WE LCO ME TO MIDDLEHOOD BY JUDI KETTELER
How to Live to Be 86 SEARCHING FOR WISDOM WHILE NAVIGATING BETWEEN TWO VERY DIFFERENT GENERATIONS.
AT MY MOM’S HOUSE ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS, I WORK ON MY LIST. IT’S CALLED “HOW TO live to be 86.” My two sisters are there, as always, because we spend almost every Sunday afternoon at her house—a ritual we’ve kept for 10 years. We talk about politics, history, jobs, husbands, everything. When we started, our dad was still alive but declining, and it seemed important to spend as much time together as possible. My kids were 1 and 3, and I remember those Sundays as very difficult, because Dad was cranky and my kids were wild and I felt exhausted all the time. It’s so different now. It’s just the adults, though my daughter, now 10, will often tag along. She comes mostly for the pit stop at Finke’s, the little market full of snacks and fountain drinks just down the street from Mom’s house in Ft. Wright. She alternates 2 8 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1
between eavesdropping on the grown-up conversations and FaceTiming with her friends in my old bedroom while eating her Finke’s chips. Mom has outlived just about everyone in her circle. My dad. Nearly all of her in-laws. Several of her friends. It’s occurred to me lately that I should be paying more attention to this feat and mining her longevity secrets. “So, Mom, let’s talk more about how you’ve lived to be 86,” I ask, rummaging around in her kitchen for a pencil. I find one in the magnetic memo pad holder that’s been a fixture on the fridge forever. It’s dull white with little green flowers and a dried-up eraser. “Wait a minute, I remember buying this pencil at Card Station at Tower Hill Plaza when I was, like, 11.” “Well,” Mom says, with her characteristic head tilt, “it’s still a good pencil.” “Add it to the list: Take care of your things,” my sister, Laura, quips. In fact, more than one artifact from my childhood peeks out. I spot the plastic yellow colander in the drain board, the same one I remember from when I was a kid. It has a hole in the corner from when it must have caught the edge of a burner before someone poured boiling pasta into it. I remember that you always had to pour the pasta a little askew so it didn’t fall through the hole. Mom could have bought a new one long ago. But this one still works well enough, she says, so why throw it away? As a middle-class white woman from a family with no significant history of the diseases that tend to claim lives early, Mom has plenty of advantages in the longevity game. She’s made good choices, too, like eating healthy, taking walks, quitting smoking back in the 1970s, and staying social through friends and volunteering. “And water,” says my sister, Nancy. “Make sure you put the thing about water on the list.” The joke is that a glass of water was always Mom’s go-to first aid. We laugh as I start jotting down notes. And though I agree about the water—my kids have bruised knees but are well hydrated—I’m not actually after a prescriptive list. I’m searching for something less tangible. On one hand, Mom hasn’t strayed far from her Depression-era upbringing that said Make do with what you have. But she’s managed to balance those formative influences with the idea that you have to stay ILLUSTR ATIO N BY D O L A SU N
