Old People Talking - Conversation

One of the things I love about this blog is that I often have a lot of thoughts and conversations and this is a place where I can put them. I don't know if I am sharing them. Various friends have told me from time to time, that they read something in my blog and recently a cousin from my childhood found me because he looked something up and it took him to my blog! This morning I was talking to my sister about my latest passion for dressmaking in the late 1800's as a career and an art.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my Great-grandmother was a skilled dressmaker according to the Federal Census, by the age of 16. Also by that age, I was taught in high school Home Economics Class how to sew and by 18, I was making all my own clothes. My sister and I both could sew and we grew up watching our mother re-upholster furniture and sew all the curtains for our houses. My mother also made some of my clothes and in particular, I remember an Easter outfit she made for me of pale yellow linen in the style of Jackie Kennedy, a slim skirt and bolero jacket with a paisley brown and yellow cummerbund. It was beautiful. Being a teenager, I didn't respect the garment or my mother's efforts or art - I wanted jeans and a sweater set - the going fashion for teenagers.

But I digress, and that brings me back to my subject, old people talking. This morning I asked my sister if I was boring her talking about sewing clothes and the cost of fabrics in Philadelphia in the 1960's and she said I wasn't because she liked to sew too. I asked her because I had stopped phoning my brother because although I listened politely to his endless stories about getting tree trunks and renting a log splitter to make his wood piles for the winter wood stove, and his detailed accounts of car and truck repairs, if I talked about something interesting to me, he was in the habit of putting his phone on mute. When I got hip to what he was doing, I confronted him and then stopped calling. It is a two way street. You tell your stories and listen to theirs. My sister and I do that. She talks about work rlationships and the adventures of her daily bus commute which I find interesting because I took the bus to the city daily for years when I worked at the library in Glouceter City and my bus and hers used the same route and things have changed!

Recently, however, atlunch with two friends, I was talking about discovering the death of an old friend I had looked up on the internet. The friend and I had known one another in the 1970's and hadn't kept in touch much over the years. I looked him up and found his death notice an the Canadian registry of artists. He died in 2022. It was remarkable to me because I have reached the age where often when I look up someone from the past, I found they have died. The friend with whom I was talking had done her share of the conversation on the topics of her frivolous daughter-in-law, her son's lack of control of his wife, and her still painful hip replacement surgery, and I had listened politely, but when I was talking about the Canadian artist and how we had met, she was getting impatient and interrupted and told me to get to the point and complained that I digress too much. I was hurt. I fought back and reminded her of the social cotract of friendship where we listen to one another with patience and respect. She and I haven't spoken since and I feel the friendship may be waning. Waning friendships in aging is another good blog topic for another time.

Anyhow, talking about sewing my dresses for work as a young woman working in Philadelphia in a publishing company in the 1960's may have been one of those well known 'old people boring conversations' so I asked my sister but of course, she is prejudiced in my favor and said it wasn't boring.

The friend with whom I am having lunch today was mentioning to me how when she gets together with her gentleman friend's young family, his adult children are middle-aged and their children are in their teens, none of them ask her even one question about her books or her writing or her life. They aren't interested in her at all. She has written three wonderful books on the pines: Batsto and other Quirky Places in the PineBarrens is her most popular one. She is very popular at Pinebarrens events like the antique glass and bottle show and the Clountry Living Fair and hundreds of people tell her how much they love her books, but her boyfriend's kids have no interest at all.

I have seen this before in regard to old people. Once at the photo department of Walgreens an old man showed me a photo of his Navy ship in the arctic. They were there searching for parts of a Russian crashed craft of some kind. He was trying to tell the store clerk who was visibly bored and impatient, which I have seen before, and which I understand. After all, they are working! That clerk didn't give a hoot about Russian aircraft or the arctic and the old man was keeping him from his tasks probably stocking shelves.

We have no place to tell our stories if we have no friends. That's one of the things I LOVED about my previous involvement with historical society volunteer work - we all were interested in history and enjoyed the stories we shared. Plus it was all older people who were polite by a lifetime of training and because historical clubs and societies seem to attract polite people.

I don't have any conclusions to draw from this set of observations about aging and conversation, except that I suppose it is a big challenge and an important one to continue into our aging to cultivate friends in social groups who share our interests so we have people to talk to. And, perhaps, to take up writing and also take up blogging! It just occurred to me that one of the reasons I have been so interested in my Greatgrandmother's life as a dressmaker is because I listened to an old person talking when I was young.

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com