Mum is relaxing on her sofa. She does lots more of that these days – watching TV, reading, doing crosswords, being waited upon. Mind you, it has taken Marje till her mid-90s to get there. A couple of years ago, she felt guilty if she’d not gardened, cooked, emptied the bins, driven to the shops in her ancient Nissan Micra, and visited the “elderly” at the local care home by lunchtime. It took a bad leg break for all that to change.
Now at 94, she’s learning how to take it easy. I’m approaching 60. What advice would she give me on ageing? “Just accept it gracefully,” she says. Has she found it difficult? “No, I don’t think I have. Most of the years I was fortunate that I didn’t look horrendously old.” You don’t look it now, I say. “Yes, but I am horrendously old.” She laughs.
She knows she’s lucky – she’s got two kids and four grandchildren who love her to bits, has managed to stay in her own home with the help of amazing carers, and her brain is still in fine fettle even though her short-term memory isn’t what it was. But that has its advantages, too. She’s not going to hold a grudge for long.
Marje is the youngest of four children, the rest of whom have long since died. She was never a confident child, despite being made head girl at her secondary school. She often says she thinks her parents had had enough of parenting by the time she arrived. “Have I ever told you, my mother used to say that Golda [the oldest girl] was the clever one and Renee [the second oldest] was the pretty one. I was aware she’d missed me out.” She has told me. Plenty of times. In fact, Marje was smart and gorgeous – and oblivious to it.
Her adulthood hasn’t been plain sailing, though she’s quick to point out that few of us get an easy passage. When I was young, she nursed me through three years of encephalitis surrounded by people telling her either I was going to die or that there was nothing wrong with me. In Dad’s later years she nursed him through psychotic depression. She has so many qualities (kindness, wisdom, a great sense of humour and an almost feral ability to protect her kids) though for most of her life she lacked the confidence to see those qualities in herself. Ironically, one of her greatest gifts was to make others feel good about themselves while she often felt worthless herself.
But that’s all a long time ago. For many years she has been shedding the uncertainties of the past. At 60, she says, she was just beginning to get into her stride. “I thought I was at a very good age because most of my worries and anxieties had left me.” What like? She points her finger at me. “I suppose if you have children you worry about them as much as anything.” Mum has two – my sister Sharon is two years older than me. “Sharon went along very smoothly, but you always did the unexpected. So that gave me anxieties.”
I expect her to talk about my illness, but she doesn’t. Maybe that’s too obvious. “This example sounds ridiculous, but that time you came home with massive high heels, my heart sank.” I remember it well. I was 12, and they were glorious – black matt-plastic with a four-inch platform and five-inch heel. Why did they worry you so much? “I used to think, ‘he’ll make such a display of himself.’” The shoes disappeared, mysteriously. “I didn’t want to get rid of them so I hid them,” she confesses. I thought she’d burnt them. “No, I didn’t. I knew that would be going too far.”
Marje was a curious mix – she hated convention, but was also hidebound by it. She wasn’t religious but grew up among an orthodox Jewish community, and was terrified of causing offence by doing the “wrong” thing. “I wasn’t sufficiently confident in my own judgment to be able to accept what other people said.”
Despite everything she was unconventional for her time – a diffident free spirit. She went to Birmingham to do a two-year teaching diploma, taught in Glasgow at the age of 19, lived in Israel for two years just after independence, became an inspirational teacher of special needs children, and got engaged twice before marrying Dad.
In the lounge, there are photographs of Dad and Alex, who became her boyfriend after Dad died 15 years ago. It was a fabulous, unlikely romance. When Marje lived in Israel, she and Alex were good friends. After his wife died he rang Marje and reintroduced himself, some 65 years since they had last seen each other. He still lived in Israel. They became inseparable – chatting and playing, eating and drinking, planning and reminiscing, dancing and romancing, all over Skype. They never met physically. They thought it might ruin what they had. Alex died in 2017. Who do you think about more, Dad or Alex? “I think of them both in different ways.” What do you think of when you think about Dad? “He was a good man; a very principled man. I’ve heard you say that, too. Fair.”
It was Alex, though, who made her feel loved. “It was all spoken out loud. He was a very open man. He said what he thought, and what he thought about me was all good so that made me feel great.” Do you regret not meeting physically the second time around? “No. I think it would have been very difficult.” She would have been prepared to visit him if he had encouraged her. “I used to say he was more sensible than I was, and that’s why he didn’t encourage me to go, because he knew it would be far from perfect. I think we would have both been in for a bit of a shock.”
After Alex died, Mum struggled. Her osteoarthritis was playing up, she broke bones in her back, and would often tell me ageing isn’t for wimps. She seemed lonely by herself, but wanted to stay in her own home and be in control. Last year she reached a low with the leg break, a series of infections, and a lengthy hospital stint. It all resulted in a new, happier, stage of ageing – back at home with the support of carers.
Of course, there are days when she is down. One time we speak just before our daily Zoom crossword. I ask if she’s still enjoying life. “It’s a moot point,” she says. “Generally, the quality’s going down a bit. As it does. I suppose it’s closer to a yes than a no.”
What do you miss doing most? “Going out for a walk on my own two feet.” She hates being pushed in a wheelchair. You’re doing pretty well, though, I say. “I’m doing all right. Of course I am. Yeah. OK, are we playing kid?”
Should I ask you more questions tomorrow? “No, ask them me now and get it done with!”
Do you worry about money? “No, I don’t care, I know you and Sharon are attending to it. I reckon I’ve got enough to see me through to the end of my days.” She had always hoped to leave something for the grandchildren. Now if the money runs out, so be it.
I ask if she has regrets. “I’m not telling you my regrets that’s for sure, for sure, for sure. Have I? Yes. But it’s stupid to think about regrets. There are certain things, Simon, I can’t talk about. This is too personal.”
On balance, Marje is in a good place. I ask how important it is that she has a healthy relationship with me and Sharon. “Incredibly important. That’s the backbone of my life; the biggest thing that keeps me going.” Marje was an early adopter of technology. As Sharon and I live in London, and she’s in Manchester, Skype has played a huge part in keeping us close. She also seems more aware that it’s not a given for parents and children to get on. “I suppose a lot of people simply don’t like each other,” she says.
What are you proud of? “You and Sharon,” she says. That’s a cop-out, I say. “OK, going back a lifetime, I’m pleased that I was good at my job when I was teaching handicapped children. I was made for that. I loved it.” Marje loves talking about her time at Bethesda – or to give the place its full title Bethesda Home for Crippled and Incurable Children, in Cheetham Hill. She adored the kids, and would take them home to her parents at weekends (the 1950s were very different times). On one occasion, one drank Dettol and she had to pile the kids and wheelchairs into her car and whisk them off to hospital. “I got tremendous satisfaction from that job. It was perfect for me – half teaching, half nursing.” She began to believe in herself.
What frightens you most about getting old? “Don’t laugh at me,” she says. “I never want to become a smelly old woman. That’s number one. People say when you get old you become yuck. I don’t want people to say that about me.”
Anything else?
“Well just that you’re aware that your time is curtailed, and you sometimes think how’s it going to be? Then you think well everybody’s got to go through it, you’re not the only one, so you get on with it.”
Marje says she never thought about dying when she was younger. And now? “I would do if I didn’t stop myself.” You seem so phlegmatic these days, I say. “I am now.” Why? “I no longer have to chase the anxieties away. They’ve gone.”
That’s wonderful, I say. What made them go? “There was a time when I cared a lot about what other people thought of me. When I was young, every word that came out of my mouth I was thinking: is that right, is that wrong? Everything I did. Now I don’t care.” She smiles. “Maybe because there aren’t many people left who think about me!”
My fab mum Marje at 94 taking her first independent steps nine months after breaking her leg. This makes me well happy. Background commentary provided by the almost legendary @mayahattenstone pic.twitter.com/TZT80UkIlV
— Simon Hattenstone (@shattenstone) March 29, 2022
Marje has made us promise that if she gets horribly ill or incapacitated, we won’t keep her alive longer than she wants. But for now she is looking ahead. She recently took her first unsupported steps since breaking her leg. Yesterday she was in the kitchen making Passover biscuits. There’s only so much relaxing you can do at 94. And she has set herself a new goal. By August, she plans to be walking properly and have done with the wheelchair. We filmed her taking those first steps a few weeks ago. After reaching the end of the room, Marje waved at the camera triumphantly and hobbled back to the sofa. “I think I’m on my way,” she said.
• • •
A couple of weeks have passed. Marje’s walking is improving hugely. She’s even made it up and down the stairs. I tell her we need to do a photo to go with the piece. She asks me to remind her why we did this interview. It’s for a special supplement on ageing, I say.
“Bloody cheek,” she replies. “I’m not ageing!”
