HEALTHY AT 100 (35 page)

If you were lonely, neglected, or abused as a child, it can be an immensely difficult journey to seek love and healing within yourself. But it is possible to overcome such a hurtful legacy and reclaim your life. A key is to learn to treat yourself differently now than you were treated then, and to surround yourself with people who see and affirm your worthiness, and in whose presence you can be your whole and loving self. You don’t have to continue the legacy of hopelessness that you received, and you don’t have to pass it on to your own children. Instead, you can express your uniqueness and discover the healing powers of your own way of loving.

Ernest Hemingway wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” A heart that has been broken is still alive. One of the most healing things you can ever do is to find strength in your wounds and emerge with deeper wisdom, creativity, compassion, and connection to yourself and to others.

If you are able to use your pain for self-transformation rather than self-pity, if you are able to use your loss and grief to awaken new life and compassion within you, then it ceases to matter so much how cold or dysfunctional your parents might have been. If you can be the kind of parent to yourself and to the children in your life that you have always wanted, then you will learn everything you need to know about the healing power of unconditional love.

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

—W. Somerset Maugham

J
ames W. Prescott is the founder of the Developmental Biology Program of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Human Development. When he conducted a survey of forty-nine traditional cultures, he found that some took pleasure in killing, torturing, or mutilating their enemies, while others did not. What, he wondered, could account for the difference? The answer, he found, was “physical affection—touching, holding, and carrying.” Those societies that inflicted physical punishment on their children produced brutal adults. To put it technically, a low score on the Infant Physical Affection scale correlated with a high rate of adult physical violence.
¹

And Dr. Prescott discovered something else, too. He found that those societies that lavished physical affection on their children produced happy and healthy adults. In such societies, people were more trusting of one another, and their lives were characterized by more pleasure and less violence.

One of the hallmarks of the societies that exemplify healthy aging is that children are loved, held, and cared for constantly. They are rarely if ever scolded or shamed, and the idea of striking a child is
completely foreign. Those in modern society who favor corporal punishment of children believe it is necessary to teach them right from wrong. But in these societies where no child is ever hit, children are remarkably well behaved and discipline is almost never a problem. Having been treated with respect, children naturally respect their elders.

Cultures like Abkhasia, Vilcabamba, Hunza, and traditional Okinawa have no need for orphanages. This is not because parents never die. Rather it is because when they do, the children are quickly taken in by other families and by the whole community, who do all they can to be sure that the little ones not only have their basic needs met, but also feel continuously cherished, loved, and upheld.

It seems to be a defining characteristic of societies where healthy aging is the norm that people are rarely if ever abandoned or rejected. When people are in need, be they old or young, they are always taken in and cared for. People who are disabled or who have special needs are never ridiculed, shamed, or isolated, but are helped to participate as they can in everything that goes on.
One of the great secrets of these healthy cultures is that no one is ever made to feel flawed, imperfect, or unworthy of love.

In modern society, of course, it is not always that way. Abbie Blair tells a story that speaks, I think, to the timeless human longing for a way of life in which no one need fear rejection, in which all are welcomed and all are loved:

I remember the first time I saw Freddie. He was standing in his playpen at the adoption agency where I work. He gave me a toothy grin. What a beautiful baby, I thought.

His boarding mother (the woman at the orphanage responsible for his care) gathered him into her arms. “Will you be able to find a family for Freddie?”

Then I saw it. Freddie was born without arms.

“He’s so smart. He’s only ten months old, and already he walks and is beginning to talk.” She kissed him. “You won’t forget him, Mrs. Blair? You will try?”

“I won’t forget.”

I went upstairs and got out my latest copy of the Hard-to-Place
list. I wrote, “Freddie is a ten-month-old white Protestant boy of English and French background. He has brown eyes, dark-brown hair and fair skin. Freddie was born without arms, but is otherwise in good health. His boarding mother feels he is of superior mentality, and he is already walking and starting to say a few words. Freddie is a warm, affectionate child who has been surrendered by his natural mother and is ready for adoption.”

Yes, he’s ready all right, I thought. But is there anyone ready for him?

It was 10 o’clock on a lovely late-summer morning, and the agency was full of couples—couples interviews, couples meeting babies, families being born. These couples nearly always have the same dream: They want a child as much like themselves as possible, as young as possible, and most important, a child with no problems. “If he develops a problem after we get him,” they say, “that is a risk we’ll take just like any other parents. But to pick a baby who has a problem, that’s too much.”

And who can blame them?

I wasn’t alone in looking for parents for Freddie. Any of the caseworkers meeting a new couple started with a hope: maybe they were for Freddie. But summer slipped into fall, and Freddie was with us for his first birthday.

And then I found them.

It started out as it always does—a new case, a new Home Study, two people who wanted a child. They were Frances and Edwin Pearson. She was 41. He was 45. She was a housewife. He was a truck driver.

I went to see them. They lived in a tiny white frame house, in a big yard full of sun and old trees. They greeted me together at the door, eager and scared to death.

Mrs. Pearson produced steaming coffee and oven-warm cookies. They sat before me on the sofa, close together, holding hands. After a moment, Mrs. Pearson began. “Today is our wedding anniversary. Eighteen years.”

“Good years.” Mr. Pearson looked at his wife. “Except—”

“Yes,” she said. “Except. Always the ‘except.’ ” She looked around the room. “It’s too neat,” she said. “You know?”

I thought of my own living room with my three children. Teenagers now. “Yes,” I said, “I know.”

“Perhaps we’re too old?”

I smiled. “You don’t think so,” I said. “We don’t either.”

“You always think it will be this month, and then next month,” Mrs. Pearson said. “Examinations. Tests. All kinds of things. Over and over. But nothing ever happened. You just go on hoping and hoping, and time keeps slipping by.”

“We’ve tried to adopt before this,” Mr. Pearson said. “One agency told us our apartment was too small, so we got this house. Then another agency said I didn’t make enough money. We had decided that was it, but this friend told us about you, and we decided to make one last try.”

“I’m glad,” I said.

Mrs. Pearson glanced at her husband proudly. “Can we choose at all?” she asked. “A boy for my husband?”

“We’ll try for a boy,” I said. “What kind of a boy?”

Mrs. Pearson laughed. “How many kinds are there? Just a boy. My husband is very athletic. He played football in high school, basketball, too, and track. He would be good for a boy.”

Mr. Pearson looked at me. “I know you can’t tell exactly,” he said, “but can you give us any idea how soon? We’ve waited so long.”

I hesitated. There is always this question.

“Next summer, maybe,” said Mrs. Pearson. “We could take him to the beach?”

“That long?” Mr. Pearson said. “Don’t you have anyone at all? There must be a boy somewhere.” After a pause, he went on. “Of course, we can’t give him as much as other people. We haven’t a lot of money saved up.”

“We’ve got a lot of love,” his wife said. “We’ve saved up a lot of that.”

“Well,” I said cautiously, “there is a little boy. He is thirteen months old.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Pearson said, “just a beautiful age.”

“I have a picture of him,” I said, reaching for my purse. I
handed them Freddie’s picture. “He is a wonderful boy,” I said. “But he was born without arms.”

They studied the picture in silence. He looked at her. “What do you think, Fran?”

“Kickball,” said Mrs. Pearson. “You could teach him kickball.”

“Athletics are not so important,” Mr. Pearson said. “He can learn to use his head. Arms he can do without. A head, never. He can go to college. We’ll save for it.”

“A boy is a boy,” Mrs. Pearson insisted. “He needs to play. You can teach him.”

“I’ll teach him. Arms aren’t everything. Maybe we can get him some.”

They had forgotten me. But maybe Mr. Pearson was right, I thought. Maybe sometime Freddie could be fitted with artificial arms. He did have nubs where arms should be.

“Then you might like to see him?”

They looked up. “When could we have him?”

“You think you might want him?”

Mrs. Pearson looked at me. “Might?” she said. “Might?”

“We want him,” her husband said.

Mrs. Pearson went back to the picture and spoke to it. “You’ve been waiting for us, haven’t you?”

“His name is Freddie,” I said, “but you could change it.”

“No,” said Mrs. Pearson. “Frederick Pearson—it’s good together.”

There were formalities, of course, and by the time we set the day it was nearly Christmas. I met the Pearsons in the waiting room. “Your son’s here already,” I told them. “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll bring him to you.”

“I’ve got butterflies,” Mrs. Pearson announced. “Suppose he doesn’t like us?”

I put my hand on her arm. “I’ll get him.”

When I went to get little Freddie, he looked at me intently. “Going home,” he said cheerfully. I carried him upstairs to the little room where the Pearsons were waiting. When I got there, I put
him on his feet and opened the door. Freddie stood uncertainly, rocking a little, gazing intently at the two people before him. They drank him in with total acceptance.

Mr. Pearson knelt down. “Freddie, come here. Come to Daddy.”

Freddie looked at me for a moment. Then, turning, he walked slowly toward them. “Going home,” he said, and they reached out their arms and gathered him in.
²

Stories like the adoption of little Freddie are so profoundly touching because they beckon to some of the deepest callings of the human spirit. They evoke the yearning for a world in which all are cared for, in which no one feels alone, unloved, or unwanted. They remind us that love is the most powerful, magical force in the universe, and remind us of our ability to love unconditionally.

Unfortunately, many in the industrialized world are without caring support in their times of need. Twenty-five percent of American households today consist of one person living alone; half of American marriages end in divorce (affecting tens of millions of children); more than a third of all U.S. births are to unmarried women, many of whom are not in committed relationships.
³
Even within many families and marriages that are intact, there is profound disconnection and loneliness.

There sadly seems to be something about the direction of modern Western civilization itself that undermines a sense of community and makes it harder to sustain positive relationships. A few years ago, when the Unitel Corporation moved a hundred telemarketing jobs out of Frostburg, Maryland, the company’s vice president, Ken Carmichael, explained that the move was made because the area’s residents weren’t pushy enough on the phone. The problem, he said, was “the culture and the climate in western Maryland, one of helping your neighbor and being empathetic and those sorts of things.”
⁴

The trend toward isolation is taking place all over the industrialized world. Nearly half of all British adults are now unmarried.
⁵
In Germany, the divorce rate has doubled in the past fifteen years. In
Iceland, the out-of-wedlock birthrate is now 65 percent.
⁶
I’m sure that to some extent these statistics represent a shakeup of traditional lifestyles, and that many couples who are not married are living together in committed relationships. At the same time, these numbers also suggest the degree of isolation that is seeping into modern life and taking a terrible toll.

In almost every culture in the world, eating dinner together has been a place for families to strengthen bonds. The French in particular have long cherished mealtime as a family ritual, so much so that children have traditionally not been allowed to open the refrigerator between meals. But the days of sitting for hours around the table savoring small portions of several courses and relishing each other’s company seem to have passed. Instead, it has become commonplace for the French to eat in front of their television sets, while talking on the telephone, and even alone. As McDonald’s has become more popular in France than anywhere else in Europe, the average French meal, which twenty-five years ago lasted 88 minutes, has been reduced to only 38 minutes today.
⁷

The French have long been known for their propensity to talk with one another, but according to the French National Bureau of Statistics, the time spent in conversations in France has declined more than 20 percent in just the past ten years. Thousands of French cafés are closing every year. Meanwhile, the number of prescriptions for mood-elevating drugs is now higher in France than anywhere else in the world.
⁸