I recall reading somewhere that Baby Boomers are in a state of
denial regarding our own aging. Umm, is that why funny aging baby boomer videos are being made about us? Regardless of our current age, many Boomers vividly remember our first interaction with someone in their senior years.
I was around 10 years old. My family lived in an apartment building and directly across from our first-floor unit lived an elderly, very fair-skinned Black woman named Ms. Preston. In my mind, I see her as clearly now as I did then. She had a head full of long, silvery white hair. When it was uncombed it puffed out around her face like a lion’s mane and made her seem just as intimidating as any wildcat.
Ms. Preston was widowed, lived alone and she struck me as being an unhappy lady. I cannot remember her ever smiling, though I suppose she must have smiled sometime at someone. Maybe she smiled at her relatives when they came to visit, but I don’t recall anyone else visiting her, just my mom and me. Sometimes when I was playing outside with my friends, I would see Ms. Preston sitting behind the sheer, white lace curtains at her window just staring into space.
My time spent with Ms. Preston wasn’t exactly a friendly visit. Mom periodically made me go over there and do small chores for her. The widow lady had limited mobility as a result of having had a minor stroke, or so I was told. She liked to keep her apartment tidy and clean, but wasn’t strong enough to do the dusting and mopping, and wash the few dishes that she used and left in the sink. Those things were left for me to do, for which Ms. Preston usually paid me a dime.
At that time, I guessed Ms. Preston was about a hundred years old, but I was a preteen then and anyone older than twenty-five seemed old to me. Looking back, I believe she may have been around 80. I am sure that she must have had some mobility, enough to allow her to take care of her most personal needs, but in all my memories of her, she is always seated on the side of her unmade bed, shoulders sort of hunched forward, one arm hanging limply at her side and wearing either a pastel colored nightgown or a light robe.
Apparently, she was unable to comb her hair, because often she would ask me to do that, too. She had very long hair for an old Black lady, and unlike in these contemporary times when just about everybody from preteens on up is wearing someone else’s hair in one form or another, Ms. Preston’s hair was her own. “Comb it harder.” she often said. “I’m not tender-headed.” Then, not bothering to hide her edginess, she would add, “You are barely letting the comb touch my scalp.” Little did she know that I never enjoyed combing her hair. And I usually stood silently behind her while doing so, so that I wouldn’t have to look into her scary grey eyes. Her cantankerous disposition always reminded me of the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz, and in my young mind she was a witch. That’s also how my playmates and I whisperingly referred to her whenever we played outside.
Mother instilled in us the same Christian values that she was taught by her parents; live by the Golden Rule and help others. Now that I am an adult, decades beyond that timid little girl, and if I live will one day be the age Ms. Preston was, I better understand her. And I fully appreciate one of the many lessons of living benevolently that mother insisted her children learn.