Silver Threads Among the Gold
As a child, I spent hours cranking the RCA Victrola in the corner of our row house dining room while listening to 78 rpm records. One of my favorites was John McCormack, an Irish tenor, singing “Silver Threads Among the Gold.” Through the static and needle scratch inherent in early records, his clarion voice sang:
Darling I am growing old
Silver threads among the gold
Shine upon my brow today
Life is fading fast away.
This was a favorite love ballad at the end of the nineteenth century. I must have been captivated by a voice coming out of a wooden box. I can’t imagine I was attracted to the morbid lyrics, which were written by an Ohio teenager in 1873. “Silver Threads” is still a barber shop quartet standard.
In the early twentieth century the average life expectancy in the U.S. was 45 to 50 years. Age was venerated. Today, life expectancy is in the high seventies and age is a joke—literally. Recently, I received an e-mail with a series of cartoons on ageing from Rehoboth Beach neighbors of the past. The lead cartoon showed a rather decrepit appearing woman seated at the interview desk of the Autumn Years Dating Agency. The secretary assisting the client peers at her computer screen and says, “I see you prefer to date a man with regular bowel movements. Does involuntary count?”
Another cartoon depicts an older woman in a sling back chair on the beach with sun glasses and sun hat askew holding a Tom Collins in her right hand. She comments to her friend, “Sure, marriage is lots of fun some of the time. The trouble is you’re married all of the time.”
My favorite, however, was the picture of a wise old owl and the caption, “You can’t stay young forever. But you can be immature for the rest of your life.” That should be a bumper sticker or on a tee shirt. I immediately thought of people I know who are trying to stay young forever. A multi-billion dollar industry of cosmetics, clothes, pharmaceuticals and plastic surgery has been built on products to disguise aging.
My sixty year old friend who wears black spandex biker trunks and a spandex tank top to the gym wonders why no one will talk to him. I’m not sure he had a spandex body at twenty or thirty. But at sixty spandex emphasizes his spread; it doesn’t aid his disguise. No one talks with him because his appearance is bizarre.
Similarly, I frequently see a woman in our condo elevator whose facial lines rival the crevasses of the Grand Canyon. Her hair, however, is so black the Black Stallion would be envious. I’m sure she thinks the hair color hides her gray. What it really does is call attention to the disparity between her aged skin and her Clairol hair. She’s always well groomed and gray hair would be a plus for her.
Then, of course, there’s Carol Channing, one of many celebrities whose smile has been made so permanent by plastic surgery that it will still be in place long after global warming has come and gone.
But aside for my snide observations on the cartoons I was troubled by the latter part of the old owl’s observation, “…you can be immature the rest of your life.”
I consider myself relatively mature. However, like the production of fine wine, it’s been a gradual process of aging. I certainly wasn’t mature at 17 when I got my driver’s license. Nor did maturity come at 21 with the right to vote, nor at twenty-six with an M.D. degree, nor 27 with my marriage. It came with a lifetime of experiences, many of them painful.
Again, like wine production, the dregs of the drink are eliminated in the process of decanting multiple times. In life, the dregs of immaturity are decanted by the hard knocks we all experience. But even when a fine wine is poured, a bit of sediment remains. And even now in my eighth decade a bit of immaturity remains. I’m aware of it whenever my partner says, “You never listen to me.” Frequently he’s right. There are times I don’t listen.
I’m also aware that my need to be right, and make the other person wrong, is another hold over of immaturity. Being right may make me feel momentarily more secure; but does it really matter whether the toothpaste tube is rolled or squeezed, whether the toiletries on the vanity are arranged carefully in a row or in a haphazard Rorschach design? Must all my friends be bleeding heart liberals like me?
Sediments of immaturity remain in my life.
How much sediment remains in yours?