Boomers Can Help Biden By Speaking Up About the Realities of Aging

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My then–eight-day illness coincided with President Joe Biden’s stricken performance at the first presidential debate on June 27; and so, I have been thinking about age and the limits it imposes on our energies; and how long it takes some of us to acknowledge its real impacts, as though we might have prevented our physical decline and mental slowdown. As though we are at fault.

Let’s begin with the obvious: The debate’s 9 p.m. start time in the president’s time zone is when most old people (including me) get ready for bed. He was tired! I’ve since heard that Biden had a cold that Thursday night, which explains the weak, scratchy voice. (Or was that the excuse the campaign invented?) Regardless, if Biden felt half as compromised as I have with my upper respiratory infection — when I have misspelled “horseradish” on the grocery list, run over a curb on a day when I had no business driving, repeatedly emailed “Christy” at work when I meant to send messages to “Crystal,” and committed any number of verbal gaffes with my antibiotics-addled brain — then I’d be willing to give the president a pass on his poor performance.

But I don’t think physical exhaustion explains it, unless you acknowledge it as a natural consequence of his age. That’s the conversation that anxious Democrats seem reluctant to have. Joe Biden is old. We don’t have to hide it, mock it or try to explain it away. When performing without the benefit of a teleprompter, or the psychological comfort of his team of aides, Biden acted like what he is — an 81-year-old man who is decades past his prime. And who should not be running for the most rigorous, visible and consequential job in the world.

I doubt whether Biden can be convinced to pass the baton less than two months before the Democratic convention, though the next-day New York Times column by his friend Tom Friedman made an eloquent and compassionate case for why that decision would serve the country. “[T]ime has finally caught up with him,” Friedman wrote. “And that was painfully and inescapably obvious on Thursday.”

Asked to bet today, I’d predict we are careening toward a second Trump presidency, which will be a disaster for the environment, for women’s reproductive rights, for immigrant protections, for an independent judiciary, for public-school funding and so much more. Perhaps, in the meantime, we can salvage a graceful exit for Joe Biden by ceasing to slap our foreheads and exclaim about his perfectly normal signs of aging: the shuffling gait, the search for words, the raspy voice, the stooped posture. All of which I remember from my own father’s decline, a man who, like Biden himself, had once been a sharp-minded attorney and politician, too.

As I stare down turning 67 on July 4, I am mindful that we can best locate empathy when we have experienced another person’s plight ourselves. It’s no surprise that I felt nothing but sadness for Joe Biden, who is nearly 15 years my senior, as he lumbered and stumbled onstage. I saw in him a quality that, until recently, I’ve been unwilling to see within myself — a refusal to concede to age, to recognize when it is time to step back and clear the path for younger people.

My upper respiratory infection hung on for 10 days and took two different prescriptions to kick because I had spent weeks performing like I was 20 years younger than I am. Having assured my retired husband I would scale back my work commitments this year, I instead stubbornly hung on to my two part-time jobs while taking on freelance assignments and contract work that I was afraid to turn down — all at a pace I once readily sustained. Mix too little sleep and too much multitasking with generalized stress, and you eventually get sick.

And if you’re old, you take a long time to get well.

I’ve since quit one of the part-time jobs and am scheduling my freelance work more carefully. But more than once during this extended illness, I have remarked to my husband that I tire more easily, that I must start prioritizing rest. “If that’s aging in a healthy 67-year-old,” I’d say, “how does an 81-year-old president do it?” Those comments now seem prescient, post-debate.

Neither my husband nor I is a huge Biden fan, but we are staunch Democrats and we’re afraid of Donald Trump. We’ll vote for Biden if he stays in the race and are trying to convince our Socialist older son that he should care enough to vote at all. The broader realization, however, is that we aging Boomers lack humility. We’ve been in charge for so long, during such a pivotal time in U.S. history — a period that I now recognize to be an anomaly of liberalism in a self-interested, deeply conservative country — that we can’t see our limitations and step off the stage.

We wouldn’t be in this position now if the Democratic National Committee had built a bench back when Biden was billing himself as a “transition” president, the only one who could defeat Trump in 2020. We wouldn’t be here if he had made more use of a Black female vice president whom, it appears now, he picked for show and to appease a constituency he couldn’t afford to alienate.

But here we are. The commentators who call for this clearly exhausted president to get on his feet again, prizefighter-style, to schedule interviews “in unfriendly places” and to forcefully compete are themselves still in denial. They’re asking him to summon a level of energy that most 81-year-olds cannot muster, let alone keep up between now and November.

Being this sick for this long, I have been forced to cancel appointments, to read and nap, to recognize that my body no longer will allow me to push at the edges of my energy. I can still contribute, but it’s going to have to be in different ways. Biden’s greatest gift to the country, to his family and to himself would be to make way for a successor and offer himself as the advisor and elder statesman that he deserves to be.

Some question whether the president, from his seat at the pinnacle of power, is capable of that level of self-awareness. “What was the combination of moral conviction, personal confidence and selfishness that propelled Biden, despite the risks, toward his decision to seek another term?” asked columnist David Ignatius in a Washington Post commentary that my sister shared with me the day after the debate.

To say that Biden no longer is up to the job is neither to blame him nor to deny the achievements of his administration. In fact, it is ageism — a perverse sort of shame — to avoid citing his diminishing capabilities. We aging Boomers must speak publicly about the realities we are experiencing as we grow old. Only then can we demystify and make peace with this most natural, and inevitable, of life’s progressions.

You Can’t Know a Place Until You’ve Been There

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Leading up to my vacation in mid-April — where my modest goals were to unplug, hike, read and relax — I loved watching people’s faces when I told them where I was going.

“Paducah.”

Is that in Kentucky?

“Yes, Mitch McConnell territory.”

So, what draws you there?

In truth, it was a friend recommending the arts scene and the National Quilt Museum that got me thinking about Paducah (and trying to talk my husband into it). He and I had debated about Memphis, Santa Fe and Asheville, North Carolina, but what we really wanted was a manageable, low-key place in which we could escape city traffic and return to our small-town roots — but still have some interesting things to do. If that meant two deep-blue Minnesota liberals would venture into solid red Kentucky, so be it.

Paducah, Kentucky, sits at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, and had a catastrophic flood in 1937.

Paducah, the smallest of the nine UNESCO Creative Cities in the United States, seemed to fit what we were looking for. UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and it cites Paducah (along with Santa Fe) as a notable City of Crafts and Folk Art. We found that to be true, during a five-day visit that included:

The population of McCracken County, for which Paducah is the county seat, is 67,400. But to find this array of culture in a town of 27,000 — cafés and restaurants, locally owned art shops, bars with bands and solo artists, a river history museum, a downtown movie theater screening Civil War — was astonishing on the southern edge of the Midwest.

Two sides of Paducah

And that’s my point. Had we simply driven through downtown, where the Republican Party headquarters sits squarely in a business district pushing to make a post-COVID comeback, I’d have confirmed my stereotypes about Kentucky (which still calls itself a commonwealth) and kept going. But we got out of the car and stayed a few days — meeting locals, walking the streets, riding bikes, renting a 130-year-old brick “shotgun house” in a weedy, working-class part of town a fair distance from the Holiday Inn where the quilters stay.

We frequented an “all are welcome here” coffeehouse, Etcetera, one of the few eating establishments that didn’t shut down on Sunday in this heavily Christian town. (The closest Unitarian church, which I would have liked to attend, was 97 miles away in Clarksville, Tennessee.) Etcetera attracts colorfully tattooed young people and has a resident cat who sleeps in a heated little house on the patio. The backyard neighbor keeps two lovingly restored Studebakers in his garage, and I was only too happy to hang out and read while he chatted up my husband about classic cars.

Owen Kim Blaisdell, Paducah Ambassador
One of 60-plus floodwall murals

In short, we found our people: the retired schoolteacher outside the Republican headquarters who directed us to Kirchoff’s, the best bakery downtown, with the bonus of a women’s clothing section in the adjoining coffeeshop; the helpful owner and bike mechanic at BikeWorld near the 135-acre Bob Noble Park (also close to the 55-acre Stuart Nelson Park, once the segregated recreation spot for Blacks and now host to the annual Emancipation Celebration every August 8); the young couple restoring the shotgun house next to our AirBnB, who’d wait to blast their music until we left.

We met other folks with whom we were more careful, like the proprietor of a cramped antique shop who piped up when I saw a campaign sign from 1980 in which Ronald Reagan commanded that we “make America great again.”

“I didn’t know that all started with him,” I told my husband. “I thought ‘It’s Morning in America’ was Reagan’s theme.” The proprietor, standing tall, proclaimed Reagan to be a great president. She showed no interest in our viewpoints, likely detecting our disdain, and said her daughter is a Democrat “only because they give her money.” We smiled and moved on to the Four Rivers Corvette Club showcase across the street.

Dogs have to wait at Kirchoff’s Bakery & Deli, too, where a line stretches out the door on Saturday mornings.

On those blissful early mornings when I sat with my journal and a fresh cup of coffee, I pondered how Paducah felt different from my heart-of-the-city home in St. Paul, Minnesota:

  • No recycling containers, anywhere. We even asked a cop.
  • No apparent mass transit system, though I did see one bus stop.
  • No food co-op; and granted, Paducah is small, but Northfield, Grand Marais and St. Peter, Minnesota, all have them.
  • No bookstore downtown and likely no zoning laws. Parking lots take up a lot of precious space.
  • No consistent infrastructure for walking or bicycling. Sidewalks in our neighborhood were in disrepair, and some just ended mid-block. The only painted bike lanes I found were out by BikeWorld.
  • No recovery meetings for women, though the sunburned men wearing bill caps and work boots welcomed me warmly to their meeting. The sayings and the steps were all comfortably familiar — “just spoken with more of a twang,” I told them with a laugh.

Those men’s generosity, their acceptance, helped me avoid a head space where I crossed my arms and complained about what Paducah isn’t or what it lacks (“another Dollar General store?”). That’s too self-satisfied, too sanctimonious, plus it’s the antithesis (or should be) of why we travel. Not to confirm our ways of thinking or insist that others conform to them, but to challenge our habits and beliefs, expose ourselves to something new.

Quilting artist Barbara Ann McCraw has an exhibit at the National Quilt Museum called “Life Stories.” Twenty-two percent of Paducah’s population is Black.

No sooner had I decided to observe rather than judge the differences in Paducah, than I was confronted for what felt like the umpteenth time by a person who declared they could never live in Minnesota because it’s so cold. “How can you stand it up there?” Try as I might to describe the beauty and variety of the four seasons, to explain that you learn to dress for the cold, to cite the social services and amenities that our high tax rate affords us: I could see it. They would visibly shut down.

Whether on the plane, or at Ann Patchett’s bookstore, Paranassus Books (our one stop in Nashville), or in a conversation where I was trying to show genuine interest in Paducah and its confluence of rivers or the stunning Land Between the Lakes Recreation Area that straddles Kentucky and Tennessee, the person who had a preconceived notion about Minnesota clearly wasn’t interested in learning more.

And that’s a shame, because I’d like to show them my home state with the same joy, vigor and gracious hospitality that they showed me theirs. I never thought I would visit Kentucky. I’m too mad at Mitch McConnell and the legacy he’s left us of a conservative six-member super majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. But if politics were a reason to avoid travel, I’d go nowhere but Minnesota in the Upper Midwest.

Beauty is easy to find in Paducah.

If Kentuckians want to write off Minnesota for the weather, the best I can say is, “Your loss.” I’m glad I visited Paducah, grateful to have pushed past a stereotype. The docent in the National Quilt Museum described the difference between 18 feet and 18 inches in examining the artwork on their walls. “At 18 feet,” she said, “you see the vision. At 18 inches, you see technique.”

From 18 feet away — or, actually, 744 miles — my vision of Paducah was that of a backwater, no place I’d ever care to visit. From 18 inches, right up close, it was a special community, with a lively arts scene and friendly people. A town I would return to, and one I recommend.

Weather or Not: The Rituals of Daily Dog Walks

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How many health habits — physical, spiritual, emotional — have I promised myself I would stick to every day? Pushups and neck stretching, journal writing and meditation: They feel good when you do them, but time gets away from me, and then I forget until the next good intention comes along.

Not so with dog walks. Ever since my family rescued our first dog (the late, great Skip) in 2000, followed by sweet Lucy in 2003, I have dog walked every morning — sick or healthy — without fail, unless I am out of town. When people ask how often I walk my household’s current dogs, Mia and Gabby, I can honestly tell them: “Every day, any weather.”

A recent article in the Washington Post, reprinted in my local newspaper, urged readers not to “skip your dog’s walk” or assume that letting them out in a fenced backyard would suffice. The reasoning shows the human benefits of dog walks, too.

  • Dogs need exercise and don’t pursue it on their own.
  • They need the mental stimulation of seeing — and smelling, always smelling — new things.
  • And they need “human interaction,” which I would reframe as bonding. You develop a relationship with your dogs when you’re outside together every day.

Though I don’t always want to leave my house early in the morning, I am always glad I did once I get out there. Putting my feet on the street and my face in fresh air is as good for my mental health as it is for theirs. Once Gabby does her down-dog stretches, or I see light softening the sky, we suit up and show up. It’s time to go.

Mia (left), Animal Humane Society, born in 2014; and Gabby, Standing Rock Indian Reservation, born in 2018.

The walks go better when I stay calm.

I like to stride when I walk: head up, glutes pumping, spine long and straight. At 66, I am grateful to be able to move so fluidly. Striding uninterrupted rarely works with leashed dogs, however. “Guardians need to take the animals’ lead,” says the dog-walking article, rather than dragging our pets along on our fast-paced walks or runs or on a bike ride — I shudder whenever I see it — with a leashed dog straining to keep pace.

“If your dog wants to sniff every blade of grass, then that’s what they want to do on their walk,” says a dog-training advocate quoted in the Washington Post piece, which, tellingly, never uses the term dog “owner.” My morning dog walks are for Mia and Gabby, not for me. If I want pure exercise, I can schedule that for another time.

Sometimes I imagine the dog walks as a metaphor for life. When the girls pull on their expandable leashes or go off in different directions, forcing me to pirouette in the middle of the sidewalk to keep us all from getting tangled, I liken the aggravation to the pressures I navigate each day. Whether it’s a project that has hit a roadblock, or an imagined slight from a friend, or my perpetually overbooked calendar — it will all smooth out eventually if I respond more than react.

So it is with my willful, unruly dogs. Praise and positive reinforcement, as well as a few consistent commands (“too icy” during the winter, when an unplowed alley looks unsafe), go much further than yelling at them or letting myself get exasperated. I can breathe deeply and watch the sunrise, or admire an artful garden, or look in a shop window while the dogs scratch and sniff. That makes the walk more interesting for them and much more pleasant for me.

My husband loves the New Yorker cartoon that shows a mid-sized dog on a leash with a thought bubble: “Always good dog, never great dog.” Our dogs are great. It’s hard to overstate how much they mean to me. If I praise Mia for listening rather than yelling at her for stopping at every tree, if I kneel and stroke Gabby’s chest while she squirms at a long red light, if I let them visit their regular haunts in our neighborhood — the yard with food scraps outside the fence, the husky with the blue eyes who never barks — then I am allowing them some agency, acknowledging their intelligence.

It isn’t always my agenda; that practice serves me in relationships with humans, too.

Sometimes, the dogs see a cat.

Our neighbor, Tim, walks his cat around the block once a day on a thin nylon rope, and Gabby, especially, goes manic behind the fence that surrounds our backyard. Installed by the previous homeowners, the wrought-iron fence allows her to see who is walking along the side street of our corner property — which, in my view (not to mention the dog’s), is critical.

I feel for the dogs behind those tall, wooden privacy fences who can hear and smell other animals but can’t see them. They paw frantically at the ground, and stick their snouts beneath the gate, baring their teeth but mainly wanting to engage. Which is what I long to tell the owners when they open the back door to yell at the dog for being just that. A dog.

We see the occasional roaming cat on our morning walks. Mia and Gabby bark and lunge while the cat hisses and arches its back, calling to mind the phrase “fighting like cats and dogs.” Rabbits are prey, not to taunt but to kill. Gabby goes into hunting pose, keenly alert, her tail straight up in the air, when she sees a rabbit freeze in self-defense. Her jaw opens and closes as if preparing to chomp down fast. It’s pure instinct on display.

Drawing by Anna Frodesiak (Creative Commons)

A rez dog whose relatives still hunt for most meals, Gabby has killed rabbits in our backyard. She’s even ferreted out a few bunnies in alley bushes on our morning walks, carrying the poor things home squirming or flopped dead between those warmed-up jaws.

We saw a coyote one summer morning, standing in the middle of the street. At first, I thought it was a long-legged, shaggy dog without a leash. But it looked too wary and thin to be domesticated, and the coyote lost interest in making a meal out of my smaller dog, Mia, once it saw me. Instead, it turned and trotted toward the river while I calculated how many busy roads it had to cross.

The beauty and rhythms of nature remain evident, even in the city, if you take the time to notice — contemplating the outsized impact we humans have had on the planet, as though we owned it, holding back leashed dogs that yearn to run.