LIZ ZELVIN--AN OUTRAGEOUS OLDER WOMAN

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Today, the multi-talented Elizabeth Zelvin--writer, singer, song writer, psychotherapist--gives us a much-needed (at least on my part) Saturday boost! Liz's latest mystery is DEATH WILL EXTEND YOUR VACATION. Her short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and have been nominated for three Agathas and a Derringer award. As Liz Zelvin, she recently released OUTRAGEOUS OLDER WOMAN, an album of original songs.

Oh, and a bit of business before we turn it over to Liz.  Our winners of advance reader's copies of Charles Todd's An Unmarked Grave are Karen Russell, Ethan, and Diane Hale! Could you three send your mailing addresses to me at deb at deborahcrombie dot com? I'll forward them to the Todds' wonderful publicist at William Morrow.


And now--

LIZ ZELVIN: In a recent discussion of the term “senior citizen” on the Sisters in Crime e-list, everybody had a different idea of how old you have to be to merit that mildly demeaning label. My best answer is the last verse of my song “Creeping Age,” which appears in my new album of original songs, OUTRAGEOUS OLDER WOMAN. (The first version, written twenty years ago, was titled “Middle Age”.)

           

            I never will be elderly, I never will be old

            Though my roots have turned to silver 

            and my molars all to gold

            The woman that I am, my friends, is what I’ll always be

            Getting old? So what! ’cause too damn old 

            is ten years more than me. 

As we’ve all heard, sixty is the new thirty. Seventy is the new forty. To my tennis-playing Aunt Hilda, since her birthday last month, 100 is the new seventy. And although I’m collecting Social Security and a card-carrying Medicare recipient, call me senior at your own risk. When I dive into that phone booth (let’s pretend I can still find a phone booth in 2012) and whip off my trifocals and frilly blouse, I reveal a T-shirt that says “Outrageous Older Woman.”

I actually have the T-shirt. Sometimes I put it on to go for my three-mile run in Central Park, only one long block from my apartment. By the time I reach the park, I’ve usually forgotten what I’m wearing. (Sad to say, Outrageous Older Women suffer from declining memory, just like senior citizens.) It only comes back to me when I notice that a helluva lot of women of a certain age are giving me a big smile as they pass by.

So what’s the matter with “senior citizen”? The term was coined as a euphemism for such epithets as “elderly,” “little old lady” or “little old man,” and the floridly disrespectful “old bag” (female) and “geezer” (male). But sometimes a painstaking attempt to be polite reeks of insincerity, and the recipient takes it for the false compliment it is. My Aunt Marta was in her mid-sixties, younger than I am now, when she ran into a high school classmate she hadn’t seen in decades. When the woman told her she was “looking very spry,” she was so furious that steam came out of her ears when she told me about it.

The up side of being a senior is the half-price bus and subway fare and the discount at the movies. Oh, and the accumulated wisdom of long experience. The down side is everything else, including the fact that we shrink. There’s nothing figurative about that “little.” I’ve lost an inch and a half already and will probably be looking up instead of down at my grandchildren in another ten years.

So what have I done with my golden years? So far, I’ve published three mystery novels featuring recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends, world-class codependent Barbara and computer genius Jimmy. DEATH WILL EXTEND YOUR VACATION is just out. In this one, Bruce and his friends take shares in a lethal clean and sober group house in the Hamptons. The first one, DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER, came out on my sixty-fourth birthday. And in the hiatus between book two and book three (I don’t need to say anything about the current state of the publishing industry, do I?), I wrote a dozen short stories (three nominated for the Agatha for Best Short Story and another for the Derringer) and recorded OUTRAGEOUS OLDER WOMAN.

It’s not so much the mystery plots that I couldn’t have written as effectively when I was younger. But that cumulative life experience I mentioned enables me to create complex characters, breathe life into them with distinctive voices and authentic relationships, and explore such themes as addiction and recovery and the nature of friendship. In the album, I sing about love and family, abuse and healing, and yes, aging. I do my best to make  readers and listeners laugh and cry. In the books, Bruce hits bottom, displays a smart mouth and a lot of New York attitude, and eventually takes an honest look at himself. The songs range from the embellished retelling of a Jewish shaggy dog story to my take on 911, written in New York a day or two after the tragedy.

It seems to me that “senior citizen” is a patronizing term. It implies that once you reach a certain age, your effectiveness diminishes and people have to make allowances for you.

Being an Outrageous Older Woman is all about empowerment: no allowances, no excuses, and a helluva lot of fun.

DEBS: I say "hooray!" How about you, REDS and readers?