Lauren Aliza Green on Multigenerational Friendships
What Sunday music sessions with nonagenarians taught Lauren about cherishing ordinary moments.
This essay by Lauren Aliza Green went straight to my heart. I’m guessing it will go straight to your heart, as well. When Lauren said she wanted to write about intergenerational friendship, I was delighted. It’s a meaningful topic to me as so many of friends are decades younger, so I was imagining the same would be true for her. But I was blissfully wrong (which makes sense, since I’m on the older end of the spectrum and Lauren on the younger)! What an exquisite, tender tribute to friendship. I want to hang out with Walter, Shirley, Bobby, and Lauren on Sunday afternoons!
Lauren wrote another gorgeous essay for Beyond last year, when her debut novel The World After Alice was published. It’s a beautiful book; as with all of Lauren’s writing, smart, thoughtful, insightful, with loads of intrigue.
⭐️ The paperback is out this month and to celebrate, Lauren is generously gifting five readers an autographed copy of The World After Alice! If you’d like to be one of the lucky recipients, please add “Alice” after your comment. The winners will be chosen at random on Monday, July 14th and notified by Substack Direct Chat. (Shipping is limited to the United States)
I’m especially excited to share this essay with you—Lauren made a beautiful recording. The world needs this sort of care and devotion right now. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments! ❤️
All the Sundays
I ring the doorbell and wait, imagining Walter on the other side, making his labored descent. He greets me with a hug, guiding me past the stair lift and the canes propped against the wall. Every Sunday the sight is the same: dappled sunlight coming through the windows, two pianos, the Sunday crossword already completed on the couch. We gather here to make music: Walter, our friend Bobby, and I. Shirley, Walter’s wife of more than sixty years, is our sole audience member. They were all born in the 1930s, children of the Great Depression; I am twenty-nine.
Walter and Bobby take their seats at their respective pianos. Bobby, as usual, has prepared a list of jazz standards to play. I sing the vocal line on “The Lady Is a Tramp” and “Blue and Sentimental.” Sometimes, in advance of our meeting, Shirley will email me a song to learn. One week it was “I’ve Got a Crush on You” by Gershwin; another, “Like Someone in Love” by Van Heusen and Burke. I keep a running list on my phone of our repertoire.
I first met Shirley and Walter in an Italian conversation class. We discovered, serendipitously, that we lived around the corner from each other. Shirley is a retired academic; Walter, a researcher. We soon became friends, bonding on the ride home through discussions of theater, restaurants, and travel. Shirley is the more excitable of the two, with wavy gray hair and green eyes that are quick to light. Walter, by contrast, radiates stoic intensity. His mind seems often to be elsewhere, as if scanning the patterns beneath things. For this and his frazzled appearance, our Italian teacher called him “Einstein.”
At some point, Shirley and Walter learned that I was a singer and invited me to join their Sunday concerts. They introduced me to Bobby, a former speechwriter and musical savant. “Name a key,” he told me the first day, his hands already dancing around a melody. What seemed at first a parlor trick soon revealed a greater talent: he could play any song I named, by heart, in any key. His knowledge on other subjects is equally encyclopedic; he is just as likely to quote Yeats in conversation as he is to mention Kennedy’s press secretary. He’s hilarious and big-hearted, with a spirit of boyish delight. He dresses formally, in collared shirts and slacks. His frame is slight, even ascetic. He often walks me home, and I’ll turn at the last second to see him amble back down the block. There lies beneath his joy an undercurrent of sadness; his wife died many years ago.
Our performances last around an hour. Afterward Walter goes to get the drinks tray. No matter how many times I’ve offered to help, he refuses. Then we talk: politics, poetry, the past. Shirley tells me about seeing a play at Judson Church for two dollars a ticket. Bobby laments the fact that all the “gents” in the men’s room at Carnegie Hall text on their phones. They reminisce: the Vietnam protests, the summer they weren’t allowed to play at the public pool because their parents feared they’d catch polio. As a novelist, I’m used to listening. The gift here is being invited to listen to people with such rich stories to tell.
Last year, Shirley and Walter attended the launch of my debut novel. They sat in the front row so that Walter could hear. (He wears hearing aids, though those can be finicky.) A pang of emotion struck me: nostalgia for the moment while it was still unfolding. Having friends six decades my senior sharpens my sense of time’s preciousness. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the last time they’d be able to celebrate a book launch with me; if it was the last time all the people in that room would be able to celebrate in just that configuration.
For nonagenarians, Shirley and Walter get around. They drive to visit their son out of state; they fly abroad. When they leave, I take care of their plants and gather their mail. They bring me back tokens from their time away: a beautiful scarf made overseas, a whimsical pair of art-themed socks. I, too, am a traveler. When I went to Tokyo last winter, Walter asked me how I planned to communicate. “Have you heard of Google Translate?” I asked, pulling up the app to show them. Shirley looked wistful: once, misunderstanding—and the spontaneous memories that arise from it—was a necessary part of life. She doesn’t even own a cell phone. There is beauty in inconvenience, she reminds me.
*
One day a few months ago, an email arrived in my inbox from Shirley: there would be no concert that weekend; Bobby was not well. Doctors had found something. They were running tests. He was scared; they all were. I asked questions, determined to mobilize into action. I was, after all, the heartiest among us; I could easily run errands. Shirley said she’d keep me posted and that, in the meantime, Walter was teaching Bobby how to use his microwave.
We resumed our concerts the following week, under the shadow of Bobby’s looming treatments. We sang, we played, we drank. Shirley wondered if every language toasted to life and health. She rattled off a few: za zdorov’ye in Russian, na zdraví in Czech, skål! in Swedish. They all meant the same thing.
With time, our post-music conversations deepened. Our talks about Cole Porter evolved into discussions about what it meant to be a patient. “Patient” was apt, Bobby said, because withstanding the infusions, dizziness, and nausea did require immense patience. I told him about websites listing clinical trials. We discussed the healing properties of Greek yogurt. His appetite was all but gone. “Escoffier could be the chef, and it still wouldn’t matter,” he said. (I mentally filed away the name to look up later.)
What is friendship? What special powers does it have to enrich our days? I recall, as a college student, reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and being struck by this line: “Without friends, no one would choose to live.” Aristotle goes on to say that friendship benefits both the young and old—the young, because it keeps them from erring; the old, because it supplements the activities they can no longer perform. I would add to this that friendships which span the human continuum remind us that even when we feel alone or stranded in time, we’re all trucking down the same path. What comfort there is in such knowledge.
This past Sunday, I told Walter, Shirley, and Bobby about this piece, sparking a discussion on the rewards of multigenerational friendships. I said that the elderly offer a sense of perspective. The anxieties associated with youth (career uncertainty, self-doubt, comparison to others) are, to an older friend, mere trivialities. Been there, done that. They assured me such perspective ran both ways: there is immense joy in seeing life through less wizened eyes. Bobby shared a story about two friends who recently entered assisted living, and how they missed being surrounded by young people. “It’s like being in God’s waiting room,” he said.
Our time together is shaded by the knowledge of its finitude. This is okay. If anything, I wonder if more relationships would be better off being bound by this knowledge. Certainly, we seize every opportunity we have for joy. After I finish singing, Bobby beams and says, “Fantastic! Just fantastic.” This willingness to appreciate the moment—to fully, without embarrassment, embrace it—is the rare quality of someone who knows better than to take tomorrow for granted.
Last night Bobby and I walked together to the door. He wore a sweater despite the 90-degree heat. He gripped the railing. The following day, he was going for a CT scan. I wished him luck. This time, it was I who offered to walk him home. He declined, assuring me he would be fine. After we said goodbye, I strolled along the river, hoping to catch the sunset. “Blue Skies” played through my earbuds: Blue days…All of them gone…Nothing but blue skies…From now on. The music kept me company all the way home.
*Names have been changed for privacy.
If you enjoyed this essay, you might also like this one by Carmel Breathnach:
My Mother turns 96yo in September. She lives in her own home, cooks new recipes, reads Bestsellers, emails and Zooms. Mom stays on top of the news, cheers on the Mets and telephones five children, eleven grandkids and three greats often, Someone drives her daily for a walk with her walker along the long hallway at the local library,
through the aisles at Walmart or Shop Rite. Mom volunteers at a Consignment shop. She enjoys her daily nap, but laments needing one. I am lucky to speak with her every night.
I was also lucky to know and be close to my four grandparents. In my twenties, this led me to choose a career in gerontology. My first Clients were four times my age. I thought I knew so much then. Little did I know how much I would learn and grow as my life was enriched by Elders for over forty years. And now I am one (though my mother insists at 72yo I am still young!). These days I
enjoy being a grandma and am still making friends both older and younger. My Mother taught us well about how to grow older with purpose, connection, humor and grace. She is a role model for many.
We need more Laurens. Isolation and loneliness are epidemic in America. Thank you for sharing this heartwarming story, for making a difference and for inspiring others to follow your lead and reach out.
Such a beautiful essay! I cultivate inter generational friendship, I am 65 and my friends range from their 20s through every decade into their 80s. This: Without friends, no one would choose to live.” Certainly my life wouldn’t be as meaningful.