Catherine Gentry is a Houston writer dedicated to compassionate creativity. She holds a BA in English from Princeton University and practiced environmental law in Houston for several years before retiring to raise her three now-grown children. Her essays have been featured in The Houston Chronicle, The Princeton Alumni Weekly, and Women Under Scrutiny: An Anthology of Truths, as well as in online publications including Grown and Flown, Living the Second Act, and Literary Mama. Catherine loves exploring her city to find new places and inspiration and is an avid accidental gardener. As a Writer in Residence with the Writers In The Schools program, she enjoys visiting classrooms across the Houston area to teach creative writing and inspire storytelling in new and unexpected ways.
“How old are you?”
Eliana asks me this question as I pass by her desk. She’s one of my third-grade creative writing students, and like most of her classmates, she’s eight. Her years on this planet can still be counted on her fingers. She tilts her head, her sparkly t-shirt catching the light, and looks at me like she’s trying to figure out the answer.
For a moment, I consider telling her my real age—58. But I hesitate. Acknowledging my age out loud makes it seem so real. And unlike most of my students, whose birthdays are the subject of excitement and anticipation, my next birthday feels intimidating, even a little frightening. I’ll be 59, which can’t be counted on my fingers, and is too close to 60 for comfort.
When I don’t answer immediately, Eliana loses interest. “I’ll be nine next month,” she announces, “and for my birthday party we’re going to have cupcakes with chocolate frosting and lots of sprinkles!” She smiles and turns back to her writing project, something to do with a pink unicorn and a magic portal.
Her question stays with me and I wonder again why it feels so difficult to admit my age. It’s just a number, at least that’s what people say. I don’t feel that old, even if it’s a cliché to say so. When people treat me like I’m old, it surprises me—someone unexpectedly calls me “ma’am,” the Uber driver lifts my suitcase for me without asking, or the barista at my local coffee shop tells me I remind him of his mom. It takes me off guard, their assumption that I am old, or at least older, when I don’t feel like it on the inside.
After class with my third grade students, I meet a fellow writer for coffee. She says she feels old. She is 38. Twenty years younger than I am. She could be my daughter. I can’t decide if that makes me sad or relieved, or maybe a little of both. The world is undeniably ageist, especially when it comes to women. It feels like everyone wants to look young, or at least younger, searching out Botox and fillers and plastic surgery. Each year, women spend more time and money to meet this narrow stereotype of beauty and defy the years that are inevitable. Hair can be colored and fresh new faces can be bought, but it’s not real. It’s an illusion, erasing wrinkles and lines like deleting the tally marks of experience. Even when the gray is covered, and I admit that mine is, the years are still there underneath.
My grandmother, the one I am named after, lived to be 97 years old. She was almost exactly fifty years older than me and in our family, we were known as “the two Catherines.” I loved that symmetry, the way we were alike even though we were separated by nearly half a century as an age gap. I can’t remember her without gray hair and the crinkles that formed around her bright eyes when she saw me. When I was eight, the same age as my student, my grandmother was my age. I wonder if she felt old then.
She lived a long life, passing two days after her last birthday. She missed the century milestone by just a few years. By the time she died, I’m not sure if she knew it was her birthday. Her awareness had faded with her complexion and her hair, till everything about her felt pale and fragile. I remember as a little girl wishing she liked chocolate, just like me, but up until nearly the end of her life, she enjoyed her favorite dessert, strawberry ice cream.
When I was little, I got to spend weekends with her at the farm, the one she lived on with my grandfather in rural Texas. My cousin sometimes came too, the one from California, with blonde curls that melted in the bath we shared, little girls, bubbles and blue fluffy towels my grandmother got especially for us. We woke to the sound of cows, singing mournfully to each other and my grandmother scurrying into the kitchen to make us breakfast. I remember her in her 1970s blue and tan polyester pantsuits, clothes that felt so out of place on the farm, especially for her, a former flapper with wild stories she would share after a drink or two. She told tales of growing up in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where as a teenager she went on Saturday night joy rides in a hearse “borrowed” from a friend’s father, always with someone named Evelyn who sounded heavenly.
My cousin and I played dress up in her old gowns, and I remember how we used to make veils out of the shortest ones, little girls playing at being brides, as my grandmother laughed, calling us “sweetheart” and “princess.” We imagined our lives in a castle with a canopy bed like the one we woke up in. Only later, when we were too big to share the bed, did we hear the stories about how my grandmother had run away from home at seventeen, climbed out the window and down a ladder, to marry my grandfather, a stern man who smelled of bourbon and cigarette smoke.
Looking back on it now, I think her life with my grandfather was hard. He didn’t let her make decisions or do the things she enjoyed if it conflicted with what he wanted. He liked banana cream pie so that’s what she made. My memories of her love of strawberry ice cream don’t really start until after he died. Authoritarian and demanding in life, he was the head of the family occupying the head of the table, and for birthdays, all of us got the same plain vanilla cake, with only the color of the icing and the name changing. She wasn’t smiling in any of the photos. My favorite picture of her was taken years later, when she was eighty-five. It was her birthday. A pink party hat balances on her white fluffy hair, and a smile lights her face. She’s holding a dish of strawberry ice cream with a candle in it. It took her that long to decide she could celebrate herself. I don’t want to wait that long.
When I was eight, I remember asking her how old she was. She shook her head and furrowed her brow, then announced in her deep Oklahoma accent, “Sweetheart, I’m as old as Methuselah!” As a child, I was never sure exactly who Methuselah was, and before Google it was hard to know for certain, but it had that Biblical ring to it that made it seem ancient. I’ve done research since then, and it turns out Methuselah was Noah’s grandfather, a man who apparently lived to the ripe old age of 969. I think again about my student’s question—how old are you?—and my reticence to answer. I was never great at math, but by my grandmother’s standards and possibly subject to the transitive property, I am now officially as old as Methuselah.
The realization that my own grandmother was once my age feels poignant and in some ways, liberating. I don’t have to behave a certain way. Too many people view aging as something out of control and scary, which it can be, but by clinging tightly to old ways, as rigid and unbending as arthritic joints, they make it even harder. Trying to be younger doesn’t work either. What makes young people beautiful, in part, is their lack of experience, the way they meet the world. There’s no way to copy that. I’m interested in finding ways to respect the wisdom that age brings in a world that seems to dismiss it. I’m still learning.
When I see my student Eliana in class next week, I’m going to ask about her birthday plans. Then I’ll tell her about mine. I’m going to have chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting, still my favorite, but this year, I’ll try something new. I’ll celebrate my grandmother and dish out a scoop of strawberry ice cream. I might even wear a pink party hat. People say time passes quickly. Eat dessert first. So I will. It might be a decision of the moment, but it’s one I’m going to stick with. Hold the sprinkles on the cupcake, but give me a glass of champagne. I’ll toast to another year, to my grandmother, and Methuselah, whatever age that might be.
Written by Catherine Gentry
