COMING OF AGE

STORY BY CHRISTINA HUGHES BABB | PHOTOS BY DANNY FULGENCIO

Our neighborhood octogenarians, nonagenarians and centenarians tell us, in so many words, to stop the fretting. The golden years can be sweet, they say, with the right mindset and practices. It is the “fourth quarter” of life, one 80-something tells us. As in a football game, he explains, the final phase, if played with heart, can be the most meaningful, the time to give one’s best effort, a time to shine.

“I don’t want to die,” Ruth Allen says in a moment of frankness. Rather than spend much time bothered by the idea, the 88-year-old prefers to fill her life with music, sports and adventures and occupy her mind with thoughts of grandchildren, friends and her golf swing.

Ruth golfs, plays table tennis, bowls in a league, dances, travels and socializes seemingly nonstop. Yesterday she played doubles in table tennis for the first time. “It requires some fast moving, fast thinking,” she says. That she is a couple of years short of 90 hasn’t decelerated her activity much. “I had to go down a size in bowling ball because I am not as strong as I used to be,” she says. “I don’t travel much anymore, but mostly because flying is such a hassle nowadays.”

In an upstairs room of her Lake Highlands duplex hangs a map, pins marking the places she has visited — England, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Morocco, Rome (the Vatican), Rio De Janeiro, Bahamas, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Indonesia, Thailand, Tokyo, Mexico, Canada, Hawaii.

The early years

As a kid in the 1930s, she was inclined toward physical pursuits such as baseball, Tarzan-esque tree climbing, snowball fights and dare-deviling with cousins who llived on her Cleveland, Ohio street. “Riding a sled hooked to the back of someone’s car very dangerous,” she says, head shaking. In the 1940s she hung at nickelodeons, and danced to the likes of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. “My Catholic high school was all girls, so we danced with each other.” She adored athletics, but balks at what the girls at St. Joseph’s wore to gym class: bloomers.

Dreamily she recalls the nearby Poor Clares convent at whose chapel she always stopped to pray. A rental house beside

Ruth's made for an interesting parade of neighbors. She remembers a man shooting himself (not fatally) to avoid World War II. She married a boy from her neighborhood and they moved to Dallas, where Ruth held various jobs: secretary at the American Heart Association; jeweler's assistant at the Apparel Mart (where she fine-tuned her fab fashion sense); purveyor of Climax, a pink putty wallpaper cleaner; and Dallas Arboretum gift shop volunteer, to name a few. She learned to belly dance in Morocco and still dances, prefers Jazzercise. It helps her maintain good posture, she figures. “I saw my mother bending over as she aged, and I promised not to let that happen to me.”

Success — Ruth Allen is the tallest 5 foot 1 inches you’ve ever seen.

Laugh a lot

Ruth lives in a duplex about a mile from White Rock Lake. It is decorated for Halloween in September; she’s just getting started, she says. “I love Halloween and

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dressing up in costume.” A stack of old photos reveals Ruth as Donald Duck, a happy clown, a scarecrow, one half of a pair of dice and a tooth-deprived caveman. At her previous and larger Lake Highlands home, she was famous for theme parties. Her favorite show is “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Most of the other stuff, especially those daytime soaps, is unwatchable, she says. Her blonde grandsons, whose photos are scattered about, are resistant to the type of games Ruth likes. They prefer video and computer technology but rediscover on each visit that checkers and card games can be fun.

Getting old

Never feared it until she was about 80, she says. At 40? 50? 60? No. Stayed too busy to think about it. The attitude seems to have worked for Ruth; if she claimed to be 70, no one would doubt it.

But life reminds you. Her husband died in 2005 right after their 50th wedding anniversary. Losing people — parents, spouses, friends — is hard. Still, she lives in the now rather than the then or when.

The emeritus program at Richland Community College is a source of fitness, adventure and friendship, she says. The group goes sightseeing, exercises and takes an annual overnight trip.

“We went to Fossil Rim one year, and when this giraffe stuck his nose in my ear, I ended up in a gal’s lap. We became friends after that!”

When she broke her wrist years ago, the perpetually cheerful Ruth sank into rare depression. “I was so miserable, trying to do things like write with my left hand. After that, I vowed I would never allow myself to feel that way again. If I got hurt, I would relax and let myself heal.” The next spring she suddenly had to undergo triple bypass surgery. “I sat in the yard and read.” In three months she was back in Jazzercise class. Her health is good, overall. She credits physical momentum, gratitude, nature and daily oatmeal with flaxseed.

“I sit in my backyard — I love that backyard — and talk to God all the time,” says Ruth, a member of St. Patrick's Catholic Church. “He’s been good to me."