I ran across a great website, Brownielocks, that lists holidays and observances for every day of the year. Today is International Older Persons Day. The World Health Organization classifies older persons as over sixty. I haven’t quite achieved older person status, but I’m getting closer by the minute.
With the demise of extended families, elders were seen in our society as useless and, like old horses, put out to pasture. With all us Baby Boomers turning wrinkly and silver, though, that paradigm is shifting. Grandparents in other parts of the world have always had an honored place in their societies. It’s nice to think that’s begun to be the case again in our own culture. Older people have the wisdom of long experience for which there is no real substitute.
I’ve been thinking about how many of my favorite children’s stories have wise elders in them. Some are wizards such as Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books and Dalben in Lloyd Alexander’s Pridain series. Some offer the main character a safe haven and a listening ear, such as Hannah in Witch of Blackbird Pond, Matthew and Marilla in Anne of Green Gables and Crane Man in A Single Shard. All of them add richness, texture and depth.
Do you make a point of putting older people in your stories? I often do. It just seems natural and right to have an elder or two somewhere in the mix.
Elders make good writers, too, expecially for children. Many authors begin their careers late and/or continue writing into their seventies, eighties and nineties. Scott O’Dell was sixty when he wrote Island of the Blue Dolphin, his first children’s book. He penned nearly thirty more children’s books before his death at the age of ninety-one.
I found a list of books on starting a writing career later in life at September University, a good site for creative aging in general.
So don’t get discouraged if you are an elder who wants to write. And if you are a writer, remember to include a few elders in your cast of characters. Your stories will be the better for it.
