Wiser With Age

Category: Advice

  • A Love Story Between Two Lovers of Nature

    A Love Story Between Two Lovers of Nature

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Audrey and Frank Peterman (Courtesy Audrey Peterman)

    I’m a Jamaican-born immigrant to America where I met a man so elegant and gorgeous, he reminds me of James Bond. After seven years of friendship, when I tried to fix him up with all my most beautiful girlfriends (sometimes they took an instant dislike to each other), we finally realized that we were perfect for each other and got married within six months. We’re now approaching our 28th wedding anniversary, and we love and trust each other more than ever.

    Three years into our marriage, we got in our truck and drove 20,500 miles around the country, visiting the spectacular destinations such as the Badlands, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, Washington State. That journey gave us a lot of time to talk and get to know each other even better. When we didn’t have even one blow up, Frank says he knew we would make it.

    He had been married twice before and gently shared the lessons he learned. For example, one day he said,

    “Honey, there are three of us in this marriage…â€

    “Wait!†I exclaimed! “I didn’t sign up for that!â€

    “There’s three of us in the marriage,” he continued unfazed. “There’s you, there’s me, and there’s the relationship. The relationship is made up of how we treat each other, how we speak to each other, and whether or not we make each other our priority.”

    Well, that made sense. So we decided that, whatever happened, the two of us would make the decision together, then consider our mothers, our children, and our family and close friends, followed by everyone else.

    Another time he said, “You know, each of us is going to go crazy sometimes. But it is very important that we don’t both go crazy at the same time.”

    He explained that, if I was upset about something, it would be his job to listen and hear me out, then repeat back to me what he’d heard to make sure he got it right. If he had, he’d explain what had happened to produce that result. If I said he hadn’t got the point, we’d start over. I would do the same for him if he was upset.

    Realizing that communication is difficult and that meaning doesn’t come directly from one person’s mouth into another’s head in just the way it is intended, keeps us open to being gently corrected.

    I share some of our key principles for a successful, smooth and happy relationship in my brand new book, “From My Jamaican Gully to the World,†which tells the story of our environmental journey resulting in the White House taking action. As a result of our efforts to protect the national parks and share them with all Americans, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum promoting diversity and inclusion in January of 2017.

    This Valentine’s Day, I wish everyone the privilege of looking at their partner with new eyes and appreciating what you saw in the beginning. No one is perfect, including you, and once you accept that, the relationship can become much easier and happier.

    Read our interview with Audrey Peterman to learn more about her, and Frank, (and how they live on a boat in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) here.

  • Author Francisco Stork: Letting Go

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Photo by Francisco Stork

    On this late autumn day, the elms and oaks around my house seem determined to let go of all the leaves that have died on their limbs. Everywhere I look there is a letting go. The sky has let go of blue and allowed itself to be covered with a thick mantle of gray.

    I am reminded of the letting go that I need to do. I am 66 (not that old as actuarial tables go) but like you and everyone and everything else that has been born, I am on my way to that final, total, letting go and I believe that it is time to shed what is no longer needed in this final stage of the journey.

    It’s not a long list, the things I need to detach from. They are internal things mostly, like the ambition for worldly recognition that served me so well when I was young and yearned to be somebody. Now ambition and the search for glory and rewards are a heavy burden and I would like, if at all possible, to travel light.

    Whenever I try to explain to people that in this phase of my life, I wish to let go of no-longer-needed wants, they get worried that I may be in the grips of depression. Sometimes, I see disappointment in their eyes. I am bailing out on the American dream to strive, always to strive for more, to never quit. I am giving up on living life to the fullest. Why, there are people older than me running marathons, running billion-dollar enterprises, running for president of the United States. A few of my more literary friends have even taken to quoting the famous lines from Thomas Dylan’s poem:

    Do not go gentle into that good night,

    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    I try to explain that, actually, raving and raging are at the top of the list of what needs to go. And if there is any burning inside of me, it will be more like the gentle flame of a candle that stays lit in the windstorm. But isn’t rage needed now more than ever? Isn’t giving up on rage the equivalent of not caring, of standing silent in the face of suffering and injustice? Am I being irresponsible? I respond that anger is not the strongest force, the fiercest weapon, but my words are taken as defeat.

    I want to keep on working, fighting if you will, by being as useful to others as I can. What I am letting go of is the old motivation and the old methods of work. I let go of working for the fruits of my labor and focus on the sincerity of the effort. If I work with honesty and truth the outcome will not matter. I embrace work as a gift. The energy and ability to work, the talent, the creativity behind it, all is a gift and my only hope is to pass the gift successfully to others. The method too will change from hurried and anxious productivity to work done with the urgency and seriousness of an inner calling, a sacred obligation. Waiting with receptive attention, listening, silence, the fecundity of leisure – all these will be part of the work.  The value and priority of different daily tasks will change. What if everything I do each day is equally important? What if playing with my grandchildren is as significant as writing a story? What if I write a story with the same love with which I hold my grandchild? And what if love becomes the burning purpose of my work?

    So many world traditions recognize old age as a special time. A spiritual time when a person can let go of the business of making a living and spend time looking care-fully at creation or searching for the presence of a creator, or developing virtues like humility, patience, kindness. Here in America that kind of letting go seems like giving up or, worse, cowardice. But letting go is an act of courage. It is choosing to finally, finally, follow the beat of your own drum. It means, if it comes to that, living on the margins of what is approvable by the world you live in. Courage could mean a solitude that is entered bravely, but not without fear. I am letting go of the images of myself that have served me well since I was a child. Who am I if not the talented boy who could read hardcover books in first grade? Or the dutiful lawyer or the Latino writer? Who am I, really, without these comfortable images?

    These old, old, trees let go of their leaves effortlessly. For them, the process of letting go each year is part of their becoming and their becoming happens just as it is meant to happen. It is, unfortunately more complicated for me. The acorn “knows†it will become an oak tree. My own becoming takes some figuring out. Not just who I am but who I am supposed to be. Who is the person I am finally to become? For I feel the presence of becoming in my old heart and it is not the same restless energy of forty years ago. To find out where this becoming is taking me, I must let go of all that is not true, of all that belongs to others, of all those cherished fantasies. No one said it wasn’t going to hurt.

    And yet, this letting go is not without a quiet joy, like the joy of the trees swaying in the wind, or the joy of the spiraling, falling leaf. I don’t know how to describe this joy. It is a paradox. It is joy filled with a light that is both dying and living.

    I let go of trying to understand it.

    Francisco X. Stork is a former attorney and an award-winning author of teen fiction novels. His eighth one will hit shelves in 2020. He often uses themes of his own life as inspiration for his writing. “The Memory of Light†is inspired by Stork’s own experience with depression, and “Marcelo in the Real World†is about a teen boy labeled as having a developmental disorder. Read our interview with him about his personal journey here. 

  • Grandmother, 81, releases debut album with grandson and is nominated by Latin Grammys for “Best Norteño Album”

    Grandmother, 81, releases debut album with grandson and is nominated by Latin Grammys for “Best Norteño Album”

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Irma Silva singing with her grandson, Jorge Loayzat, with the band Buyuchek on their family’s ranch in General Terán, Nuevo León, Mexico. (Courtesy Universal Music Latin Entertainment)

    Irma Silva was born and raised on her family’s ranch, “Rancho El Naranjo,†in General Terán, Nuevo León, Mexico. Ever since she was a little girl, she dreamed of being a singer like her uncles who were members of the Norteño band, Los Alegres de Teherán, which formed in the 1940’s. Instead, due to her family’s wishes, she became a seamstress. 

    However, because of the encouragement from her grandson, Jorge Loayzat (singer and bajo sexto player of the Norteño band Buyuchek), to pursue music, Silva – now 81 – says her days are currently spent doing interviews for press around the world. She has not only completed her first album, “Las Canciones de la Abuela†(“The Songs of Grandmotherâ€), but it has been nominated for “Best Norteño Album†by the 20th annual Latin Grammy Awards. This week, they traveled from their home in Monterrey to attend the red carpet event in MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on November 14.

    • A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.











      Irma Silva and her grandson, Jorge, arrive in Las Vegas on November 11 in preparation for the Latin Grammys. (Courtesy @JorgeLoayzat)

    “I loved to listen to my father sing, and I used to love to sing,†says Silva in Spanish, explaining that during the era of her youth, it was looked down upon for girls to pursue singing as a career.

    She repeats often that she thought her dream of singing was over forever and still can’t believe what is currently happening.

    “I really thought that at 81, that it wasn’t the right time…†says Silva, “I didn’t want to do it, but my grandson is very stubborn. I am very happy now…very happy.â€

    Working on the album, which took approximately a year, was also therapeutic for her because the 14th of November additionally marks the one year anniversary of the death of her oldest child of four. 

    “We filmed the music videos on the ranch of my family,†says Silva. “Working on the album this past year…it helped me.â€

    Creating the album also meant a lot for her 28-year-old grandson.

    “I remember the songs she used to sing me when I was still in the crib,†says Loayzat, explaining he has felt so many emotions working on this project with his grandmother who worked hard her whole life, and gave her all to her family. “I’m happier for her, more than for me. She has never even been to a concert, not to mention on a stage. I’ve already been singing for 16 years.â€

    He says he had always wanted to record an album with his grandmother since as long as he can remember.

    “I was thinking a simple album,†remembers Loayzat. “It was my bandmates that motivated me to make a complete professional album. A lot of people got involved to help us complete it.â€

    “I have a lot of friends whose parents sing very well, but they don’t record them thinking that it won’t result in anything,†says Loayzat, “but I’ve witnessed, in doing this project, that working on something noble brings many rewards…one of them being learning that it’s never too late to achieve your dreams.â€

    It has also opened up more ideas for the duo to work together. Coming next is an album with the Norteño artists of his grandmother’s youth, which is her next dream.

    “We already recorded the song, “Nueve dias†(“Nine daysâ€),†says Loayzat, adding that his grandma sings it with Norteño legend Poncho Villagomez, and it will drop on November 22. “Unintentionally, she has just started a music career.†

    “I now want to tell young people to fight for your dreams,†adds Silva. “I had once thought that I was too old, but here I am singing a very old song, ‘La Pajarera’ – the same song my teachers would make me sing when I was seven, and now I’m singing it again.â€

    This time, however, she is singing on an international stage.

  • My father and his replacements

    My father and his replacements

    All through my boyhood, my father worked from early in the morning until late at night. I spent a lot of time missing him. When would he come back, I often wondered.

    My grandfather fit the bill as my old man for decades. He took me to his office with him, and to baseball games at Yankee Stadium. He set the standard in taking the time to ask me how I was doing in school and what I planned to do for a living. And that worked fine until he died in 1981.

    I wanted my Uncle Leonard to take over for my absentee father. He was worldly and witty and accomplished — a Yale Law School graduate with a French wife and an English sports car. And to his everlasting credit, he, too, tried to play back-up.

    Once I became a father myself, I told myself everything between me and my Dad would someday change for the better. He would take more of an interest in me — and more important, in my wife and our son and daughter.

    But he remained elusive. And then, in 1997, at age 70, he died. Whatever opportunity once existed for us to be a father and son, at least as I imagined fathers and sons should be, was now suddenly gone for good. I cried at his funeral as I’d never cried before or have since.

    My search for an honorary old man resumed. I reconnected with Stanley, a former boss, recently retired and almost 30 years my senior. We became good friends. I drove out to Long Island regularly to visit him and go for walks with him in a waterfront park. At least until he, too, died, in 2011, at age 88.

    So it still goes for me, even now, at 66. I’ve stayed in touch with another long-ago boss, Morty, now 92. We’ve lunched together and messaged each other on Facebook. He’s taken an interest in my family and done me more than a few favors professionally.

    I also came to know John, 77, a retired doorman. And grown friendly with Ron, 83, a retired police officer. I’ve stayed in touch with Charlie, 74, once my next-door neighbor and a former printer turned security guard.

    I’ve now looked my whole life for a man who would put his arm around my shoulder and guide me through whatever came. An old man who, having gone around the block more than I had, could act, if only part-time, like a father to me. Set an example for me in how to be a father myself.

    Tell me, as I wish to this day I could hear my own father tell me, that I’ve turned out okay.

    Finally, my old man would show me how to be an old man myself. He would serve as a lighthouse beaming a signal through the darkness of the future to bring me safely to shore.

    But now I’m fast running out of old men to call my own.

    At what age does an adult outgrow the need for a Dad, if ever? Lately, I suspect that I’m getting too old to feel this biological impulse anymore, that it’s too late in the game for me to entertain such expectations anymore. If I’m to be realistic, I have to recognize that I’m already down to my last old man. If I’m still to look for an old man to call my own, an old man who will be around as long as I’m around, I now know just where to find him.

    The mirror.

    Bob Brody, an executive and essayist in Forest Hills, NY, is author of “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.”

  • Author Francisco Stork: Advice to Young Writers

    Author Francisco Stork: Advice to Young Writers


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.

    “What advice would you give a writer starting out?†is the question I am always asked at the end of one of my talks to high school students. I have thought about this question long and hard trying to come up with an answer that will be truly helpful. There are so many possibilities. Do I talk about developing skills or do I talk about attitude, about the mind-frame needed to write something that matters, something capable of touching hearts? In the end, I tell the young person about the one thing that helped me the most: writing every day in my journal.

    I started writing in my journal when I was a sophomore in high school and have been doing it almost every day since then. I am now 65 years old. I’m too scared to do the math and count how many entries this makes. In a closet in the basement of my house there is a stack of notebooks that goes almost to the ceiling. If I were to search for the first entry, I would probably find something very melodramatic about the unbearable sadness of unrequited love . . .and a few pages later, something with a lot of restless adjectives about a new possible love. These days the entries are more like silent prayer.

    I became a writer in those journals. At some point in my mid-forties there came a facility, an ease of vocabulary and imagination that allowed me to create characters that were part of me, yet were not me, and stories that were connected to yet separate from my own life story. Looking back, I see the journal as the equivalent of the scales that the pianist plays or the free-throws that the athlete repeats, alone in his back yard, one after another. My journal is where the habit needed for every skill was formed. The journal is where thought turned into instinct. The words that drip out slowly at first eventually start to flow as if they needed time and attention to feel fully welcomed.

    My journal gave me the gift of unconsciousness and of consciousness. Unconsciousness, because what I really want to say to that young person asking for advice is to forget about all those things she thinks writing will bring: fame, security, lots of people admiring you and loving you. Forget about the results, which more than anything else will paralyze you, or push you to write words that will not last, and instead focus on the effort. Love the trying, if you can. Offer your work to God, or life, and let them take care of whatever happens to your work after you finish. This is what I would like to say, but instead, I talk about writing in a journal every day because the practice of writing with the knowledge that no one will read what you write will, if you keep at it, eventually give you the freedom of knowing that what you write matters even if you are never famous, even if no one ever reads your words. This is the gift of unconsciousness that journal writing gives.  The journal’s gift of consciousness is the awareness that develops inside of you. The awareness of feelings and thoughts and of the universal humanity that is reflected in you and of which you are a part. You explore sadness and joy and ugly things too, like envy and anger, and when it comes time to invent the characters in your novels, you can create their souls from the first-hand experience of your own soul.

    This is what I want to say to the young person that wants to be a writer. But I can tell that she won’t like an answer that involves day after day of dedicated purpose. Start now, and maybe in 10 years, or 20, or 40, you will have something that the world finally recognizes as valuable. My dear young person doesn’t want an answer that requires years of working without anyone knowing he is working. She wants something that will happen before the junior-senior prom. Still, I go ahead and tell him about writing in a journal, about writing day after day to save my soul, sometimes my life. I tell him. Write in a journal every day. Write as if your soul and your life depended on it. The rest will take care of itself.

    Francisco X. Stork is a former attorney and an award-winning author of seven teen fiction novels. He often uses themes of his own life as inspiration for his writing. “The Memory of Light” is inspired by Stork’s own experience with depression, and “Marcelo in the Real World” is about a teen boy labeled as having a developmental disorder. Read more about his personal journey here.Â