A Word In Edgewise: Aging Well as an Art

Aging well is an admirable aim, but it’s best to consider that, like it or not, you’ve been aging since your eyes blinked open to the first intrusive light of day. Some resist aging early, reliving lost high school sports heroics, while others bull forward into the future, unprepared. Both reject their unique present moment.

The recently passed, 91-year-old primatologist Jane Goodall exemplifies a well-aged life. Her eyes speak volumes; one is hard-put to find an image in which her regard is not serene yet focused, whether speaking on behalf of fellow creatures, or warning of the dangers of ignoring the nature and nurture of our planet. View video of orphaned chimpanzee, Wounda, ready for release. The cage opens, Wounda exits, then turns back to embrace Goodall before vanishing into the forest.

Goodall’s parents nurtured her love for animals, but, divorced, college became too expensive. Goodall went out to Gombe, by Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, and studied chimpanzees. In 1966, sans bachelor’s degree, she went straight on to a Ph.D. in ethology.

Dolly Parton’s flash and dash, large-busted and spangly, shaking the rafters with “Jolene,” might seem far removed from Goodall’s quietness and khakis, blond hair fastened in a ponytail as she dwelt among our primate cousins. But Dolly’s no fool. “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap,” she quips, the big hair and spangles covering a big heart. She’s boosted the economy of her hometown, Sevierville, Tenn., through her art and her many philanthropies, including The Imagination Library.

Since 1995, some 270 million books have been sent to children in English-speaking countries, and 2.4 million age-appropriate books fly worldwide, every month. Her dad couldn’t read; this is Dolly’s response. Not a college grad, she holds honorary doctorates from Carson-Newman College and the University of Tennessee, honoring her contributions to music, education and philanthropy.

Featured in a recent issue of The New Yorker is a performer familiar to and loved by millions for her stage and TV performances, particularly CBS’s “The Carol Burnett Show,” which ran from September 11, 1967, to March 29, 1978, drawing up to 30 million viewers weekly, of which I was one. Burnett turned 92 this past April 26.

Her disruptive early life with/between her mom, Louise, her mother’s mother, Mae Eudora Jones, and feckless father Jody might have been more challenging than Goodall’s Gombe forests or Dolly’s Sevierville cabin and 11 siblings. Burnett and her grandmother (“Nanny”) lived in a studio apartment down the hall from Louise. Burnett slept on the couch. College tuition of $43 was just out of reach until she received an envelope anonymously containing a $50-dollar bill. The fact — for which we can be grateful — that UCLA had no journalism major led Burnett to enroll in the theatre-arts program.

Perhaps due to her chaotic upbringing, Burnett has always preferred happiness to the other side of the coin. In her recent New Yorker profile, Rachel Syme quotes long-time friend Vicki Lawrence: “Carol never wants to hear any of the bad stuff. I’ve learned that when you get together with her it’s, like, Let’s laugh … she just wants to be happy.”

Nonetheless, Burnett was brave enough to face TV audiences and offer Q&A sessions, ending each weekly show by tugging an earlobe to say good night to her grandmother, and later to her audiences. Her crew was family, yet she summarily fired one who persisted in rudeness to guests. She avoided political satire, choosing takeoffs on earlier material; her Scarlett descending the staircase in drapery and curtain rod (“Went With the Wind”)is hilarious today.

Those aged well realize their own worth but acknowledge the worthiness of others; existence is not a zero-sum contest. If you have a leaning, a gift of whatever dimension, practice it, share it and don’t give up. Classically or street learned, raise the faux-Latin cry, “Illegitimi non carborundum!”*

*“Don’t let the bastards grind you down!”