OLDER WOMEN IN THE WORLD

You know how it is when you’re vacationing in another country watching the passing parade and the women seem assured and confident? You start to think that they’re probably your age but somehow they’re doing it better. Or they at least seem to be more visible than American women.
Recently I tried this idea out on a Parisian-born woman of a certain age who lives in California and she said she’d much rather be here than there. Because even though French women continue to get appreciative looks as they age they don’t have the same opportunities we do here.

A Belgian woman I met at a book reading said the same. She said some of her European friends would never have dared to go back to school, change careers, move to another city with the ease that American women do at any age.

I love it when stereotypes come crashing down.

On my Juicy Tomatoes radio show which you can hear at http://www.juicytomatoes.com/ I talked to five women about cultural differences experienced by middle aged and older women.
Tell me what you’ve noticed.

Susan

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

I can remember when I started groaning “Oh, no. I’m turning into my mother.” I think one of the first times was when I told my kids “no humming at the dinner table,” and one asked “why not?” and I had no good answer. Certainly it was better than fighting across the table. But the no-humming rule came straight out and unedited from my mother’s mouth. Maybe she got it from her mother.

And on it goes. You keep running into your mother. You catch your reflection in a window and it's your mother. You worry about the toaster catching on fire and it's your mother. The silliest things. And one cold night you feel the need to go to the kitchen door, take a gulp of freezing air and look at the stars. Wasn't she always doing that?

Women of my generation took great pride in being different from our mothers. We were better educated, had fuller careers, broke glass ceilings, ran for office. And got married and had families and became exhausted Superwomen.

And then our daughters grew into women to have careers and babies and tweak the program to do things different from us.

But sometimes you hear them groan, too, that they are turning into us. For example, one of my daughters blames me for her compulsive list-making.

On this week’s Juicy Tomatoes radio show (www.juicytomatoes.com) I talked to five women about mothers and daughters. The relationship is full of drama and difficulties but if we're lucky it mellows, even ripes as it ages.

It’s a nice thing to think about, the link from mother to daughter and so on, when you’re out looking at the stars.
Susan