What Would I Be At 74?

Had a little shudder when I read 'Tiny, Meaningless Things' by Marisa Silver published in The New Yorker issue of October 24, 2022. Would that be me when I'm seventy-four too? Would I be regretful and start living in the past? Or analyzing which parts of my life had gone wrong? 

While the author described the relationship (or the lackthereof) between a seventy-four-year old widow Evelyn, and a seven-year-old boy Scotty who lives across the hall, it isn't so much a story about him. It's more of a story about Evelyn. It talks of how she lives, and her thoughts reminiscing about the past, as well as going about in the present being involved in the lives of her daughters.  

Evelyn had a routine and a daily schedule of chores to complete. Scotty helped Evelyn with her chores, and he felt good hanging out there being useful, something he doesn't get being at home with his messy mother. When he was done with the chores, he would slowly eat a cinnamon toast Evelyn prepared. 

She knows almost nothing about him. She doesn’t know when his birthday falls, or the name of his school, his favorite color, or the name of his little brother. She doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up. It would embarrass them both for her to ask the condescending questions adults normally come up with to pretend they’re interested in children’s lives. The crudity of superficial intimacy would make what goes on between them inconsequential. No, her relationship with Scotty is something else. It is unencumbered by the baggage of the past or by other attachments. They exist for each other only during the time when Scotty helps her with her chores and eats his toast.

The bare relationship between Scotty and Evelyn ended when she noticed things missing at home. Small things. A pack of tissue, an eyeglass chain, Q-tips, an old seashell, a tube of toothpaste, a pen, and finally a silver corn holder that her husband loved. She went to speak with Scotty's mother. She got her things back, and Scotty never returned to Evelyn's apartment. One day, she realized that Scotty and his mother had moved out, and a new family had moved in. 

Scotty will forget what happened. He’s seven, after all, and there is so much ahead of him that will consume his attention. If he remembers her at all, it may be years or even decades from now. He’ll eat a slice of cinnamon toast and have a vague impression of an old lady, or the warmth of a freshly ironed shirt, or maybe a slight feeling of regret. But before he can place the memory something will distract him. And then he’ll forget all over again. 

Evelyn is the mother of three adult daughters — Naomi, Ruth and Paula. As life goes, she has a strained relationship with them. An interview asked if this relationship is a result of generational distance, or simply rigidity or blindness on Evelyn's part. 

Yeah, Evelyn is not an easy one! She is a sharp-edged, emotionally guarded woman. Even when her actions cause great friction, as they have with her youngest daughter, Paula, she’s unlikely to blame herself. In today’s parlance, we’d say that she has not “done a lot of work on herself.” She’d scoff at that idea! As she would at the notion of dwelling in your feelings. She would tell anyone who asked that she loves her daughters, and I think that’s true. I think they are the most important people in her life. But she can’t (or can’t yet) empathize with their sadness or struggles, because that would require her to examine her own. 

When one goes through life, at seventy-four years old, there'll be plenty to think about. One literally has a lifetime of experiences to share, but would that be dismissed as being ignorant, being outdated or being simply being annoying? 

I would need to ensure mobility and health to spend my golden years in the way I want, and not in the cliché of only hospital visits and staring at the television set. In this age, we chart our own path, and in 'retirement' and at our supposed golden age, we would need to keep our wits about us equally sharp too.  

There was a time, after Frank’s death, when she found herself watching other people—a man dragging a garbage can to the curb, a woman putting coins into a parking meter. Her fixation on them was so intense that often they noticed, but she couldn’t help it. She was mystified by the way people went about the simplest tasks, the ones that had once seemed so minor to her as to require no thought but that she now had to talk herself through, step by step, as if she were a stroke victim who couldn’t remember how to use a fork. Once, when Ruth was home from college, she found herself moving a lock of hair out of Ruth’s eyes just the way a woman at the post office had done for her daughter. Ruth pulled back and gave Evelyn a funny look, as if she’d registered the inauthenticity of the gesture, which left Evelyn wondering if she’d ever been the kind of mother who did such a thing. She’d been prepared for Frank’s death—his decline was slow, the end inevitable. When it finally came, she didn’t feel “lost” the way people often said they did after a tragedy. No, it was that she lost herself. She wonders if the person she’s been for all these years is only a vague approximation of someone she never found again.