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INTRODUCTION TO THE FABULOUS GEEZERSISTERS 

If you want to know why we named this blog what we did, it’s because our combined age is 111 and climbing.  And yes, we’re sisters – Ruth Pennebaker, who’s three years older, and Ellen Dlott, who will always be the baby sister.  At this point in our lives, we figure, we’ve got the chronological heft to call ourselves fabulous if we feel like it.

 

We were both born in Oklahoma and grew up mostly in West Texas.  Since then, our lives have diverged.  A lot.  For more than two decades, we’ve lived thousands of miles apart on different continents.  But we’re still very close.  We can’t imagine a world without the other in it.

 

This fall, 2007, we’re both trying new ventures.  Ellen has moved to northern Poland to work as an English teacher.  Ruth is in Austin, Texas, where she recently quit her job to return to her own writing.  Most people would say we’re both certifiably nuts — but who cares?  All we can do is fall flat on our respective faces.  And not for the first time, God knows.  Besides, our family has a long, proud tradition of nuttiness.

 

So, this blog is to stay close and to support each other and anyone else who wants support or a laugh or, when life warrants it, a good cry.  At this age, if you haven’t had the stuffings knocked out of you a few times, you probably haven’t lived.  Or you might have access to some really great drugs we’d be quite interested in.  In either case, do stay in touch.

 

                            – Ruth Pennebaker & Ellen Dlott

 

RUTH PENNEBAKER’S BIO 

I’m a slow learner.  I had to go to law school to figure out I didn’t want to be a lawyer (I hate conflict, which is kind of a drawback).  I wanted to be a writer.  The truth is, I’ve always been attracted to low-paying work.  But, it’s low-paying, fascinating work and I love it, even when it’s driving me crazy, since I don’t deal too well with rejection.  (I’m working on this.)

 

For most of my adult life, I’ve either held a fulltime job involving writing or worked at home doing my own writing.  They both have their benefits and drawbacks.

 

Fulltime job benefits: office away from the home; workplace camaraderie; paycheck.

 

Staying at home writing benefits: freedom to do my own work; flexible schedule; could get rich and famous doing this, but probably won’t.

 

Fulltime job drawbacks: Having to be there, even when you don’t feel like it; not being your own boss.

 

Staying at home writing drawbacks: No structure; possibility of isolation (in which case, you end up having long, highly emotional conversations with your cat who, being male, doesn’t hold up his end of the discussion and often appears to be bored and only humoring you and not listening closely); no steady paycheck; nobody thinks you’re working when you’re at home and “only” writing.  (This frequently leads to one of my all-time favorite questions:  “Are you still working or are you writing?”)

 

Whew.  Look at the space I just took up on my most recent choice’s drawbacks.  What am I – crazy?  Apparently.  But at least I’m self-consciously crazy.  That always counts for something, in my view.

 

But, hell.  That’s the way it is.  I want to do my own work and I’m well-acquainted with the drawbacks of that choice.

 

I’m also well-aware that time is fleeting.  I’m 57 and, so far, a 12-year survivor of stage II breast cancer.

 

Our mother died 10 years ago, when she was 73.  She died a terrible, prolonged death from accelerated Parkinson’s – losing all control of her body and eventually losing her mind.  I can still remember one of the last times I went to see her, walking down the long, shiny halls of the nursing home, hearing someone screaming.  It was Mother, who had always been so quiet and polite all her life.  She was being cared for well, but screamed a lot at the end.  So did our maternal grandmother, now that I think about it.  You have to wonder about those quiet, circumspect lives they and other women lead, only to end up screaming hysterically at the very end.

 

Our father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s shortly after Mother’s death.  He’s still alive, being cared for in a small town about an hour’s drive from where I live.  He’s declined very gradually, but it’s been years since he’s recognized any of us – although I do think we look familiar to him.  Lately, he can’t keep up any kind of conversation, which he used to be able to do.  In August, he fell and broke his hip.  On one of his first days in the hospital, I looked at him in his bed – helpless and panicky and in pain – and had a brief vision of him as he used to be in his prime.  I could almost see that younger version of him — strong, athletic, handsome, competent to run his own life – and could feel what I know that younger person would have felt: grief, horror, contempt for what he had become.

 

So Ellen and I are the only true survivors of our small family.  I know that she, like me, is haunted by our parents’ ends.  It can’t help shadowing your life when you’re in your fifties, knowing what may come.  I always tell our kids that we’ve got depression, cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in our family.  But on the plus side, we’re smart and we’ve got a great sense of humor and nobody gets to pick his genetic inheritance.

 

In spite of all of this, I’ve had a good, very fortunate life.  I’ve done work I’m very proud of and enjoy.  I have a wonderful daughter, Teal, who’s 25, and and equally wonderful son, Nick, who’s 21.  After almost 35 years of marriage, I’m still crazy about my husband, who remains the most interesting person I’ve ever met.  And I have great, close friends, even if they don’t all live in Austin, dammit.  And an incredible sister who lives too far away.

 

 

To me, this is a blog about the second half of two women’s lives.  It’s a record of what we’re doing and how we’re doing.  There’s life after menopause and we’re still hanging in there, trying to get the most out of it we can. – Ruth Pennebaker

 

ELLEN DLOTT’S BIO

My young adult years were mainly spent in broadcasting, after a rocky start. This was close to 40 years ago, when  Help Wanted ads in most newspapers were sexually segregated.  “We don’t need any secretaries,” was the usual response when answering ads listed by the now-defunct radio school from which I graduated.  But eventually I slipped into the market as an announcer at a backwoods station.  Being a deejay was exciting at first.  Like Ruth, though, I wanted to write, and my final years in radio were as a copywriter. 

I met my husband, Bill, while in the process of trying to launch a career as a freelancer.  The unpredictability of freelancing spooked me early on, so I sought out  part-time supplemental work.  He was a sales trainer for a telecommunications company, looking for someone to book appointments for salespeople.  I didn’t get that job.  Someone who really liked soliciting was hired.  I got him instead, a much better deal. 

We spent four basically good years together in Dallas.  By 1985, both of us had burnout.  Or maybe just early mid-age crises.  The solution was to move to Israel.  Following months in an immigrant absorption center in Beer-Sheva, Bill established a successful business as a private English teacher.  For 14 years I worked with a patent attorney firm.  Although many envision Israel at best as volatile and dangerous, our lives were calm and secure in the Negev.  Beer-Sheva, after all, is close to no borders and not a passionately disputed city like Jerusalem.  Both of us immensely enjoyed the nearness of Europe.  Neither of us had traveled outside North America before and yearly chose a different country to visit on vacations. 

I can remember so well a bright autumn day when I was walking home,  pleased with the day’s work, pleased to be going home, then suddenly thought, “All’s well now.  But it won’t continue.  Some day, everything will change.” 

And of course, everything did change.  Ruth got cancer.  Mother died.  Our father, much as I tried to deny the early signs, got Alzheimer’s.  I knew my turn was coming, one way or another, and it did in 2004.  After a few months of a general, undiagnosed decline, Bill died. 

Clinging to the familiar when your world has turned upside down is a common reaction.  It took a long time to thoroughly digest the fact that my old life was gone forever.  In its place was an unsatisfactory limbo. I often felt too old and tired to start all over again. Eventually, I decided I was too young not to try.  Finally I wrapped it up, slammed and bolted the door and here I am in Gdynia, Poland.   

This is a beautiful, vibrant city on the Gulf of Gdansk.  As elsewhere in Eastern Europe, an interesting population shift is in effect. Many young Poles are lured to Western Europe to further their careers, while thousands of foreigners like me have been drawn to the East.    

It strikes me as absurd that Ruth, the person to whom I feel closest, is in fact thousands of miles away and has been for the last decades.  And yet the instant we speak on the telephone and on the too-rare occasions we’re able to see one another in person, it all falls into place.  As much as I’ve loved my parents, even as a snot-nosed toddler, Big Sister was the most important figure to me in family life and always will be. — Ellen Dlott