When I was growing up, women turned into old ladies when they hit menopause. They’d put on headdresses and sit on a bench downstairs to gossip, criticize the neighbors, and complain about old age. The Soviet system obliged this mentality by retiring women at 55. Men retired at 60 but their life expectancy was 12 years shorter in peacetime, so the issue of old age was often moot.
This is why talking to Lidia Falcón, who at 85 has more energy and leads a fuller life than many 25-year-olds, was quite an experience. I learned a lot of fascinating stuff and got an invitation to visit the writer when I go to Spain but the most valuable takeaway is that old age begins when you decide it begins. I also really enjoyed how in a long conversation there was no mention of COVID and no complaints about young(er) people.
I also discovered that two of the projects I’m working on and that I walked into seemingly randomly are connected. This has no value for scholarship but it has a lot of value for me.
“I’ll definitely come over for some coffee when I’m in Spain,” I said at the end of the interview.
“Coffee?” Lidia asked. “Umm, I was hoping for something stronger. Maybe even much stronger, you know?”
Clarissa's Blog 
So loved this post! Especially the ending
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Thank you!
I’m going to love it even more when I actually travel to Spain and meet her.
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Which you will. You absolutely will. No, you must 🙂
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‘…old age begins when you decide it begins.’
When I was a child, my grandmother’s boyfriend, who was born in 1865, told me that he did not commence getting old until he was 93. He had been in a field on his family farm plowing with a mule-drawn plow. The mule steped on one of his feet and crushed it. He did not walk with an obvious limp, but he said he had never really recovered. He died at age 98, while I was an undergraduate.
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That’s a beautiful story, David.
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And to think that she has been dragged through the courts like a common criminal… I wonder how her case ended up. I have not been able to find any recent update on the outcome of the case initiated by the Fiscalia in Barcelona.
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The great thing was that when I asked, she was completely non-victimlike about it. The whole thing elicits a kindly chuckle at the expense of the young people who have no idea what real feminism should be about.
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