocketing levels of anxiety and depression. And I, like most teachers, did my best to help. The amount of students I was walking down to the counselors’ office or staying after class to talk to grew exponentially each semester. This was deeply meaningful to me, but over time, alongside the persistent threat of guns, took a toll.

During the break, I started Beyond. And Beyond became far more work than I ever imagined, so carrying on here has made it impossible to go back to teaching. I miss it gigantically for a variety of reasons, but one of them is the way I was able to elder. Working with that age group, with all their beautiful hopes and visions and also fears, was a privilege. One that I miss.

So I look for other ways to elder. Perhaps here with Beyond? With family members who I can now channel my love into the way previous generations channeled their love into me. I do my best to stand up for them, if needed, and to just generally love the hell of them in the hopes they, too, can walk around knowing they’re adored.

With friends who are younger, of which I have many. As Kiese suggests, How may I be of service? Before it sounds like I’m some magnificent, benevolent sage, far from it! My wisdom lies solely in knowing the hardness of the world—and the beauty. And that we all benefit from love. We all benefit from having a champion. We all benefit from having a village. Even if it’s a small or flawed one. So I offer what I can when I’m able.

I’m so profoundly grateful to my elders. They are with me still. With Auntie Marge, I didn’t just lose a cherished aunt. I lost my fierce and dear elder. Of my band of elders who raised me, only my father remains.

I’ve been so lucky. I wish the luck of elders upon all of us, especially the generations coming up now.

There is so much suffering in the world right now, it’s staggering. Let’s elder one another as best we can.

End Note: I’m not sure I’ve expressed myself here quite as I would like to. Michigan is having extremely thick, damp, low-pressure weather today which blows out my head. It makes thinking clearly, articulating myself properly, finding the proper words, et cetera, hard. The literary writer in me alongside the perfectionist and Capricorn is shouting to hold this back until the weather shifts (which, in Michigan, could be weeks!). But one of the things I so enjoy about Substack is the loving support and the sense of lifting that pressure of doing everything exactly right, so I’m going to do something that is very unlike me and send this even with the concern my writing isn’t entirely clear. Head and brain injury and its longterm complications are a part of my life. I’m working on not pretending I’m fine all the time and taking some chances with presenting myself just as I am in the moment. Thanks for being here with me!

That’s it for this week! What are you grateful for? What’s your good news? What has brought you joy? Who are your beloved elders? Who have you served as an elder to?

xJane